Position / Disposition: Inaugural Exhibiton

MILL VALLEY, CALIFORNIA – CHANDLER GALLERY is very pleased to present our inaugural exhibition, Position / Disposition, on view from March 1^st through April 12^th, 2025. An artist reception will be held on Saturday, March 1^st from 5 to 7pm to celebrate the exhibition and opening of the gallery. All are welcome to attend.

 

Position / Disposition presents a selection of works by California-based artists, and finds focus in presenting works which embody a distinct sense of place. Whether through subject, medium or process, each artist is influenced, and often fueled, by their geographic and subsequent cultural positioning. Many works included explore place through subject matter, ranging from ice melting in a muggy Los Angeles studio, to a lulling, hazy beach scene, to the rolling hills of wine country, or color studies of the forest floors of Northern California. Other artists contemplate place through medium, such as California White Oak or lichen and mica from the California mountains. Other works engage and animate space in their design, like the mobiles by East Bay artist Emily Payne, which gently turn at the slighted gust of air to paint the walls with cast shadows. These works are conceptualizations of the artists’ experience of place, and their desire to create works that engage their place. The resulting works capture the mood of our shared home.

 

Position / Disposition includes works by Mari Andrews, Gale Antokal, Farell Beam, Shannon Belardi, Renée Bott, Squeak Carnwath, Kristen Garneau, Ruth Charlotte Kneass, Donna Loftus, Hanneke Lourens, Emily Payne, Libby Raab, Greta Waller, and Janet Yano.

 

This exhibition was drawn together to celebrate this place, the nexus and driving force behind Chandler Gallery. Chandler Gallery begins because of a space. Occupying the location that was previously and iconically Seager Gray Gallery, Chandler Gallery came to be through the forward thinking of Donna Seager and Suzanne Gray. Knowing the magic of their space, and the loss the community would feel upon their closing, they sought someone who could carry their vision forward. Committed to keeping the space a place for contemporary arts and the Mill Valley community, Seager and Gray approached Chandler Simpson, a former director of Maya Frodeman Gallery, previously Tayloe Piggott Gallery in Jackson, Wyoming, living in the Bay Area. Upon her first few steps through the threshold of 108 Throckmorton Avenue, Simpson could sense the magnetism of what Seager and Gray had built. For Simpson, continuing their legacy is both humbling and exciting—an opportunity to uplift local artists while introducing new artistic perspectives to Marin County and the greater Bay Area.