ROBINSONG
ROBINSONG
Classic Cars West | 411 26th Street, Oakland, CA
August 4 - September 25, 2016
Opening Reception: Friday, August 5, 6-10pm
Second Reception: Friday, September 2, 6-10pm
Oakland, CA Classic Cars West is pleased to present Robinsong, a solo exhibition by Jillian Piccirilli. This special installation explores one family’s notions of home and the American Dream. Robinsong features archaic mixed media photography, text, sound, familial artifacts, and site-specific installations that immerse visitors in the story of the artist’s family’s bygone home Robinwood. While it is a deeply personal story, the triumphs and tragedies of this clan offer wider resonance through a tale of love, loss, searching, and belonging.
Robinwood was the home of Jim King, a carpenter, and Mae (Carlson) King, an amateaur photographer. With blueprints lifted from the 1946 issue of Better Homes & Gardens, the Kings built Robinwood on Michigan cow pasture land with sweat, luck, and their modest means. And it was the locus of their lives for sixty years. Piccirilli’s mourning after her grandparents’ passings led to this swan song series for these makers and their homestead. Drawing upon Mae’s photographs and the artist’s own, Robinwood lives on in over fifty cyanotypes, each cast with gum bichromate color and handpainted. This special installation of the series at Classic Cars West’s gallery space also features furniture pieces built by Jim and arranged in a special site-specific installation, subtle sound works that hark back to Robinwood’s soundscapes, as well as new prints to the series.
About the Artist : Jillian Piccirilli creates series-driven art grounded in narrative, histories, and collaboration. Often born of a preoccupation with nostalgia and loss, her work seeks to give these personal aches tangible form through imagery that draws upon play and whimsy. She studied art and anthropology at Cornell University, where she was the recipient of the University’s Faculty Medal of Art and Charles Goodwin Sands Memorial Medal of Art. She has exhibited in California, Colorado, New York, and Rhode Island, where her Providence Art Windows public art installation garnered praise in the Washington Post. In 2012, she moved to Oakland, CA, where she maintains a rigorous studio practice. Currently, her work focuses on archaic photographic printing methods that operate at the intersection of photography, painting, and printmaking.
About the Gallery : Alongside their selection of classic vehicles, Classic Cars West hosts locally and internationally known artists in their spacious garage-cum-gallery. Largely installation-based, Classic Cars West’s exhibitions are expansive and experimental in their approach to space and the role of the viewer in the act of creation.
About the Curator : Dasha Matsuura is an Oakland-based independent curator and assistant director of Spoke Art (San Francisco). Matsuura curates three exhibitions a year at Classic Cars West, in addition to serving on the Board of Directors of Oakland Art Murmur.
Classic Cars West
411 26th Street, Oakland, CA
classiccarswest.com
Hours : Wednesday - Friday 5-10 pm, Saturday 11-10 pm, Sunday 11-3 pm
Free & open to the public