Featured Artist: Travis Ridlehuber

Burly, bearded, and well-groomed, the men Travis Ridlehuber paints display cultural markers of Western masculinity. Gracefully emerging from custom made wood panels—crafted to Travis’ specifications by a trusted East Bay wood artisan—these portraits are at once macho and delicate. This artist’s detailed brushwork takes rugged manliness and elevates it to a thing of breathtaking beauty.

Featured Artist: D Young V

In the thirteen plus years street artist and muralist, D Young V, has lived in San Francisco, his striking images of war, weaponry, and revolution has very much become a part of the city’s urban environment. 

Featured Artist: Brian Leo

Brian Leo creates small-scale paintings that pack a visual punch. Using bright colors reminiscent of Warhol’s palette, Brian explores the socio-political, and the public and private spheres with an air of satire and humor. The commercial world offers this artist an endless source of inspiration as logos, media clips, memes, and the like often find their way into his compositions.

Moving Sculpture at the Opening of He•li•o•trop•ic

Shrouded in a black and white spandex pillowcase, Jeanne Lauren of Skyana Entertainment, stands on a pedestal at the center of the gallery. Behind her emerge electrical-tape renderings of free-flowing vine-like forms traveling up the gallery’s wall. To her left a partial contour-line silhouette of a human figure peaks out.

Things to Come: Carly Ivan Garcia

“You’ve gotta be really strong in your convictions. You gotta be the person who doesn’t care about what anyone thinks anymore,” Carly Ivan Garcia tells me by phone from a café in his Marin County neighborhood. “I started curating my shows when I was younger because no one wanted to exhibit me. I created a show in a one bedroom.”

Christine Aria “Falling Deep Below Heaven”

    The Midway Gallery is thrilled to present “Falling ‘Deep Below Heaven,’” a watercolor series by Christine Aria in conjunction with Inyoung Seoung’s He•li•o•trop•ic.

Christine is one of The Midway Gallery’s inaugural resident artists and will be the first to activate the Gods and Monsters exhibition space with her sensual free-falling figures.

Featured Artist: Robin Birdd

Stepping into Robin Birdd’s studio reveals a collection of oddities ranging from the absurd to the unsettling. One corner houses a pile of breasts in a variety of sizes; from large sacks reminiscent of bean-bags to smaller, hand-sized pieces that tumble onto a nearby table. Birdd takes a seat at a desk, swiveling her chair to face me. Behind her a collection of milk crates store a variety of art supplies and notebooks, bowls containing paper cutouts rest on the tabletop beside a small sewing machine. Above the cluttered workstation are a number of shelves, which display drawings, masks, photographs and numerous vessels.