Jessica Hess considers herself a landscape painter, but rather than capturing vistas of waterfalls or forests, her paintings document the ephemeral graffiti she observes in Oakland, San Francisco, and in her travels (see some of her paintings here). Adding another layer to the images-within-images she has going on in her work, Hess teamed with sculptor Christa Assad to create a collaborative series of hand-painted ceramic sculptures. Assad created wheel-thrown, constructed stoneware pieces that take inspiration from Hess’s subject matter — spray cans, paint buckets, fire hydrants, pigeons, and other markers of urban detritus. Hess then hand-painted them with acrylic, filling them with images of tagged-up cityscapes. Hess has an exhibition coming up at Art Works Downtown in San Rafael, CA on March 6 and some of these collaborative ceramic pieces will be in the show.
Jolene Lai returns to Thinkspace Projects with a new collection of eerie paintings. The aptly named "The Beautiful Haunting," starting on Sept. 14, brings her sensibility, seemingly informed by pop mediums and children’s stories to the gallery walls. The painter has a rare ability to evoke the same sense of mystery and danger in settings absent of human occupants. Lai was last featured on our website 
Though the starting point of his work stems from complex ideas surrounding our perception of reality, 
