PAST EXHIBITIONS Water is a powerful thing. Soothing, nourishing, cleansing, purifying, forceful, destructive, turbulent – its qualities are elusive and complex, even diametric. A vital life source, water figures symbolically in many sacred rites performed across the globe. As a natural resource whose availability can be overabundant or scarce, its effect on the human condition can be profound. As society strives for greater global awareness in a world experiencing irreversible climate changes, we ask ourselves how to protect the earth from its further mismanagement. To answer this begs a closer examination of how we as individuals view, respect, and value water in our own personal culture. In this second Sentient presentation, we will select artists whose works explore water in subject, material and understanding. Consciousness Invite What is consciousness? What makes us sentient beings? How does art bring us back to our true selves? These will be just a few of many questions to tickle your thoughts during Sentient salon’s premiere event on Friday, September 28, 2007. We invite you to join us for this inaugural evening filled with art, opera, food and spirits – an experience that promises to stimulate all five senses and provoke your mind. Left:Shadan Mirabedi and Michelle Gellar. Right: San Francisco Opera Mezzo Soprano, Erin Neff. The first half of the evening will include brief talks by the exhibiting artists as they discuss their work and creative processes. A carefully crafted assortment of delectable bites will be served with wine and spirits throughout the evening’s 3.5hr program to be enjoyed while viewing artwork in the good company of Sentient’s many wonderful members and guests, an interesting cross-section of respected artists, collectors and art enthusiasts. Brubaker’s paintings, inspired by landscapes and string theory, play with the idea of macrocosm versus microcosm and the ensuing parallel. The blurring of boundaries and separation of matter and energy are ideas that resonate in her work, grounded in an astute use of color. Themes of interconnectedness circulate, expressed in an intuitive manner reminiscent of jazz improvisation and free association. Jen Lee and show details Samuel’s visually arresting photographs of hyper-detailed flowers and foliage form a fluid dialog from one to the next. Each work is intensely focused on the subject’s otherworldy nature by contrasting form and color with stark white or black backgrounds. His compositions accentuate the plant and flowers’ anthropomorphic tendencies and captivate the human eye with their exotic beauty. Pagel’s video piece, "Invisible Links," borrows the ancient and traditional Japanese art of art of stone appreciation, suiseki, to create a surprising alternate reality that invokes questions surrounding not only the very nature of the rocks themselves (could rocks perhaps be sentient?), but also the limits of our own human perception. Set to a musical score specially created by renowned Japanese composer, Miyuki Ito, invokes the result is a delightful and enigmatic work. All three artists demonstrate a connection to a true source of inspiration and through their work we are able to witness the visual realization of their search for higher meaning -- the the place within ourselves that we recognize as a connective energy between all sentient beings. The show was held at the art gallery of the Design Guild San Francisco from Sept 12 to Sept 29, 2007.