Macro Views, Micro Wonders Exhibition at San Diego Mesa College Art Gallery 2015
Catalog Essay: Alessandra Moctezuma
The first time I encountered an installation by Cathy Breslaw at the Oceanside Museum of Art it left an indelible impression. Entering the gallery was like walking through a portal into an enchanted universe. Sparkling, translucent and colorful elements floated about and made light glimmer and dance. Although she used commonplace industrial materials they were imbued with a magical natural presence. I was an astronaut in an intergalactic adventure or a diver in an underwater realm.
In further conversations and studio visits, I came to see Breslaw as a true artist/scientist. Her artwork revolves around an interest in space and light but it is also very much concerned with life, ecology and perception—reminding us of the fragility of our surroundings. She also might be described as a rational diviner whose visual inventions reveal the fractal sublimity of nature in the very small and the very large.
The art of transforming scientific perspective into sensual revelation is stunningly displayed in the San Diego Mesa College exhibit Macro Views, Micro Wonders. The installation Dream Scape evokes the sky and the clouds; it has an atmospheric feel and a playful luminosity that emerges from the delicate organic forms. Another environment is inspired by the artist’s surreal experience at Columbia Glacier in Alaska. Mesh and reflective materials combined with photographic images to suggest the refulgent surface of glaciers; a sound piece by Mexican artist Francisco EME utilizes the sound of icebergs cracking to evoke the ominous power of nature.
Other artworks are displayed on the walls, hang from the ceiling or sprawl on the ground. Acrylic paint layered and spilled into gorgeous splotches of varying thicknesses evokes a multi-hued growing organism as seen through a microscope—a glorious amoeba or a Roscharch blot. Is it a painting as it spills and flows on the concrete floor? These works demonstrate how Breslaw continues to reinterpret and expand the boundaries of a traditional medium. Painting is not dead; it is transformed as it is molded into a solid organic form or as layers of color mesh take the place of the expansive brush strokes of a Color Field painting. Breslaw’s creative vision searches an expansive universe or zooms in, on a newly discernible form.
Alessandra Moctezuma, M.F.A.
Gallery Director, Professor of Fine Art
San Diego Mesa College, California
Catalog Essay: Alessandra Moctezuma
The first time I encountered an installation by Cathy Breslaw at the Oceanside Museum of Art it left an indelible impression. Entering the gallery was like walking through a portal into an enchanted universe. Sparkling, translucent and colorful elements floated about and made light glimmer and dance. Although she used commonplace industrial materials they were imbued with a magical natural presence. I was an astronaut in an intergalactic adventure or a diver in an underwater realm.
In further conversations and studio visits, I came to see Breslaw as a true artist/scientist. Her artwork revolves around an interest in space and light but it is also very much concerned with life, ecology and perception—reminding us of the fragility of our surroundings. She also might be described as a rational diviner whose visual inventions reveal the fractal sublimity of nature in the very small and the very large.
The art of transforming scientific perspective into sensual revelation is stunningly displayed in the San Diego Mesa College exhibit Macro Views, Micro Wonders. The installation Dream Scape evokes the sky and the clouds; it has an atmospheric feel and a playful luminosity that emerges from the delicate organic forms. Another environment is inspired by the artist’s surreal experience at Columbia Glacier in Alaska. Mesh and reflective materials combined with photographic images to suggest the refulgent surface of glaciers; a sound piece by Mexican artist Francisco EME utilizes the sound of icebergs cracking to evoke the ominous power of nature.
Other artworks are displayed on the walls, hang from the ceiling or sprawl on the ground. Acrylic paint layered and spilled into gorgeous splotches of varying thicknesses evokes a multi-hued growing organism as seen through a microscope—a glorious amoeba or a Roscharch blot. Is it a painting as it spills and flows on the concrete floor? These works demonstrate how Breslaw continues to reinterpret and expand the boundaries of a traditional medium. Painting is not dead; it is transformed as it is molded into a solid organic form or as layers of color mesh take the place of the expansive brush strokes of a Color Field painting. Breslaw’s creative vision searches an expansive universe or zooms in, on a newly discernible form.
Alessandra Moctezuma, M.F.A.
Gallery Director, Professor of Fine Art
San Diego Mesa College, California