It is a first joint open-studio-type show for the couple. Though now divorced and no longer based in a jointly owned studio, both Dunn and Mehler support each other’s individual artistic pursuits.
The Dunn Mehler Gallery, a combination art gallery, office and home, celebrated a gala opening in October 1993. For 12 years, the pair showcased and sold topflight American-crafted two- and three-dimensional works of art including paintings, sculpture and jewelry, and held literary readings for adults and children, concerts, plays, lectures, weddings and cooking demonstrations.
 Photo courtesy Carl Mehler Dayle Dunn and Carl Mehler are teaming up for an exhibit, beginning this weekend, of his photography (left) and decorative ad functional home art such as that which filled the previous Dunn Mehler Gallery. |
At that time, with the advent of the economic downturn, she sold the building and moved the gallery online and into her spacious new El Granada home, continuing to represent her established artists while recruiting new ones.
“There’s life after retail!” enthused Dunn.
Mehler, in the meantime, devoted himself to a longtime dream of pursuing photography full time.
“My goal is for the viewer to see what I see when I take a picture,” Mehler said.
Now the two plan shows in their respective new locations. Mehler will show his semi-abstract photography, crafted with an eye toward architectural aspects, from 11 a.m. to 4 p.m. Saturday, May 16 and Sunday, May 17, at his home at 712 Toulouse Court in Half Moon Bay (for information call (650) 740-1584).
Mehler builds on his 35-year career in architecture, in which he focused on Bay Area high-rise office buildings, to tighten in on shots that capture and explore details that have an architectural slant and yet stand alone as artistic photographs. “It’s what I see — line, color, form, shape, scale,” he said. “I am giving people another venue” in his home.
He has shown his greeting cards to prints in Berkeley, and now plans another show there in June (with his stepdaughter Katie Carrin who will show her jewelry) and yet another show at the 1870 Art Center in Belmont later in June.
Meanwhile, Dunn is borrowing from the concept of home staging in the creation of her home gallery, where she is arranging sculpture, lamps and other functional yet artistic pieces created both by artists the Dunn Mehler gallery represented and new artists she has contacted.
“I set it up so you can see things like they would be in your home,” she said.
She will hold an extended show, beginning May 16 but continuing through May 24, from 11 a.m. to 4 p.m. daily in her home at 207 Dolores St. in El Granada (for information call 726-7667).
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