By Ed Goldman
Sometimes the most serious artists are the ones who never forget the importance of nostalgia, whimsy and humor.
Northern California artists Michael Dunlavey and Debra Kreck-Harnish bring a combination of looking back, looking ahead and just plain looking around to Archival Gallery May 30-June 29, with a Second Saturday reception June 14 from 5-8 p.m.
While their work is unalike, something Dunlavey and Kreck-Harnish have in common is late-blooming art careers. While both had planned to be artists in their youth, Dunlavey poured his art into co-founding with his wife Lindy an eponymous graphic design studio, one of the region’s most prolific agencies for more than three decades. Kreck-Harnish has been a professional artist since 2010, having spent a successful career in sales.
“I started painting when I was only 16 years old,” Dunlavey says. “My father, Ed, was a Civil Engineer and a fine watercolorist. He taught me a lot. By the time I was 19 I’d already had 11 one-man—well, 11 one-boy—gallery shows.” He resumed painting in 2010 when he and his wife closed their studio and retired.
Coincidentally, it was the same year that Kreck-Harnish began her at career in earnest. She’s lived, worked, and traveled throughout the United States and Europe. She attended the Institut für Europäische Studien (Institute for European Studies) in Vienna, Austria and received her bachelor of arts degree in environmental science from Alfred University in New York. She says she’s a lifelong creative recycler: “Trash is simply a failure of imagination.” One of her specialties is creating mixed-media assemblages out of discarded objects.
If Dunlavey’s paintings seem almost photographic on detail, his photos, which have also been the subject of gallery shows, seem painterly. He says he’s “long been inspired by old things—antiques, old Navajo rugs, the texture of a weathered barn, rusted metal, vintage toys and games, and the patina of a faded sign.” He says his goal is to capture in his work “a time less hurried, a calmness of spirit.”
Old fishing boats, he adds have always fascinated him, especially “those on the verge of falling apart and sinking into the sea.” he says he can’t walk by one “without shooting a photograph as inspiration for a future painting.”
Kreck-Harnish loves to create “assemblages,” saying she loves “the challenge of finding a new use for a cast-off object.” Something about its patina or shape will call out to her, she says, “asking to come home.” Lately she says she’s been attracted to vintage kitchen objects.
“One fun part about working with spice tins of any age is that the scent of the spice never completely goes away,” she says, adding that some days, her studio “smells like a spice market—and what a heavenly fragrance.” It transports her back to her childhood when she baked with her mom and cooked with her grandma. “To this day, nutmeg reminds me of my mom and oregano reminds me of my grandma.”
Archival Gallery is open Wednesdays through Saturdays from 11 a.m. to 4 p.m. It’s located at3223 Folsom Boulevard in East Sacramento. The phone number is 916.923.6204. You can preview upcoming shows and rue the ones you missed at archivalgallery.com.
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