Fear Not – William Rhodes Artist’s Talk with Gospel Choir Performance

Please join us for William Rhodes’ talk with gospel choir performance by the Dr. George W. Davis Senior Center Choir, music conductor and leader Kenneth Little
Saturday, Oct 3rd starting at 2 pm

This is part of a series of NEXUS SFBay events including the Caleb Dowdell performance with his piece, Our Prism of Dreams, starting at 1:30 pm just downstairs at Gearbox Gallery, performance about 15 minutes. William’s talk starts at 2 pm upstairs with the Dr. George W. Davis Senior Center Choir closing out the event with a Gospel Choir performance. See one or both at that galleries at 770 West Grand Ave in Oakland.

More about Fear Not, William Rhodes’ solo exhibition at Transmission Gallery:

William Rhodes’s sculptures on view incorporate objects that have been used, inherited, discarded, or found with elements he has carved himself. Trained early on as a furniture maker, he combines hand carved figures, flames and snakes with objects collected from a family home, photographs, hardware, tools, and other remnants of everyday life. Neon words signal from some pieces.

The resulting works resemble shrines or memorials, but they remain grounded in the ordinary. Religious symbols appear alongside household objects. A photograph might be surrounded by carved waves, tools, hardware, animals, or religious symbols. A suitcase can become an architectural space. A toilet becomes the base of an unexpected monument. Things with little apparent value are carefully incorporated into elaborate constructions, their histories becoming part of the work.
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Rhodes is equally interested in people; family, mentors, and leaders, as well as those who have been overlooked or treated as disposable, recognizing and elevating their presence in his work. By giving attention to these lives, enshrining and revering them, he considers how value is assigned and who gets remembered.

The title Fear Not appears in the work as both a phrase and a kind of instruction. It can be read in relation to the religious imagery that runs throughout the sculptures, but it also takes on a morepersonal meaning. To look closely at lives and objects that are easily dismissed is, in its own way, an act of resistance to that dismissal.