SPRING, 2010
April 8 - June 4, 2010
Mining the Collection: An Archaeology of the Senses – Featuring Pamela Blotner

Each year, a single artist is invited to create a body of work inspired by the Badè archaeology collection. The guest artist will gain access to the entire Badè collection, spend time with staff archaeologists and curators, and conduct research that will drive their final exhibition. This series helps to foster cross-disciplinary dialogue and brings to life significant artifacts from biblical times, placing them in a new contemporary context.

An Archaeology of the Senses by Pamela Blotner

Six Visions by Pamela Blotner

Sapere by Pamela Blotner

How do we comprehend a lost civilization? And how can we use art to capture its essence? While archaeological science and historical scholarship help us reconstruct the purpose of artifacts, it is perhaps the artistic imagination—aided by the senses, the most basic building blocks of human understanding—that divines their meaning.

As Artist-in-Residence at the Badè Museum, these questions have been at the core of my work “mining” its central holdings, relics excavated from the Iron Age site of Tell en-Nasbeh.  Examining this collection, I was struck by the numerous objects I found that were associated with the sensory aspects and experiences of everyday life.  In one cabinet, a variety of clay oil lamps helped me envision what the town’s residents saw as they illuminated their surroundings at night, while incense burners and tiny jugs in another let me imagine what they smelled as they lit aromatics or spread fragrant oils on their skin. I discovered drawers filled with mortars and pestles used to grind local spices, bowls for food and jugs for wine. Exploring further, I found tiny rattles to shake and smooth worry beads to run through my hands, imagining the sounds, ceremonies, rituals, and shared beliefs that had unified and sustained this ancient civilization.

In this exhibition, I hope to recreate something of the sights, sounds, smells, and tactile impressions encapsulated in Tell en-Nasbeh’s artifacts and encourage viewers to use their own senses to bring these everyday objects to life.

An Archaeology of the Senses invites viewers to use their own senses to bring these everyday objects to life.  

Pamela Blotner is an artist, educator and curator who has lived in the San Francisco Bay Area for the last fifteen years. In her Berkeley studio she creates sculptures and drawings that reflect on humankind’s relationship to nature, belief, science, and calamity. In her writing and travels she examines the survival strategies used by artists, the works they create in response to violence or war, and the power of art to serve as a touchstone that shapes a culture and ensures its continued survival.

Over the last 25 years, much of Blotner’s work has been informed by her experiences as an Illustrator/Mission Specialist on missions for Human Rights Watch, Physicians for Human Rights, and the UC Berkeley Human Rights Center. She has worked with or written about war survivors and artists in Guatemala, Iraqi Kurdistan, Bosnia, Croatia, Cambodia, and Burma.

Pamela Blotner has taught throughout the Bay Area and created the Sculpture program at the University of San Francisco. For the past 12 years she has been member of the faculty of Pixar University at Pixar Animation Studios. She also serves on the Advisory Board of the of the Artist’s Rescue Mission in Houston, TX. In January of 2010 Blotner will become the Inaugural Artist-In -Residence of the Center for Art, Religion and Education of the Graduate Theological Union.

Futurelogs by Edward Foley

Fossvogsdalur by Elizabeth Kenneday

The Wound by Steven Holloway

WINTER, 2010
January 28 - March 19, 2010
Muse/Reuse: Visual Reflections on Sustainability

Muse/Reuse: Visual Reflections on Sustainability weaves together a number of connecting currents that drive our concerns for beauty and nature. Wetlands and forests serve as touchstones for ethical inquiry, and as markers and measures of resource (mis)management.

If sustainability represents endurance over time, these artists muse over aspects of our natural world that struggle to endure, often against human intervention, and reveal the beauty that can be found in what remains, as indicated in Ventana Amico’s aptly titled “Remains to be seen.” These works explore humans’ relationship to nature, and our collective responsibility to support this delicate balance.

Aesthetics is concerned with the ways humans experience the world through their senses. Catherine Richardson’s Held Notes brings together sound and vision in a composition of sensory acuity. Mariangeles Soto-Diaz adds the essence of taste in her study of family food consumption. Environmental aesthetics extends beyond the art sphere to include aesthetic appreciation of both naturally occurring and built environments.

Many of these works center on bark imagery and waterways, which, when represented in diverse media, create a united voice of advocacy and environmental awareness. Questions of adaptation and change are considered on a local, national and global scale. Steven Holloway maps our own local creek systems, Ted Foley charts the recovery process of lakes and logs in Michigan, and Elizabeth Kenneday depicts reforestation efforts in Iceland. Reflecting the tensions between native and non-native, permanent and ephemeral, Muse/Reuse asks each of us to consider the moral, social, cultural and theological implications of our natural world, and our critical role in the stewardship of our planet.

Mapping Sacred Ground from J. Ryan Parker. View larger on Vimeo.

House, Home by Janice Nakashima

Labyrinth, Sibley Volcanic Regional Preserve, Oakland by Michael Rauner

Archeology by Shane Weare

INAUGURAL EXHIBITION
September 10 - December 18, 2009
Mapping Sacred Ground
Opening Reception: September 10, 5:00-7:00 pm.

This invitational show features the work of Bay Area artists Lawrence Labianca, James Linnehan, Janice Nakashima, Laurie Polster, Mie Preckler, Michael Rauner, and Shane Weare. The exhibition examines notions of territory, boundary, and mapping of sacred space, and includes photographs, drawings, etchings, and sculpture. An associated panel discussion will explore ancient archaeological sites, spontaneous roadside memorials, and California’s sacred spaces, both constructed and organic.

Mapping Sacred Ground will open Thursday, September 10, with a reception from 5:00 - 7:00 p.m. In addition to the Thursday night opening, the gallery will participate in the Second Fridays North Berkeley gallery walk on the following night, September 11, when it will remain open until 7:00 p.m.

INCLUDED EVENTS:
October 15, 5:00 – 7:00 p.m.
Gallery Talk: “Mapping Sacred Ground”
Doug Adams Gallery at the Badè Museum
Pacific School of Religion
1798 Scenic Avenue, Berkeley

Badè Director Aaron Brody, museum registrar Karen Krosloswitz and author Erik Davis discuss “mapping” as reflected in ancient archaeological sites, spontaneous roadside memorials, and psycogeographies of California’s sacred spaces, both constructed and organic.

Speaker biographies:

Dr. Aaron Brody is the Robert and Kathryn Riddell Associate Professor of Bible and Archaeology and the Director of the Badè Museum at PSR. Brody holds a Ph.D. and M.A. from Harvard University, and a B.A. from the University of California at Berkeley. He taught at the University of Georgia, Boston University, and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology before coming to PSR and the GTU in 2002. Brody's field work has been conducted primarily at Bronze and Iron Age sites on the Mediterranean coast of Israel, and he has participated in projects in the Negev and Akko Plain and with the Ohlone-Muwekma at sites in northern California. His primary research interests include archaeological interpretations of the society and economy of ancient Canaan, Phoenicia, and Israel, archaeology and the study of religions, and deep water archaeology. Recently his research and publications have been focused on household archaeology, metallurgy, and interregional trade at Tell en-Nasbeh, the ancient site that forms the principal holdings of the Badè Museum.

Karen Kroslowitz is the author of “Spontaneous Memorials: Forums for Dialog and Discourse,” which appeared in Museums & Social Issues: A Journal of Reflective Discourse. Karen holds a Master of Arts in Museum Studies from John F. Kennedy University, where her graduate thesis, “Socially Responsible Collecting from Spontaneous Memorials,” earned her the Gail Anderson Award. Presently, Karen is the Registrar for the Computer History Museum and also worked in collections management and exhibit development at the Bishop Museum in Honolulu, the Wing Luke Asian Museum in Seattle and the National Steinbeck Center in Salinas.

Eric Davis is a San Francisco-based writer and culture critic. He is the author of TechGnosis: Myth, Magic and Mysticism in the Age of Information, as well as a short critical volume on Led Zeppelin IV. Davis contributes to scores of magazines, and his essays have been included in over a dozen books. He won a Maggie Award for his San Francisco magazine profile of the Internet entrepreneur and UFO contactee Joe Firmage, while the New Yorker has recognized his expertise in the works of the California science fiction writer Philip K. Dick. You can learn more about his work at www.erikdavis.org.