“Intimate Nature”, featuring Madelyn Covey, Tae Ha, Claudia Morales, and Kathrine Worel
DICTÉE Art & Exhibition / New Village Oakland
2117 11th Avenue, Oakland
July 12 - August 23, 2025
Although only a mile-and-a-half from my place, I’ve not spent much time in Oakland’s Bella Vista neighborhood. It’s a nice nabe, tree-lined and more upscale than mine, and now home to a new art space: Dictée Art & Exhibition, which is also the location of the newly established New Village Oakland, self-described as a “hub for connection and community.”
Situated nextdoor to Xochi the Dog Cafe, the Dictée space is beautiful: a large, blocky two-story modernist-style structure with an open and airy ground floor housing the gallery. Its side and back yards are huge, and on the warm and sunny opening day I arrived, I was thirsty. Seeking refreshment, I found a table with sparkling water, wine, and beer; and a food stand by Pound 4 Pound Grilled Burgers: all for sale. It seemed rather unwelcoming to me to go this route for an opening reception, especially an inaugural show. But the community showed up, with many of the dozens of chicly dressed folks milling around in the yards or lounging on chairs, quite a few with young kids.
Described as an exhibition that explores “the ways that the natural world and human forms intersect in both everyday life and the imagination… motifs that evoke memory, emotion, and transformation,” the show featured four artists and included paintings and sculptural work. Overall the exhibit didn’t seem to me to fully reflect its theme—one I found vague and ambiguous—but Madelyn Covey’s figurative oil paintings came closest to ‘everyday life’ and ‘memory’. Painted on found wallpaper, the works depict figures in the middle of things, such as a couple on a bed with some dogs (pictured at top), a sleeping man, and a person holding a Japanese omelette (tamagoyaki) fashioned into the shape of cartoon character Spongebob Squarepants. They’re quiet paintings, rendered with careful execution. I felt them to be a bit too quiet, almost staid. Ms. Covey, a pleasant and friendly personality based in Richmond, facilitates painting and drawing at Creative Growth Art Center.
Freer, more adventurous, and more aligned with the ‘intimate nature’ portion of the concept were two oil on canvas paintings by Claudia Morales. Her floral abstractions possessed a sense of constrained energy which made me linger. The compositions, and the color palettes—greens, golds, white, and subtle rosy pink—were unified. It’s too bad there were only two of her works on display (one looked minuscule in its proximity to the larger work). Born in El Salvador, Morales emigrated to the U.S. at age 5, and has been making art full-time since 2008.
"Coastal Meditations 3," 2024, and "Coastal Meditations 6," 2025, by Kathrine Worel.
I loved Kathrine Worel’s stoneware works, the strongest of the show. Eight of her ceramic pieces were on display at Dictée (as well as three mixed media on paper works on the walls). They’re elegant, organic-looking creations with mysteriously subtle glazes, some of which look like they have barnacles living on their surfaces. Carefully and thoughtfully crafted, they invite the eye to explore and tempt the hands to touch their many different surfaces and tantalizing textures.
The gallery’s founder and owner, Tae Ha, had several works on display too. Originally from South Korea, she’s lived in California for the past three decades. She bought the space with funding from Point Blue Conservation and did all the landscaping herself. Though currently a rental, she’d like to establish the second floor as a place for an artist residency, and turn Dictée’s yard into a sculpture garden.
Her piece “Waves,” an arrangement of curled triangular portions of wire mesh, was in the expansive back yard. The mesh bits kept moving around in the mild breeze, with people inadvertently shifting them as they walked by. To be honest, I didn’t even know they were an art piece; definitely a work in progress to my mind, requiring a good deal more thought and better execution.
Apart from a few pieces, “Intimate Nature” isn’t as successful a show as it could have been in my humble opinion. But Dictée has great promise as a gallery. It could very well become an excellent space for future exhibitions—especially for sculpture—along with some complimentary refreshments. It was nice to talk with the artists, people-watch, and check out all the bright summer fashion. Though I could have gone for a water, a piece of cheese, and a few grapes…
