Artist celebrates The Bay in work at the Oakland Center

• April 22, 2011 8:00am

Sylvia Min, a lecturer in the Art Department, is showing pieces in the lobby of the CSUEB Oakland Center, 1000 Broadway, Suite 109, through June 9.

An open reception is set from 1-4 p.m. Saturday, April 23. The building is open Monday-Thursday 8 a.m.-9 p.m. and Friday-Saturday from 8 a.m.-5 p.m.

The collection includes eight pieces: six watercolor paintings on paper and two paintings on canvas.

In this body of work, Min paints delicate and detailed red maps of the San Francisco Bay Area, and then saturates and sprays them with the water from the bay. She says the results are unpredictable because the water causes the paintings to bloom and bleed, 

The paintings are rendered in cadmium red – red being a color strongly associated with love, blood, sin, warning, fortune, and power. Cadmium is a natural and toxic element used and found in pigments, batteries, fertilizers, petroleum products, metal plating, and plastic and textile manufacturing. It is also a by-product of car exhaust, cigarette smoke, leaching landfills, and industrial and agricultural waste, and is one of he major pollutants in the bay.

Min’s work contrasts anxieties and fears about the environment, pollution, and natural disasters, with the underlying beautiful, fragile, and temporal nature of the place she calls home.

DD