For the past year, as California’s drought continues to intensify, Rhode Island School of Design trained printmaker Louesa Roebuck found herself depicting water in a series of new monotypes. The works—almost 40 in all, some of which are 8-feet-long—made by painting on glass and hand rubbing water-soluble pigments, have just been hung on the walls of Accident and Artifact in San Francisco’s Mission District (the opening party for the exhibition, complete with bites by Izakaya Rintaro, is slated for Saturday, November 14). Roebuck, who currently lives in Stinson Beach and creates installations made of foraged foliage for restaurants and events in the Bay Area, found herself drawn to the ocean, fog, rain, and dew for this print project. Roebuck says she was driven by knowledge of the landscape’s “craving for water.” In fact, the creative who completed stints at Chez Panisse and Erica Tanov before developing an experimental space of her own (a boutique and gallery in Oakland that was called August), notes that dew even helped to create some of the prints. Roebuck calls the works, “abstract landscapes which I hope evoke many things. I hope they are dreamy and moody and full of sea and sky and water.”

By Elizabeth Varnell

Pictured: A monotype created by Louesa Roebuck, on display at Accident and Artifact in San Francisco.
Photo by Laurie Frankel