Giving Life to the Community
Artists
Brian Goggin & Jonah Roll:
Brian Goggin's Bio:
Throughout my career I have developed sculptures and installations which utilize, and are inspired by, traditional and unconventional locations. I begin my process by investigating the site or environment for which I am to create a work; a public urban or natural, interior or exterior place, a museum or a gallery. For inspiration in developing any project, I look to unexpected locations or methods of presenting artwork and research the place's history, folklore, sense of antiquity, rumors, legends, and surrounding current/past architecture, and/or topography; and contextually related materials and/or objects. Following this investigation through a process of reflection, I come to an appreciation and understanding of the site which helps me develop an image which is at once dream-like yet familiar, poetically meaningful, and conceptually intriguing; unleashing a hidden life and unexpected history in the commonplace.
In 2001 I completed Convertibles a site specific stone and steel sculpture for a public park in Menlo Park. Between 2001 and December 2003 I created, and installed, the permanent site-specific sculptural installation Labyrnith for the new Yahoo! Search engine Headquarters in Sunnyvale. Labyrinth consists of five bronze gateways arranged on a public park adjacent to the "Yahoo!" headquarters building as a web without path or boundary. The portals are full-sized, seemingly random, open doors attached to their doorframes; each stands in a different part of the grassy, forested landscape. All of the doors are cast in bronze using molds taken from actual antiquated doors chosen from five unique cultures throughout the world: India, Mali, Thailand, Guatemala, and Afghanistan. Their individual cultural identity is clearly evident in the shape, composition, ornament and or symbology carved into all of them. Visitors are invited to follow a unique personal labyrinth as they meander along their chosen path, passing through and metaphorically connecting the virtual cultures represented by each of the ancient doorways. We are working on the final documentation for this project so only have in progress shots for now.
On March 7 I completed "Desire for the Other" a sculpture of an elongated articulated centipede-like couch consuming and digesting furniture, for the Domestic Odyssey show at the San Jose Museum of Art. Currently I am completing a sculpture entitled "Traffic of Ideas" for the city of Seattle. Traffic. will consist of twenty one oversized bronze cast books seemingly toppling off a prominent gateway, in the process of being blown off there perch by a sudden gust of wind, falling and opening, loosing pages like irregular broken Chinese fans. The pages are frozen in a moment, where they are blowing out of the books, along the fence, and down and above University Ave in flurries catching on the sides of buildings, lampposts, poles, and signs, hovering above pedestrians below. For more information and documentation about these and other projects, please visit my website at http://www.metaphorm.org.
Jonah Roll's Bio:
Jonah Roll was born and raised on a 45 foot sailboat, The Flying Walrus in Honolulu, Hawaii. He has used painting to survive since his childhood in paradise and to navigate his way along the Pacific Northwest to San Francisco's Mission District.
Roll received a Bachelor of Fine Arts degree in 1989 from the Pacific Northwest College of Art in Portland, Oregon. Influenced by watery beginnings in Hawaii and recent wanderings in Latin America, Roll's work takes viewers on a journey to a surreal destinations with images imbedded in his original and stylized reality.
He has created several artworks for the public and many of his paintings are included in private collections. Roll is currently working on a series of paintings for collectors Jim Sergeant and Faye Mitchell. His work has been exhibited in Hawaii, Portland, Seattle, San Francisco, Santa Cruz, Washington D.C. and New York. Recent work can be seen every year during San Francisco Open Studios.
Jonah Roll is an artist-in-residence at Project Artaud, a San Francisco artist's community. He lives with his wife, Mexican photographer Katia Fuentes, their daughter Julieta and gato Mookie.
For more information about Jonah check out: www.Jonahroll.net.
