Gabriel|Sia at Pallet Space, 6510 San Pablo Avenue
I find myself writing this morning what could be an urgent plea or an eleventh hour request, detailing my current trials and challenges, but that is not the message I want to bridge the lapse in my communication/connection with you. Instead I want to extend an intimate invitation to the space, both physical and online, where the art I have been creating for the last two years, solo and in collaboration with Sid Gabriel, has recently gone up.
Walking between worlds as an artist, human being, and pilgrim, the liminal space that spans concepts in my artistic, intellectual and spiritual process surfaces as disjointed incoherencies, abstractions, diaphanous portals to the nebulous realms of mind. Through the process of improvisation, discovery, and revision--facilitated by trusting in the not-knowing and searching for narrative, meaning, definition--form emerges: thought, image, sound. Sometimes it's quick, other times it's a hundred edits. When I find myself stymied or stagnant, I put it aside, until I can see it again with fresh eyes, hear with clear ears, feel and think with unencumbered mind.
I once described myself as a multimedia or multi-platform and also multidisciplinary artist; however, all of these terms refer to various media being created simultaneously in one work, and not a single artist that works in many media, sometimes simultaneously, but more often, publishing, performing or presenting various artworks throughout one's career. What I find myself creating and expressing only comes through me, and where I find myself detaching from the identification with it is the same place where I am open to the form it takes.
My workflow has always been the process of layering and editing of media, whether it is electronic music, poetry, dance theater, mixed media assemblage, digital paint, photomanipulation, leather couture, cat collars... The process still excites and rewards me--to re-vision one's work, to revisit, to re-experience, to create something new off of a glimpse behind the curtain, a distant riff fading like a dream, to travel down an uncharted road and find something wholly different than where I started--this fills me with gratitude to live this life, able to express the world I perceive around me and the worlds conceived within me, at times profound, sometimes beautiful, other times horrific, graphic. I know there is a certain intensity that is the thread that sutures all these myriad forms together. Perhaps it is the culmination of the entire process of creating this body of work.
Sid and I opened up a retail space on December 1 to present our recent work. We have been making art together for eleven years now, and still discovering ways to co-create and collaborate. We have recently become leatherworkers as an endless stream of die-cut leather serendipitously filled our home and studio, currently around two tons, Sid predicts. Before December we were still just figuring out how to morph this pre-consumer industrial refuse into art you can wear. All of our time, energy and resources were engulfed by it, and three weeks ago we committed to being in a physical space seven days a week. And now after three months of challenges, hardship, deficit, we appear to be coming through the other side.
Today we are celebrating our store. We are part of this amazing space just a few blocks from our home, the Pallet Space. It's an amalgamation of antique store, artspace, gallery, and bazaar. Sid and I are featured artists through February and we are officially launching. I've been installing a few assemblages and creating a couple on site. We will be making art in the space, serving tea, fitting people in custom/one-off leather art, apparel and accessories, playing music all day and extending our normal hours til 10:00, later if there's demand for it. So please come by, see what we've been upto. If you can't make it, we have a photoblog:
http://sourcecouture.tumblr.com
and our online store:
http://etsy.com/shop/GABRIELSIA
Teaser images ...
Chris Sia
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