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Online
Photo Gallery
- Melinda Montanye
Melinda Montanye has been a freelance
photographer since 1997. She has shot for local
newspapers, magazines, ad agencies, theater groups
and food companies. The first cookbook she photographed,
“Seasons Cooking,” was published in
2001 for Guckenheimer Food Management Co. From
that experience Melinda’s love of food flourished
and her partner, chef Jackie Martine and she decided
to open the Seaweed Café.
The restaurant in Bodega Bay has
been a success receiving a 27 rating from Zagat
after only 2 years of service.
With the restaurant established
Melinda is stepping back into photography with
renewed enthusiasm, honed organizational skills,
a succinct sense of timing and tight attention
to detail.
If you would like a portfolio sent
to you or would like to discuss work please contact
Melinda at 707- 875- 2700
or email
Melinda. |
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From
Sunday April 26 to Sunday May 28, the Seaweed
Café will proudly present the paintings
of America Martin, a talented fine artist based
in Los Angeles. We had the pleasure of meeting
America Martin a couple of years ago when she
visited Laetitia Thomas, her cousin who was then
on our staff and is now on her way to Peru exploring
the world of Indian textiles.
America then drew a simple yet inspired portrait
of Jackie. We immediately recognized talent, this
elusive quality that distinguishes artists capable
of sustaining and renewing their creative process.
America Martin studied with Vernon Wilson, at
the Art Center School of Design, and the School
of the MFA in Boston. Her paintings and drawings
are emphatic expressions of playful references
to a number of the major schools of the twentieth
century, as well as to enduring indigenous art
forms. Her work distinguished by a command of
line and color travels between mediums. While
her favorite landscape is the landscape of the
human form, she is currently working on a large
series of peopled urban landscapes painted in
oil and ink on paper and canvas.
About her work, Martin says: “It is true.
The artist is not born to a life of pleasure.
She cannot be idle. It is only duty and discipline
that make art. The artist is gluttonous, constantly
devouring life in order to translate all that
she sees, smells, lives or breathes into her own
language.
America Martin can be contacted through her
website, www.americamartin.com,
where a sampling of her work can be viewed. She
can also be contacted through the Santa Barbara
Art Company. America Martin paintings will be
exhibited at the Seaweed Café from April
28 to May 26. Please join us for an amazing visual
experience. |
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Many
of you know Robert DeVee as a fine artist and
co-owner of The Ren Brown Collection gallery just
around the corner from the Seaweed Café,
in Bodega Bay. What you may not know is his life-long
passion for 3-D photography. Currently showing
in the restaurant are photos taken on a trip to
Japan last year.
Getting the dimensional effect requires
taking two photos of the same image. One method
is to move the camera two and a half inches to
the side for the second photo — the distance
separating our own eyes. The two images are then
merged on the computer and printed. To properly
view the photos, don your 3-D glasses with the
red lens on the left. If you reverse the glasses
it is very dizzying!
We hope you come to the Seaweed
Café to enjoy our usual fine food, and
also to view these unusual and distinctive images. |
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| To celebrate and honor
couples for Valentine's Day Melinda has taken photographs
of some of our neighbors and friends. Come and see! |
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New Year Exhibit
"You are the Stars"
Nothing has stirred our passions
quite like Hollywood's fabulous stars of the silver
screen. Like the stars on a clear night, they
have captivated us with a nearly magical combination
of glamour, grace and beauty.
We have decorated the restaurant
to help celebrate memories of a time not so long
ago when these Hollywood icons dazzled our senses
and inspired our imaginations, uplifting our spirts
and bringing us hope, even in times when hope
could be found in few other places.
Many of the photographs displayed
are printed on stunning metallic silver media
designed to yield a unique black & white quality.
We feel the resulting prints truly capture the
emotion, the mystique and the breathtaking beauty
of the stars whose names and persons have transcended
time. |
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All prints on display are loaned to the Seaweed
by two friends, Tim Carnahan and Luan Christ.
Mr. Carnahan suggests that You are the
Stars. Using specialized photographic
enlargement techniques and the metallic silver
papers and framing materials he will transform
your favorite photo -- or one he shoots for you
-- into a stunning original truly befitting your
star status.
You can contact Tim Carnahan at (916) 371-3667
or email:TLCarna@pacbell.net |
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Summer
Exhibit
- Marsha Connell Oil Paintings
Rivers to the Sea
Paintings from Salmon Creek to Gualala
On California’s North Coast,
daily life is tidal. Summer fog obscures and reveals
distant views; great swaths of land appear and
disappear under water. Seals, pelicans, seagulls,
cormorants, sandpipers, kayakers, beachwalkers.
. . watch each other, shape-shift with currents
of water and air.
I make walking drawings in a sketchbook. My marks
dance with rhythms of water, rocks, and sky. They
begin a process to feel and see more deeply, to
discover my language for this fecund place. At
my feet, tides deposit driftwood, seaweed, wire,
bones—orderly lines and random sequences
angled with rocks. They feel like authentic drawings
of nature.
Painting. . .at the lip of river or ocean, sometimes
above it like a bird. . . my easel is often precarious,
my stretched canvas a large kite I anchor in insistent
coastal winds. My brush churns and floats, crashes
against rocks, drifts out to sea, dissolves into
mist. It, and I, seeking expression of the spirit
of this place, respond to nature’s forces,
like a boat on a river to the sea.
Marsha Connell lives in Santa Rosa,
California. On the faculty of Santa Rosa Junior
College and Sonoma State University, she has participated
in numerous regional and international exhibitions;
her work is in many private and public collections.
Marsha is the recipient of several California
Arts Council Artist in Residence grants and leads
art workshops in California, Alaska, New Mexico,
and Mexico. You are welcome to contact the artist
through her website http://www.marshaconnell.com
e-mail marsha@marshaconnell.com
or call 707-527-7754. |
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| Spring
Exhibit
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"Greg's Flowers"
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"Dancers"
To see other pieces in the series
and for sales information, contact the artist
at 707-824-1974 or garrickmaul@hotmail.com.
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December
- March Exhibit
- GarrickMaul - "A
State of Grace"
This new work is a series of steel
and Plexiglas sculpture that pays homage to modern
dance and certain specific dancers who have pushed
their bodies, gravity and the viewer's perceptions
of movement and form beyond traditional boundaries.
Although it is the artists most
recent work, it is the fruit of a 25-year obsession
with contemporary dance.
A dozen pieces will be on display
at the Seaweed Cafe through the winter.
Garrick Maul also makes contemporary
steel furniture and lighting. He lives and works
in Sonoma County.
The artist's website, www.garrickmaul.com,
will launch before the end of the year.
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| November
Exhibit
- Carla Wilkinson
- Paintings
"I hope you enjoy this collection
of paintings. They are part of a series from a
recent trip to the French Riviera and Northern
Italy.
While in Italy, I was privileged
to paint with Philip Buller, a well known Sonoma
County painter. High on a Tuscan hilltop, a group
of us painted our lush, verdant surroundings while
we were lovingly cared for by the most incredible
Italian family. The experience was rich beyond
description... from the food to the terrain to
the extraordinary kindness we were shown by our
hosts and villagers. I hope I have captured a
little of the richness of that summer sojourn
in these paintings.
Enjoy the art and the fantastic cuisine of the
Seaweed Cafe!
Bon Appetit!" |
"Laundry" |
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"Persimmons"
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October
Exhibit
"I paint food because threads
of memories of food and never-ending desire for
food intrigue me. I enjoy both drawing and eating
them. Also, these are records of food I actually
eat. These are pen and watercolor drawings, framed
with acid-free material." |
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September
Exhibit
- Michael Cone -
Photography
"I am twenty years old and
an honor student at Dominican University in San
Rafael. I was born in L. A. but lived most of
my life in Mendocino. Two yeas ago my family and
I moved from Mendocino to Sebastopol. I have always
been intrigued by what there is to explore in
nature. Living in Mendocino, a place which offers
such incredible beauty, helped me to see how truly
amazing my surroundings are, wherever I may be.
Several years ago I found that photography
helped me translate my sense of wonderment with
nature into something others can see. After dabbling
with my mom's camera for a while, I enrolled in
a five day photography class at Sierra Nevada
College in Lake Tahoe. There, under the direction
of a professional photographer, I learned the
basics of black and white photography, development,
and printing. I came home a more serious student
of photography and decided to resurrect my parent's
old darkroom. Recently I attended a limited enrollment
class offered by the Ansel Adams Gallery in Yosemite.
Aside from what I have learned through
formal instruction, I am mostly self-taught. I
have read extensively, visited photography exhibits
and studios, and constantly experimented in the
field and in the darkroom. I think of myself as
a perfectionist. I will not merely settle. I print
repeatedly until I have achieved a print that
conveys the best and most powerful representation
of what I visualized when the shutter was released.
In a time of digital imaging, I
feel the viewer must be assured that the photograph
before them has not entered the digital domain.
I create my photographs entirely traditionally.
All prints are processed to current archival standards,
and selenium toned. They are then mounted using
only archival materials.
I thank you for viewing my work,
hope that you find something in it for yourself,
and welcome you comments."
Michael Cone
September 2004 |
"Towering Old Stump,
Donner Summit, CA"
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"Vineyard"
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July
Exhibit
"I spend way too much time
in my head and eventually the images are transferred
to canvas."
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| Previous
Exhibits |
| May
Exhibit
- "Flavors of Paris
and Istanbul"
Melinda Montanye
Black and White street
scenes from Istanbul and Paris calling on the
everyday internal life of the people. Brassai,
Cartier-Bresson and Man Ray certainly contribute
to Melinda Montanye's vision.
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"Gem Shopping" |
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April
Exhibit
Executed in a few days, Zenmai's
"City of Women" Collages reveal
her exuberant talent, the breadth of her imagination,
and a rare mastery of this medium. |
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