Marin HandMade 
Lauren D'Amato, Ruby Neri, and Mariah Nielson with Natasha Boas
Date : Sunday, March 10
Time :  2 - 3pm 

Join us on March 10 for an inspiring afternoon exploring the intersection of craft, contemporary art and the Bay Area's artistic legacy. Lauren D'Amato, Ruby Neri, and Mariah Nielson, along with guest curator Natasha Boas, lead a lively discussion that draws connections between their practices and Gertrud Parker's visionary focus on craft and the rich cultural narratives embedded in traditional, handmade art making. 

Lauren Rose D’Amato is a pinstriper and painter living and working in San Francisco, CA. As a second generation sign maker she is drawn to decorative folk arts, hand-lettering, and the iconic imagery tied to her upbringing and direct experience pinstriping and lettering on lowriders. She is motivated by her intention to learn and implement techniques of handmade modes of production and by doing so explore her artistic lineage. She attended the San Francisco Art Institute and received a BFA in painting in 2016 and  afterwards apprenticed and worked at New Bohemia Signs. D’Amato continues to work independently as a painter and has been the Adjunct Professor of Hand lettering at CCA since 2019. Currently, she is the Headlands Center for the Arts Tournesol Awardee for 2023-2024 and an SFMOMA 2024 SECA finalist.  She is currently working towards upcoming projects at Gallery 16, BAMPFA, Charlie James Gallery and House of Seiko.

Ruby Neri draws upon twentieth-century West Coast traditions as well as a global catalogue of art historical and anthropological modes. She depicts the human body as a porous instrument of pleasure, terror, and everything in between; this places her within a lineage of recent Los Angeles-based artists that includes Mike Kelley and Paul McCarthy, while her penchant for hand-driven craft connects her to the Bay Area Figurative and Funk movements. Over the last twenty years, Neri has also been one of the leading figures in the return to ceramics as a contemporary artmaking medium. The vessels that have dominated her production during this period evoke both earthy tactility and psychological intimacy. Her use of sprayed glazes, meanwhile, links her ceramics to the street art she produced in the late 1990s as a member of what would become the San Francisco-based Mission School, connecting a contemporary urban art form with the archaic power of pre-historical wall-painting and object-making.

 

Mariah Nielson’s background as an architect has informed her work as a curator and design historian. She worked as curator at the Museum of Craft and Design, San Francisco, (2009–2011) and as director of the JB Blunk Residency (2007–2011). In 2013, she completed an MA in Design History at the Royal College of Art and the Victoria & Albert Museum, London. Mariah co-founded the design brand Permanent Collection and is currently the Director of the JB Blunk Estate and Blunk Space. 

Natasha Boas, Ph.D., is a French American international curator, writer, and educator based in San Francisco and Paris. Integral to Dr. Boas' curatorial and writing practices is the re-thinking of received art-historical and geographical classifications. Through her work, she excavates under-recognized artists and art movements, with a specific interest in transnationality, unconventional archives and affective art communities. Her resulting writing and exhibition-making engage in pressing contemporary conversations. Most recently, her original work on the modernist, surrealist Algerian artist Baya Mahieddine has elevated the artist out of obscurity with exhibitions at NYU Grey Art Gallery, the Sharjah Museum, l’IMA in Paris and the upcoming Venice Biennale 2024.