Moraga Art Gallery

Moraga Art Gallery announces a new exhibition, “Moments in Time”, opening June 7 through August 13. The show features the works of member artists, Debby Koonce and Judy Miller with guest artist, Dinah McFarlane.  

The exhibit will include works by more than two dozen gallery members and guest artists. 

A reception will be held on Saturday, June 17 from 5:00 to 7:00.  The public is invited to view the art, chat with the artists, enjoy wine, light snacks, and music.

Debby Koonce

An impressionistic landscape painter throughout her life, Debby Koonce continues to paint local scenery with an emphasis on Mt. Diablo and Contra Costa. Her focus is on light, shadow, atmosphere and color. She also paints scenes from her travels around the globe and draws inspiration from the new environments that these unique places bring.

Judy Miller

A friend walked by as I was sculpting one of my gestural figures and exclaimed “Wow, I felt like that the other day.” This emotional response is what my work is all about. My narratives focus on everyday life, familiar objects, and situations and experiences. I strive to create a narrative by combining texture, form, and movement.

As a multimedia artist, I have explored many techniques and media, my abstract paintings are highly textured and sometimes include collage and assemblage elements. In 2019, I completed a 22 ft.., 8 panel collage, assemblage exploring the past 8 decades. This piece was featured for several months at both the Diablo Gallery and Moraga Gallery.

I have been honored to be chosen as an artist in dozens of juried exhibits through out Northern California. My work has appeared in several National Art Magazines. In 2020 I won a National Contest to show my work at the Art Expo in New York.

When exploring something in a different way I seem never to run out of ideas and different forms to explore. My series have a widely different feel to them, but these differences are what drives my work. I hope I never tire of opening a new door.

Guest Artist, Dinah McFarlane

Weaving is a slow meditative process that allows for time to embed a memory in the material. Whether from a plant or animal, the fiber also has its own behavior and memories from harvesting to packaging ingrained into the strands. Each version of a design ends up only being an inspiration for the final piece because the process is about working with the movement of the material while infusing my own energy into it. Emotions play a part of the final outcome as they become infused with each bend, knot, loop or cascade of thread. The mental and physical processes merge, then dissolve into the piece to produce something unique that cannot be repeated again. It all comes down to time and the luxury of reflecting on past experiences. Things seen and unseen, people loved and lost…the concept of time slips away while creating an image of something that may last for another generation or more.

Central to my pieces is the forming of something recognizable but still abstract. The looping of wire is repeated over hours, then bent into yet another form. A simple strand of paper is layered to create images from shadow and light, strength and fragility. Animal fiber is shaped, twisted, dyed, felted, sculpted into something completely new with only a small recognition of the animal it came from.