By Liv Moe Photos by Scott Duncan
December is not the best time to survey the status of Second Saturday. Each winter, the monthly event goes into a sort of suspended animation; it gets cold, Christmas parties start to rival art receptions, and the galleries themselves have holiday parties which upstage their own monthly events. Bit by bit Second Saturday starts to look like a ghost town. Read more »
Different Parts of Remembering
Robert Ortbal
JAYJAY
Through December 23
Sac State sculpture professor Robert Ortbal is based in Emeryville, so I’m not sure if the ‘sense of place’ referenced in the statement for the show is a Bay Area sense or a Sacto sense, but whatever Read more »
This is another one of those crazy Second Saturday weekends with almost TOO much going on! Aside from the usual (Second Saturday art walk, Midtown Bazaar, Second Sunday Antique Faire) there are some great events scheduled… here’s our picks:
Sacramento Japanese Film Festival at the Crest
Summertime is Film Fest time here in Sacramento- we just finished up another great edition of the French Film Festival and July offers the Sacramento Japanese Film Festival, now in its sixth year! The SJFF has five full-length films lined up this year. Opening night offers Departures, a wise and funny film that deals with Japanese attitudes about death. We here at MidMo HQ are already making plans to check out Saturday’s flicks: K-20: Legend of the Mask, a parallel history superhero flick set in a 1949 Japan where WWII never happened, and Throne of Blood, Akiro Kurosawa’s 1957 masterpiece. Sunday offers two very different offerings: the Jacques Tati-esque comedy White on Rice and Memories of Matsuko, a tragic-comic film starring Japanese pop star Miki Nakatani.
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Sacramento History Night at McMartin Realty
McMartin Realty at 21st and K will host a Second Saturday event that will feature photos, artifacts and books on local history. Photo collections on display will include items provided by members of the Sacramento County Historical Society and other local history organizations including the Sacramento Library’s Sacramento Room. Several authors of local history books including Sacramento’s Chinatown, Sacramento’s Southern Pacific Shops, California State Fair, Roseville, Sacramento’s Alkali Flat and Sacramento Postcard History Series, will be present to sign their books. Other exhibits will highlight advertisements and photos from Sacramento’s early real estate development era, including print ads for neighborhoods like Boulevard Park, Oak Park and West Curtis Oaks. Wells Fargo Bank will have a genuine Wells Fargo stagecoach on site!
Favela Rising at Sol Collective
Winner of 36 international film festival awards, Favela Rising is an incredible documentary that tells the story of Anderson Sá, a former drug-trafficker who turns social reformer in Rio de Janeiro’s dangerous hillside slums. The film shows as part of Amnesty International and Sol Collective’s monthly Second Sunday film series focusing on human rights issues. Through hip-hop music, the rhythms of the street, and Afro-Brazilian dance he rallies his community to counteract the violent oppression of drug gangs and corrupt police. At the dawn of liberation, just as collective mobility is overcoming all odds and Anderson’s grassroots Afro Reggae movement is at the height of its success, a tragic accident threatens to silence the movement forever.
Flatlanders III
Nelson Gallery
July 8 – August 15
Reception: July 8, 5:30-7:30PM
Nelson Gallery Director Renny Pritikin’s biennial Flatlanders show is always something to see, and this year’s edition features an intriguing mix of newer talent and artists with long history in the region. Read more »
Rogelio Manzo, La Duda (the Doubt),Oil, Image transfer/Resin Panel, 2010
Stopped by Skinner Howard Contemporary Art yesterday and took a quick peek at Looted, the new Rogelio Manzo show. Manzo’s work is a good example of art that needs to be seen in person to appreciate. When I saw photos of the images online before the show I wasn’t particularly interested; in person the work (often much bigger than one might assume) has a luminous quality that isn’t captured well in photos. He’s got a good control of paint, and the active brushwork in the figures shows an appealing confidence that keeps your eye moving. Most of Manzo’s portraits are painted on resin based carriers that refract light througout the image, even behind the painted portraits. The effect is interesting and unusual- one can make out the hanging hardware on some of them- and speaks to an artist that isn’t afraid to bend some rules.
While I was intrigued the overall effect of the work, I’m not bowled over by Manzo’s actual rendering. The facial features in his portraiture tend to be outsized and cartoonish- they remind me a LOT of the faces drawn by amateur comic book artists with more experience learning other artists’ styles than looking at real people. The same is true of the clothing his sitters wear. It’s as though Manzo knows what a torso looks like and knows what a suit looks like, but has never really paid attention to anyone actually wearing one. These portraits owe a nod to Francis Bacon, and the comparison doesn’t help Manzo. Bacon’s masterful scrambling of features leaves the sitter not only intact, but eerily enhanced; Manzo’s decomposed faces leave the sitter identityless – which may well be his intent.
Dean DeCocker See Bee's,acrylic paint, cardboard, metal, powdercoat, 2009
By Jackson Griffith photos by Scott Duncan
“Art is the only way to run away without leaving home,” a sign over the door tells you as you’re leaving Art Ellis Supply, a comfortably funky purveyor of artist’s and bookbinder’s materials that has been a fixture on J Street in Midtown Sacramento since 1948. It’s something Sharon Tanovitz, half of the husband-and-wife team that has owned the shop since 1976, found somewhere and decided to share. The source? “Anonymous,” she says. “The other one I’ve always wanted to do was: ‘Remember – everyone was a beginner once.'” Read more »
Picture this: it’s the second Saturday of the month and you’re in Midtown. The streets are alive with people eating, shopping, drinking and visiting galleries. A quick ten-block stroll might take you 30 minutes or more to complete because of the sheer mass of bodies on the street and suddenly you wonder to yourself, ‘can this really be Sacramento?’ Read more »