Northern California artists James Aarons and Mark Taylor have tapped into a vein of emotion connecting a number of NIAD artists. “I Have Always Been a Storm” is a group exhibition of more than 33 objects, drawings and paintings, features weather patterns, landscapes, portraits and city structures that vibrate with sentiment and color. Although, the works are often full to overflowing with marks and ideas, there is a deliberate insistence of contemplation within them that seems to be asking, “Are you looking at me?” Reply: “Yes, of course. And we can’t look away.”

Featured in the exhibition are works from Lois Ann Barnett, Krissi Dean, Luis Estrada, Carlos Fernandez, Joe Flores, Sylvia Fragoso, Peter Harris, Erica Martinez, Dorothy Porter, Demetri Petroupolos, Kevin Randolph, Elena Rossi, Jonathan Valdivias, Jonathan Velazquez, Michael Walker, and Billy White.

Mark Taylor is a visual artist and experimental filmmaker who works across media, including screen printing, film, photography, collage, sculpture, and text. His artist books have been collected by the Library of Congress, the University of Southern California, Stanford University, the Dartmouth Hood Museum and the New York Museum of Modern Art, among many others. Taylor’s films have screened at festivals, galleries and museums around the world. He lives and works in San Francisco.

James Aarons is a reformed modern dancer, ceramic artist and yoga teacher who combines the gestural necessities of each of these skills when considering what to do. Whether it’s making a drawing of a line or articulating a direction in space, the quality of the movement that creates it is what informs his work most. Mr. Aarons’ work is collected by private and corporate clients nationally and is in the collections of Kaiser Permanente, Sodexo USA, Northwest Mutual and the Peninsula Hotel in Hong Kong, among others. He splits his time between Mokelumne Hill and San Francisco, CA; one for studio and the other for restaurants and civilization.

Aarons and Taylor are married.