“That’s Where the Beauty Is”

Comments (0) By Hiya Swanhuyser Wednesday, Jul 13 2011

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“Summer/Selections” features some never-before-seen work of Margaret Kilgallen’s. (Some of you are already running for the door; good on ya.) Kilgallen is/was one of the linchpins of the Mission School of art, which coalesced in the late 1990s; her husband, Barry McGee, continues to make work in the style they invented together (with lots of other local artists, of course), one which takes from folk sign-making traditions, letterpress shapes, and a love of nature, especially the ocean they surfed in. Kilgallen died at age 33 in 2001, and she has been mourned ever since by art lovers and her many friends. For all these reasons, “Summer/Selections” is a spectacularly exciting show. Artists don’t always manage to say what they mean about their work, but one of the reasons we love Kilgallen is for her near-poetic language. “Even if I’m doing really big letters and I spend a lot of time going over the line and over the line and trying to make it straight, I’ll never be able to make it straight. From a distance it might look straight, but when you get close up, you can always see the line waver. And I think that’s where the beauty is.”
Wednesdays-Saturdays, 11 a.m. Starts: June 23. Continues through Aug. 5, 2011