"Connecting Points" Art Show at The Main Gallery

Connecting Points features artworks by mixed media artists Shirley Bunger and Natalie Ciccoricco. The collection explores the connections that inspire each of the artists. Although they differ aesthetically, each artist uses similar materials –vintage paper, photographs and thread – in a deeply personal way to engage the viewer through association and meaning. Connecting Points opens Wednesday, June 29th and runs through Sunday, July, 31st. The Main Gallery, located at 1018 Main Street in Redwood City, will be hosting a reception with the artists on Sunday, July 10th, from 1pm-4pm. The reception is open to the public.

Shirley Bunger draws her inspiration from the connecting points that join together individuals, families, and generations. Bunger uses found materials – old books, magazines, letters and other bits of paper – to create abstract collages and sewn works that reveal very personal stories of connection. Her richly layered works invite viewers to step in closer, explore details, and create or reflect on their own stories of connection. In From the Kitchen of ___, Bunger stitches a collection of family recipes rescued from estate and garage sales into an heirloom quilt. In doing so, she preserves the memories captured on those cards – of friendships, family gatherings, celebrations, cultural connections and moments in history – and transforms them into a new form of family heirloom, worthy of being passed from generation to generation.

Two complementary pieces – Garden Flowers and Wild Flowers – celebrate Bunger’sconnection with her paternal grandmother, and the connections her grandmother helped forge with the natural world. Pictures and drawings of flowers are layered and sanded to reveal a dreamlike garden that recalls the lessons in flower identification her grand mother taught her in the garden, and while hiking and camping in the mountains of Colorado and California. In Home, Bunger layers images of houses torn from 1950 architectural magazines, creating a dreamlike study of “ideal” homes, and inviting viewers to reflect on their own memories of houses – and their own connections to “home.”

Mixed media artist Natalie Ciccoricco moved to the Bay Area four years ago from Amsterdam. Ciccoricco finds ideas in the dream state just between being asleep and fully awake where her collages become connecting points between the surreal dream world and reality. History and nature also offer Ciccoricco a way to connect with American culture and rituals. Found images and old photographs, combined with embroidery thread and occasionally ink or paint, resurface to tell a new visual story.

The two pieces Sunrise and Winter Prism are tributes to the American landscape and its rich history. The collages draw upon Native American weaving patterns, which blend right into the faded found photographs that are used for the background. Since Ciccoricco moved to California from The Netherlands, she finds endless inspiration in her new surroundings, which form an important recurring theme for her works in this show.

Be sure to come and experience Connecting Points at The Main Gallery, an artists’cooperative with some 16 members that showcases the work of some of the best local talent in the Bay Area. The Main Gallery is located at 1018 Main Street, at the corner of Main and Middlefield in the historic yellow Victorian Cottage in Redwood City. The Main Gallery is open Wednesday through Sunday from 10:00 am to 3:00 pm. For more

information, please visit our website at www.themaingallery.org or call The Main Gallery
at (650) 701-1018.