Listening, a solo show at one of SLO's newest art galleries, Osos Contemporary, is an immersive experience 

Torn magazine articles peek out above a yellow Jacquard-dyed canvas covered with pen and ink drawings painted over in explosions of blue, orange, and red.

An abstract tribute to an alt-coutry music legend, Garnet Heart Lucinda Williams Singing is part of Christina McPhee's audio-visual show, Listening, at Osos Contemporary in San Luis Obispo, which will hang through Nov. 18.

"The idea was to make this evocation of what it feels to hear her voice," the Atascadero resident said. "A color response to sound."

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• Photo Courtesy Of Christina Mcphee
• A CLOSER LOOK Sara Frantz studies Christina McPhee's piece Mono Lake Shape God during the Oct. 7 opening of Listening, a solo show on display at Osos Contemporary through Nov. 18.

Her painting/collages have layers, each built on top of the last. Starting with the Jacquard, then the pen and ink, then the magazines, then the paint, McPhee imagines the spatial landscapes spurred by the music she's listening to and puts it on canvas. That type of listening is what her show is all about.

"You should listen so much that it's like the bottoms of your feet have ears," she said. "It's that idea of moving through landscape and listening."

But not just to music. To spoken words, too. Her work connects performance, writing, text, and drawing in both paint and on camera. The exhibit at Osos Contemporary will feature a curated playlist meant for gallery visitors viewing her pieces, as well as video work to watch and listen to.

Listening is Osos Contemporary's second show. The first featured several artists that owner Mark Warren Jacques knows and admires, including Nick Wilkinson from Los Osos (Left Field Gallery), Casey Gray from San Francisco, Erik Railton from Portland, and several others. Located at 967 Osos St., Jacques' art gallery and studio space opened on Sept. 1.

His aim is for the gallery to do more than showcase art.

"I want it to be a thriving community space, too," he said, which is why he hosts an open studio and art workshop every week.

Called the Lemonade Stand, Jacques opens up the large space he leases in the J.P. Andrews building in downtown SLO on Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday nights to those who sign up for the six-week workshops on the Osos Contemporary website. All materials to create the art, high resolution images of the artwork, a website listing, and a pop-up exhibition and reception are included with the cost of the workshop.

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• Photo Courtesy Of Christina Mcphee
• LISTEN AND WALK Christina McPhee's new solo show at Osos Contemporary, Listening, features nine paintings that she created in recent years, including (from left to right), Where for Twelve Years Hummingbirds, Mono Lake Shape God, Garnet Heart Lucinda Williams Singing, and Moon Roof Sheep Rock.

"It's not really a class, though; I want to be clear about that. It's a workshop, I just host it. I provide the materials. I open the studio. ... I have all these easels, a full kit for people to make art, I have all the different surfaces," Jacques said. "If you're a beginner, I'm happy to work with people one-on-one about my process, but it's not a class on how to make my art. It's a workshop about how to get creative."

Jacques believes that creativity isn't necessarily something that can be taught. It's something you just have to go for, and practice and experiment with. By opening up his studio to others, he hopes to give local artists the chance to do just that. The artists who participated in the Lemonade Stand's first six-week workshop will show the results of that work in Osos Contemporary on Thursday, Oct. 27, during the Farmers' Market from 6 to 9 p.m.

For the past almost two decades, Jacques has traveled around the country and focused on art. From his hometown of Columbus, Ohio, to Portland, San Francisco, Los Angeles, New York, Houston, Fort Lauderdale, and a small town north of San Diego, he has worked with other artists, collaborated to open galleries, and honed his craft with a focus on geometric shapes, color, and line work.

"The broadest scope of descriptive words are abstraction, geometric, art drawing, precision—that's a big focus of mine," he said. "Over the course of the years I've been painting, is just trying to get better at the craft of it, the precision. And just do everything by hand, not use a computer."

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• PHOTO COURTESY OF MARK WARREN JACQUES
• ALL ALONE Mark Warren Jacques new art gallery in downtown SLO, Osos Contemporary, creates a space where viewers can get intimate with each of the art pieces on display, such as Atascadero artist Christina McPhee’s Readable Bloodclot.

When he moved to San Luis Obispo with his fiancée earlier this year, Jacques said he knew he would need to find a studio where he could work on his art because the space they found to live was so small. He came across 967 Osos St. with the help of a friend, and it was so big, he felt the need to share it.

Osos Contemporary's mission is to provide an accessible arts space in San Luis Obispo, foster an interest in art among community members, and create a space to recognize both emerging visual artists and established artists.

McPhee is an established artist who came into Osos Contemporary one day to check out the grand opening exhibition. They started chatting and hit it off, Jacques visited her studio, and the solo show, Listening, came together quickly.

Born in Los Angeles, McPhee moved to a very small town in Nebraska at the age of 7, where she started drawing and painting before attending art school at the Kansas City Art Institute, and receiving her MFA from Boston University, where she studied under the late Philip Guston. She's taught art at the university level, had solo shows across the country, and does both film/video work as well as paint/collage.

She said the abrupt transition from big city life to a rural childhood really influences her art.

"You're looking at a different world, and you're just like, where am I?" McPhee said, adding that this particular show partakes in some of the joyful, zany spirit that she found in LA, its pop architecture, and the big city space when she was young. "I was so entranced ... We went for lots and lots of road trips out in the deserts and out in the mountains. [I saw all this] crazy landscape and architecture, and then we moved to Nebraska and that wasn't there." Δ

Arts Editor Camillia Lanham is feeling a little zany. Send joy to [email protected].