JOHN CHIARA | Group Exhibition: Views of San Francisco 2011

John Chiara
24th at Carolina (Left), 2006

"Crown Point Press is pleased to announce a new color etching by Robert Bechtle. His latest print is featured in the gallery along with a group exhibition titled Views of San Francisco that highlights Bay Area-inspired prints by artists who have worked in the Crown Point studio over the years.

 

Robert Bechtle has lived in Northern California his entire life, and he continues to find inspiration in its suburban streets. In his latest print, Three Houses on Pennsylvania Avenue, 2011, rows of terra cotta rooftops are bathed in cheerful sunlight emanating from a clear blue sky. The large soft ground etching is inked in a pastel palette and layers of diffused light and shadows stretch across driveways, streets, and parked cars. In this meticulous depiction of his Potrero Hill neighborhood, Bechtle continues to reveal beauty in ordinary details of the everyday.

 

Among the prints included in the group exhibition is Joyce Kozloff's San Francisco Victorian, 1981. Kozloff was part of the Pattern and Decoration movement, and she made prints that related to her ceramic work of that time. She embossed shapes onto the paper and created colorful and delightfully ornate images of fruits, flowers, and ornamental details characteristic of Bay area architecture.

 

San Francisco photographer John Chiara uses a large hand-built camera to produce his one-of-a-kind works. For his project with Crown Point Press he created a series of three color photogravures of a panoramic view from a San Francisco hilltop. The rich, velvety black silhouette of trees and overgrown grass are prominently focused while orderly buildings fade into the background. Chiara's photogravures capture the quiet, transient moments of contemplation within an urban environment. The Views of San Francisco group exhibition also includes prints by Iain Baxter, Richard Diebenkorn, Al Held, Tom Marioni, Ed Ruscha and Wayne Thiebaud."

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