SOMA – Urban Grit

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Perched high above the banks of the Napa River, a stone’s throw from the Oxbow area of the city of Napa and the newly christened Copia, the American Center for Wine, Food and the Arts, stands the home of one of the Napa Valley’s more colorful — and successful — artists, Gordon Huether.

While Huether’s home may overlook what some might call paradise, visitors won’t find a garret-secluded, starving artist whose main pastime is contemplating the mysteries of the universe while seeking vainly to snag a spark of inspiration. On the contrary, Huether exudes a near volatile, urban guerrilla persona, driven by a life-imitating-art compulsion that fuels his creative passion.

“There’s no distinction between my art and my life. It’s not a Monday-through-Friday, 8-to-5 endeavor. It’s a 24/7 state of being. That means I’m always creating, observing, processing, distilling and expressing. So my home — where I live — holds a higher, different standard for me,” Huether said.

According to Huether’s publisher:

“These 12 separate abstract artworks in glass, are encased in a 50-ft. long steel railing at the public entrance of the new Charles Schwab & Co. building in downtown San Francisco. The artwork is comprised of 12 panels of double-paned glass, each four feet long and three feet high.

Artist Gordon Huether designed the series of pieces from close-up photographs he took of urban streetscapes, manipulated through computer graphics programs to expose “the beauty found in ordinary, everyday things.” Combining etched and fused techniques, each panel interprets a photo from a series created by Huether of such common urban sights as cracks in sidewalks and peeled paint on walls and gates.
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