CHRISTIAN BURCHARD, KAREN STAAL & MARCELLO ROMANO
Our three featured artists work in three distinctively different approaches and materials, each turning our attention to nature; nature of material, nature of music and the nature of the infinite world around us. Christian Burchard skillfully manipulates green wood while allowing it to change organically in the drying process. The result is a beautiful interaction of the nature of the material and the intimate knowledge he's gained through experimentation. Karen Staal focuses on Jazz Musicians in this selection of paintings, creating new harmonies with line, shape and color. Ashland High School student, Marcello Romano's photographs feature the nebulous night sky in his series, Stargazing.
Join us for an artists' reception on First Friday, March 4th from 5-8 pm.
Born in Hamburg, Germany in 1955, Christian Burchard has been living in the United States since 1978. Starting out as a furniture makers apprenticeship in Germany in the middle seventies, he studied sculpture and drawing at the Museum School in Boston then at the Emily Carr College of Art and Design in Vancouver BC.
Burchard has a way with wood, a gift for seeing and bringing out new dimensions of its natural beauty, the elemental poetry of rings and grain. He puts vision and skill into his expressive sculptures. But his masterstroke is letting the wood simply be. - Joyce Lovelace, American Craft Magazine
Picnic, Karen Staal
Karen Staal specializes in oil paintings of the human figure. While her portrayals are somewhat realistic, they are also interpretive. Intentionally steering away from realism, Staal interprets intimate human scenes by creating new harmonies with line, shape and color. With strong compositions and careful attention given to space surrounding and between figures, the emotional impact of that figure, or relationship between figures in her paintings, is strong.
Karen holds a BFA from the San Francisco Art Institute and also earned a degree from the Kendall School of Design. She studied abstract painting at American University in Washington, D.C. and portrait painting at the Ridgewood Art Academy.
In conjunction with the Ashland Galleries Association annual high school artists exhibits, Ashland High School student, Marcello Romano's series, Stargazing will be featured in the gallery. Romano is already exhibiting his nebulous landscapes in LA and drawing much attention. Through long exposures of night sky, Romano is able to capture an entire sky full of stars in these stunning images.