Phillips is proud to partner with Headlands Center for the Arts on their 15th annual Benefit Art Auction, a longstanding tradition which provides support to the institution’s exceptional artists and public programs. Headlands has been a hub for artists to innovate and experiment for forty years, counting over 1,600 artists among its alumni and creating a home for the creative essence of the Bay Area.
Headlands Center for the Arts was founded in 1982 as a multidisciplinary space with a focus on contemporary art across all disciplines. Situated among the coastal wilderness of the Marin Headlands in the Golden Gate National Recreation Area, the historic campus of Fort Barry invites international artists of all backgrounds to reimagine the buildings as art projects of their own, allowing for unique approaches to Headlands’ history and identity with each new artist’s input. Many of the works undertaken at Headlands have filled museums, theaters, libraries, and public spaces around the world, and recognition for alumni artists, from MacArthur “Genius” grants to Guggenheim Fellowships, Academy Award and Turner Prize nominations, highlight the scope and impact of the relationship between Headlands and its creative visionaries.
Culminating in a live auction on May 31st, Headlands will kick off with a public exhibition on May 20th showcasing over sixty works of art. Headlands’ Board Member and Phillips’ Northern California regional lead, Sophia Kinell, shares her favorites below.
Headlands is a place for making and experiencing art, and we are honored to partner with these artists. […] It is a celebration of the creative process, and we are grateful to everyone involved.
- Mari Robles, Executive Director of Headlands Center for the Arts
Clare Rojas, In the fog together, 2014. Courtesy of the artist and Jessica Silverman, San Francisco.
Clare Rojas
Clare Rojas is a beloved Bay Area artist and Headlands alum, represented by Jessica Silverman here in San Francisco. Her work has a sense of mystery and an otherworldly quality to it. Rojas lives and works in Bolinas, and there is such a strong sense of place with this one as it depicts the unmistakable Northern California fog. She says: “The fog always feels like a being, a character in our narrative. It's a force.” The other character rendered repeatedly here is her, which feels very introspective. Her work is included in the permanent collections of SFMOMA, the Museum of Modern Art in New York, and Museo de Arte Contemporáneo de Castilla y León in Spain, among others.
Carrie Schneider, Moon Drawing #139, 2015. Courtesy of the artist and Candice Madey, New York.
Carrie Schneider
A new discovery for me, and that ability to come upon something novel and brilliant is what Headlands is all about. Taken from the Blue Ridge Mountains in North Carolina, Carrie Schneider's Moon Drawings capture the lunar cycle on medium format film — this is made from one negative so what we see in the work above is a result of multiple exposures. I love that she is using the camera, which is a very exacting device, to abstract something. The compression of time and space is remarkable. Schneider earned her MFA at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, attended the Whitney Museum of American Art’s Independent Study Program, as well as the Skowhegan School of Painting & Sculpture. She is based in Brooklyn and Hudson, New York, and currently serves as the Wolf Chair of Photography at The Cooper Union.
Lenka Clayton, Boat and Ocean 10/08/2020, from the series Typewriter Drawings, 2020. Courtesy of the artist and Catharine Clark Gallery, San Francisco.
Lenka Clayton
One of those seemingly simple, conceptually loaded works...There is so much more than meets the eye here. Lenka Clayton’s typewriter drawings came out of her Artist Residency in Motherhood. These works are essentially what the artist could create in fragmented, nap-length pockets of studio time — extremely resonant for any working parent. I love the back-story behind Boat and Ocean too. This particular piece is a sheet of paper that she folded into the shape of a boat, unfolded it, and then rendered the ocean waves with the typewriter. Clayton’s work is included in the permanent collection of SFMOMA, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Carnegie Museum of Art, and the Blanton Museum of Art.
Susie Taylor, Green to Purple Gradient, 2020. Courtesy of Johansson Projects, Oakland, CA.
Susie Taylor
I love textile and I love a grid — works that are inherently precise, ordered, and meticulous in their construction. I immediately think of Annie Albers here who said, “simplicity is not simpleness but clarified vision.” Susie Taylor is a Bay Area-based artist, and looks not only to Albers but also Sol Lewitt, Agnes Martin, Frank Stella and Ellsworth Kelly. Her work was recently included in Material Meaning: A Living Legacy of Anni Albers at Craft in America Center in Los Angeles.
Alicia McCarthy, Untitled, 2022. Courtesy of the artist and Berggruen Gallery.
Alicia McCarthy
Alicia McCarthy is a celebrated Bay Area artist and Headlands alum, based in Oakland, California. Known for her woven lines and high-keyed color, she creates pattern with paint. Her intricate grids have a playful, spontaneous quality to them. McCarthy is a member of the Mission School — a movement that emerged in the 1990s in the Mission District of San Francisco, inspired by the local urban culture, graffiti, and street art. She received her BFA from the San Francisco Art Institute and MFA from the University of California, Berkeley. Her work is included in the permanent collections of many major institutions, including SFMOMA, Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive, and the Oakland Museum of California.
For a full schedule of events and registration, visit Headlands’ auction website.
Read our interview with Mari Robles, Executive Director of Headlands Center for the Arts.
Discover More from Headlands Center for the Arts >