S Street Art District

We were recently at Skinner/Howard Gallery talking to Pamela Skinner and Gwenna Howard and were reminded of how lucky Sacramento is to have this taste of hip urbanism in our own downtown. The former warehouse space on Street that is now Skinner/Howard Contemporary Art rivals anything South of Market in SF or South of Canal Street in NY.
Pamela Skinner has long been on art’s leading edge in Sacramento, first gaining recognition in 1994, when she blazed a trail into the R Street Corridor and opened Excentrique Functional Art Gallery in a loft that was once an industrial bakery. At a time when the corridor was still largely abandoned, she helped gather signatures to develop the area.
Skinner and Howard began transforming the cavernous space S Street Space in 2006, bringing in rolling walls to create intimate viewing areas in a gallery that can easily accommodate more than 100 visitors. The move to S Street proved to be good for the gallery, offering ample street parking and breathing room during Second Saturday.
Other galleries and studios have since filtered into the vicinity including S12 Studio and Solomon Dubnick. Verge Gallery and Studio Project is slated to open later this year just one block away and is anticipated to build further momentum for the area as an arts district. We predict that by Summer 2011 this will be the big destination on Second Saturday and beyond.

Community Composition

Muralists Sophia Lacin and Hennessy Christophel have been creating murals for a little more than two years, and are currently finishing up their 18th mural on the CADA building at S & 7th Street. The duo has caught on like wildfire and are setting Sac on fire with their large-scale compositions. There's a lot more than luck driving this charming pair. Check back for more on how they have built a successful business painting the town.

Marvelous Muralists, Lacin and Christophel

This has got to be one of the worlds great jobs... muralist. And right here in Sacramento we have the marvelous duo Sophia Lacin and Hennessy Christophel painting the town and making it a more colorful wonderful place!

This particular building is at 7th and S Street, scheduled to be completed today. You can check out their blog by clicking right here.

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