Sarah Shepard Gallery is pleased to announce Intersections II, a winter group show featuring new works by Bay Area artists Rachel Kaye, Susan McKinney, Kelly Ording, and Lena Wolff. In parallel with Intersections, our 2025 summer group show, Intersections II brings together works across drawing, painting, collage, and sculpture united in a dedication to order and balance, both in composition and color. The interplay of stripped down natural and geometric forms and cool-toned colorways defines the work included in Intersections II. Ranging in size from Kaye’s 8 ½ x 11 in. colored pencil drawings to McKinney’s 40 x 32 in. hanging ceramic sculptures, these abstract pieces are brought to life through stark whites, deep blues and forest greens.
The works featured in Intersections II perfectly encapsulate each respective artist’s practice and aesthetics: they are paradigms, standing unique while also complementing each other’s tone and textures. McKinney’s sculptural “tapestries” delight in their gravity-defying engineering and delicate glazes, which seem to mimic frosted surfaces. With their alternating rows of jigsawed ceramic loops, these sculptures reference weaving schematics, taking compositional inspiration from textiles. Similarly, Wolff’s nuanced cut-paper collages draw from iconic quilt patterns—with their unfolding shapes and geometric constitution—and share a pursuit of balance through asymmetry. Ording’s bold, abstract paintings also trace the journey of line and shape on paper. Ording begins by treating her paper with a bath of liquid and salt, weathering the surface and creating an atmospheric plane for her meticulous linework. Kaye’s colored pencil drawings round out the works on paper included in Intersections II. Their high-contrast winter complexions bring out the texture of the paper, creating a luxurious, velvet-like finish.
Together, these works bring a much-needed brilliance to the winter months. Their intersecting mediums, forms, and palettes offer harmony, represent a steadfast attention to craft, and encourage appreciation for the singular possibilities of shape, line, and color.
Rachel Kaye lives and works in San Francisco, CA. Kaye was born in 1981 and earned a BFA from California College of the Arts (CCA) in San Francisco, CA. She has exhibited nationally and internationally in Paris, Tokyo, San Francisco, Oakland, New York, Los Angeles & Palm Beach. Kaye has completed large-scale murals at Google (Mountain View), Meta (Menlo Park) and the Hook Fish Restaurant (San Francisco). Kaye’s work has been featured in the Huffington Post, Refinery 29, Artsy, SF Gate & East Bay Express. Kaye lives with her two children and husband, fellow artist, Jay Nelson, with whom she collaborates with often.
Susan McKinney is a ceramic artist and award-winning industrial designer who lives and works in Marin, CA. She holds a B.S. in Industrial and Product Design from Arizona State University. McKinney focuses on color, material, and finish, collaborating with clients working at the intersection of technology and craft. McKinney began exploring clay’s materiality in 2008, connecting her passion for inventive design with natural materials. In 2018, McKinney founded her own ceramics studio SKINNY Ceramics, which has evolved into her eponymous practice Studio Susan. Her design contributions have received honors from IDEA, Spark, FastCo Innovation by Design, and her ceramics have been featured in exclusive collections with West Elm and SSENSE. She has completed artist residencies in Greece, Denmark, and Japan.
Kelly Ording was born in 1976 and resides in Oakland. She graduated with her BFA from the San Francisco Art Institute. In addition to her works on paper, canvas, and collages, Ording has created several large-scale public works and murals. Her murals can be seen in San Francisco’s landmark Clarion Alley, Unity Plaza in San Francisco, Genentech, the Emeryville Center for Community Life, and in Yogyakarta, Java, Indonesia with the Bagkit/Arise Project in association with Clarion Alley Mural Project and Indonesia Institute of the Arts, Yogyakarta. She has completed residencies at Google, Mountain View; the Facebook Analog Research Laboratory, Menlo Park; and Kala Art Institute, Berkeley. She was the recipient of the Sustainable Arts Foundation Award as well as the 2020 Kala Art Institute Master Artists Award. Ording’s work is included in collections such as the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, the San Francisco Arts Commission Public and Civic Art Collection, the Alameda County Collection, JP Morgan Chase Collection and the Ellie Mae Collection, to name a few. Ording’s first monograph, LOVE LETTERS, was published in 2025 by Land and Sea
Lena Wolff is an artist, craftswoman, and activist for civic engagement. She was born in Larkspur in 1972, and spent her childhood living semi-communally with her family at the Zen Center of Los Angeles, later living in Paris and outside of Amsterdam. She has been based in the San Francisco Bay Area since the early 1990’s. Wolff received a BA in English and Creative Writing from Mills College (1995) and an MFA in Printmaking from San Francisco State University (2003). Wolff pursues a range of disciplines, including drawing, collage, sculpture,murals, text-based pieces, and public art, and is inspired by American folk-art traditions, minimalism, geometric abstraction, and Op art. Her work has been presented in galleries and museums across the US and collected by ONE National Lesbian and Gay Archives, San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, Oakland Museum of California, the San Francisco History Collection at San Francisco Public Library, San Francisco Arts Commission, Alameda County Arts Commission, Cleveland Clinic, University of Iowa Museum and the Zuckerman Museum of Art, among others.