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The Lisa Coscino Gallery announces the opening of its new exhibition entitled "Below the Surface". The exhibition will open on Friday, 22 June and run through 21 July, 2001. A Reception for the artists will be held on Friday, 22 June from 6-8pm. The Gallery is located at 171 Central Avenue in Pacific Grove.

"Below the Surface" is a group show featuring the work of five local artists. The artists included in the exhibition are: Diane Eisenbach, Heidi Hybl, Molly McCall, Addison Robichaud and Robynn Smith. The focus of the exhibition is on work that explores surface texture, abstraction, and/or meaning or subtext that is literally "below the surface", not knowable without explanation or insight into a particular artists iconography.

Although Diane Eisenbach is primarily a ceramist (she is Head of Ceramics at MPC), she will be exhibiting finely executed drawings, the subject matter of which is based on memory. In these pieces, Eisenbach combines graphite and paint, organic form and abstraction in an attempt to express the disillusion of what memory once meant and consequently, the longing one feels to retrieve the pieces one leaves behind.

Painter Heidi Hybl's new work is based in the imagery of bridges, some may be more familiar than others. Hybl's literal bridges are a metaphor for those other, figurative ones; the bridges between people, places, worlds, ideas. Using the recognizable iconography of the Brooklyn, Golden Gate and Bixby bridges, Hybl plays hide and seek with her images, sometimes scratching into the surface while other times overpainting, in attempt to allude to how elusive those "other" bridges really are.

Molly McCall's new paintings are pure abstraction, grids of color and shape, over which she applies a clear coat of high gloss resin. The result is a colorful canvas with a surface as shiny as a surfboard. While the surface is seductive on these paintings, it is in the meaning where the story really lies. The paintings which all follow the same grid format, are all based on childhood memory. The titles of the pieces guide the viewer to his/her own interpretation with a sense of humor and universality.

Santa Cruz based artist Addison Robichaud's paintings celebrate the surface by using a variety of treatments to either build up or scratch away. Robichaud's approach to painting can be likened to Michaelangelo who claimed to "free" the figures from inside his blocks of marble. Working with paint, wax, layering and moving the paint around, images, ever so slight, begin to emerge. Once the imagery emerges, Robichaud clarifies them and defines their setting. In the end, he gives us paintings rich with color and abstraction, the meaning of which one must search closely for.

MPC Creative Arts Division Chair, Robynn Smith approaches the surface in her work with a set of tools that would scare off most people. Smith starts with large pieces of wood and literally tears into them, carving away until images begin to appear. She next applies tar and gesso, sees what remains and heads back into the paintings for more sanding and carving. Her images tend towards animals and the figure and she often sets up juxtaposing images to explore other concepts such as war, freedom and persecution.