May 28, 2026 - September 6, 2026

Sponsored by Bryce & Florence York Fund and AltaOne Federal Credit Union

The Exhibit | Artists Biographies | Images | Events

In Second Nature, artists Annette Goodfriend, Ruth Tabancay, and Esther Traugot examine the natural world through a lens of both wonder and warning. United by a profound attentiveness to ecological fragility, their works blur the boundaries between science and imagination, beauty and unease. Through sculpture, textile, installation, and mixed-media experimentation, the exhibition reflects on humanity’s increasingly precarious relationship with the ecosystems and species that sustain life. 

Rather than illustrating environmental issues in documentary terms, these artists translate lived ecological concern into poetic and deeply imaginative visual language. Their works feel dreamlike and surreal yet remain grounded in scientific observation and biological truth. Human intervention, pollution, warming oceans, threatened marine life, microscopic bacteria, and disappearing natural remnants all surface throughout the exhibition as reminders that environmental damage occurs at both visible and invisible scales. 

Each artist approaches this reality through a distinct material vocabulary. Annette Goodfriend constructs sculptural hybrids in which human and marine forms collide, emphasizing ecological interdependence. Ruth Tabancay turns to tactile materials such as thread, tea bags, beeswax, and sugar to create delicate meditations on bacteria, waste, and environmental degradation. Esther Traugot offers gestures of tenderness and repair, wrapping found natural objects in hand-dyed fibers as if to preserve what is vulnerable or slipping away. 

Together, Second Nature reframes humanity’s relationship to nature, balancing alarm with reverence while considering what it means to care for a world so fundamentally altered by human hands. 

Annette Goodfriend is a Northern California–based sculptor whose work merges art, science, and surreal imagination to investigate the mutating relationship between the human body and the natural world. Drawing from her background in Genetics and Art at U.C. Berkeley and later earning her M.F.A. from the California College of the Arts in Oakland, Goodfriend creates sculptural forms that explore anatomy, biology, and environmental transformation with equal parts critical inquiry, scientific precision, and dark humor. Her recent work turns particularly to the ocean, examining humanity’s profound interconnectedness with marine ecosystems increasingly threatened by warming waters, pollution, and ecological collapse. 

Goodfriend is a winner of the International Art Competition Premio O.R.A. Italia, the Malamegi Lab 15 International Art Prize, and was one of 18 artists from 15 countries selected for the YICCA International Art Prize. She is the recipient of numerous awards, including the Discovered Award, a grant and exhibition funded by the National Endowment for the Arts and Creative Sonoma, and has been honored with residencies at the Morris Graves Foundation and the Headlands Center for the Arts. 

Working primarily with epoxy, resin, rubber, wax, and plaster, Goodfriend casts, builds, and assembles unexpected hybrid forms in which sea life, human anatomy, and scientific apparatus collide. Her sculpture has been exhibited locally, nationally, and internationally, including at the Museum of Sonoma County, Kellogg University Art Gallery, San Jose Institute of Contemporary Art, the HDLU Pavilion in Zagreb, Croatia, and 3)5 Arte Contemporanea in Viterbo, Italy. Goodfriend lives and works in the San Francisco Bay Area.

Ruth Tabancay’s passion for science led her to study microbiology in college. Following a stint as a hospital laboratory technologist, she went on to medical school. After 11 years in private practice, she left medicine to study art. Her bodies of work include those based on microscopy and magnification, geometry (both Euclidean and non-Euclidean), and ecological systems. 

Her techniques include embroidery, stitching, crochet, assemblage, rotary knitting, Jacquard weaving, felting, cast sugar, and installation. She is a graduate of the University of California, Berkeley; University of California School of Medicine, San Francisco; and California College of the Arts. Her work has been exhibited regionally and nationally, including The Textile Museum, Washington, D.C.; Museum of Craft and Design, San Francisco; Houston Center for Contemporary Craft; World Financial Center, New York City; and San Jose Museum of Quilts & Textiles. 

Tabancay lives in Berkeley, California. 

Esther Traugot’s installations include crocheted wrappings in and around found natural objects with hand-dyed golden yarns, eliciting both a vibrant warmth and intimacy with her objects, bringing attention to their fragility and implying an intrinsic value. Touching on narratives both personal and universal, she investigates a personal relationship with the natural world. Her experiences growing up very close to nature in the back-to-the-land movement of the 1970s amidst an idealistic farming community influence her interest in the dichotomies in seeing oneself as an intrinsic part of nature and living in the modern world. 

Since receiving her BFA from the University of California, Berkeley in 2005, and her MFA from Mills College in 2009, she has shown extensively in solo and group exhibitions in the United States and abroad. Her work has been exhibited in the Bay Area, Los Angeles, New York, Paris, and Columbia, at venues such as the Berkeley Art Center, Bedford Gallery, Palo Alto Art Center, Irvine Fine Arts Center, Brea Art Center, the El Paso Museum of Art, the Samek Gallery in Pennsylvania, Kathryn Markel in Chelsea, New York, and overseas in the Paris Art Fair, and Floriligio in Bogota. She has been commissioned for the permanent collections of Neiman Marcus in Walnut Creek and Beverly Hills, and for private clients as well. 

Esther Traugot is represented by Muriel Guepin Gallery in New York, and Chandra Cerrito Art Advisors in the Bay Area, California. She currently lives and works in Northern California.

Exhibition Tours  

Free with your BMoA Membership.

Saturday, June 13
Friday, July 17
Saturday, August 8

second nature: exploring the work

Saturday, July 18
1:00 PM - 2:00 PM

Join us for a thoughtful conversation surrounding the ideas, processes, and themes at the heart of Second Nature. Featuring exhibiting artists Annette Goodfriend, Ruth Tabancay, and Esther Traugot, this special program offers audiences a deeper look into the artistic practices that shape the exhibition. Moderated by Andi Campognone, the conversation will explore how these artists approach material, concept, and process, while offering insight into the personal and philosophical questions that inform their work.

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ARTICULATED

Esther Traugot | Friday, June 12, 12:00 PM
Ruth Tabancay | Friday, July 24, 12:00 PM
Annette Goodfriend | Friday, August 14, 12:00 PM

Instagram Live conversation between exhibiting artists and curator Victor Gonzales about creative practice, inspiration, storytelling, and process.