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

22 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
Black bamboo over bamboo plywood with waxed linen thread. My work references ancient tools, weapons and instruments, and asks what story an object carries forward.
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Stockfarm #2 by Parvin — Stockfarm #2 Parvin Oil 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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Fluenta by Charissa Brock — Fluenta Charissa Brock Bamboo · 35 × 56 × 3 in
Bamboo alone — gathered, dried, heat-treated and split, then bent and sewn. Here I explore the flow of water in a plant that grows the way water moves.
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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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The Heron Knows Patience Pays by Parvin — The Heron Knows Patience Pays Parvin Acrylic on Canvas · 26 × 36 in See the work ›

Star Dance by Charissa Brock — Star Dance Charissa Brock Bamboo, glass, waxed linen thread · 28 × 60 × 2 in
This piece is part of my “Cloud Watching” series, comprised of many small spiral forms connected together with one continuous line to create an interconnected, flowing network.
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Wild Flowers by Parvin — Wild Flowers Parvin Oil on Canvas · 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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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
Stretched canvas and mulberry paper with bamboo and waxed linen thread — a drawing that has left the plane of the wall.
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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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Spira Fiore by Charissa Brock — Spira Fiore the spiral flowers Charissa Brock Bamboo, glass, waxed linen thread, cast paper · 22 × 18 × 21 in
From the spiralling technique I have developed over the last twenty-eight years of working with bamboo: two layers of curved bamboo splits, sewn and layered together, with cast paper and glass leaves. In this series I am inspired by DNA structure, seashells, and the unique and complex method used to create these pieces.
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The Shore by Parvin — The Shore Parvin Acrylic on Canvas · 24 × 36 in See the work ›

Paddling in Circles by Charissa Brock — Paddling in Circles Charissa Brock Bamboo, paper, gold leaf, glass, waxed linen thread · 14 × 14 × 2 in
Bamboo, paper, gold leaf, glass and waxed linen thread. Small enough to hold, patterned like something found in a tide pool or under leaves in a garden.
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Mist by Parvin — Mist Parvin Oil 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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Web of Stars by Charissa Brock — Web of Stars Charissa Brock Bamboo, Glass, waxed, linen, waxed linen threa paper · 14.5 × 13 × 4 in
Bamboo, glass and cast paper, studded with glass beads fused by the artist. Each glass bead reflects the structure back to the viewer and catches light, highlighting the internal pattern.
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Serendipity #9 by Parvin — Serendipity #9 Parvin Oil on Canvas · 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 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.

Walk the show › See it in a room › Write to the gallery ›