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

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