55″ – Images of Sea Level Rise – Abstraction Meets Reality

A new exhibition, part science and part art, is now showing near the San Mateo Bridge on the eastern shore of the the San Francisco Bay. It is, 55″ — Images of Sea Level Rise — Abstraction Meets Reality, and is housed in the Hayward Shoreline Interpretive Center, a building that sits atop a salt marsh by the Bay. The exhibition features two painters and one photographer, each with very distinctive styles. Jennifer Koney, a process painter, uses her batik printmaking skills to add depth to her work while Matthew Kowalski over-paints rubbings on wet paper so that the paper is transformed into what could be mistaken for zinc or some other lightweight metal. Oliver Klink, the lone photographer in this show, finds beauty in ice as he travels in and around Iceland and Antartica. A sobering thought is that the building in which the exhibition is being shown is expected to disappear under water as sea levels rise. If you visit, be sure to wander into the room next to the exhibition hall — the Wetland Habitat room — to see the lepoard sharks and Pacific Staghorn sculpin that are there.

Oliver Klink, Jennifer Koney, Matthew Kowalski, 55″ — Images of Sea Level Rise — Abstraction Meets Reality, Hayward Shoreline Interpretive Center, Hayward (San Francisco/Bay Area), through April 12, 2014.

Oliver Klink, Images from Antartica and Iceland series, short lens expedition photograph, Hayward Shoreline Interpretive Center

Matthew Kowalski, View From a Glass Bototm Boat, radical relief process, 55″ Images of Sea Level Rise, Hayward Shoreline Interpretive Center

Jennifer Koney, Silver Lining, process painting, Hayward Shoreline Interpretive Center

The Hayward Shoreline Interpretive Center, Hayward, California