About Expressions Gallery- Art Gallery - Workshops - Classes
Location
Located in the Ashby Arts District only a half block from the Ashby Bart Station at 2035 Ashby Ave, Expressions Gallery opened its doors July 8th, 2006.
Hours: Wednesdays - Saturdays, noon - 5 PM and Sundays, noon to 3 PM and by appointment.
We are also open additional hours for special events and poetry reading.
A Community Arts Center
Expressions Gallery views itself as more than a gallery, it offers itself as a community arts center with classes and events as well as its gallery of fine art works.
Art Works
Expressions Gallery is proud to present the work of fine artists with varying talents: painting, print -making, sculpture, assemblage, crafts, jewelry, fiber arts, photography, music, film, cetecean art, robotic art and floral arts.
Classes
There are classes for all ages and individuals. Those interested in receiving a class schedule should contact: or the Gallery Phone: 510-644-4930.
Public Participation
The public is invited to participate in many ways: browse the gallery, attend openings, become part of our Collectors & Critics Circle, participate in classes, hold events and meetings here, become a member, purchase art, form a book club or poetry reading group, Co-sponsor an event, see independent films and meet the artists at openings and scheduled artist teas.
Overview
The gallery offers fine art from established local and international artists but also is a place that supports and encourages artistic talent development. Some newcomers to the arts will always have a chance to display some of their work.
New forms of art will also be featured and hopefully trigger discussion about the arts as we know it and the arts future direction. One such artist, Paul Higham, who was included in the first show, And All That Jazz, comes to California from New Orleans He relocated here temporarily at the Headlands Art Center, on a scholarship supported by the Artists Alliance and funded by the Irvine Foundation that enables a small group of artists selected out of a much larger group, who were wiped out in hurricane Katrina, to continue their work. He does what he calls translation modeling, a method he developed for creating sculpture and wall art from the GPS waves, or the Dow Jones, or any immediate on-going data flow that can be followed on a computer. This data is converted into sculpture or images on paper or moving images on a screen that are virtually alive. Paul’s view is that conceptual art captured by the still camera invented in the 1880’s is dead and this literally, is the wave of the future. Paul teaches about the history of art and it’s future as a university professor. Trained at one of the finest schools in the world, the Goldsmith’s, in London, Paul offers us a glimpse into the future, as he gives us a picture of our world outside of our vision in which we live everyday. He makes the invisible, visible and interprets it into art.
The Art: Recycled and found Show, presented the work of another cutting edge artist, Mark Fischer, a Cetecean Acoustic Artist - An artist who works with sounds of whales, dolphins and birds he records while out on the ocean and then uses mathematical formulas and a computer to convert these sounds into spectacular colored images in the form of prints or motion pictures. The New YorK Times found Mark's work unique and interesting and wrote of it in their Tuesday, August 1, 2006 article entitled: Subtle Math Turns Songs of Whales Into Kaleidoscopic Images by Gretchen Cuda.
The Animals and Animation show introduced Robotic Art by artist Max Chandler. Robotic art is a new and growing field. Max's work won an award of merit at the Manhattan Arts International's Small Works 2005 competition.
Gallery Shows
Gallery shows are based around various themes that have to do with current issues in our times. The gallery offers space to groups and encourages collaboration with others who are attempting to put forth the same message for the good of society. The August show: Art: Recycled and Found was joined by Architects, Designers, and Planners for Social Responsibility, a Berkeley based group that carries this message of doing what we can to keep our world green. More such collaborations are desired by the Gallery Director whose vision is to link local efforts together.
About the Director - Rinna B. Flohr
For Rinna B. Flohr this gallery is the coming together of two careers dealing with people’s expressions of their feelings, view and understanding of the world and or adaptation to, acceptance of, or rejection of it. One career is in the arts and the other is in mental health.
Rinna B. Flohr holds a degree from Syracuse University School of Theatre Arts. It was through theatre that she became interested in mental health. She worked in community centers in New York and San Francisco and with the Association of Retarded Citizens to use drama and psychodrama to help people learn and expand or contain their behaviors and choices. Wanting to know more about the psychology of helping people she started her second career in mental health where she received a Master’s Degree and a license to practice psychiatric social work. For 37 years she has followed a career in mental health that resulted in becoming a Deputy Director of Mental Health for Alameda County and later an Assistant Director of Mental Health for the City and County of San Francisco. Her own return to the arts actually began in 1991 when the Oakland Firestorm destroyed her home. She began the rebuilding process and realized that she needed to know more about architecture and interior design. She began taking courses in reading plans and some basic design with UC Berkeley Extension that led to her completing the program and becoming an Interior Architect and Designer. Rinna is also an artist herself. She has exhibited her floral art and jewelry at the San Francisco Women Artists Gallery in San Francisco, the Giorgi Gallery in Berkeley, the Legion of Honor Museum and she was part of promoting the Bouquets to Art show held this year at the De Young museum with some arrangements she did that were featured in Union Square store front windows. Rinna is drawing upon all of these skills as she opens Expressions Gallery. She looks forward to combining these two careers into one new career where the tools of expression are foremost. The name Expressions Gallery was suggested by a friend and from Rinna’s point of view is definitely the right name for what she is attempting to do.