User:Kyedemmon/sandbox

Introduction
Kari Marboe is an Oakland, CA based ceramic and text artist. Her work focuses on public engagement and is often site specific, drawing upon the history and materials of a given location. She currently teaches at UC Berkeley, California College of the Arts, and Mills College.

Education
Marboe graduated in 2008 from California College of the Arts, in Oakland, CA, with a BFA in Ceramics. While there, she studied under Arthur Gonzales and Nancy Selvin. She received her MFA in 2012 at University of California Berkeley (Berkeley, CA), where she studied under Richard Shaw.

Early Work
Public engagement has been a key part of Marboe’s work from the beginning of her career. In 2008, Marboe and another artist, Adam Green, opened a Marboe Green Gallery in the Temescal area of Oakland. The gallery’s goals included drawing the community together, creating public engagement, and bringing attention to local artists. A part of the galleries mission was fulfilled by holding public events, in which the community came together to make work. As her work progressed, Marboe featured this aspect of public engagement more frequently.

In 2012, Marboe participated in the 42nd Annual UC Berkeley Master of Fine Arts Graduate Exhibition. Her work in this show clearly demonstrated her interest in public engagement as well as an interest in text based work. For her exhibition work she used a variety of different mediums (wall signs, newspaper ads) to create site-specific text-based installations. She placed one work directly outside the gallery, and hung it inconspicuously to look like the advertisements on the wall. Marboe intended for the piece (Panel #1) to be read by those entering or exiting the gallery, and describes exactly that passing moment of a viewer walking by.

Other works in the exhibit included a series of newspaper stacks (Newspaper Spaces #1-7). The newspapers contained adds which Marboe, along with collaborating artist Erin Johnson, had written and published in the East Bay Express. The ads were small with short, whimsical messages, such as: “If this was lucky, would you tuck it in a pocket?”

Recent Work and Artistic Practice
Marboe’s practice focuses on text work, site specific installations, historic and archival research, and public engagement. Much of her work combines all four of these facets.

Marboe describes her site-specific work as “artworks designed conceptually and physically for a particular space” and she is interested in the idea of art that is “both fleeting and archived” - fleeting due to its temporary state and archived because of its historical foundation. Often these interactive works are placed in specific sites which draw upon the contextual history of the location. Latham Memorial Unveiled, a project completed in 2013 in the Downtown Oakland Historic District, clearly demonstrates all of Marboe’s artistic values. Before creating the piece, Marboe researched historical records at the the Oakland Public Library. Her work was intended to “[take] this history and [create] a piece that combines that story with themes of how the memories of citizens are preserved within city structures over time.” A permanent installation of the project was was completed in 2016 as the request of the city of Oakland.

Other recent projects include sculptural ceramic pieces which are specifically made with audience engagement in mind. Marboe created a series of “touching sculptures”, small rounded ceramic forms that hung on the wall. Each form had two holes for people to place their fingers in and touch through the gap. She also created a series of “looking sculptures,” larger rounded ceramic forms with small openings on opposite sides. Marboe placed them on bases, which allowed two people to stand on either side and look through at each other, or for one person to look across and see others in the space. These projects demonstrate the audience engagement that is important to Marboe’s sculptural works.

A more recent example of Marboe’s text specific art practice can be found in Social Objects: Socially Engaged Craft Theory, Practice and Action. In it she presents the idea and process of turning a written letter into a sculptural object.

Teaching Career
Marboe is a lecturer at California College of the Arts, and UC Berkeley. She is also an assistant adjunct professor at Mills College, teaching ceramics.

Exhibitions

 * 2017:
 * Intimate Abstractions: Ceramic Invitational, Patricia Sweetow Gallery, Oakland, CA, Curated by Nancy Selvin
 * 2016:
 * Waiting Theater Presents, Two-Person Project with Erin Colleen Johnson, Bench Projects, Oakland, CA, Curated by Ellen Lake
 * 2015:
 * 4x40, Southern Exposure, San Francisco, CA, Curated by Chris Sollars
 * Make Words, Project with Erik Scollon, Interface Gallery, Oakland, CA, Curated by Christine Wong Yap
 * RESONATE: Inaugural Exhibition, Root Division, San Francisco, CA, Curated by Dana Hemenway and Amy Cancelmo
 * 2014:
 * Resource, BLOCK Gallery, Oakland, CA, Curated by Lacey Haslam/Curator, BLOCK Gallery

Residencies

 * 2016:
 * Residency, Watershed Center for the Ceramic Arts, Newcastle, ME


 * 2014:
 * Writer In Residence, Featherboard Residency, Aggregate Space Gallery, Oakland, CA