NY2CA Gallery Presents
Lisa Reinertson: Of Water & Earth
August 27–October 4, 2026

NY2CA Gallery, 617 First Street, Benicia, California

Artist Reception: Saturday, August 29, 5–7pm Artist Talk at 5:45pm NY2CA Gallery is pleased to present Of Water & Earth, a solo exhibition by distinguished Benicia artist Lisa Reinertson, on view from August 27 through October 4, 2026.

Bringing together new and earlier work, the exhibition presents figurative ceramic sculpture alongside works on paper in pastel, pigment, charcoal, and oil stick. Ranging from intimate shoreline studies to major freestanding figures, the works reveal water and earth as both subject and substance, joining landscape, body, memory, and material.

Reinertson is perhaps best known locally for Neptune’s Daughter, her bronze sculpture on the Benicia waterfront. For more than four decades, however, her wider practice has centered on large-scale figurative ceramics and public sculpture, using the human figure to consider what it means to live in a particular body, within a particular culture, and on a shared and vulnerable planet.

Her perspective is shaped by her experience as a woman, artist, mother, and person deeply concerned with social justice and environmental protection. Earlier bodies of work have addressed extinction, migration, peace, civil rights, and environmental loss. In this exhibition, those concerns remain present, but Reinertson also turns toward something equally necessary: the beauty, joy, and consolation the natural world continues to offer.

Water has long moved through her work.

Growing up in Sacramento, Reinertson was surrounded by rivers. They were places of family life, summer heat, dogs, swimming, rest, and release. Years later, during the quieter period of the pandemic, she began walking regularly along the Benicia shoreline with her dogs, looking closely at the place where land and water meet.

She became drawn to the traces left by the tides: shallow pools, exposed rocks, marsh grasses, birds, reflections, and the shifting marks made where water recedes from shore. What began as an effort to draw these places developed into a sustained body of shoreline works.

These drawings became the foundation for Of Water & Earth, inviting ceramic works from different periods of Reinertson’s practice into conversation with them. Some are recent, while others return from earlier chapters. Together, they reveal how persistently water, animals, human figures, coastlines, and the interdependence of life have surfaced across her art.

In the works on paper, the shoreline is not presented as a fixed view, but as a place of transformation. Rock becomes water, water becomes sky, and birds seem to emerge from the landscape itself. Pastel, charcoal, pigment, and oil stick capture not only the appearance of a place, but the sensation of standing within it.

These are not simply landscapes. They are places of memory, refuge, and belonging.

The ceramic works give earth a physical presence. Clay becomes body, wave, animal, gesture, and human form. Reinertson’s figures often appear in acts of holding, protecting, waiting, or listening, carrying tenderness and vulnerability alongside strength and fierce care.

The human body is understood not as separate from nature, but as part of it. The figure belongs to the same living world as the bird, the fish, the dog, the shoreline, and the sea.

Bringing together works on paper, ceramic wall pieces, pedestal sculptures, and major freestanding figures, Of Water & Earth offers an uncommon opportunity to experience the breadth and physical presence of Reinertson’s practice within a single exhibition. The works span nearly two decades, with earlier pieces placed in conversation with sculptures completed in 2026.

Among the newest works is a large mosaic and ceramic surfer sculpture celebrating the coastal environment of Northern California. It is a work of movement, pleasure, and vitality, while also carrying an awareness of what is at stake as ocean waters warm and marine ecosystems face increasing pressure.

At a time when environmental and social crises can feel overwhelming, the exhibition offers something more intimate than a warning. It asks what remains worth loving, and whether close attention can restore our connection to the living world. Reinertson returns to what still gives life meaning: water, animals, coastlines, the human body, and the fragile beauty of life on earth.

Throughout the exhibition, beauty and urgency remain closely connected. Water offers movement, memory, pleasure, and renewal. Earth offers weight, form, origin, and belonging. Neither is merely symbolic. They are the materials and living systems through which the work takes form. These works are important not because they provide easy answers, but because they make connections palpable. They remind us that the body is part of nature, that beauty can carry urgency, and that care begins when we recognize ourselves as belonging to the world we are trying to protect.

Of Water & Earth asks us to look closely at what surrounds us, to recognize the beauty that still sustains us, and to remember that what we love, we may also be willing to protect.

Exhibition Details

Lisa Reinertson: Of Water & Earth
August 27–October 4, 2026

Artist Reception: Saturday, August 29, 5–7pm
Artist Talk: 5:45pm

NY2CA Gallery - 617 First Street Benicia, California

Featuring: Figurative ceramic sculpture and works on paper in pastel, pigment, charcoal, and oil stick.