Living in Tijuana and teaching in San Diego, painter Charles Glaubitz is comfortable toggling between two cultures, which gives his work what he calls, "hybridity." His influences---ranging from comic books, Hiayo Miyazake, Henry Darger, the Clayton Brothers, Mexican Exvotos paintings, childrens' art and Star Wars---can be detected in the vibrant palette of reds, yellows and other eye-watering colors that inform his pop-infused narratives. Charles' participation at Varnish is nestled between his recent mural/installation at Museo Carillo Gil in Mexico City---"Yo soy tu iluvia en tu desfile, la verdad en tu illusion (I am the rain in your parade, I am the truth in your illusion")---and an upcoming all-Tijuana artist show in May 2006 at the San Diego Museum of Contemporary Art entitled A Strange New World.

Sculptor Ron Garrigues' first group show was at the Oakland Art Museum in 1959, followed by a solo exhibition in 1961 at the California Palace of the Legion of Honor. Ron's recent work continues his fascination with form with a sensibility of a reductionist, not a "modeler," with visual and social information paired together and then pared down to a absolute minimum. "There is a beauty in the skull," says Ron, "but it implies foreboding...the skull is a signpost on the road we travel." In the Garrigues bronze Elephant-Ivory Sacrifice the commercial and everyday tragic aspects of the black market ivory trade are distilled via a pair of truncated tusk stumps. Attached to the graceful line of the elephant's skull, they have been rendered to look as though they were designed with premeditation.

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