Frank Cole: The House Inside | March 12 - April 25, 2026

Working from his West Oakland studio, Frank Cole paints from a distance, both geographic and temporal. His large-scale works emerge from reflections on his childhood in Mississippi, with landscape, weather, and architecture forming an enduring visual vocabulary. In this work, Mississippi becomes less a fixed geography than a felt condition, a stand-in for memory and connection, suspended between clarity and dream.

Framed by porches, window casings, and thresholds, Cole’s paintings position the viewer in an interior space, looking outward. Beams, panes, and floorboards divide and measure the picture plane acting as armatures for recollection, holding in place fleeting impressions of light on water, wind through tall grass, or rain dissolving a stand of trees. The result is both architectural and narrative, emerging as quiet meditations on place and time, imbued with reverie and longing.

The paintings carry a subtle tension between shelter and exposure, presence and absence. No figures occupy these interiors; instead, the viewer becomes the inhabitant. The threshold functions as a metaphor for memory–a point where the past remains visible yet inaccessible.

Accompanying the larger canvases, small preparatory studies reveal the evolution of each composition. In these pieces, Cole tests structure, color temperature, and atmosphere. The studies function as concentrated meditations—intimate works where gesture and light are first explored before expanding into the larger paintings.

While rooted in a specific place, these recollections resonate beyond their origin, becoming a point of departure for a broader exploration of early embodied experience - how light filled a certain room, the rhythm of rain on a roof, the view framed by a familiar window. Through carefully constructed interiors and expansive vistas, Frank Cole transforms personal memory into a contemplative space others can inhabit.

Kristie Hansen: Alternation | March 12 - April 18, 2026

In Alternation, Kristie Hansen transforms a single, deeply personal object into a series of intimate sculptural forms that explore how memory evolves over time. The works originate from a brown suede jacket that once belonged to the artist’s mother—an item passed on during a period of family transition marked by downsizing, aging, and the loss of a long-held home.

Rather than preserving the garment intact, Hansen dismantles and reshapes it, allowing one article of clothing to generate multiple sculptural works. The suede is folded, stitched, and formed into soft geometric shapes that retain traces of their earlier life while becoming something entirely new. Beads taken from her mother’s jewelry are embedded along the seams; introducing variation within repetition and suggesting the individuality of memories that emerge from shared histories.

Through this process, Alternation reframes a private inheritance as a broader reflection on transformation. The work speaks to experiences familiar across generations: the passing down of belongings, the reshaping of family narratives, and the quiet negotiation between holding on and letting go.

Rather than presenting change as a singular event, Hansen treats it as gradual and ongoing. One garment becomes many objects; one story unfolds into multiple forms. In this way, Alternation approaches personal history not as something fixed, but as material that can be continually rearranged—an evolving structure shaped by resilience, adaptation, and persistence over time

Sonia Gill: Memento Vivere - Remember to Live | April 23 - June 6, 2026

Raised as a middle child in the middle of the country in the middle of the 20th Century, artist Sonia Gill started creating at an early age. There is an abundance of family stories of her creating animals from Kleenex tissues while waiting in the car as mom did shopping (people left their kids in cars at that time). However, by ten she became discouraged from making art both by her family and by her teachers. Her creative stream went underground and didn't surface again until age 30 when she enrolled at CCA in Oakland and majored in painting.

Between 10 and 30, Gill tried her best to be a Normal All-American Girl, gearing up for a life of supporting the dreams and endeavors of a mate and offspring. Married at 21, she earned a bachelor’s and two master’s degrees and worked at many different jobs including teaching French at many different institutions. The children never came, the marriage dissolved, and she headed West from the East coast.

Landing in San Francisco and connecting to her present husband and constant muse, she brought that creative stream to the surface again entering CCA and earning a BFA in Painting. Her renewed art journey started with a chance connection to the Nabis Vuillard and Bonnard, which was enhanced in Art School by exposure to the Bay Area Figurative movement as exemplified by Park, Weeks, Diebenkorn, and Bischoff. After over 40 years of juried and solo shows, winning awards and drawing followers, these influences are still strong in the work presented here.

The artist lives in Northern California maintaining studios and homes in both Berkeley and Yorkville.

Jeff Dikio: This Must Be the Place | April 30 - June 13, 2026

In This Must Be the Place, Jeff Dikio reflects on the quiet spaces where memory, environment, and emotion intersect. Borrowing its title from the Talking Heads song, the exhibition considers “place” not as a fixed location, but as a feeling—something recognized in passing, in fragments, in moments of stillness.

Using paint chips in his collages, Dikio reconstructs familiar “every day” scenes  into compositions that feel both grounded and unsettled. What emerges is a visual language of belonging, where home is less about geography and more about resonance.”

Images:

Frank Cole, Pond House (Temple and Flame), 108 x 72, acrylic on canvas

Kristie Hansen, Parts of a Whole 303, 2025, suede, glass beads, metal, and nylon thread, 12.5 x 9.5 x 4.5 inches

Sonia Gill, Lighting the Night, 2026, paper, 20 x 20 inches

Jeff Dikio, Mission Street Victorian (yellow), 2026, paint chip collage, 14 x 20