By SDCN Editor
Oceanside, CA–Mark Chamness, a Californian artist based in Oceanside, is exhibiting new works in fibers and what the artist calls “discarded urban plastic” at the Hill Street Country Club in Oceanside.
Chamness’s work draws from legacies of abstraction, his training as a painter and carpenter, and his daily experiences of the last several years with the ongoing Covid pandemic.
The last three years have been a time of significant personal and cultural change for the artist. Many people have been reexamining the domestic space and reconnecting to labor-intensive hand work.
Though Chamness’s practice stretches back much farther than that, these new works have evolved to include new materials from 2020 onwards. While supply chain issues and shipping made some materials harder to come by, there has been no shortage of single-use plastic. He collects bags caught in bushes or left on the beach, cuts them into strips, and tufts the strips into his needlepoint. Each piece becomes a record of its time, incorporating the stories embedded in the environment around him.
“I deal in fragments. I love things that are stuffed in between the cracks, that are unimportant, things that are tossed aside,” Mark Chamness said.
Chamness lives as a carpenter by day. He started working with wood in high school and transitioned into art making as funding for woodshop started waning. He eventually entered Cal Arts as a painter in 1992. Blending these traditions is at the core of his practice and allows the work to bounce back and forth between art and craft, structural and decorative, sensual and conceptual.
The opening reception for Chamness is Sept 2 from 5 p.m. to 8 p.m. at the Hill Street Country Club, 530 South Coast Highway in Oceanside.
The exhibition program begins in October.
The gallery is wheelchair accessible with street parking.
