Transition Trail: An Installation

“Throughout our lives we face a series of transitions –  when you climb a ladder there is a point when your foot has left one rung and before it reaches the next, that you experience groundlessness. This is a point of unknowing and possibility.”  say the artists.  It is this ground that is explored, the uncertainty, possibilities and mystery inherent in such a space through which one forges ones own personal trail.

Using stones, sand, leaves, shells, paint, paper, seaweed, feathers, ribbon, board, beach charcoal, barbwire, fiber & fishing twine, Stinson Beach artists Felicity Crush and Heidi Sandvoll hang, weave, string, sew and drape together a site specific installation that transforms the gallery.  It expresses their exploration of a life transition, grounded in the inspiration of the physical world of West Marin.  The flowing line as a “trail” becomes a metaphor for an inner journey, imbued with the natural world of West Marin. All the gathered natural material will be returned to nature after the exhibition, a completion of a cycle.

Felicity Crush spent her earlier years working for Greenpeace as a media officer and sailor – helping to create and communicate the powerful media images with which the organization conveys its message of environmental protection. Since settling in West Marin thirteen years ago she now works as a graphic designer with social activist organization Mainstreet Moms Organize or Bust (theMMOB.org) and other community groups. Her artwork has been exhibited in UK, Norway, Japan and the US.

Heidi Sandvoll has lived and worked as a painter in West Marin for the last fourteen years.  The hills, ocean, rocks, grass slip into her work in an iconic and symbolic way as the nature of West Marin seems to seep into our beings and somehow begins to define who we are.  Sandvoll has shown her work in many Bay Area venues, as well as, in Los Angeles.   She also collaborates the Lisa Townsend Company to create sets and costumes for their dance pieces.