A conversation between Bay Area artists Judith Belzer and Kathryn Spence, whose work is featured in MCAM’s fall exhibition Shifting Terrains. Belzer’s paintings explore our dynamic and sometimes uncomfortable relationship with the natural world and the built landscape. Spence’s carefully crafted objects and arrangements are inspired by nature but are composed from the discarded materials of the human world—exploring the disconnection between nature and human culture and, in particular, the realities of an overwhelmingly consumption-driven society.
Arrive early to see the artists’ work on view at MCAM in Shifting Terrains!
Eventbrite registration suggested but not required.
ABOUT THE ARTISTS
JUDITH BELZER is an artist based in Berkeley, CA. Primarily employing paints as a medium, her work explores our engagement with the natural world and the built landscape. Belzer’s paintings have been exhibited widely in galleries and museums and her work is held in many private and public collections including The Berkeley Art Museum-Pacific Film Archive and The Nevada Museum of Art. Hosfelt Gallery, which represents Belzer’s work, mounted her most recent solo exhibition “Where We Stand” in the spring of 2022. Belzer graduated from Barnard College with a degree in English and studied art at The New York Studio School. Awarded residencies at Yale Norfolk and Yaddo, Belzer was a Guggenheim Fellow in 2014. She currently teaches at Harvard University as a visiting lecturer in the Department of Art, Film and Visual Studies.
KATHRYN SPENCE’s carefully crafted objects and arrangements develop out of play, and a fascination with materiality, physicality, and space. Time spent outside watching birds, exploring, and planting have influenced her work which reflects on the human impacts on the natural world.
Spence (b. 1963, Germany) lives and works in the Bay Area, and is featured in numerous public collections including SFMOMA, the M.H. de Young Memorial Museum, BAMPFA, the Oakland Museum of California, the Nelson Museum at U.C. Davis, Mills College Art Museum, the Denver Art Museum, the Birmingham Art Museum, the San Jose Museum of Art, and the Santa Barbara Museum of Art. Spence is a recipient of the Anonymous was a Woman award, the Eureka Fellowship, an Artadia award, and the Fleischhacker Foundation award.
Solo exhibitions include the Aldrich Museum of Contemporary Art (2012), Mills College Art Museum, Oakland, CA, 2010, the Johnson Museum at Cornell University, Ithaca, 2001, and the Kemper Museum of Contemporary Art, Kansas City, 1999. ‘Material World’ at the Denver Art Museum, and ‘Indestructible Wonder’ at the San Jose Museum of Art are recent groups shows, among others such as the 2005 Corcoran Biennial, Washington D.C., the California Biennial at the Orange County Museum, exhibitions at the Israel Museum, Jerusalem, SFMOMA’s ‘Present Tense’, Mass College of Art, Boston, Torch Gallery, Amsterdam, the first ‘ Bay Area Now’ at Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, S.F., San Jose Museum of Art, and the Oakland Museum of California. Kathryn showed for 18 years at Stephen Wirtz gallery in SF. She currently has a solo show at P. Bibeau in NYC.