PATTER HELLSTROM VISUAL ART

Select Works / Patter Hellstrom Arc Fine Arts curatorial project / Vedder Price San Francisco headquarters - California  June - September 2014

Installation photos by Mido Lee

 Patter Hellstrom is a San Francisco based artist who has shown her work internationally and is part of many private and public collections including the Pfizer Art Collection, JP Morgan Chase Art Collection and the Natong Museum in China. Patter holds a degree from the University of Wisconsin/ Milwaukee. She has received grants and awards throughout her extensive career as an artist including a NEA Award, San Francisco Museum of Art SECA Award Nominee, National Endowment for the Arts and the Rockefeller Foundation.

Hellstrom’s abstract and prismatic works invoke the beauty of calligraphic brush painting. Through acrylic ink and a slick polypropylene surface, Hellstrom unlocks a current of color and emotion as she walks the tight rope between balance and chaos. The artist’s loose brushwork and lush color palette are offset by subtle centerlines or focal points that guide and anchor the flowing pigments. While much of Hellstrom’s process relies on media and chance, she searches for stability or a meditative moment within each piece. This is in relation to the stability one searches for while

traversing through the twists and turns of daily life. Wells of color sprout, splash and explode across the structural lines and a lustrous surface as an emotional response is imparted onto the viewer. Encompassing themes of impermanence, compassion, stability, and interdependence, the centerlines hold despite disruptions of splashed color and textured brushwork, suggesting stability within chaos and a curious interdependence between two forces.

Hellstrom’s loose and confident brushwork emphasizes the beauty of a simple stroke. Coupled with her liberal use of vibrant colors, Hellstrom’s works recall Asian calligraphic traditions that inspire the artist. She studied brush painting with a master painter in Nantong, China. India influenced her palette, as she traveled to remote villages in Bihar as a guest artist at the Mithila Art Institute, twenty miles from the Nepal border. Subsequently, both regions and cultures have made a lasting impression on Hellstrom’s art practice.

Hellstrom's work at ArtHaus Gallery in San Francisco's tech corridor

“Isolated brush movements executed with mudra-like precision give physical expression to an inner state of being, offering a platform to investigate the dichotomy between thought and emotion. That curious space is ripe with a complexity. The alchemy of how experience is lived out dwells in the constancy of change despite our desire for permanence. Composed of energy emotions flow like water, mixing with our consciousness likened to pigment. Together they create a vivid flow of energy, both deeply felt and ever changing. Balance is reached in my work as structural lines are held despite insistent disruptions, speaking to stability within chaos. A seamless method of applying ink with unlikely brushes to a slick surface records the ephemeral moment or spark of experience. Focus turns to the shaped pieces which encapsulate the flow of emotion, releasing the gesture from its' format." PH

_______________________________________________________________________________________

See Hellstrom's work in the LIVE Auction September 19th 

ArtMRKT advertising / see Hellstrom's BOOM used as primary image

______________________________________________________________________________________ 

Unique Multiples

Unique Multiples are one time prints of Hellstrom's work on a metal, face mounted plexi and a metal-like film. All methods allow the piece to change with lighting conditions. CLASH (right) is seen in the 16" x 20" size printed on metal with a one inch back frame floating the image off the wall. This new format can be printed up to 58" x 58". Below Hecate's Broom was created for Nuance in a mural-sized diptych to grace their conference room.

______________________________________________________________________________________ 

Hellstrom + Design

Poliform exhibited Hellstrom's Twin Impulses 48" x 72" in the opening of their Applegate Tran showroom at the SF Design Center.

Twin Impulses was also featured in the HGTV article in Front Door with collaborating partners CLIMB and ArtHaus.

Hellstrom's diptych Twin Impluses used in innovative CLIMB + ArtHaus collaboration depicted in HGTV's magazine Front Door

________________________________________________________________________________

GRIEF PATH: an installation at CIIS - FILM OF PROJECT 

 __________________________________________________________________________________

 CURATORIAL + WRITING

MITHILA PAINTING: The Evolution of an Art Form

Co-curated and managed by Patter Hellstrom Visual Art the show is filled with fantastic connections between traditional and contemporary subject matter and styles. The Ethnic Art Foundation shares the amazing work throughout the United States. California State University / Fresno opened the tour in the Fall of 2012. New Delhi India hosted in the winter, then the exhibition opened Fall 2013 at the Chazen Museum in Madison Wisconsin. Listen to a WI Public Radio interview with the museum director on the show. January - March 2014 takes the tour to Syracuse University in New York.  

2014 exhibition at University of Syracuse NY

 “Over the past several decades, the artists of the Mithila communities have produced an astonishingly brilliant body of works on paper, drawing on their centuries old iconographic traditions and techniques as well as evolving new imagery and approaches that reflect global transformations. I have rarely encountered such a highly concentrated number of exceptionally gifted artists. They are a treasure!”

____________________________________________________________________________________