Journey of the Moon by Charissa Brock
Upcoming · Bainbridge Island

Unrehearsed

No sketch, no plan — let the form arrive.
October 2 — November 5, 2026  ·  Opening First Friday, October 2, 5–8 PM
Journey of the Moon · Charissa Brock · Bamboo, glass, waxed linen thread, paper
Charissa Brock — invited artist

She gathers the line before she draws it.

Brock harvests her own bamboo from backyards, gardens and farms around Oregon, dries it at least six months, then drives off the oily starch with heat — which hardens the cane and makes it of no interest to insects. Only then does the work begin: split with three different tools into fine strips, bent, layered, sewn with waxed linen thread, and set with glass she fuses herself.

Two bodies of work are in this room. Sub Rosa Caeli — beneath the celestial — takes the helix from DNA, seashells and star patterns. Cloud Watching makes the same spiral small, and joins many of them with one continuous line.

“There is a line that is walked between what a viewer sees, what they think they see, and what they actually see.”

Charissa Brock, artist statement
Parvin

She pours, and the canvas answers.

Parvin grew up in the Iranian hillsides, with visits to the Caspian coast that still surface in the work. She emigrated to the United States at eight, returned to Iran for school, then studied Story Illustration at the Chouinard Art Institute. Illustration became advertising, advertising became fashion, and fashion gave way to paint.

She works without preliminary sketches, often pouring directly onto the canvas. What arrives is not corrected into a plan; it is allowed to be what it became.

“Two artists, one instinct: trust the material, trust the memory, let the form arrive on its own.”

From the gallery’s note on the show
The walk

39 works, hung the way the room reads.

Bamboo and paint, alternating — the way they will stand in the gallery. The sculptures carry their shadow with them; several of them hang from the ceiling and want the wall behind to be empty.

Da capo by Charissa Brock
Da capo from the head; begin again Charissa Brock Bori bamboo, waxed linen thread · 48 × 47 × 27 in

Da Capo is made out of Phyllostachys nigra, or black bamboo. Black bamboo is an amazing plant.

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The Viking by Parvin
The Viking Parvin Acrylic on Canvas · 48 × 36 in

The largest and most violent of Parvin's paintings. Ultramarine and deep violet collide with an acid yellow-green across a white ground, the darks pooling into hard-edged masses while the yellow tears through them in a diagonal.

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Wing and Feather by Charissa Brock
Wing and Feather Charissa Brock Black Bamboo, bamboo plywood, waxed linen, fused glass, rattan · 64 × 32 × 9 in

A free-standing sculpture on a tall pale post set into a base of layered bamboo plywood. A central vertical form is covered in small cut rounds of bamboo around a circular center of fine bamboo strips and framed by two dark curved canes that cross at the top and bottom.

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The Golden Hour by Parvin
The Golden Hour Parvin Acrylic on Board · 36 × 48 in

Gold and ochre fill most of the surface, broken by a band of deep red across the upper middle and a flare of rust at the upper left. A strip of white and red-brown cells runs along the lower edge.

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Fluenta by Charissa Brock
Fluenta Charissa Brock Bamboo · 35 × 56 × 3 in

A wall piece in two separate sections of dark bamboo cane. Each cane is opened along its length in a series of long oval windows that show the pale inner wall of the bamboo.

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Carnelian Bay by Parvin
Carnelian Bay Parvin Acrylic on Canvas · 30 × 48 in

A bay seen from above a wooded shore. Rust, red-brown and ochre fill the lower two-thirds as dense hillside and brush, with two small pools of pale blue near the bottom edge.

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Journey of the Moon by Charissa Brock
Journey of the Moon Charissa Brock Bamboo, glass, waxed linen thread, paper · 31 × 61 × 4 in

A wide wall piece built from long curved bamboo canes, some dark and some pale, sweeping across from left to right. Thin bamboo ribs are stitched along several of the curves in fan-like rows.

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Golden Shores by Parvin
Golden Shores Parvin Acrylic on Canvas · 30 × 48 in

Horizontal bands of apricot, coral and gold stack across a wide sky, with a line of deep coral just above the middle. Below it a band of slate blue and green reads as water, and warm gold and pink spread across the foreground.

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Star Dance by Charissa Brock
Star Dance Charissa Brock Bamboo, glass, waxed linen thread · 28 × 60 × 2 in

A wall piece in a long S-shaped curve. A dark bamboo spine is filled with rows of cobalt blue and clear glass beads, and from it fans of pale bamboo ribs extend outward, each rib ending in a small crescent of cobalt blue glass.

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Stockfarm #2 by Parvin
Stockfarm #2 Parvin Acrylic on Canvas · 40 × 30 × 1 in

A hillside of pale gold and green under a violet ridge, forty by thirty inches, with the land laid in broad flowing planes and no built structure anywhere despite the title. Parvin lets the paint find the contours rather than drawing them, so the fields read as poured rather than planted.

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Zephra's Flight by Charissa Brock
Zephra's Flight Charissa Brock Stretched canvas, mulberry paper, bamboo, gold leaf, glass beads, waxed linen thread · 40 × 30 × 3.5 in

A panel on stretched canvas. Bamboo fans, each a half-circle of thin bamboo spokes tipped with pale leaf-shaped paper pieces edged in gold leaf, are linked end to end along four wavy vertical lines that run the height of the canvas.

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Dawn by Parvin
Dawn Parvin Acrylic on Canvas · 40 × 30 in

A dark headland pushes in from the left over deep blue water, and salmon light breaks through the grey-blue above it. This is the most representational work in Parvin's group and the one where her poured technique earns the most: the cliff face is a single dark pour whose ragged lower edge became the waterline, and the light in the sky is not painted around the cloud but is the cloud, thinned to let the ground show.

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Spira Fiore by Charissa Brock
Spira Fiore the spiral flowers Charissa Brock Bamboo, glass, waxed linen thread, cast paper · 22 × 18 × 21 in

Spira Fiore comes from a body of work based on a tying system I created which draws inspiration from seashells. It is made of three layers of bamboo.

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The Heron Knows Patience Pays by Parvin
The Heron Knows Patience Pays Parvin Acrylic on Canvas · 26 × 36 in

A great blue heron stands at the right edge of a still pond at dusk. Streaked clouds in blue-grey and cream fill the sky and open to orange and gold at the horizon, and the pond repeats the gold between dark green banks.

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Paddling in Circles by Charissa Brock
Paddling in Circles Charissa Brock Bamboo, paper, gold leaf, glass, waxed linen thread · 14 × 14 × 2 in

A radial form mounted on a white ground inside a clear box. Thin bamboo spokes run from a central cluster of clear glass rounds, through a bamboo ring and beyond it, each ending in a pale leaf-shaped paper piece edged in gold leaf.

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Wild Flowers by Parvin
Wild Flowers Parvin Acrylic on Panel · 24 × 36 × 1 in

Two by three feet. A meadow band of violet and rust running the width of the canvas beneath a pale sky, the flowers implied by texture and speckle rather than depicted.

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Web of Stars by Charissa Brock
Web of Stars Charissa Brock Bamboo, glass, waxed linen thread, cast paper · 14.5 × 13 × 4 in

Web of Stars is inspired by the feeling I had as a child reading the poem “Wynken, Blynken, and Nod.” The idea of sailing in a boat in the sky, among the stars, was such a wonderful fantasy. The framework of this piece is made from heat-bent bamboo canes, detailed with knotless netted waxed linen thread studded with beads fused by the artist.

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Serenity by Parvin
Serenity Parvin Acrylic on Canvas · 36 × 24 in

A wide ochre sky, streaked with white cloud pulled thin by the tilt of the panel, sits over olive-green hills and a pale band of water. Parvin's fluid method usually produces incident; here she has suppressed it, holding the pours to broad horizontal registers so the picture reads as landscape and stays quiet.

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The Shore by Parvin
The Shore Parvin Acrylic on Canvas · 24 × 36 in

A white band cuts diagonally across the lower half between edges of orange, rust and deep red, beneath a pale grey sky with a darker grey cloud at the upper left.

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Silver Lining by Parvin
Silver Lining Parvin Acrylic on Canvas · 24 × 36 in

A pale silver-grey field with fine cells across its surface. A drift of ochre and gold runs diagonally down from the upper left, and a band of silvery blue lifts along the bottom edge above a thin strip of warm brown.

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Breaking by Parvin
Breaking Parvin Acrylic on Canvas · 24 × 36 in

Dark navy slopes close in from both lower corners and frame a white channel of water. Bands of blue and lavender run across the middle, and the upper half is a white and grey sky patterned with small dark cells.

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Mist by Parvin
Mist Parvin Acrylic on Canvas · 24 × 18 × 1 in

Fir trunks dissolving in fog, worked in soft green and violet with scattered points of warm light held in the canopy. Twenty-four by eighteen.

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Serendipity #9 by Parvin
Serendipity #9 Parvin Acrylic on Panel · 18 × 18 in

Eighteen inches square. Warm ochre and rust flow across the panel in a single sweeping movement with pale gold at the crest, reading as a hillside or a dune or neither.

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Bloom by Parvin
Bloom Parvin Acrylic on Canvas · 14 × 11 in

A single blossom opens at the centre of the panel, its heart a dense knot of teal and turquoise that breaks outward into filaments of deep violet. Parvin works in fluid acrylic — poured and tilted rather than brushed — and the evidence is in the paint itself: cells where the heavier pigment has sunk through the lighter, and fine white lacing along every boundary.

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Blooming by Parvin
Blooming Parvin Acrylic on Canvas · 14 × 11 in

Olive and forest greens gather at the upper left, shot through with gold, while a broad white form curves up from the lower right and meets them along a scalloped edge. That edge is the whole painting: it is not drawn but formed, the natural boundary where two densities of fluid acrylic refused to combine.

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White Bloom by Parvin
White Bloom Parvin Acrylic on Canvas · 14 × 11 in

The quietest of Parvin's blooms and the most difficult to make. Working almost entirely in white and pale grey with the faintest sage tint, she gives herself no chromatic contrast to build form with — only density, edge and the lacing that fluid acrylic leaves as it settles.

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Tulip by Parvin
Tulip Parvin Acrylic on Canvas · 14 × 11 in

A large rounded pale form in white and soft sea-green spreads across the upper part of the canvas, with a darker green pool near its center and a white, scalloped edge. It sits on a mottled grey ground that runs to the bottom of the canvas.

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The Pacific by Parvin
The Pacific Parvin Acrylic on Canvas See the work ›
Serendipity by Parvin
Serendipity Parvin Acrylic on Canvas See the work ›
Bay Begins by Parvin
Bay Begins Parvin Acrylic on Canvas See the work ›
Where The Candor Flies by Parvin
Where The Candor Flies Parvin Acrylic on Canvas See the work ›
Early Morning by Parvin
Early Morning Parvin Acrylic on Canvas See the work ›
Waves by Parvin
Waves Parvin Acrylic on Canvas See the work ›
Falling Waters by Parvin
Falling Waters Parvin Acrylic on Canvas See the work ›
Untitled I by Parvin
Untitled I Parvin Acrylic on Canvas See the work ›
Untitled II by Parvin
Untitled II Parvin Acrylic on Canvas See the work ›
Untitled III by Parvin
Untitled III Parvin Acrylic on Canvas See the work ›
Wild Flowers by Parvin
Wild Flowers Parvin Acrylic on Canvas See the work ›
SURF by Parvin
SURF Parvin Acrylic on Canvas See the work ›
Visit

Come on the second of October.

First Friday Art Walk, 5–8 PM. JG Art Gallery, 176 Winslow Way, Bainbridge Island. The show hangs through November 5, and both artists’ work can be seen in the room, on your own wall, or in a gallery you can walk.