Opening Reception: Saturday, December 10th | 5pm - 7pm

Nancy Toomey Fine Art is pleased to announce Winter, an exhibition of works by Andrew Fisher, Betty Merken, Jimi Gleason, and Miya Ando.

The season of winter has often provided artists with material for exceptional and spellbindingly beautiful works of art. The very nature of how we perceive this season invokes a stepping back, a meditation on atmosphere, and a desire for transformative solitude. The four artists included in this exhibition have long been concerned with the representation of light, often evoking the shifts of perception that nature can provide. The subtle nuances of each of these artists' work allow us a moment of dreamlike tranquility, a time to contemplate and experience our own white silence of space. Though much of the work featured in this exhibition utilizes deep resonant color and tone, the message is one that we can all value in these uncertain times--to pause, to reflect, and to embrace the beauty of the external world.
Andrew Fisher earned his Bachelor of Arts degree with honors in Sculpture, Drawing and Metal Arts from the California College of the Arts. His studio practice is focused on painting, sculpture, and the design and crafting of extraordinary furniture and light fixtures. Simultaneously, he has achieved wide recognition for his achievements in interior design. Fisher's past work includes several series of tapestries crafted from coffee filters, used to make coffee and then painted, cut and quilted together; a series of works on paper incorporating discarded plastic tarps; monoprints; and paintings on canvas. His current work blends his love of metal and sculpture. Using canvas, steel, and paper, Fisher creates intricately sewn tapestries which he paints and gilds with 24 karat gold. He also creates dramatic sculptures in steel and brass - again, completely gilded with 24 karat gold. Andrew Fisher lives and works in San Francisco and San Miguel de Allende, Mexico. 

Betty Merken is an American painter and printmaker. Her work can be found in several galleries and numerous private and public collections in the United States, Asia, and Europe, and in the permanent collections of major museums, including the Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco (the de Young Museum and the California Palace of the Legion of Honor), the UCLA Hammer Museum in Los Angeles, and the Portland Art Museum in Portland, Oregon. Merken has been honored with fellowships from the BAU Institute in Otranto, Italy and New York and the Civita/Northwest Institute for Architecture and Urban Studies in Italy. She is the co-author, with Stefan Merken, of Wall Art, Megamurals and Supergraphics (Philadelphia: Running Press, 1987). 

Jimi Gleason was born and raised in Southern California. He graduated with a BA in Fine Art from UC Berkeley in 1985, later moving to New York. Upon his return to California, Jimi worked as a studio assistant for renowned abstract painter, Ed Moses. His work is included in many important private and public collections, both here and abroad.

Miya Ando received a bachelor's degree in East Asian Studies from the University of California at Berkeley and attended Yale University to study Buddhist iconography and imagery. Ando's work has been exhibited extensively throughout the world, including a recent show curated by Nat Trotman of the Guggenheim Museum. She has produced numerous public commissions, most notably a memorial sculpture in which she utilized a 30-foot tall piece of steel which had fallen from the World Trade Center buildings. The sculpture is permanently displayed in front of Zaha Hadid's Aquatic Centre in Queen Elizabeth Olympic Park, London. A Critic's Pick in Artforummagazine in 2015, Ando is also recipient of numerous awards including the Pollock Krasner Foundation Grant. Her large-scale installation piece Emptiness The Sky (Shou Sugi Ban) was featured in Frontiers Reimagined, a collateral exhibition of the 2015 Venice Biennale, in the Museo di Palazzo Grimani.