The 7th annual East Meets West exhibit, featuring paintings, photographs, sculpture and poetry, will be on display during the month of January at the Livermore Library’s Civic Center Gallery. The public is invited to meet the artists and view the works at a reception with “east meets west” refreshments on Saturday, January 5th from 12:30-4:00 p.m.
Livermore artist Lily Xu originated East Meets West in 2007 to celebrate paintings from both Asian and Western traditions. Over the years, she has expanded the mission to include more contemporary-style work and art in various mediums, poetry being added in 2011. In addition to Xu’s paintings, this year’s exhibit includes works of art by Bill Paskewitz, the late Merilyn “Tilli” Calhoun, Walter Davies, Kurt Fehlberg and Katie Caulk; as well as poetry by Livermore’s Poet Laureate Cher Wollard, Jim Curcuro and Kay Speaks.
The Livermore Civic Center Public Library is located at 1188 South Livermore Avenue. The library is open Monday to Thursday from 10:00 a.m. to 9:00 p.m., Fridays from 10:00 a.m. to 6:00 p.m., Saturday from 10:00 a.m. to 5:00 p.m., and Sunday from 12:00 p.m. to 6:00 p.m. For more information call 925-373-5500.
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Meet the Artists:
• Xu combines traditional Chinese and contemporary Western techniques to create highly decorative works. Xu was born in China, is a fourth-generation artist. She studied Chinese literature and fine art at Beijing University before immigrating to the United States in the early ‘90s. She spent time in New Jersey, Michigan and Austin, TX, where she founded the Austin Chinese Fine Arts Society. She and her family moved to Livermore in 2004. Xu is especially skilled at Chinese watercolor and ink drawings, using simple brush strokes and a heavy use of color on rice paper, depicting flowers, birds, scenery, figures, and animals.
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She has conducted intensive research in combining color and ink, lines and curves in her paintings. Her distinctive personal style includes forceful, fresh, rhythmical brushstrokes - a perfect combination of Western and Chinese forms of expression. Xu has received many awards in juried exhibitions, nationally as well as in local communities. Her work has been published in the Austin American-Statesman, Austin Woman, The Independent, Pleasanton Gazette, LPC Anthology and “Where a Painter meets a Poet." Xu is a member of Pleasanton Art League and Livermore Art Association, and is on the board of directors for the Multicultural Artists Partnership.
• Paskewitz is a full-time faculty member in the Art Department of Las Positas College, and has taught many of the best-regarded artists in the Tri-Valley. He studied at the prestigious School of Art at Cooper Union and earned a Master of Fine Arts from City University of New York. On vacation in California after graduation, he decided to stay and never went back.
A world traveler, his work includes watercolors and oils of his Antioch home and environs, as well as subjects from his various trips to Europe, Egypt, Russia, and beyond.
Paskewitz looks for spontaneity and a dialogue with his subjects. He has a real rapport with shapes, forms, lines, light and content. Of his paintings, he explains, “I paint with varying brush pressures and gestures and I control transparent puddles of color. I produce a memory of my experience. The images are the efforts made visible from my experiences.”
• Calhoun was an active member of the Livermore Art Association, the Livermore Heritage Guild, the Livermore Cultural Arts Council, and was instrumental in helping to found the Livermore Art Association Gallery and Carnegie Museum in downtown Livermore, circa 1974. She was a well-known artist in the community, and taught art and drawing classes for many years through Livermore’s Adult Education program. Calhoun painted in a variety of mediums, mainly watercolor, and styles, including a “Grandma Moses” folk-art style, in which she captured the history of her family and Livermore.
She melded her artistic ability and a love of history to publish The Holm Family Cookbook with the help of her daughters, sister and niece. Calhoun died unexpectedly this past Mother’s Day, due to complications from melanoma (please wear your sunblock).
• Davies is a well-known photographer whose work has appeared in numerous shows in California and New Mexico. He has taken classes and workshops with photographers such as John Sexton, Jay Dussard, Bruce Barnbaum, Ray McSavaney and Carol Rose Brown. His photographs are held in public and private collections throughout the West.
“I am neither a poet, nor a painter, nor a sculptor or wordsmith,” he says. “The muse that has captivated me is the beauty and mystery of light and shadow. I attempt to explore their play and dance, contrasts - both hard and soft, with the music of color, all through the eye of a camera. The exploration is incomplete however, until experienced through the eyes of a viewer. Please join me and share my vision, while viewing these images. Davies also serves on the Livermore Cultural Arts Commission.
• Fehlberg learned to throw pots from his father in the basement of their Montana home. He earned a Masters of Architecture at Montana State University, while also studying ceramics, life drawing, lithography and jewelry. Fehlberg’s architectural career took him to Anchorage, and he furthered his study of ceramics at the University of Alaska.
He and wife Lauri moved to the Bay Area in 1987, and he took a 20-year hiatus from working with clay. When Fehlberg returned to ceramics, he experimented with a westernized Japanese raku process. “Pots are removed from the kiln with tongs at a red-hot 1800 degrees and immediately placed in a container of newspaper and sawdust,” he says. “The smoke from the fire blackens the bare clay body and adds carbon to the glazed surfaces. “
His most recent work has been wood fired in Anagama or Noborigama kilns, traditional Korean or Japanese wood-fired kilns. The way the wood ash is deposited on the clay body is particularly suited to the wheel-thrown and altered forms that Fehlberg favors. The Fehlbergs are currently building a studio outside of Bozeman, Montana, where they plan to pursue ceramics, jewelry, furniture design and architecture.
• Caulk’s contemporary multi-colored linocuts convey naïve art simplicity with their subtlety of detail and flat planes of colors. “Carving into linoleum is a welcome process of precision and reflection for me” she says. “Self-taught, I jumped fulltime into the art scene ten years ago when the kids entered college. I started with painting oils and acrylics, but now linocut is my passion.” Her linocuts have been published as cover art, and granted awards.
As a former board member of the Tri-Valley Artist’s Guild, Caulk helped organize the annual Livermore Art Walk, and was featured as the 2009 Livermore Art Walk artist in The Independent. She also contracts for a self-publishing company, designing book covers and book interiors. A long-time Livermore resident, she moved to Placerville last year, where she works from her studio in a barn overlooking the country life she loves.
• Wollard is currently serving her second term as poet laureate of Livermore. In My Other Life, a volume of her original poems and paintings, was published in 2010 by Richer Resources Publications. Wollard’s poems and short stories have appeared in A Bird Black as the Sun: California Poets on Crows and Ravens, The Carquinez Review, The Gathering, Saturday Salon Literary Harvest and A Taste of the Valley, as well as other publications.
She has won numerous regional awards, including the Grand Prize at the 2004 Bay Area Poet’s Dinner, the Gold Ribbon for Poetry at the 2002 Alameda County Fair, and two Lydia Wood Awards for prose and poetry, as well as second place in short-script writing from the Southern California Film Academy in 2001. Wollard spent two years as a participant in Ellen Bass’s poetry workshop. She is a member of the Ina Coolbrith Circle and a founding member of the South Bay chapter of the American Screenwriters Association.
Wollard spent 27 years as a reporter, columnist and editor at various Bay Area newspapers, most recently the San Jose Mercury News (1990-2000). She now works as a local Realtor and writes articles about real estate for The Independent.
• Speaks began writing poetry in 2007, and won her first of five subsequent Alameda County Fair Silver Awards that same year. She is a member of numerous local area poetry critique and writing groups, and participates in open mic poetry readings in the East Bay. Her poetry often reflects her Chinese and Irish ethnicity, as well as her interest in family history research and photography.
As a first generation Chinese American and avid genealogist, Speaks has had Chinese exhibits on display and has lectured on her Chinese family history at both the Pleasanton Museum on Main and Livermore Heritage Guild. She is an active member of the Livermore-Amador Genealogical Society and lectures on genealogy research techniques in Northern and Central California. A member of the Livermore Valley Camera Club, her photography has been displayed at the Livermore Public Library and the Alameda County Fair.
Speaks has been a corporate controller and director of information technology, and is currently an information technology manager for Pleasanton-based Leisure Sports Inc.
• Jim Curcuro, a longtime resident of Livermore, has displayed his poetry in previous East meets West exhibits, as well as the Third Biennial Ekphrasis exhibition for the City of Livermore, Blacksmith Square shows and the Alameda County Fair.
His poetry has won numerous awards, including “Best in Show” in the 2010 Alameda County Fair as well as Silver awards in the 2011 and 2012 Alameda County Fair. Curcuro’s real passion is “open mic” events, where can share his humor as well as his thought-provoking poetry with others.
