The Art of Clouds
2889 Ford St. Oakland
July 19-August 23rd, 2025
Atmospheric and ephemeral, with a whisper of the mythical, clouds take flight in the imaginings of over 25 artists in Gray Loft Gallery’s summer show The Art of Clouds. Painted, drawn, photographed, rendered by air pollutants on mirrored surfaces, and captured in minute detail, renderings of clouds surround the viewer in this jewel-box of a show.
Jan Watten’s Rothko Sky greets visitors at the top of the stairs. A division of blue and white color fields, vast in theory yet exquisitely contained within its frame. The clouds and sky exist in a harmony of separation, touched only by a thin band of lighter blue. Intangible and lonely in the way Rothkos tend to be, the image evokes a feeling of flight into the unknown.
Circular images rendered in graphite on yupo by Gale Antokal melt and drip across the page, evoking every foggy morning of a cold San Francisco summer. Glimpses of houses on hillsides, embraced by clouds on all sides and shifting in and out of focus, demand attention. The longer one stares, the more the images flow in and out of awareness, like a phantom just beyond reach. Created more by erasure than mark-making, the works describe a dream barely remembered or an image developing in darkroom chemicals.
Maja Planinac’s black-and-white photograph (pictured at top), features a nude woman pulling a cloud toward her, her head obscured in the act. Left alone on a wall, it tells a surrealist's tale; the figure’s gestures eloquently suggest the ephemeral nature of clouds that cannot be held. Whether a fairy tale or a cautionary fable about imagination untethered, it is left to the viewer to decide. Slender fingers intertwine with atmospheric tendrils, creating a conversation of misty whispers.
Sarah Grew’s Three Ways of Thinking about Air presents grayscale clouds clinging tenuously to mirrored surfaces. Composed of common air pollutants, emulsion, and glass, the images appear ready to slide off, as though unable to be contained. “Soot and construction dust are the two main large particle air pollutants that we breathe and they happen to be black and white (or at least white-ish). I collect soot from wildfires as the pigment for my black layers and use a mix of rock-dust for my white emulsion layers,” Grew writes. Elements like ash and coal form ethereal, celestial compositions, with the materials themselves seeming to resist stillness, yearning to remain airborne and at large. A quiet concern over climate change runs through the show.
Patrick Jagger’s Corcoran Lagoon Cumulus offers a striking contrast. A silvery mirage of clouds is pierced by man-made poles that stretch skyward. A visual tug-of-war unfolds, as the rigid lines challenge the softness of the sky above. It depicts a scene so bright it calls for the viewer to shield their eyes, as if faced with a divine presence, with carefully dodged and burned silvery tones lending a celestial glow.
The Art of Clouds captures what we see in the sky and what we imagine it to be. We find them beautiful and just beyond reach, even as climate change alters their color and composition. The styles and media shown are as varied as the skies themselves. In a place where clouds are rare, especially in the summer, Gray Loft Gallery offers a serene glimpse skyward and a visual respite from the weight of everyday life.
