Vallejo artist Diana Krevsky retrospective opens at Mare Island Art studios Sunday

VALLEJO — Legacy in Color, a retrospective of Vallejo artist Diana Krevsky spanning five decades of her work, opens at Mare Island Art Studios on Sunday.

Krevsky’s wide range and evolution shines throughout 40 pieces in various mediums and styles. From life size, humorous paper mache sculptural figures, to gouache, oil and collage works in vibrant colors, many of her works add satire or political and environmental commentary to their visual appeal.

Krevsky’s art career started in New York in the 1960s when she studied graphic arts and design at the Pratt Institute. After graduating, she found a job in publishing, lived in Brooklyn and immersed herself in the art scene. She worked on oil paintings in the style of abstract expressionism that was in vogue at the time.  

After a while, the tremendous pressure to succeed in the New York art world and the harsh environment that surrounded her — gunshots and drugs in her neighborhood, riots and civil unrest in the city at large — pushed her to move out. 

She joined her family in Nashville, where her art flourished in a different direction. “Getting out of that New York scene, with the pressure to succeed at all costs, was a liberation,” Krevsky said. “It took breaking away from the education that I had to find my own way.”

While she worked as a graphic designer for another publisher, got married and had a daughter, she started making paper mache animals for her child, just for the fun of it. At the same time, she got interested in politics and decided to imbue her art with socio-political commentary, abandoning the abstract style.

“I wanted to make a statement about the military, because the war in Vietnam was happening at the time, so I wanted to do a general and make him really grotesque,” she said. “So I thought, ‘I can make the paper mache figure, put my canvas over it, and then staple it and paint it.’ That’s how the technique came about.”

The sculptural pieces in the exhibit include a large troll, a woman falling head on into a big purse, and a life size figure of a woman sitting on a chair at the beach, with a series of small paintings at her side that spoof various types of art and offer an ironic view of art critics. “I call it lowbrow, or spoofing high art,” Krevsky said.

She worked on those “puff figures,” as she calls them, for around 30 years. “I think the last one was from 1999, and then I said, ‘I guess I’m done.’” At the same time she was creating wood pieces using scrap wood and painting. A couple of her wood pieces from that period are included in the exhibit.

Krevsky moved to San Francisco with her husband and daughter in 1972. After she divorced, she stayed in the city and got involved with artist collectives like Project Artaud and Southern Exposure Gallery and helped run their galleries. 

In 1993, she moved to Vallejo, where she discovered a thriving art community, but she kept her studio at Hunters Point Shipyard in San Francisco. “It's almost like a tale of two shipyards. I'm attached to both,” Krevsky said.

In Vallejo she got involved in environmental issues. She became part of the Restoration Advisory Board for environmental cleanup of the Mare Island Naval Shipyard and volunteered to establish the Mare Island Shoreline Heritage Preserve. 

She also contributed art pieces and initiated art fundraisers for various Vallejo groups, including the Solano Land Trust.

Throughout the years, Krevsky has kept experimenting with different techniques and ways to show her art. Several of the pieces at the exhibit, for example, are unframed and unstretched, so the canvases are tacked directly on the wall and the borders show the scalloped edges of the fabric.

The exhibit also features collages, which Krevsky makes using fragments of her own art pieces. “I didn’t throw anything out,” Krevsky said. “ If a piece was not successful, but I liked different sections of the painting, I would save that and use the fragments in a collage.”

Other works reference Mare Island, such as a skyline viewed from the Ferry Building, with the docks and the giant cranes under a foggy sky, or a striking piece entitled, “And the Band Played On,” which shows the trumpet players of the high school band that performed during the farewell to the commander of the Navy when the Mare Island shipyard closed. 

A group of Mare Island Art Studios artists visited Krevsky’s studio in San Francisco to select the works for the Legacy in Color exhibit. “They’re doing so much for the community, the Mad Hatter Parade, the Obtainium Works,” Krevsky said. “They have such a great impact. I’ve always admired that.”

The Legacy in Color exhibit, showing 40 pieces from Vallejo artist Diana Krevsky, will be open every Sunday in August from noon to 4 p.m. in Mare Island Art Studios, at 110 Pintado St. The artist talk will begin at 2 p.m.