KAREN STAAL
EXHIBITIONS
2004 Hanson Howard Gallery, Ashland, OR, Solo Exhibition 2003 Berryman Gallery, Medford, OR, Solo Exhibition 2002 Hanson Howard Gallery, Ashland, OR, Solo Exhibition 2001 Jega Gallery, Ashland, OR 2000 Anna Horrigan Gallery, Ashland, OR 1996 Rogue Gallery, Medford, OR, Solo Exhibition (Painting and Sculpture) KSYS Public Television, "People's Choice Award" 1995 Jega Gallery, Ashland, OR Wiseman Gallery, Grants Pass, OR, "Northwest Women" Show 1994 Beaverton Showcase, Beaverton, OR, 1st Place, Painting Umpqua Valley Arts Center, Roseburg, OR 1993 State of Jefferson Exhibition, Medford, OR 1991 Rogue Gallery, Medford, OR Oregon State University, Corvallis, OR Madison House, Medford, OR, Solo Exhibition 1989 Jeremy Stone Gallery, San Francisco, CA Claudia Chapline Gallery, Point Reyes Station, CA 1987 Sausalito Art Festival, Sausalito, CA College of Marin, Ignacio, CA, Solo Exhibition 1986 Marin County Juried Exhibition
EDUCATION
BFA San Francisco Art Institute
AFA Kendall School of Art and Design, Grand Rapids, Michigan
American University, Washington, D.C. (Abstract Painting)
Ridgewood Art Academy, Ridgewood, NJ (Portrait Painting, with Paul Burns and Arthur Maynard)
College of Marin, Ignacio, CA (Figure Painting)
BEATRICE, CORNELIA, TRESSA, RUTHIE, BERTHA AND HERMIONE
An Exhibition by Karen Staal (2004)
As I looked over the yellowed pages of our old photo albums, I met the faces of women in our family who are so far removed from us in terms of culture, values and experience, yet only 50 years or so removed in time. From using oleomargarine sacks to color "butter" and running wet clothes through the ringer, to microwaves and electric dryers; from trade union wars and communists to Muslims and terror; from romantic crooning to punk rock; from flounced skirts and long, chaste courtships to low riding jeans and living in sin.
These were women who were old enough in the 1940's to understand what World War II was all about. Grandmas, aunts, great-aunts---many experienced the dark period of the war, when air raid practice, gasoline rations and limits on sugar were the least of their privations. Would their lives ever be the same, they wondered? Sons, husbands and brothers were often "missing in action." Some became "killed in action." One brother in our family had returned home on Christmas furlough with pure white hair at age 22. He surprised them at the back door. Two days later he was gone.
Still, the women in the album appear undaunted. Things would definitely get better. This was, after all, the second war to end all wars. They were hopeful and seemingly blessed with an uncommon grace and certainly an uncommon faith. And in those days, anything was possible.
This series might have been entitled "Simpler Times." The poses of the figures are definitely arranged, deliberate; as in the photographs, the women are looking straight ahead, catching the viewer's gaze. The style here is intended to be direct, straightforward, and without ambiguities---as simple as the times the pictures represent. An illusion, of course, but it is the past as recalled by a then very young child. The figures are life-sized, but even bigger than life in my memory.