Vivienne Flesher: Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird @ Fourth Wall Gallery

The Fourth Wall is pleased to present Thirteen Ways of Looking at  a Blackbird-over 30 digital collages by artist Vivienne Flesher. Flesher has a long and notable history as a New York illustrator. Her career includes U.S.P.S. stamps, the New York Times, Washington Post, The New Yorker,  Rolling Stone Magazine, NPR, Harper’s, the NY Review of Books, to name a few. Now living in San Francisco, the majority of her time is spent creating personal work

Around 2000, the computer began to play a larger part in her illustration work and she became excited by the possibilities for her personal work, as well.  That discovery led to the digital collages she is doing now. Released from the requirements of illustration jobs, a new freedom of ideas and images opened up for her. 

She explained, "I was always working on my own but would share my personal work and photography only with the few art directors who are themselves artists in their own right. They, in turn, took chances with my computer generated images—as an example, the Kennedy Center JAPAN! Project—which I turned into a show at Stir Gallery in Shanghai, China."

"The work in Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird utilizes photos from my travels as well as personal objects, drawings and paintings, plus signs and typography discovered while walking in the city. I’ve included some of these objects with the images they are used in. The name of this show derives from the title of a poem by Wallace Stevens."

Vivienne Flesher’s photographs and drawings have appeared in the New York Times, LA Times, American Express, Random House, Harper’s, NYReview of Books, Bloomingdale’s, Shiseido. Vivienne has worked on animations for Pfizer. She has created campaigns for Starbucks and Macy’s, Canon, and Broadway theater posters. Her children’s book East of the Sun West of the Moon was animated and shown on PBS. She has produced stamps for the United States Postal Service. Images originally produced for the The Kennedy Center’s JAPAN! grew into a series of large-scale images for an exhibition combining painting with photography at Stir Gallery in Shanghai, China. She has shown at Jack Fischer Gallery SF CA, Zeitgeist Gallery Nashville TN, Pallas Gallery SF CA, Parco Gallery, Tokyo. This is her first one person show at The Fourth Wall Gallery, Oakland CA