Opening Reception: Booby Trap – A Group Exhibition

JESSICA CADKIN, LAURA MALONE, CHARLIE MILGRIM, K.C. ROSENBERG, CAITY SALAMANCA

In celebration of Women’s History Month, “Booby Trap” brings humor and wit to feminist commentary. Each artist draws from personal stories. Using the kitchen as a metaphor for women’s work, Rosenberg and Ratcliff both honor and mock traditional notions of a woman’s place. Like her mother’s casserole nights, Rosenberg creates art with “leftover” scraps from her studio floor. Ratcliff’s ceramic cakes serve up sex and success for us to taste. Milgrim’s tin cisterns play on the expression “Nice Jugs”, offering a sardonic meditation to heal an insult. Cadkin creates abstract Rubenesque shapes that mimic the female form: referencing the binding of women’s creativity as well as the sewing tradition handed down from her mother and grandmother. Malone’s buck-naked dancers’ spin in gleeful defiance of age-bound stereotypes, while Salamanca’s painting, “She Has a Tropical Glow,” explodes with color, movement and texture, celebrating her attraction to her wife. Says Salamanca, “I see my wife covered in sand and salt, I’d be lying if I said this painting was about anything other than the sweat on her upper lip.”

Gallery Hours: Fri and Sat, 12 – 5 pm
Oakland Art Murmur / First Friday: April 4, 5 – 9 pm

Image caption:
(Left) Mary Curtis Ratcliff, Success Cake, 1996, 9.25″ x 12″ x 12″, Hardware cloth, plaster gauze, copper, permaice, acrylic
(Center) Jessica Cadkin, Dirty Pillow #1, 2025, 11″ x 11″ x 4″, Mixed media (nylon pantyhose, pompoms, fiberfill, thread)
(Right) Caity Salamanca, She Has A Tropical Glow, 2024, 24” x 30” x 2”, Mixed media on canvas