The collages on display came to life as a spontaneous outburst of an artistic impulse, which may have been dormant inside of “me” for years. From the beginning, this work made itself known primarily through abstract expression, a way of relating inner feelings and beauty, rather than as recognizable objects of concepts. What is pouring out from nowhere resulted in a delightful interplay of cheerful, bright colors mingled with intricate shapes. A fun-loving dance.

The small pieces of paper, used in a mosaic method, were cut from different magazines, while leafing through, particularly from National Geographic magazines. They were selected for their specific hues.

Nachshon was born and raised on kibbutz Ha –Ogen in central Israel, during the Independence Way – is this the right word? Or is it war? in 1948. After serving three years in the Israeli army (1968-71), he lived for two years in Jerusalem. In l973-74 he traveled by himself in India and Nepal, and was certified there as a hatha yoga teacher.

He has made San Francisco his home-base since 1975. Taking an art class while residing in the desert of Palm Springs (2003-4) kindled his desire for artistic expression.

Info: Nalus111@yahoo.com

Center for Learning in Retirement (CLIR)

Members of Center for Learning in Retirement (CLIR) who are artists have gathered together once each year to exhibit their work. These artworks consist of paintings, photography and sculpture. They are sometimes products of a new art experience after retiring and sometimes are the culmination of a life's work. The show is always exciting.

CLIR is an educational, cultural and social organization for seniors serving the entire Bay Area. Founded in 1973 by the University of California Berkeley Extension, CLIR is now a free-standing non-profit organization. CLIR has offered classes in the visual and literary arts, history, the sciences, foreign languages, politics and other topics as well as a variety of social and cultural events. These include an annual picnic, luncheon, holiday party, walks, tours, a book club, a current events discussion group and access to concerts, recitals and theatrical and dance performances.

We will celebrate CLIR's many years of members' art with this final look at their work gathered in this spacious venue.

CLIR's office and classroom are located at 57 Post Street, Suite 614 in San Francisco. Please visit our website at www.clirsf.org and enjoy the art in this show.

Artist Niki Stefanelli brings her solo exhibit Cultural Encounters to Kings Galleries from March 1-April 9 with an opening on Sunday, March 5 from 12:30 to 3PM. The display includes over 50 works of art documenting the common humanity of people around the world. In celebration of Women’s History Month, The TSK Room features photography highlighting women’s daily lives in Cambodia, Cuba,Ghana, India, Myanmar, Turkey, United States and Vietnam. This room also exhibits work on wood panels exploring communities living on the water. Stefanelli’s exhibit continues into the MLK Room with a focus on daily spiritual practices from Buddhist and Hindu traditions in Cambodia, Myanmar and India. The gallery features mono-prints from Japan and mixed-media works from Cuba. Niki Stefanelli aims to share her ideas about the complex 21st century world and give viewers insight into cultures different from the one in which she grew up.

Niki Stefanelli is a San Francisco Bay Area artist, photographer and art educator. Her artwork explores life experience across cultural boundaries. Stefanelli’s artwork has been informed by her extensive world-wide travel and by her time spent in Ghana, West Africa as a Peace Corps volunteer. Her work has been exhibited both locally and internationally, and images can be viewed on her fine art website: nikistefanelli.com

Niki Stefanelli grew up in Maryland and received her BFA from the San Francisco Art Institute. She exhibits her work in galleries, non-profitspaces, and community venues. She has taught art in a variety of settings including independent schools, an international school in Tanzania, and community colleges. She has incorporated her love of travel into her teaching career by leading international service projects for high school students to Cuba, Ghana, South Africa, Tanzania, China, Cambodia, Thailand, Vietnam and Australia. Combining her passion for photography with her love of people, Niki Stefanelli recently launched a lifestyle photography business for families and high school seniors. More information about her photography business can be found on her website: nikistefanelliphotography.com

UnMasked, art from Childrens Multicultural Museum 2016 workshops, is showing in the Kings Galleries from Jan 21 to Feb 27.

The Museum has been providing free art workshops since 1986, when it was formed by arts advocates from the First UU community. 2016 workshops were led at SF Main Library, Tenderloin Childrens Playground, and Betty Ann Ong Rec Center.

The Children’s Multicultural Museum has been delighting children and their parents since our beginnings in 1986, when a group of art advocates from UUSF got together to create it!  CMM began as a non-profit with funding from the California Arts Council and the SF Neighborhood Arts Program.  We initiated the Children’s Multicultural Arts Day in partnership with the Museum of Modern Art at the War Memorial Building.  With cutbacks in funding, CMM became volunteer based.  We created new community partnerships to continue bringing multicultural art projects and cultural experiences to children 6 to 12.

CMM found the Civic Center area to be a convenient and welcome place to bring its eclectic mix of multicultural themes, recycled materials and children’s imaginations.  And the area contains the highest population of deserving kids in the city.  Our first public venue of artwork was a holiday tree for San Francisco Davies Symphony Hall Deck the Hall celebrations!  Stepping forward to curate the organization, local artist Andrei Glase began teaching a weekly art studio at SF Recreation and Park’s Tenderloin Children’s Playground at 570 Ellis.  Still nurturing the connection with SF’s vibrant center we brought the exhibit “Recent Work from Tenderloin Children’s Playground” to the King’s Gallery at the Unitarian Center; later we took the expanded exhibit to the Fisher Children’s Center at the Main Library.  Since 2013 we have been providing a monthly art workshop called “Art All Around” at the Library, a site at which we can encourage parental participation in making art together, and at which large art pieces can be  displayed throughout the year.  For the fifth year we have offered weekly workshops at the Betty Ann Ong Chinese Rec Center in Chinatown for their summer camp.  And a special festival activity is our PeaceDoves origami display, which we just presented at the International Children’s Dance Festival.

“UnMasked” is our January 2017 exhibit at the King’s Gallery which will include our 2016 artwork from our three workshop locations.  And on February 5 we’ll host an art-making reception for the kids and their adults.  Workshops are provided free of charge to the community, thanks to the workshop space provided by our community partners, and gifts in kind art supplies provided by volunteers.  Contact Andrei at the locations below if you would like to volunteer or donate funds or materials.  With the decline of art education in our schools it is just so essential to do what we can to encourage our young creative minds with individual and community art projects.  Art is about making decisions … so you want to sketch something without knowing exactly what the final picture will be?  Make a little decision to see art all around.

Contact:  childrensmulticulturalmuseum@gmail.com

CMM, 1849 Geary Blvd, #15371, San Francisco CA 94118

Andrei Glase, Curator in Charge, 415-913-8556

Maria Solis and Elaine Pratt will be showing their art work through the holidays and you are invited to their reception on Sunday, December 18 at 1:30 PM in the King Rooms.

Maria Solis (top photo)

Best known as Maria Solis at the UU, I paint silks under the name of 'SILKREATIONS by Miriam.' I am submerged in all the Arts. I sing and write under the name of Miriam Kelemen Solis. My exhibited flowers painted in Acrylic and are my LEFT-HANDED PAINTINGS. They are the result from an injury to my right arm.

I still wear special gloves to reduce the pain. Painting on silk is easier on my hand. I have always been drawing and painting. In my childhood during the Holocaust ART was my salvation and is still makes the best part of my life; I still enjoy this very special world. Happily it became also an inheritance for my three daughters and four grandchildren. They all share in this special place and they all intensely pursue their individual paths in their chosen, varied media.

Elaine Pratt (bottom photo)

From an early age I have been a creator; painting, drawing, sculpting, designing all sorts of things, dancing, singing and acting, dreaming of being an artist of one sort or another. Finally narrowing down my interest in creativity to being a designer, a profession I could support myself with right out of college, knowing I would pick up my passion for fine art in oils. I graduated from the University of Cincinnati’s College of Design, Art and Architecture with a degree in Graphic Design in 1983. Winning many national and international design awards, teaching design at Mass Art and AIB, judging award shows, I now am able to juggle and merge being a designer, with my own design firm, Pratt Design www.prattdesign.net, and my passion for abstract expressionism in oils.

My work is engendered by my response to the world. Many things inspire me; among them are nature, science, energy of all sorts, emotions and the interpersonal drama. My training in design influences my art. Working in oils, I bring an abstract graphic approach to my emotive gestural images. Sometimes it is en plein-air inspiration, always conceptual and abstract. I am interested in the simplest gesture of the hand as a means to communicate my feelings about my subject. Painting for me is a highly focused meditative experience. From an early age, I was inspired by Turner’s landscapes and Van Gogh’s gestural strokes. facebook.com/elaineprattart

All Artist’s Proceeds From The Sale of These Paintings Will Go To: The Fire Relief Fund For Victims of Ghostship, Oakland Fire

Friday, December 2nd, at approximately 11:30 PM, a tragic fire erupted in an artist collective workspace in the Fruitvale district of Oakland. Within the space many artists and attendees of our art community were present. To date, the exact number of injuries and fatalities are unconfirmed but have risen to 36 and may take weeks to resolve. Sadly, what is known is that this is a massive tragedy for the Bay Area Arts community.

Artist J. Alan Constant (November 2016). This exhibition will occupied two rooms in the King’s Gallery and over 40 works of art will be on display. 

All are welcome to a reception to be held on Sunday, September 25, 12:30 PM,

King Rooms 

Join us for the UUSF Family and Friends Group Art Show Reception! There will be juice, wine, cheese and yummy things to snack on while you observe great art works by people you know and love. (view the group artwork collages)

Father John’s artistic skills were nurtured by two artists for six years from the time he was nine. The first artist mentor was Shyunyu Omaru, a water color artist with sumie (black ink brush). Peter Iwao Sasaki was an oil paint artist who later became a renowned iconographer in Finland using egg tempera. Father John continued his art work after completing his graduate studies in New York. He has written three critical books on Iconography based on his extensive research and travels in the Middle East, the Balkans, and Russia.

Father John resumed his pen and ink with watercolor art when he was assigned to serve at Holy Trinity Cathedral (Diocese of the West, Orthodox Church in America) in San Francisco in 2006. He uses his off days for art projects. He simply wishes to share with the viewers of his pictures the joy of the experience of being at the place depicted in his drawings. He always works on site in order to convey the fresh live atmosphere of the place.

In a wealthy country like ours it’s hard to believe that children go hungry. So when my friend, pediatrician Dr. Lucy Crain, asked if I would be willing to photograph hungry children locally, I was surprised and a little confused. The kids I’d seen in San Francisco, even poor children, didn’t fit my image of a hungry child. But she assured me that a CDC survey showed that 20% of children nationally grow up in families that are food insecure. In the high-rent San Francisco Bay area that increases to 25%.

The title of the photography project “Who’s Hungry? You Can’t Tell by Looking” was Dr. Crain’s idea. Of the 20 images presented in this exhibit, half come from families that are food insecure and half from families with plenty of food. It’s impossible to tell by looking which child fits into which category. The photographs were taken at the Tenderloin Health Fair, at street fair, churches and private homes all in San Francisco.

The local branch of the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) sponsored this exhibit. Their hope was to alert pediatricians that they needed to regularly screen their young patients for food insecurity. The images reached 65,000 pediatricians in online newsletters nationally. The photographs hung in Supervisor John Avalos’ office in San Francisco’s City Hall. They also hung in Sacramento at the State Capitol Building outside the governor’s office where they impacted legislators and thousands of visitors. In June of 2015 the national leadership conference of the AAP passed a resolution to ensure that pediatricians routinely screen for childhood hunger. My personal thanks to Lucy Crain, MD, MPH, FAAP, Clinical Professor of Pediatrics at the University of California, San Francisco for her vision and commitment to children’s health and this project. Thanks also to the children and families who participated.

About the Photographer Karen Ande is a social documentary and portrait photographer based in San Francisco, California. In 2002 she began chronicling the AIDS epidemic and its effects on children in sub-Saharan Africa.

Her work took her from rural villages to city slums in Kenya and Rwanda, where she photographed people who daily face the challenges of AIDS and its impact on those they know and love. This work culminated in the award-winning 2010 book with journalist Ruthann Richter:  Face to Face: Children of the AIDS Crisis in Africa. More recently Karen’s work has broadened in scope to include issues of poverty, childhood hunger, and rights of seniors in other areas of the world, including Nepal, El Salvador, and the U.S.”

Not content to remain an observer, Karen has raised thousands of dollars for organizations helping children orphaned by AIDS. She and her work have been featured in newspapers, magazines and television.

• Show begins May 12 and ends on July 1.

• Art Receptions is Sunday, June 19, 12:30 PM to 2:30 PM, King Rooms

• Mini Viewing - Monday, May 16, 5:30 PM to 7PM, King Rooms

Featuring oils paintings by Nancy Buffum from Brooklyn in the 1980s, and a selection of more recent artwork.

The exhibit takes place in the Kings Galleries of the Unitarian Universalist Center of San Francisco from May 12 through July 1. The Kings Galleries are open Monday-Friday 9:30 AM to 4:30 PM, Sundays 12PM-4PM, and by appointment. Contact nancybuffum@gmail.com or 415-845-2584.

View more images at facebook.com/NancyBuffumArt/

Artist’s Statement

Please come see my artwork from New York in the 1980’s, expressing my deep experience of seeing and being with the people and landscapes, subways and streets of a beautiful and often brutal city. Fast forward to California 2016. I have always worked in many media and with many subjects for my artwork. The exhibit includes examples of more recent paintings and drawings as well. 

Most of the artworks from Brooklyn have been in storage since 1990. I want to thank members of the Art Committee for urging me to bring this work out; my family for their support in my cross country journey to liberate the paintings, and especially Hilary Buffum, my moving and packing ally. And Joe Dellert, the best picture framer in San Francisco.  

About Nancy Buffum

Born 1957 and studied visual art at Bryn Mawr College and Boston University. She painted and exhibited in New York City in the 1980s, prior to moving to the San Francisco Bay Area in 1991. Her body of work includes mixed media, installations, murals and watercolors as well as the oil paintings featured in this exhibit. While living in Brooklyn, New York Nancy led the Association of Williamsburg/Greenpoint Artists and directed Red Hook Arts, a youth performing arts program. She held arts residencies at Dorland Mountain Art Colony in southern California. Nancy produced lecture/ performance events for Humanities West at Herbst Theatre from 1994 to 2001. She has exhibited in San Francisco at Luscious Garage, The Mechanics’ Institute, Sweet Inspiration, and the Kings Galleries. Her mural in the interior of Other Avenues Food Co-op was painted in 2012. Nancy is a member of Ocean Beach Artists, founded in 2013. She teaches art privately.

New show featuring the majestic paintings of Reverend Margot Campbell Gross, Minister Emerita in the Kings Gallery until May 8. Join Margot for a very special artist's reception on Sunday, March 6 from 12:15 PM to 2PM in the King Rooms.

Margot’s Artist statement:

The subject of these new paintings, as of my previous work, is the human aspiration to grow by reaching out beyond oneself, and by reaching within. In many of these paintings, this theme is expressed by the spiral or coil, although that figure may be almost obliterated in the painting process. This spiral/coil signifies not merely the shape of growth – spiraling outward and coiling inward – but also the energy that fuels the will to grow. I approach painting as a spiritual exploration, which includes problem solving, intuitive response, and reflection. Painting, for me, is a dialogue with the unknown.