Even when venues close and galleries shutter, the idea that led to the creation of the space can remain; sometimes that idea can grow.
This is true for Oakland-based painter Rachel Wolfe-Goldsmith, whose event space, studio and gallery Wolfe Pack Studios is set to host its final exhibition May 9 through May 18.
Unfinished Business, a solo show of Wolfe-Goldsmith’s latest work, is a series of sandy golden-brown painted canvases, each based on a photograph of Wolfe-Goldsmith’s recent lived experiences. Those include a scene of West Oakland’s Wood Street, an image from a trip Wolfe-Goldsmith took to Morocco last year, and a silhouette of Wolfe-Goldsmith in a harness while rock climbing, made to look as if she’s flying.
The artwork flows beyond the borders of the canvases, with lines and shapes enveloping the entire gallery as one big continuous piece. Within that, there’s a metaphor: when the canvases come down, blank spaces will remain where the images once hung.
“I’m working on a story based on myself,” says Wolfe-Goldsmith of the exhibition, while sitting on a couch in her studio-gallery. She adds that the driving notion behind her latest work is “death and transition — whether that be in a spiritual form or in a real world of things changing, dying and moving into a new form.”