Fourth of July art happenings in San Jose

Jack’s Falling Water by G. Fraas 

This Fourth of July, get out and see the art in San Jose!  Several possibilities exist, and some are free.  For the quilt lover, the San Jose Quilt Museum offers free admission on Friday, July 3.  The show Reservoir: John M. Walsh lll Collects showcases an extraordinary group of contemporary art quilts from the private collection of advocate and champion of the contemporary art quilt movement, John M. Walsh III. Reservoir includes a selection of twenty-nine quilts based on water and nature-inspired themes, a primary component of the Walsh collection.

At Montalvo Art Center in Saratoga, Hirokazu Kosaka manipulates a set of prints from an ongoing community-based project called Ruin Map in Los Angeles, Seattle, Pennsylvania and San Jose. As part of Ruin Map, participants are invited to draw the site of their childhood, from memory. The artist then transforms the drawings into traditional woodblock prints on handmade paper. Regular Project Space hours are Thursday-Sunday, 11 am-3 pm.  There is no charge to view the art in the Project Space, and Montalvo also has hiking trails and acres of grounds to explore.

ICA’s annual Monotype Marathon – a print exhibition and fundraising auction that features the work of the best printmakers in the Bay Area, runs from July 1st to July 18th and culminates with a silent auction on the evening of July 18th.  Event sponsorships are on sale now at the ICA.

WORKS/San Jose presents ‘remote/control’, which opens during the SubZERO Festival on Friday, July 3, from 6 pm to 11 pm. The show consists of eight Bay Area artists including John Bruneau, Jason Challas, Joe DeLappe, Joseph Kohnke, Sheila Malone, James Morgan, Tom Riebold, and Shannon Wright. These artists will utilize electronic reproductions, signals, and transmissions to reflect concepts of mass media production, representations of “self” in virtual spaces, and the illusion of control that personal electronic devices create in our world.  Sheila Malone and Jason Challas were the show’s guest curators.  This is the second annual SubZERO Festival, an eclectic, creative gathering with two stages of entertainment emphasizing the indie spirit.

Finally, San Jose has abundant public art for the person who fancies a stroll on a sunny Fourth of July weekend.  Check out the downtown, outdoor art with a map, or take this easy route:  City Hall has a rotating exhibit program in its 4^th Street City Windows Gallery (City Hall 1^st floor wing hallway), San Jose State University has an ongoing exhibit program at Thompson Gallery and the 2nd floor of the MLK Library, and in the SoFA district (1^st Street south of San Carlos) there are many galleries as well as changing artwork in storefront windows.