2011 Year in Review (Part 1)

Our January opening was so packed that we steamed the windows up, and people stuck around long after the party was over.

2011 has been a wild ride of a year for Hang Art. In addition to hosting twelve exhibitions at the gallery, we participated in three art fairs (in one month), went on a couple dozen studio visits, added seven new artists to the roster, and most importantly – connected wonderful people to quality artwork.

In case you missed all the excitement we have collected and concentrated 2011 into a year in review so big it needed to be split into two parts.

JANUARY

Our January Exhibition featured the work of Anthony May, Peter Dimick David DeFelice and Nancy Spoelhoff

The biggest news here all year was the transfer of ownership of Hang Art from founder Shanna McBurney to Piero Spadaro on the first of the year. If reading this comes as a surprise it is because Piero and the rest of the gallery staff are committed to maintaining Shanna’s vision of an open and accessible venue for collecting original artwork. In fact, Shanna still serves in an advisory role.

January was also the start to an amazing year of exhibitions with Restructured, a group of artists whose work is a collection of broken fragments coalesced into a new whole. We had a nice studio visit with David DeFelice before hand to get an idea of what to expect for the exhibition.

Jenny E. Balisle also had a busy January with a museum exhibition that she curated at the Museum of Los Gatos.

FEBRUARY

From left to right: Former intern Nico Barredo, artist Klari Reis (holding her new painting), and featured artist David Lippenberger.

February we hosted David Lippenberger‘s solo exhibition, Gridlock. You can check out photo’s from the opening reception here on our Facebook page.

As always, the steady stream of new artwork continued to flow throughout the month of February.

MARCH

Jenny E. Balisle (R) discussing art and life at the opening reception

In preparation of Jenny E. Balisle’s solo exhibition in March we zipped across the bay to her studio one morning in February for a studio visit. One of the reasons we love studio visits because they give us an opportunity to chat one-on-one with the artist and get to the nitty gritty of their art practice. We found what Jenny had to say so insightful that invited her to give an artists talk at the gallery. If you missed the talk, you can watch the whole thing online here.

APRIL

Lea Feinstein bringing in her unmounted paintings for review.

In our April exhibition “Action, Reaction” we explored chance as we invited Lea Feinstein, Jeff Loehmann, and guest artist Lela Sheilds to walk the delicate line between chaos and control.

MAY

Opening morning at the San Francisco Fine Art Fair

In May we placed ourselves in the epicenter of an art explosion as we participated in three unique art fairs in addition to our regular exhibition. Envisioned as an exhibition in four parts titled Location, Location, Location, each fair featured a curated grouping of new and exciting work and no two locations featured the same artists.

It all began at the Affordable Art Fair in New York on May 4th followed the next day with our First Thursday opening reception back at the gallery in San Francisco.  With barely a chance to catch our breath we then set-up shop at both the San Francisco Fine Art Fair and ArtPad SF on May 19th. The whole experience was a great opportunity to introduce our amazing artists and our unique program to our friends both new and old.

You can check-out photographs of the events here.

JUNE

We always accessorize accordingly. Lacey at Galleries for the House.

With the summer in full swing we set out on a road trip through the open landscape paintings of Ann West in her solo exhibition, “Off in the Distance”.  We loved the sense of calm that her paintings brought into the gallery, but we knew it couldn’t last because we had more planned for the month.

Next up was Galleries for the House, a one night only event where we teamed up with Andrea Schwartz Gallery, Braunstein Quay Gallery,  STUDIO Gallery, Toomey Tourell Fine Art, and others to raise money for Central City Hospitality House’s Community Arts Program.  The evening was a huge success with several happy collectors (including quite a few Hang Art staff) finding amazing artwork.

In June we also stopped by Olivia Brown’s studio to preview her new work for a special off-site solo exhibition titled, “Ecstatic Resonance”.

So much more to come.

So much happened and we are only half way through the year.

Check out the second half of the year here.

---