Currently showing at Fe Gallery

A Busy Month

The State Fair begins on August 21^st.  One of my pieces for the Homeless in Sacramento series was selected for the Fine Arts Show in Building 7.  Drop in!  The pavilion outside always features lots of fun acts.

UniversityArt on J Street will host a preview of the ArtBra Charity Show, which is now an annual show and auction to raise money for the fight against breast cancer.  The link is here: www.albieaware.org

The show and auction move to the 20^th Street Gallery in September.  I did a fun piece featuring our two pets called “An Imperfect Pair”…you can draw your own conclusion.  So come out both months…Second Saturday is always a blast.

I was selected by the Sacramento Metropolitan Arts Commission to do a mural along Franklin Boulevard in south Sacramento.  The mural will be on a wall of a building along Franklin Boulevard starting in September (of course I’ll be working on it before then if you want to come cheer me on!)

Franklin Boulevard is one of the most unique streets in Sacramento.  I used to ride my bike on it when I was a kid, all the way up to one of the most sacred spots of all time:  Tower Records at 16^th and Broadway. El Novillero is still one of our favorite restaurants.  Great food!

Happy Independence Day

My most memorable Independence Day went like this:  My dad (who is almost radically averse to buying fireworks) was outvoted by the family and forced to buy the gigantic “Battle of Yorktown” display at the Red Devil stand near us. When night fell we gathered on the sidewalk where the magical box of “safe and sane” fireworks sat. Several futile attempts were made to light the “punk”, which was a weird lighting device invented by the fireworks companies to frustrate kids and parents alike.  They never worked and my dad was forced to resort to matches. It was a windy night, but dad charged head on and finally lit “The Niagara Falls”, a medium-sized cone that shot off a “waterfall” of blue sparks.  No one paid attention where the remainder of “The Battle of Yorktown” was placed in relation to the cone and (you guessed it) Niagara Falls became “Entire Box”.  The wind bent the stream of sparks onto the box which, as advertised, ignited in one gigantic burst of flame.  It was as if a magnesium comet streaked across our neighborhood! All of us watched in awe as the Battle of Yorktown went up in a swirling, spinning, sparkling ball of colored flame.  Amazing!  Just as suddenly it was over and what had been the most exciting thing in the world quickly became a black heap of crappy, smoking char.  It took several seconds before someone asked:  “Is that all there is?”  My dad shit a brick.

State Fair

For the third time, judges have accepted my work for the Fine Arts competition at the California State Fair.  One of my “homeless” pieces will be on display this year.  Details next time, but you can see the series at the Folsom Borders Store.

I finished the series of paintings on my impressions of our economic plight.  Everyone’s been impacted one way or the other, some more than most.  The five paintings in this series depict Sacramento’s tent city, which despite news articles to contrary, still exists, albeit in another location.  One painting is called “Foreclosure”.  If you haven’t lost a neighbor to foreclosure, you’re lucky.  Just here in our neck of the woods (Folsom), we’ve seen several nearby neighbors lose their homes.  The fifth painting came from a scene in downtown Sacramento.  I was out walking at lunch one day when a guy who looked pretty much like me (OK, maybe a tad younger) crossed the street in front of me carrying all of his belongings … everything on his back or under his arms.  He had a pretty nice shirt on too.  He looked like he was headed for his first night in the homeless shelter.

The five paintings are moving in to the Borders Book Store in Folsom.  Go see them.  Buy a book!   My web site has taken on a distinctively new look.  Lindsay continues to be a whiz.  I regularly post my paintings on Facebook.  Some are still in progress, but you can always see what I’m up to.

My next “political project” as Owen calls them, will be on the plight of our oceans…something entirely different for me.  I’ll be posting previews on Facebook.

I’ve recently done several paintings that depict what’s going on in our economy.  Normal people like me and you are out of work, losing their houses, trying to get by.  I hope to show the paintings soon.  I’ll let you know, but in the meantime, I’m posting them on my Facebook page.  If you haven’t signed up for Facebook, you should…you re-connect with people you thought you’d never see again.

My theme song isn’t something you’d recognize, although I imagine some of those close to me (Leslie my wife, for instance) think it’s “Theme from Shaft”.  Actually it’s quite heraldic…something you’d hear in an old Robin Hood movie.

I will never hum it for anyone simply because I have a lousy voice, can’t carry a tune and have a tin ear.  Although it satisfies my need for a theme song, it’s not “music” in the truest sense because my musical talent is zippo.

A long time back, I figured if I had to channel my artistic energy, I needed to do it with a brush on canvas or some other surface.  In a nutshell, that’s why I paint and don’t wait in line at the America Idol tryouts.