New Art Exhibit Revisits Childhood

Emerging contemporary art isn’t always readily accessible, and patrons are often left asking, "What does that mean? What was the artist trying to say?"  

In Kate Barrengos' lastest installation "Architectural Play" incites a different question: "Do you remember?"

With subtle simplicity, Barrengos transports us back to a golden age of childhood, while at the same time exposing us to classic architecture from a viewpoint that most of us haven’t considered in a lifetime.

Working with acrylics on Belgian linen, the artist represents great architecture recreated with a child’s wooden building blocks. From Stonehenge to the Great Wall of China, the Taj Mahal to Fallingwater, the Pantheon to the Eiffel Tower, and even a local nod to the at , Barrengos paints the innocence of youth with a depth of structure that easily pulls the viewer into her experience. The exaggerated simplicity of the blocks allows the viewer to absorb the images freely, looking up from a child’s perspective to bask in the monument of the structures.  

Harkening back to her own childhood in Nebraska, Barrengos recalls the flatness of landscape and the need to escape into her mother’s world as an art consultant. Playing on the floor and dreaming with her mother’s art books and catalogs, Barrengos as a child sought to transport herself through simple block constructions of the places and images she saw. 

Today, Barrengos revisits those day dreams in a series of paintings, one building towards another, like a poem with many stanzas leading the viewer on a walk through history as seen through the innocence of youth.

The artist's process sought to break down complex structures into components to gain a hyper-understanding of a still life. 

“Stonehenge was the first piece in this series, and I was thrilled with the accessibility that others found in that piece, and I said, ‘I can do this; people will get this,'" Barrengos says. "I wanted to create a travel journal of smaller paintings, a human connection with the process, and a raw and personal connection to the painter. Children are so serious minded in their play, and I wanted to see where that [focus] would take me in my art.”

With a background in biological sciences at the University of Nebraska, Barrengos turned to a formal education in fine arts in 1993, and has been painting professionally with more than a dozen exhibitions since 2008. Painting out of her home studio in Mill Valley, the mother of two said her two teenagers were no help with the building blocks, but for her it was “fun and done.”  

It’s not often you can speak of an art exhibit and say, “Fun for the whole family!” But these unique works are universally accessible to both children and the child within seeking to reconnect with a grander yet simpler time.

The 411: "Architectural Play" is currently on display in the Thompson/Dorfman Partners offices at 39 Forrest St. in Mill Valley, downtown just off of E. Blithedale. It is open to the public Monday to Friday, 8:30 a.m. to 5 p.m., through Oct. 28. An opening receptiontakes place during the First Tuesday Artwalk on Oct. 4 from 6 p.m. to 8 p.m.