"Raised by Wolves" & "Wellspring"
475 25th Street, Oakland
Opening Reception and Artists' Talks
February 21, 2026
Exhibit through March 21, 2026
One artist creates her pieces on the floor, the other at a loom. One approaches her work in a loose, intuitively kinetic process; the other composes first, then executes that composition slowly and incrementally. The styles and processes of the two artists currently featured at Mercury 20 Gallery couldn’t be more different, yet they somehow complement one another. It’s a contrast that succeeds precisely because the work of KC Rosenberg and Christine Meuris are so dissimilar.
I’d arrived at the gallery for the show’s opening reception, and for the artists’ talks taking place that Saturday evening. Though I was most interested in viewing Meuris’s woven silks, Rosenberg’s acrylics on wood panel pieces in the gallery’s front area were a pleasant surprise: at once whimsical and dark. Her paintings are intriguing for their strangeness. They’re both abstract and figurative. Many are paired together, one smaller than the other, placed directly beside one another, their panels abutted.
I was immediately drawn to a work entitled “This Ain’t No Twilight” which depicts a werewolf in jeans with a casual hand on his hip. He holds a young girl by the ankle, a shocked expression on her face, dangling from the lycanthrope’s hand. The figures are set against an abstracted background of vibrant colors: orange, purple, pink, and red; and oddly placed window shapes. I appreciated its aura, simultaneously humorous and menacing.
During her talk, Rosenberg said that she makes her pieces on the floor, explaining that the title of the show is an inside family joke because her sister, Melissa, is the screenwriter for the “Twilight” franchise. Growing up in what she described as a ‘bohemian’ household, she states that “My siblings and I all have different realities.” Rosenberg said that during COVID she experienced medical issues that involved her memory so that the figurative and abstract became fused in her work. The pieces on display in her half of the gallery were weird, wonderful, and intriguingly idiosyncratic.
In the gallery’s other half were seven silk pieces by Christine Meuris, and the loom she uses to meticulously weave those works (Meuris will be demonstrating her weaving technique on select dates at the gallery through the show’s run). They’re exquisitely crafted, each with a paisley design in varying patterns, semi-transparent. The weavings are delicate, elegant and fragile looking. My favorite was “Deluge,” a 76” x 60” work hung from the ceiling, the paisleys resembling stylized water drops (pictured at top). It’s in two pieces, but they’re in tandem, creating a unified whole. The craftsmanship is exactingly fine and I spent a good deal of time examining it. All of the seven pieces are splendidly airy, each unique but all in harmony with one another.
"Deluge" by Christine Meuris, 2025 (L), and the artist speaking (R).
During Meuris’s talk she said that the technology of the loom is what grabs her, that the composition of a piece has to come before the creation of it because the loom must be set-up. She made “Deluge” over the course of a month, working for five hours a day, five days a week. “I got so fucking bored,” she remarked. “It’s a very repetitive process, very slow, building in increments.”
Meuris became curious about fabrics due in part to the book Women’s Work: The First 20,000 Years by archaeologist-linguist Elizabeth Wayland Barber. “Fabric is everywhere,” she said. Meuris is an author herself, co-writing Day Hiking San Francisco Bay Area along with Jessica Lage and Kathryn Lage, forthcoming from Mountaineers Books in October. Whilst working on the book she collected acorns to make dye for some of her pieces.
The contrasting yet complimentary pairing of Rosenberg’s and Meuris’s work is a delight for the eye. The viewer has to switch gears mentally, but the unusual combination works marvelously for its unconventional curation.
Christine Meuris will give weaving demonstrations on March 7th, 14th, & 21st at 1:30 p.m. at Mercury 20 Gallery.
