The Diamond Sea
A group show
Oct 13 - Nov 10, 2012
Opening reception: Saturday, Oct 13th, 6–9 pm

San Francisco, CA -- FFDG is pleased to present the substantial fall showcase “The Diamond Sea” featuring small-scaled works from a diverse selection of established, mid-career, and emerging artists living and working in the United States and abroad. Artists include Brett Amory, Shawn Barber, Michelle Blade, Clayton Brothers, Curiot, Jeff Depner, Meredith Dittmar, Jeremy Fish, Jay Howell, Mel Kadel, Hiro Kurata, Nicolas LeBorgne, Russell Leng, Alexis Mackenzie, Travis Millard, Ralph Pugay, Winnie Truong, and Mathew Zefeldt. An opening reception shall be held on Saturday, Oct 13th (6-9pm). Beer and wine will be served.

"The Diamond Sea" is a collection of works from well-known internationally acclaimed artists and also features works from artists whose careers are developing on the international stage as recognition of their work spreads. "The Diamond Sea" will give viewers an opportunity to view and purchase a wide selection of smaller works in multiple mediums from this dynamic collection of focused talent.

Artist Bios:

Brett Amory
Brett Amory is a painter working in the Bay Area. Amory attended The Academy of Arts in San Francisco, where he received a BFA in 2005. His current solo show in San Francisco at Sandra Lee runs through October. His last solo show was in 2011 at London’s The Outsiders Gallery.

Shawn Barber
Shawn Barber's body of work focuses primarily on painting, portraiture, and documenting contemporary tattoo culture. Barber earned his B.F.A from Ringling College of Art in 1999 and has paintings held in private collections throughout the United States, Canada, Asia, Europe and Australia. His paintings have been exhibited in diverse solo and group venues including: Joshua Liner Gallery, NYC, NY; Billy Shire Fine Arts, Los Angeles, CA; The Shooting Gallery, San Francisco, CA; Mesa Contemporary Arts Center, Mesa, AZ; University of Houston, Houston, TX. His first published book of art titled 'Tattooed Portraits' was published by 9mm Books in March of 2006, followed by his second tome, 'Forever and Ever', a 256 page hardcover book dedicated to the Tattooed Portraits Series.

Tom Betthauser
is an alumnus of the San Francisco Art Institute and a Bay Area native. His detailed graphite works are as intricate as they are beautiful. His birds-eye perspectives of otherworldly landscapes hide many layers of urban decay in an imagined world that is falling apart. He's currently studying for his MFA at Yale.

Michelle Blade
She holds a BA from Loyola Marymount University, Los Angeles and an MFA from the California College of the Arts. Her work has been featured at Triple Base, Jack Hanley, and David Cunningham Projects, San Francisco; the San Jose ICA, Carl Berg Gallery and Broad Art Center, Los Angeles; Space 1026, Philadelphia; Union Gallery, London; V1 Gallery, Copenhagen; and the Akademie der Bildenden Künste, Stüttgart. She is a 2007 recipient of the Murphy-Cadogan Fellowship.

Clayton Brothers
Together, American artists Rob Clayton (b.1963) and Christian Clayton (b.1967) make up the artistic duo known as the Clayton Brothers. Both artists earned BFA degrees from the Art Center College of Design in Pasadena, CA. After spending most of their childhood in Colorado and vacationing frequently in California, the Clayton Brothers were inspired by the aesthetics of surf culture, street art, and punk rock. Rob and Christian currently share studio space in Los Angeles, CA. Their work has been displayed at The Armory Show in New York, the Royal Academy in London, the Madison Museum of Contemporary Art in Madison, WI, and Art Basel Miami, and is included in both corporate and private collections.

Curiot
Mexico City based painter and street artist.

Jeff Depner
is a Vancouver based painter. With his geometric abstractions, Jeff Depner undertakes a formal analysis of the interrelationship between form, colour and space. A significant influence on his highly independent formal language can be found within architecture. Depner uses, for example, flat, muted colours, which conjure up associations to institutional and industrial buildings.

Meredith Dittmar
is an artist living and playing in Portland OR. Born near Boston Mass, she grew up in a world of pet pigs, horses, hay-forts and spy games . Follow this with an education in computer science, a career in interactive design, a compulsive need to create, and a drive to Seek and you get the major elements of her person and work.

Jeremy Fish
lives and works in San Francisco’s North Beach neighborhood. His artwork deals with the relationship of all things cute and creepy, and the balance between the two. The work tends to be narrative stories designed with a library of symbols and characters. In the last few years Fish has exhibited his work in Japan, Germany, Switzerland, Taiwan, Poland, Hungry, Denmark, Canada, Holland, Austria, Slovakia, Italy, and all over the United States.

Jay Howell
has been a strong presence in the Bay Area for the past few years (now living and working in Los Angeles), sharpening his cartoon-style drawings of skinny guys with erections, naked chicks on skateboards, dogs, beer, rockers, and endless good times. His art manages to be whimsical and crude at the same time, but above all damn right funny. Howell created the animated show for Nickelodeon “Sanjay and Craig” with its full first season to be aired in 2013.

Mel Kadel
graduated from Moore College of Art & Design in Philadelphia. After living in New York for a few years, she moved to Los Angeles where she now resides in a log cabin by the 5 Freeway with her partner, artist Travis Millard. She works using coffee-stained paper, micron .005 pens, hand mixed ink wash, pencil, and blades to create carefully detailed and layered drawings of childlike characters exploring, opening up, and overcoming peril with fierce determination.

Hiro Kurata
is a Brooklyn based painter who uses the motif of baseball to frame his psychedelic allegories. His work is full of colorful lines and twisting textures, and is wrought with other symbols, nodding to each piece's deeper implications.

Nicolas Le Borgne
France based artist working on pop-surreal illustrations. Nicolas aka Odo usually works with watercolor, pen & ink or acrylic.

Russell Leng
is an emerging artist from Vancouver, Canada, and holds a B.A. in Art from Trinity Western University. He is currently living in Edinburgh, UK, pursuing a MFA from Edinburgh College of Art. His work has been exhibited throughout North America and Europe, and awards include 1st Place Painting Prize from the Surrey Art Gallery, and a BMO Student Invitational nomination. He has been featured in numerous online and print publications including Gestalten, Chronicle, and the Globe and Mail.

Alexis Mackenzie
San Francisco based Alexis Mackenzie creates collages composed by hand - cut from books she’s been collecting for years, and painstakingly pieced together as seamlessly as possible. They create themselves through a process beginning with a loose concept, followed by a series of trials and errors, subtle maneuvers, selection/elimination, harmonious unions, and happy accidents. It is a meditative process, and there is a lot of decision-making behind each element involved.

Travis Millard
(b. 1975), grew up in the backyard creeks of Olathe, Kansas. He founded the Fudge Factory Comics in 1997, now headquartered in Los Angeles. His work has been exhibited in the US and internationally, and has been published in numerous books and magazines. Some of his more highfalutin titles include, "Hey Fudge" , "Hitten' Switches" with Michael Sieben, "Farts - A Spotters Guide" (Chronicle Books) and "How to Speak Zombie" (Chronicle Books)

Ralph Pugay
Originally from the Philippines, Ralph Pugay is a Portland-based artist whose work is rooted in the investigation of anxiety and alienation that exist in an era of rapid globalization and information consumption. In 2010, Pugay received the Outstanding Student Achievement Award in Contemporary Sculpture from the International Sculpture Center. His work has been shown at local and national venues including IGLOO, Disjecta, Grounds for Sculpture, The Door at Ludlow Street, and Salt Lake Art Center. He is a recipient of grants from the Foundation for Contemporary Art and Portland State University where he received an MFA in Contemporary Studio Practice last year.

Winnie Truong Born in 1988, Winnie Truong lives and works in Toronto and is a recent graduate of the Ontario College of Art and Design’s drawing and painting program. Winnie is the recipient of numerous awards, including W.O. Forsythe award, the 401 Richmond Career Launcher prize and the BMO 1st! Art Award for Ontario, which was shown at Mocca last fall. This past year Truong has shown in New York at Mulherin Pollard Projects and was also featured at VOLTA , NY. She is in the collection of The Nerman Museum of Contemporary Art, Overland Park, Kansas

Mathew Zefeldt
got his MFA from the University of California in 2011. Zefeldt’s works are evidently time-consuming, with multiple processes of background and foreground layering, canvas on canvas collage, and color mapping. The result of which are bold, abstracted works with bursts of vibrant colors exacerbated by solid geometric shapes juxtaposed with statue-like heads of Grecian philosophers within a Euclidean space. Zefeldt paintings are most often over-sized in the 6 foot category. In “The Diamond Sea”, Zefeldt displays a rare small painting.