March 2, 2024

Cinequest x Phantom Galleries UPLIFT Live Painting Contest 2024

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CINEQUEST & Phantom Galleries are proud to present this year's CQ Live Painting Contest featuring artists Bre Contreras, Jemal Diamond and Francisco Ramirez.

These talented artists will be painting live at KALEID Gallery during gallery hours March 7th–9th, as well as the 14th– 16th, with closing ceremonies on Sunday, March 17th.

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Breanna Contreras

Bre Contreras is a captivating artist with roots in San Jose, California. She also blossoms across the sea, in Norway, as she plants seeds and breathes life into her artwork wherever she goes.

Her art is powered by limitless expression as she explores a variety of different artistic mediums, spanning from the expected to the overlooked. Using art as a creative release, she brightens everything she touches as she reaches for colors that could warm any perspective.

www.thestuffbremakes.com


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Jemal Diamond

Jemal Diamond is a Bay Area-based artist, and native Californian. He exhibits at KALEID Gallery, is a member artist of Works/San José, and creates from his studio at Visual Philosophy, all in San Jose, California. Jemal holds an MFA in studio art from The School of the Art Institute of Chicago, and asks viewers like YOU to title all of his artwork.

www.thejemalshow.com


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Francisco Ramirez

Originally from Mexico City, Francisco migrated to San Jose in 1987. His early life trained him to be resourceful and is a self-taught artist. His inspiration comes from everywhere and everyone, from Bob Ross, and Boris Vallejo to his Peers at Local Color to DDEF studios where he currently works from.

His style of work include realism, hyperrealism, abstract, and surrealism. He has worked with oils, watercolor, sculpting, photography but spends most of his time painting with acrylics. Since becoming a full-time artist in 2017, he has painted over 20 collaborative and solo murals in San Jose. His canvas paintings number well over 400 strong, the sizes ranging from 4’x6’ to 5”x7” His commissioners include various construction companies, local businesses, residential, nonprofits and independent curators that align with his mission to empower, beautify and protect this community.

www.fcoart.net


All are welcome to visit KALEID Gallery to watch the progress of the artists paint their vision of this year's festival theme "UPLIFT" and vote for your favorite while there! The artists will be present at the Cinequest Closing Ceremonies and the winner announced on stage.

Check out this year's films at CINEQUEST Film Festival.

Gallery hours: Thursdays–Fridays 12pm–7pm & Saturdays 12pm–5pm.

Location: KALEID Gallery
320 S. 1st St.
(across the street from the Cinequest Film Festival at the California Theatre.)
Downtown San Jose
info@kaleidgallery.com

January 30, 2024

Phantom Galleries presents "Inspired!" by Mason Roberts at The Pierce

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Phantom Galleries is proud to present:

“Inspired! Natural Forms, Layers and Flowers”
Mason Roberts solo exhibition

Inspired! Natural Forms, Layers and Flowers are part of a series of paintings and drawings that are inspired by natural forms of rock, soil, energy, flowers, sky and movement. They tell the story of times past and time present and the consistent motion that is generally imperceptible to most of us. Perhaps a reminder that much has come before us and that much is still to come. Color and line are meant to engage the viewer and expose the energy, movement and sanguine balance between abstraction and recognizable form.

About the Artist:
Roberts seeks out and finds inspiration through travel and encounters with new people. He endeavors to create innovative and inspiring works of art based on his love of drawing and creating something tangible, which, in turn, allows him to share his most innermost thoughts and feelings with the surrounding world. The artist strives to find balance between recognizable shape and abstract form and to tell a story through their interaction and juxtaposition.

These forms and connections often take the shape of the natural world and its inhabitants and perhaps highlight the increasingly complicated relationship we have with each other, along with the numerous connections we all share. Intersection of line and shape creating form and figure. Introduce color—intense color, tones that scream or sigh when viewed. Vibrant color! For Roberts, line + color becomes a language that can create innumerable engaging and interesting narratives that can be experienced throughout this exhibition.

Artist’s reception: First Friday FEB. 2nd 5-9pm during South FIRST FRIDAYS ArtWalk SJ.

Exhibition Dates: February 2 – April 13, 2024

Gallery hours: Daily 9am–6pm

Phantom Galleries at The Pierce Apts. Gallery Lobby
2 Pierce Ave. (at Market St.)
SoFA District downtown San Jose
info@phantomgalleries.com

November 1, 2023

Phantom Galleries presents "Past Present Future Journals" Gianfranco Paolozzi at The Pierce

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Phantom Galleries is proud to present:

Past Present Future Journals Gianfranco Paolozzi Solo Exhibition

“Marking on surfaces moment by moment, hour by hour, day by day, month by month, year by year…Creating a journal.”

Artist's reception: First Friday November 3rd 5pm–9pm
Artist will be in attendance 5–9pm during ArtWalk SJ.

Exhibition Dates: November 3, 2023–January 18, 2024
Gallery hours: Daily 9am–6pm

Phantom Galleries at The Pierce Apts. Gallery Lobby
2 Pierce Ave. (at Market St.)
SoFA District downtown San Jose
info@phantomgalleries.com

January 30, 2023

Stream of Consciousness by Robert Chavez III at The Pierce Apts. FEB. 3rd

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Phantom Galleries is proud to present:

Stream of Consciousness
Robert Delare Chavez III solo exhibition

Opening reception: First Friday February 3rd 5pm–9pm

The creation of streams of ideas flowing in my brain when I focus on this work. I specifically chose to work using an inexpensive Holga camera on this project because of its versatility and the dream-like captures I can create with it. I use mixed media to intensify or emphasize my experimental exploration of this photographic project, hence a stream of ideas. Shadows, light, and structure continually clashing with life, color, and environment. My own chaos mixed with what is around me. Enjoy the experience.

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About the Artist:
Chavez has been taking photographs all of his life, and recently earned his BA in fine art photography. He enjoys landscape photography, street art, and showing the beauty in the grittier side of life. He’s been working on this project for many years, using a $35 Holga camera to show life from his perspective.

His work has been featured in many different venues around the Bay Area, including San Francisco, the East Bay, and San Jose. Most recently, his work has been shown at the Mexican Heritage Plaza Afterlife show and at the 1Culture Camera Shy exhibition. In May 2022 Chavez received the SJCC ASG President Award for photography.He is currently a teaching assistant under Terri Garland at San Jose City College.

Exhibition dates: February 3–April 15, 2023

Gallery hours: 9am–6pm Daily.

Phantom Galleries
The Pierce Lobby Gallery
2 Pierce Ave. (corner of S. Market St.)
SoFA District downtown San Jose
info@PhantomGalleries.com

September 2, 2021

"Painting the Moment" by Kushlani Jayasinha at Phantom Galleries at The Pierce


Opening reception: “Painting the Moment” exhibit by Kushlani Jayasinha
5pm–9pm, free admission, mask required.
Part of the South FIRST FRIDAYS ArtWalk SJ

This series is born to showcase the immediacy of the given moment. I find the less time I spend with the canvas the better the outcome. Let me explain this paradox.

I’ve been asked by viewers how long it takes to paint a painting, but this question misses that the less time I spend on the painting the more substance it seems to have. It’s a matter of when to stop with a painting that captures the essence of it. Because if I miss that point, I can go for days and come out with a painting that has nothing to do with what I started with. The painting goes through phases but the immediacy is lost.

This series of paintings has that sense of immediacy. They do not try to capture anything in particular but like falling water, it is, what it is.

About the Artist:
Kushlani Jayasinha, born and raised in Sri Lanka amid turbulent social strife, is a painter whose artistic practice is informed by her Buddhist way of life and her occupational past as a Silicon Valley software engineer and a postdoctoral Physics scholar.

Kushlani’s paintings are created amid a traditional meditative process learned from the monks in Sri Lanka teaching her the gentle wisdom of Buddha. From this background, she became versed in studying the self in silence. The process manifests in careful and deliberate forms that are derived from natural formations but which are abstractly rendered on her canvases: a dreamy coastal fog, a far-off city in the mist, a peaceful body of water. The forms are unavoidably rooted in Kushlani’s conscious consideration of physical properties, and the result is something curiously tangible but simultaneously dreamlike.

Exhibition dates: September 3–November 13, 2021

Phantom Galleries at The Pierce Lobby Gallery
2 Pierce Ave (at Market St.)
San Jose, CA 95113
info@phantomgalleries.com

New Exhibits at KALEID Gallery Open Sept. 3rd

KALEID Gallery is proud to present two new feature exhibitions by resident artists Karen Carlo Salinger, and Sarah Loyola for the month of September.

Opening receptions are on First Friday September 3rd 5pm–9pm.
Free admission, all ages, mask required.
Part of the South FIRST FRIDAYS ArtWalk SJ.

Opening reception: SHIFT by Karen Carlo Salinger

Things are shifting everywhere, quickly and drastically. Our climate has been changing for a long time, but the pace of the shift has been speeding up, and we as humans have to shift to adjust to it, and change our ways drastically to try to ameliorate the damage we have been causing for way too long. Our culture is shifting, mostly for the good, for those who are waking up and trying to learn from history, to do better, and make our society a better place. Others are resisting this shift with all their might, and doubling down on the wrongs of history, because they fear change and what that might mean. We are in the midst of a massive pandemic, which is causing structural shifts throughout our world, and we as a species are trying to adapt and shift the way we live to hopefully combat this virus, and fighting massive waves of disinformation that threaten us all. Everywhere we look, massive changes are happening at breakneck speed, and it remains to be seen if we as humans can adapt to this change in a way that moves our world forward, or if our attempts to shift are too little too late.

As an artist I’ve been observing, reacting to, trying to adjust to this change as is all of humanity. My reflections are my way of processing the changes I’m seeing in the world, processing the fear I have, and the hope that I hold onto that the shifts we are seeing will cause the change we need to survive. I hold onto the beauty in this world as the hope that we need to spur us on to adjust to create change for the better, and not let the darkness consume us.

About the Artist
Karen Carlo Salinger lives and works in the beautiful and extremely flammable Santa Cruz Mountains. She spends much of her time ruminating on the precarious balance of the world we live in, and hoping that people wake the fuck up and put their collective minds and humanity toward undoing the damage that we have created, and trying to make this delicate planet a better place, for all of us, our children, and the numerous amazing creatures that are relying on us to fix our world. When she isn’t curled into a quivering ball of anxiety, she spends her time planting green things, teaching her children to be good stewards of this world and to make it a better place, and making weird art that is both an escape and a hope for a better future.


Opening reception: A Little Peace by Sarah Loyola

Unexpected gifts of the past year have been time – time outside in nature with my family and time to create in and embrace a new medium – cyanotype. This work is the joining of the two. Long having been fascinated with textures and inspired by natural processes in my painting and mixed media works, the addition of photography has brought another element. Printing using the sun further enhances the natural, the inexact, and the absence of complete control – as the medium directs the follow of the piece. Through a touch of sunlight, this body of work brings the peace of the outside in, in a close-up examination of a year in 3 San Jose parks: Alum Rock, Umunhum, and Santa Teresa – a glimpse into the passage of time through the large and the small.

About the Artist
Sarah Loyola is a San Jose based artist working in mixed media. Her work, combining painting, collage, and most recently cyanotype testifies to her love of the natural world and the diversity of Bay Area landscapes. She focuses on abstracted natural forms and processes and celebrates texture. Sarah studied painting at UCLA and at the Accademia di Belle Arti Bologna, in Italy. Her work has been shown all over California, including in Los Angeles, Sacramento, San Jose, and San Francisco. She is also an educator and brings creativity and arts integration to her work with both students and teachers.


KALEID Gallery
320 S. 1st St.
Downtown San Jose
info@kaleidgallery.com

February 3, 2021

First Friday February Exhibit Openings at KALEID Gallery

KALEID Gallery is proud to present two new feature exhibitions by resident artists Steven Borelli, and Luis Jorge Mieses opening on First Friday February 5th, 5pm–9pm.

Conduits by resident artist Steven Borelli.

I am a conduit for creativity and my works are the results thereof. Through them we are able to pierce the fragile fabric of this reality and view other dimensions with unimaginable worlds, chaos and order, organic shapes juxtaposed with design elements and. . .

Just kidding. I really am just doodling. But they’re amazing doodles. And we are all conduits for creativity.

About the Artist:
Steven Borelli has been drawing since he was a fetus. The inside of his mother’s womb is tattooed with the ramblings of his fertile imagination. These days, between fever dreams and feeding his cat, Borelli continues to indulge his imagination by creating art. For art’s sake.

Lifecasting Series by resident artist Luis Jorge Mieses.

The idea behind this series is to show the numerous ways the body parts could be captured. I copy the human figure because as time passes the only things left are the beautiful memories embodied in the sculptures.I make them for different purposes; from getting a commission of an artistic piece to show to keeping memories of our loved ones.Making sculptures represents intimate time with myself. Through it, I get to relax, feel plenty and express my creativity trying to capture the beauty I see around me.I started modeling clay, wood carving and preparing molds for the bodies of animals that I needed for taxidermy, trying – in some way – to restore the animal’s lost life in an artistic form. Making that work lighted the sparkle of sculpture in my mind. Currently, I am devoted to reproducing human body parts using molds and seeking balance in my compositions.

About the Artist:
Luis Jorge Mieses was born in Peru, where he grew up, graduated, and worked as an Industrial Engineer. Mieses inspiration started many years ago when he saw many life size sculptures taken from the people of the Amazonia, at the Pacific International Festival in his country. At the exhibition he watched an explanatory video, where he could understand how the artist took the impressions from the people. Immediately his mind traveled into the jungle with its magnificent splendor and he imagined himself taking the molds from the people that used to live there, in natural way.

Since his move to California in 2001, Mieses has devoted his time to sculpture and taxidermy. Because of the taxidermy work – which required molds preparation, shaping and molding parts for mounting different animals – he discovered the fascinating world of sculpture. Mieses first devoted his time to research and studies of the human figure, and then took art classes at Foothill and De Anza Colleges in California. Consequently, Mieses is achieving his dream though sculpture, capturing hands, faces, feet and various body parts.Currently Mieses has refined his technique reaching a professional level in the preparation of Lifecasting sculptures.Mieses’ works are in private collections and galleries.

Exhibitions open: First Friday February 5th, 5–9pm
Exhibit dates: February 5–26, 2021

In-person gallery hours:
Fridays 5–9pm, Saturdays Noon–5pm and by appointment by emailing info@kaleidgallery.com
Free admission. Social distancing and mask required at all times in the gallery.

KALEID Gallery
320 S. 1st St.
SoFA District
downtown San Jose
info@kaleidgallery

July 22, 2020

"Beautiful Garbage" by Sandi Billingsley at KALEID Gallery

KALEID Gallery is proud to present "Beautiful Garbage," a new exhibition of paintings and sculptures by resident artist Sandi Billingsley.

Sandi Billingsley is an American artist who has sold her art and painted in homes from coast to coast. As a professional faux finisher, she has over twenty five years of experience understanding and recreating surfaces, painting murals and combining them into trompe l’œil. For a decade and a half, she has applied these skills to gallery shows of paintings and sculptures which have attracted collectors from across the United States and several International destinations.

Sandi has always been wonderfully enthralled with creating but her first objective is to be friendly to the Earth. She explores diverse styles in her art. The majority of her projects start with recycling. She’s inspired by found and gifted materials. Sandi focuses heavily on structures created from used wood, discarded paper and packaging styrofoam.

Sandi’s art explores beauty and extreme color. Her many passions for life on this planet, for challenge, and for the plight of women have led her to create charged pieces in seemingly different styles. Sandi Billingsley is extremely grateful to have lived a life of creativity.

KALEID is open for viewing this exhibit:
Friday July 24th & Saturday July 25th from 5pm–9pm.
Free admission.

We will have strict safety protocols including low capacity, social distancing and masks required at all times in the gallery.

KALEID gallery
320 S. 1st St.
downtown San Jose
info@kaleidgallery.com

"Espacio" by Force129 at KALEID Gallery


KALEID Gallery is proud to present "Espacio," a new body of work by resident artist Force129.

Force129 has been very productive during shelter in place creating new paintings diverse in themes and sizes. Unique characters, cactus, beloved animals and roses are all created in his signature style with spray paint, acrylic and marker.

KALEID is open for viewing this exhibit:
Friday July 24th & Saturday July 25th from 5pm–9pm.
Free admission.

We will have strict safety protocols including low capacity, social distancing and masks required at all times in the gallery.

KALEID Gallery
320 S. 1st St.
downtown San Jose
info@kaleidgallery.com

March 18, 2019

TWO BUCK Tuesday at KALEID Gallery March 19th

Join us for the monthly artists + community creative get together. Draw, paint, chat with artists, view the feature exhibitions plus amazing work by 70 resident artists all on site with $2 art available ONLY at TWO BUCK. Free admission and all ages welcome.

This month features artists Jeff Bramschreiber, Jemal Diamond, Joe Mandrick, Alfred Preciado and Mark Martinez all onsite creating new works and available to chat about their process.

The life drawing session model is Aleena Saha - "a futurist stuck in the suburbs" - hosted by Matthew Heimgartner.

There's two excellent solo exhibitions in the feature gallery to check out: "Things Unspoken" by Matthew Heimgartner and "Pollinators" by Rose Margaret.

HAEZ ONE will be performing live music from his recent album "San Hopeless" (cassettes will be available).

Tuesday March 19th, 7pm–10pm
Free admission, all ages welcome.

KALEID gallery
88 S. 4th St.
downtown San Jose
free street parking after 6pm