A human-sized fiberglass chrysalis sits in the yard and a moth-faced mannequin rests on a table. It’s Charlie Callahan’s studio behind Tama One in Olema, and the pieces are part of an upcoming show at Small Works in San Francisco—one of three exhibitions he is putting on in June, including one in the Dance Palace lobby.
Callahan’s Point Reyes Station exhibit, “So Old, It Never Gets Old,” features photographs, screen prints and images that influenced his art. The frames are thrifted. The show isn’t polished. He thinks of it more as a mood board, like walking into someone’s art studio.
“I like things to be a little confusing,” he said. “It captures your attention and holds your imagination. The confusion gives you space to fill in the blanks and think about it in your own way.”
There is a huge, bulbous, black-lit sea urchin and a photograph of a coffee cup reflecting waves, a nod to his morning surfing routine in Bolinas. Another photograph, taken during the 2020 Woodward fire, shows an abandoned car along Sir Francis Drake Boulevard with “Vote 4 Whale” spray painted on its side. A stencil of a whale-fin bone looks eerily like a human hand, and a black-and-white photograph depicts a log washed up on Limantour Beach by a storm, covered with gooseneck barnacles.
“The log is upright, like a sea creature, and the barnacles were all moving,” he said. “I like anthropomorphizing things and emulating a spirit coming out of the landscape somehow.”
As a child, Callahan never thought being an artist could be an actual job. But at age 12, he saw an abstract painting in a magazine and realized he could make art like that when he grew up. Now, he supports his art making with woodwork.
Callahan says he makes use of the extremes of beauty and destruction to show the symbiotic and interdependent connections in nature.
“I like re-observing something we think we understand on a metaphysical level,” he said. “I like to paint the sea urchin as an icon, as a portal to an afterlife. It represents circular time; it existed through all the mass extinctions. It’s a meditative device in a way, a map of evolutionary time and balance.”
Charlie Callahan’s exhibit shows during regular hours at the Dance Palace Community Center through June. A reception takes place from noon to 2 p.m. on Sunday, June 14.
Caitlin Sullivan is the Dance Palace’s Administrative Coordinator. She lives in Inverness Park.