Steve Vanoni, hands

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Originally uploaded by Charrmer.

Steve Vanoni has that larger than life quality that you see only now and then, usually in some remarkably famous person.
Vanoni shows his hands, the hands that create art and music. Hands that teach and express in a myriad of ways the very creative soul that he is.

Steve Vanoni, Leapin' like Baryshnikov!

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Originally uploaded by Charrmer.

'Maybe you could jump up and down on the bed, you know, like kids do...' I ask Steve Vanoni innocently enough. "Well, I could do this" he says... and he does it and I am absolutely blown away! Thank you thank you thank you! I love it when people show parts of themselves that are so charming and unexpected. He has past ballet experience. He's still got it!

Steve Vanoni, Artist's Artist

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Originally uploaded by Charrmer.

Steve Vanoni has become an icon in the area art scene and is seen here in his Del Paso Blvd. Gallery Horse Cow.

Saturday Session

The Saturday morning drawing session at I Street Studio has been going for years. It’s a figure session and it’s a good one. We’ve lost track of other sessions around town, but we’d put a few bones on the fact that this one can’t be beat. If you want to get lost in drawing without distraction, this is your place. No frills, no music and, this time of year, no heat, so bundle up. The model is kept warm with space heaters. It’s a little crazy drawing nudes in a freezing studio, but everything is nuts if you think about it enough. Figure drawing is a captivating world, with a million puzzles to be solved in every pose. This session is frequented by some of Sacramento’s masters including Fred Dalkey and Jian Wang, so if you’re having a bad session, you can watch them. http://www.geocities.com/satsession/

Let Em' Be

Leave the animals alone. Quit torturing them in labs, quit imprisoning them where they don’t walk a day in their lives, quit force feeding them, quit slaughtering them, and quit shooting them for fun. Quit eating them too. That's Gale Hart's message. Only she's working on delivering it in a sly and oddly funny way. Through cartoon drawings, found object sculpture, cast resin images and multiple other mediums, she is creating a body of work based on the idea of "why not eat your pet." You wouldn't eat your faithful yellow Labrador. How have you managed to detach yourself from that wooly little lamb or gentle brown cow whose body was paralyzed with terror on the killing floor?
"Ninety-eight percent of the animals people eat are tortured," Gale says. She's up on factory farming, canned hunting and animal physiology. Knowing all of this about the animals drove her to a new place in her work where she's moving on from the huge paintings that have made her a success in a field where few find success. She's using more mediums that we have energy to list here. She says she needs all of the different mediums to express all the various issues surrounding animal rights.
The works are darkly funny: one sculpture of a cow in a body bag is titled "Got Compassion?" One adept drawing shows Marvin the Martian about to shoot Pooh Bear with a 22 caliber hand gun and Popeye aiming a Saturday Night Special at Fred Flintstone. This current work will be in a series of shows beginning in March at Exploding Head Gallery in Sacramento. Be advised not to show up wearing a leather jacket. For more on Gale, visit www.galehart.com

Nothing, Everything

You can talk to people, listen to them, ask questions, try to piece their story together. They can tell you somethings; they can never tell you everything.You can get it wrong, get it right, make it up. There are a million things to say; nothing to say. In the end, there is an imperfect story. Is it better than no story?

Painting Big

Take a 6'x12' foot canvas and prop it up outside. Know and feel what energy, mood, emotion, message you want to express. It can be something painful. Realize you will leave a lot up to timing, accident and chance. It's ok to think it's not going to work out. Begin with a pencil composition of the painting; it can be crude. A circle will do. Then go in with spray paint and add unrefined details. Focus on an aspect such as the eyes if you happen to be painting a head. Next, go in with a roller and cover large areas with acrylic house paint. Think about the basic graphic qualities of the image. Then come back with a spray bottle filled with acrylic paint. Have a squeegee handy. Now engage in a process of applying paint and scraping and washing out areas. Wait for the image to provoke and get attention.
"It's as much about waiting as creating," said Sacramento artist Gale Hart.
The process above is a loose description of what Gale had to say about working on a huge canvas. She said it's hard for her to take credit for the paintings because she leaves a lot up to accident and chance. "I can take credit for knowing when to start and when to stop," she said.

http://www.rexart.com/stretching.html

Gale Hart Hard at Work

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Originally uploaded by Charrmer.

Gale Hart is seen working in her Midtown studio where she is a constantly creating new works of art. To see more photos click here!

Fast Five with Gale Hart

It's easy and fun and were doin' it here. Every artist who appears on Artists at Large gets asked the Fast Five questions. Here they are, along with answers from Sacramento artist Gale Hart:
1. Favorite color? Orange
2. Favorite medium? Latex paint
3. Favorite surface? Canvas
4. Favorite subject? Human Figure
5. Favorite artist? Jean Dubuffet
For more on Jean Dubuffet visit rawvision.com/back/ossorio/ossorio.html

Skin this Mofo

Jan. 6, 2005 - 7:30 p.m. Gale Hart is waiting at the glass door of her midtown studio, right on schedule, ready to open the door to her world.
It's a generous gesture. You're ushered into a sparse front room where only one of her semi-famous big head paintings hangs on the wall. Then, like the wizard drawing back the curtain, she cracks the door to her mammouth warehouse space and you're in Oz. In probably 2,000 or so square feet, she has space to weld, concoct steel sculpture, cast resin, create plaster molds, construct light boxes to illuminate photographs and anything else that comes to her road runner mind.
She uses the term road runner herself. I'm like that cartoon, she says. My mind is the road runner and I'm like the wiley coyote always trying to keep up. At the back of the studio she lifts one of those roll up doors that any midtowner worth her salt would die for. Outside the killer door, she has built a wall nearly the size of a movie screen. Here, she paints monumental paintings -- her trademark. She refers to a 6'x5' canvas as small. Currently she has moved on from these paintings; not an easy thing to do since was pretty much kicking ass with them -- selling them, showing them beyond Sacramento, branding them in people's memories. More discussion on the big paintings in another episode.
Back in the studio, her new body of work is developing. Based on the idea "why not eat your pet," the work links beloved pets to the animals from which we detach ourselves in order to eat, test on, wear and use for entertainment. That line is pretty much straight from Gale's artist statement. This idea is manifesting itself in her studio in myriad forms: a series of found-object sculptures resembling circus animals, plastic rabbits created from plaster molds, intricate drawings. One of most memorable: an imposing steel rabbit sculpture titled Skin this Motherfucker.
Check back for more adventures with Gale.