True North | November 16, 2024 – February 16, 2025

True North Performance Showcase: Briona Hendren + Whitney Vangrin

Saturday, January 18, 1:30 – 3:30 p.m.
Gallery 1 Patio
$25 General
$20 Seniors, Military, Students, Educators
$5 Minors Ages 5–17
Free for Members and Children Under Five

Includes Gallery Admission Prior to Performance

di Rosa presents a pair of performances by True North artists Briona Hendren and Whitney Vangrin. Activating the Gallery 1 patio overlooking Winery Lake, Hendren and Vangrin’s performances build on their exhibited works, highlighting history, place, and materiality.

Whitney Vangrin’s Talon // Tisane explores the unique ecology of the di Rosa landscape, integrating natural elements and practices that emphasize our connection to the environment. Central to this experience will be an offering of yarrow tea from a blown-glass fountain and a demonstration of falconry, drawing on the historical and contemporary role of birds of prey in sustainable vineyard management.      

Whitney Vangrin received her MFA from The University of California, Davis, CA and was recipient of the Provost’s Fellowships in the Arts, Humanities and Social Science. She completed her Grad Fellowship at the Marin Headlands Center for the Arts in 2023 and she ran the collaborative exhibition space 1:1 with Jarrett Earnest, Leigha Mason, Alex Sloane at 121 Essex Street, NYC. She has presented performance work at MoMa PS1, Swiss Institute, Institute of Contemporary Arts, London, and ICA, Philadelphia and has exhibited throughout the United States and in Switzerland, Germany and Taiwan. 
https://www.whitneyvangrin.com/

Briona Hendren is an interdisciplinary artist whose work is an ongoing exploration of psychology, memory, and time, as related to identity, society, and nature. Through the use of repetition, sculpture, site-specific interventions, printmaking, and performance, she dives into biomorphic architectural re-imaginations of memory by unearthing entangled patterns of personal narratives. 

For this performance, Hendren moves through the gallery carrying cast iron purses from her series, Baggage. Each purse, heavy and unyielding, represents the struggles women face day-to-day: societal burdens, economic inequities, unpaid labor, gendered expectations, or denial of personal sovereignty. Through subtle and deliberate movements, she transforms the carried weight into a visual narrative of resilience, eventually planting the contents as seeds of hope and change, embodying the quiet strength of one carrying the weight of many.

Briona Hendren received her BFA in Sculpture and Museum & Gallery Methods from Sonoma State University. In addition to her art practice, Briona is the Curator for the Voigt Family Sculpture Foundation, Operations Manager for the Pacific Rim Sculptors, and the Metal Arts Director for Chimera Arts & Makerspace. Her work has been on view throughout the San Francisco Bay Area, Los Angeles, New York, and internationally. Her work can be seen at the Luther Burbank Center for the Arts, (Santa Rosa, CA), Pepperwood Preserve (Santa Rosa, CA), Ives Park (Sebastopol, CA) , and SOMO Village (Rohnert Park, CA).
https://brionahendren.com/