sheila ghidini.
Sheila Ghidini's work encompasses drawing, sculpture, installation, and site specific public art. She has been shown and collected in private and public collections including the Achenbach Collection of Fine Arts Museum of San Francisco, the Runneymede Sculpture Farm in Woodside, CA, and the Philadelphia Museum of Art. She attended Hartford Art School, University of Hartford and did graduate work at Cranbrook Academy of Art in Michigan. She completed an M.F.A. in sculpture at the University of California, Berkeley, receiving the Sylvan and Pam Coleman Memorial Fellowship. She was an artist-in residence at The Headlands Center for the Arts and The American Academy in Rome Summer program. She has received grants from the Wallace Alexander Gerbode Foundation, the Krasner-Pollack Foundation, the San Francisco Arts Commission, the Marcelle Labaudt Memorial Fund, Rockefeller Foundation and the Connecticut Commission on the Arts. Sheila has completed a number of public art projects in the Bay Area and beyond. She presently resides in San Francisco and has taught art throughout the Bay Area, including University of California, Berkeley, California College of Arts, San Francisco State University and University of California Extensions. Ghidini is represented by Pastine Projects in San Francisco, CA.
work.
artist statement.
What is not and that which is
Sheila Ghidini
For me, art is a way to filter the world; to make sense of things; to create a container for the contradictions and ambiguities of being alive. The chair form serves as a leitmotif in my sculptures and drawings. I find the chair form compelling, as a marker in space, as a symbol of both presence and absence, and as a fundamental architectural form that also has the potential to hold memory. I’m interested in calling attention to the ubiquitous, but often overlooked spaces between things as well as the shadows cast by them. This interest developed from years of observational drawing, both that of my own and of the students that I teach.
Rendering is a skill which requires close examination of the relationships between objects and space. Negative spaces and cast shadows might be considered to be empty or as an absence, but I perceive them as full and rich with nuance. Coupled with my drawing interest, I’m compelled to make objects. The quotidian forms of chairs and domestic furniture serve as my material. They are sourced from the street and the consumer waste stream, and along with my own inventions, reveal themselves to be both vulnerable and structural. What’s lost, missing, or obscured is as critical to the work, if not more so, than that which is tangibly present
news.
-We are pleased to announce that Sheila's work has been recently acquired by the De Young Museum.
-Sheila is part of the Svane Family Foundation one million dollar investment in 100 Bay Area artist. The works will be in a curated auction through Ark from September 16 thru September 30.
