“Homemaker” exhibit at Archer Gallery

Clark College’s Archer Gallery presents “Homemaker,” an exhibit of artwork by Amy Bay, Emily Counts, Mark Takiguchi and Rachael Zur, on display through April 12 with an opening reception from noon to 5 p.m. Feb. 15. Gallery hours are 11 a.m. to 5 p.m. Mondays through Saturdays. The gallery is open to the public and admission is free. The gallery is located in the Penguin Union Building attached to Gaiser Hall on Clark’s main campus at 1933 Fort Vancouver Way, Vancouver.

“Home sweet home,” “Home on the range” and “Home is where the heart is.” In these common colloquiums, “home” looms large as the ultimate place of comfort and refuge. But is it bound by four walls? If not, what makes a home? It is spiritual, personal, decorative, and sometimes political or commodified. No matter what major one studies in college, many of us take on the additional job of “home maker.” Innumerable lessons, stories, and recipes are shared in homes. This knowledge is passed from generation to generation, often by women. During the pandemic many people’s work lives also came home, expanding and blurring the boundaries of public and private lives. Suddenly we became self-conscious of what our home office said about us. Zoom staging became a very important part of interior design. The perfect, de-cluttered domicile was, for many people, an ever-present aspiration.

This is an exhibit of work by four artists, all of which explore these notions of home in their own unique ways. They also share an interest in the tension between representational and abstract images, as well as the value of a handmade mark and the physicality of materials. Amy Bay is a painter whose work starts from decorative sources full of complex social connotations and expands into thick, richly colored meditations on her subject. Emily Counts connects memory and identity, past and future, to common household objects through her ceramic sculptures. Mark Takiguchi paints from magazine sources such as Pottery Barn catalogues, and, in turn, examines and subverts notions of the perfect home. Finally, Rachael Zur’s work combines 2D and 3D materials in what she calls “expanded paintings.” Her work depicts living rooms that stretch over space and time and shed light on the multi-purpose and multi-generational nature of homes.