“Pieces of Me” Ceramic and Glaze works by Rob Rao f/ Tom Franco and Galen Melchert

“Pieces of Me” Ceramic and Glaze by Rob Rao
July 5 – July 27, 2024 (In the Back Gallery)

Artists: Rob Rao. featuring select works by Tom Franco Galen Melchert
Curated by Eric Murphy

Reception and Artist Talk: Saturday, July 13th | 2-5pm

To RSVP, visit: https://PiecesofMebyRobRaoatJGG.eventbrite.com
or
https://L2PiecesofMebyRobRaoatJGG.eventbrite.com

Where: Joyce Gordon Gallery
406 14th Street Oakland, CA. 94612 (12th St. Bart)
www.joycegordon.gallery

For more information please contact:
[email protected]
510.465.8928

“Pieces of Me” is journey exploring the techniques of renown Jim Melchert to explore the energetic connections that happens when tile is fractured and reconstituted. A metaphor for life many times we break apart but the journey is in coming back together. The pieces on these walls walk through the journey how pieces that were once broken and repurpose come back together to form something beautiful.

About Rob Rao.
I grew up in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, surrounded by the industrial complex of steel, coal and glass. So all my life I’ve understood what the melt looked like from the building process. My life is a journey how we walk through the fire. I look at myself as the intersection of the right and left brain. I am creative artist while pioneering AI computer vision technologies.

I feel that the art feeds the innovation and the innovation feeds the art. So along with being an acclaimed artist I’m also a serial entrepreneur with seven patents. Ultimately my purpose is to see color and structure where chaos exist. I have struggled early on with several learning disabilities (speech and attention deficit disorders) but what began as curse became a great gift which allowed me to see things that others could not. Art is everything. Art is life. My first solo art show was 29 years ago as senior in college at Washington and Jefferson College. This lead to a lifelong exploration of the convergence of art, innovation and life.
Galen Melchert is a multimodal artist from Oakland California. His upbringing was filled with the arts, explorations in nature and the subtle influence of his family’s spiritual community. After studying mechanical engineering he went on to apprentice for four years with his grandfather, Jim Melchert, a well established ceramics who lived and worked in Oakland. It was here he learned the art of breaking tile, and the great importance of serving and connecting people. In honor of Jim’s passing Galen has been exploring the process for himself. “The secret,” in Galen’s words, “is that on the outside every tile looks the same, but when you shock it with energy, the cracks that form reveal the unique interior structure of every tile. This process is about celebrating those cracks and making the broken beautiful.”

About Tom Franco
My art work is made up of 80% found materials. That includes the surfaces that I paint on, the paint itself, the large items and the small ones. I consider myself a folk artist, representing images of the Bay Area California where I live, our shared global culture, as well as scenes of my inner life in the subtler realms of reality.
And the third element in my style of work is that of collaboration. I love to work with other artists on the same piece. By doing this my process always stays on the cutting edge of fun, unpredictable, explorative, and fast. It keeps me open to the stories, images and energies that I could never create on my own.

Joyce Gordon Gallery is a commercial fine art gallery located in the downtown district of Oakland, California. It exhibits art that reflects the social and cultural diversity of the Bay Area and international artists. The aim of the gallery is to respect the creative pursuits of the individual and seeks to make such work accessible to a broad audience. IG/FB @Joycegordongallery 406 14th St., Oakland, Ca. 94612 | Wed – Sat 1 – 6pm | http://www.joycegordon.gallery