Earthworks

Monika Mayer

Monika Mayer is a multidisciplinary artist based in Berkeley, California. Born in Germany, she immigrated to the United States with her family in 2002. Her practice draws on natural forms and lived experience, centering on experimentation with everyday materials like inner tubes, soccer balls, canvas, paint, and found objects to investigate texture, pattern, color, and the rhythm of repetitive mark-making. Working across painting, fiber sculpture, printmaking, and mixed media, she transforms the familiar into layered abstract forms shaped through processes of repetition and accumulation.

At its core, her work is a celebration of the beauty hidden in the ordinary. Discarded and utilitarian materials gain new life as layered abstract forms that speak to cycles of change, resilience, and renewal. Circles and repeated patterns reflect the growth and natural rhythms of life. By presenting familiar objects in unexpected ways, Mayer invites viewers into a space of ambiguity, encouraging them to pause, look closely, and consider what lies beneath the surface.

Monika holds a B.A. in Social Education from the University of Applied Sciences in Cologne, Germany and a M.A. in Educational Leadership from the University of the Pacific in Stockton, California. She is a member of Mercury 20, an artist-run gallery in Oakland, and an alumna of the Kala Artist-in-Residency program in Berkeley. Her work is held in private collections in the U.S. and Germany and has been exhibited nationally, including at Tryst International Art Fair (LA), Tiburon Library Gallery, College of Marin (Kentfield), Kala Art Gallery (Berkeley) and Mercury 20 Gallery (Oakland).

For more information, visit monikamayer.myportfolio.com
For purchasing, please email [email protected]
Instagram: @_monikamayer

Lisa Carroll

I believe that it is imperative for us to rebuild, maintain and grow our relationships with the land. Primarily an abstract painter, I have also worked with a variety of materials from found objects, paperclay, acrylic ink, fabric, metal, and wood as a way to respond to my experience of diverse environments. My practice is process-oriented with the outcome a kind of distillation of what it feels like to be human in a time of climate breakdown upheaval. 

I began working on Earth Books in 2023, a project I’d been thinking about for years. As an avid trail runner, I do most of my running in Redwood Regional Park, in Oakland, CA a few miles from where I live. I practice emptying my mind as I run, with the intention of listening to the forest; a kind of chant emerges such as, “this is a scrub jay story, this is a poison oak story, this is a blue-sky story, a fog story, a newt and coyote story.” Eventually, I realized I could serve as a kind of conduit for those voices through my art.

In the summer of 2023, I camped and explored remote areas of Nevada and Utah, on my way to a residency in northern New Mexico. I wanted to spend time sinking into places outside the immediate reach of contemporary civilization, listening, watching, and re-becoming a part of the natural world. On my first night as the sun’s rays reached horizontal under low clouds, amber wings lit up the trees. To my astonishment, what I thought was dripping sap I quickly understood was a massive emergence of cicadas from their exoskeletons. There were dozens in every tree in that windy high desert grove. What were the chances? In the morning they were all gone from their metamorphic state and now vibrated with song in every treetop. I saw this synchronous time window as a direct communication about maintaining an open state of wonder; to be part of the natural world, not a visitor or a consumer. From petroglyph sites to warm springs to the Waterpocket Fold and Valley of the Gods, I touched the corporeal alongside the intangible, pulled magnetically forward as I felt the land folding me in.
 
I also collected small amounts of clay soil. Once I arrived in New Mexico I turned the soil into the clay paint which formed the basis for the Earth Books project, compelled to hear and see the land telling stories. Every day I listened to the wind, the chamisa, the crickets and cottonwoods and, of course, the clay earth. In the process self-criticism faded as my whole body tuned in to each moment. I felt guided, interwoven, and connected. The outcome is a series of paintings on paper and small sculptural book forms. The process was slow but exciting, deep but full of levity.

Recently, as I held a mica speckled rock in my hand in the Anza-Borrego desert considering it as a possible pigment, the question arose, “How can I be a good ancestor?” The experience, no intellectual musing, was profoundly somatic. I see the question as a gift from the land itself and like the rock in my hand, now carry it with me.

For more information, visit fieldstation23.com
For purchasing, please email [email protected]

Janine Brown

Janine Brown has been a working artist all of her life. From an early age she began to wonder “What is this life? What is reality?” This led to a life-long habit of reading widely and to study of Asian art and philosophy. Her primary interest has been how to use these ideas every day to appreciate and enjoy the wonder of our existence. Working in her studio, walking, and tai chi are her daily practice. Hiking and camping throughout the western United States has provided deep inspiration from the natural world. 

After graduating from the Art Practice Department of the University of California, she has made her home and studio in Berkeley, California. Her work has been exhibited around the San Francisco Bay Area and online for many years. It is in the collections of numerous hospitals, businesses, and individuals.

Janine’s work was represented for 30 years by the SFMOMA Artists Gallery until it closed, and for the last 10 years by Kala Art Institute. She had a major show at the Berkeley Art Center in 2006 and in many group shows since 1974.

Statement

There is the journey, and there is the territory. The territory is an interest in exploring spaciousness. For the most part, I stay within abstraction. Lines and spaces, simple shapes.  

And then there is the journey. I do a piece, and then I think: “I’d like to do another one kind of like this one, or two or three, or ten or twenty.” “like this” may mean size, materials, technique or image. Each piece evolves out of the last and what determines the direction is an inner sense, an intuition toward some sort of harmonious unknown, the integration of impulses, territory as yet unexplored.

For more information, visit: janinebrown.com
For purchasing, please email: [email protected]
Instagram: @linesandspacesart