Under the light-strung trees of Mexican Heritage Plaza in East Side San José, the South Bay arts community celebrated the release of Content Magazine issue 16.4, “Profiles”, and 2024 Content Emerging Artists Esther Young and Elba Raquel. The August 22 Pick-Up Party was an event only San Jose could cultivate–a meeting point for diverse cultures, technological optimism, and a collective commitment to the community.
The School of Arts and Culture at Mexican Heritage Plaza hosted a living issue of Content Magazine with nearly all 29 featured creatives in attendance. Starting at 6:30 p.m., guests and featured artists mingled. DJ Hen Boogie kicked off the party with his genre-blending beats. Artists from the issue shared their prints, fashion, writings, and music. Guests could even take home dried sage to plant. The plaza’s indoor gallery was activated with support from Works/San José and exhibited photography, mixed media, and sculptural works directly from the magazines’ pages.
Even the food and drink at the party reflected the South Bay’s creative diversity. Mama Roc’s Kitchen brought a variety of Puerto Rican flavors, and Sushi Roku Palo Alto offered a sampling of their high-quality rolls and sashimi. Goodtime Bar, located at Fountain Alley in Downtown San Jose, also popped up and had a selection of local natural wines for guests to taste.
As the sun set, a crowd gathered to watch a belly dancing performance from House of Inanna. Afterward, The Cultivator of Content Magazine, Daniel Garcia, stepped up to the stage to announce the recipients of Content’s 2024 Emerging Artist Award. Musician Esther Young and painter Elba Raquel accepted their awards, each designed by Local Artist Joe Miller, to camera flash and applause. The Content Emerging Artist Award recognizes early-career artists and provides $5,000 in unrestricted funding to support their creative work. After accepting her award, Young took to the stage, opening her set with an ethereal cover of Adrienne Lenker’s ‘Anything.’
The party provided a space for artists to forge connections and set the foundation for future collaboration. The School of Arts and Culture at Mexican Heritage Plaza is a communal hub for celebration, organization, and art. In that way, the atmosphere reflected Content’s mission–both open and intimate, a true celebration of San Jose’s community and its commitment to the arts.
Join Content Magazine for Pick-Up Party 17.1, “Discover,” on Friday, November 22, at The Santa Clara County Fairground Fiesta Hall. The night is produced in partnership with San Jose-based 1Culture Gallery and will be a showcase for street art and culture in the South Bay.
Exploring the intersection of reflection and light, attraction and repulsion, and the soft and raw power of feminine forms.
Pink is a loaded color for Stephanie Metz, a San Jose–based sculptor whose artwork often grows out of her desire to explore meaning in the everyday things around her. She remembers going to toy stores as a little girl and resenting all the pink, girly toys she saw. She explains, “Pink always seemed like it was derogatory or diminutive—like a way to make something overly cute and helpless. I felt like that was so often paired with ideas of femininity, and I just didn’t like that as a little kid.”
Over the years, though, Stephanie’s relationships with many things—including art, sculpting, femininity, and the color pink—has changed. “I remember I was taking a walk with my dog, and we came across a bougainvillea bush that was so intense,” she says. “I stood up really close to it, and I was so overwhelmed by it. But it also occurred to me that what I was actually experiencing was the light reflecting off of those bright pink flowers.”
This experience inspired Stephanie to experiment with placing bright pink pigment against stark white walls to see if she could elicit any reflections. She then developed a series of hand-stitched felt panel sculptures that play with the concept of bounced light. For each piece, viewers think they’re seeing a bit of pink-tinted felt. What they’re actually seeing is the reflection of hidden fluorescent pink paint off of white felt. “I love the fact that the pieces make you think of the effect. What does it even mean to see that bright pink?” Stephanie muses. Throughout this project, the more that she thought of pink, the more it felt to her like a strong and decisive color that could be reclaimed for its strength.
Another of the color’s strengths comes to Stephanie in a more subliminal form. In various projects, Stephanie plays with the idea of push-and-pull. For instance, she has made sculptures that pair wool felt with porcupine quills. The soft warmth of the felt draws the viewer in, but the danger of the quill spikes pushes them back. She also works with silver metal mesh, which gives her sculptures a snaky effect that’s both threatening and entrancing. “I love dancing in the middle between drawing you in and repulsing you,” Stephanie says. “The color pink has become that for me. The more I play with different tones of really bright pink, the more I love them and the more I am overwhelmed by them.” It was this dance between reflection and light, pushing and pulling, love and overwhelm that Stephanie decided to explore more when she was offered a solo show at the Triton Museum of Art.
Stephanie has been a sculptor most of her life, and her work has been featured all over the world—from touring exhibition across Europe and Australia to the Rijswijk Textile Biennial in the Netherlands, the Institute of Contemporary Arts Singapore, and the San Jose Museum of Quilts and Textiles. In 2020, she had a solo show at the de Saisset Museum at Santa Clara University called Stephanie Metz: InTouch, which featured large, touchable felt sculptures that she’d spent over two years creating. Stephanie’s new show, In the Glow, will run from September 14 through December 29, 2024, at the Triton Museum of Art, a Santa Clara–based contemporary art museum that seeks to enhance critical and creative thinking through art. The exhibit, which took her 14 months to create, will feature a single, gigantic centerpiece and several additional supporting sculptures, all of which play with reflecting color and light.
Stephanie views her artistic practice as an extension of her experiences observing the world and learning from it. When designing for In the Glow, Stephanie wanted to push herself to try things she had never done before. “I really wanted to challenge myself to make a large-scale exploration,” she explains. “To experience a sculpture, you have to move around it with a human body. And the larger the piece, the more you have to be aware of your physical relationship with it.” This was a challenge that Stephanie met head-on: the central piece will be a 16-foot-tall and 20-foot-wide sculpture made of pieces of white industrial felt meticulously stitched together. The sculpture will hang like a multidimensional curtain of writhing, body-like, and serpentine forms. A neon-pink wall will stand about 10 feet behind the curtain and reflect the light of the room onto the white felt. Viewers will have the opportunity to walk around the sculpture, immersing themselves in a pink, glowing space.
Size is not the only boundary Stephanie hopes to push with this piece. Stephanie feels that a lot of her work is already perceived as “feminine,” and she wants to examine the full spectrum of what feminine and female forms can mean. “I’ve been in a female-identified body all my life,” Stephanie explains. “I’ve had children. I’ve had a miscarriage. I’ve had all these life experiences. With the female body, it feels culturally okay to share certain experiences, but other things are hidden away.”
Stark among these experiences for Stephanie was having children and the changes to her body that she did not anticipate. “It would have made me feel a lot more sane to have been warned of some of the more uncomfortable, grotesque, and fascinating parts of what a body goes through,” she reflects. This pushing between the pretty and the grotesque, the attracting and repelling, the familiar and unfamiliar, is part of what Stephanie wants to evoke from this piece. She explains, “I wanted to focus on the strength and the raw power of feminine forms, but also leave space for the idea of soft power—like leading through cooperation and collaboration as opposed to leading with force.”
For a long time, Stephanie didn’t feel comfortable talking about the feminist aspect of her art because of the pushback. Now, though, she’s trying to be more vocal, without being heavy-handed, so she can raise awareness for a range of experiences and realities. Even the monumental size of the central sculpture plays into Stephanie’s relationship with womanhood and speaking out. “I’m really excited to blow these forms up to be huge and really take up space,” she says, “because that’s one of the things that has always been an issue for me as a woman. I’m always aware of everybody else’s space and trying to make sure they have what they need, but sometimes at the expense of myself.” Stephanie continues to play with the idea of femininity with the smaller freestanding sculptures and wall pieces also included in the exhibit. “Some of the pieces are playing with these organic and intriguing forms. They’re almost menacing because they look kind of familiar but are also mysterious,” she says.
Playing into this element of mystery is the fact that Stephanie is not positive what her pieces will look like in their final form—particularly the show’s centerpiece, since a lot of science and engineering go into making a free-hanging sculpture. “In the Glow is very experimental for me, which is exciting,” Stephanie says. “I keep repeating to myself that I am making something that has never existed before. No one can tell me if it is right or wrong. This project is going to be what it is. And that’s really freeing.” The opening reception for In the Glow will take place on September 28 from 2pm to 4pm at the Triton Museum of Art in Santa Clara.
Much like releasing the need to control the final physical form of her sculptures, Stephanie has also embraced the idea that different people will have different responses to her art. She says, “People can be uncomfortable with abstract forms because they want to know what something is supposed to be. You can have whatever reaction to these pieces you want. There is no right or wrong in what you see or how you respond to it. I hope people will find what resonates with them.” To Stephanie, art comes back to this very concept—that it is all about making connections and finding meaning in one’s own life. She concludes, “The highest sort of thing art can do is make me feel connected to other people or ideas. I love finding kindred spirits through my art. It makes me feel like maybe I’m not so alone in the world.”
Santa Clara, 8/26/24– The Triton Museum of Art presents Stephanie Metz: In the Glow, an exhibition debuting a series of evocative fiber sculptures. Wool felt and body-like forms combined with reflected color explore themes of soft power, aesthetic perception, and the paradoxes of female life.
The free-standing and wall-mounted sculptures and immersive installation transcend stereotypical notions of textile art as decorative and domestic. Metz uses a nuanced abstract visual language to allude to the contradictions of a woman’s experiences— vulnerability and resilience, internal and external perceptions, and working within and against gender biases and expectations. The felt material used to make the sculptures reflect these contradictions, embodying both the tender and the tough by being supple yet durable.
Sculpted from wool fibers compressed into freestanding dense shapes or sutured from pieces of thick, smooth industrial felt, Metz’s visceral organic forms incorporate carefully placed pink pigment. Pink, a color loaded with cultural and symbolic significance, highlights both conformity and resistance to gender binaries. Optical interactions between the white sculptures and reflected pink light reveal lines and contours and draw attention to the very act of seeing color.
A monumental stitched industrial felt sculpture at the center of the gallery invites visitors to immerse themselves ‘inside the glow’ created between the 16- by- 20- foot ‘curtain’ of undulating abstracted figurative forms and a wall of fluorescent pink paint. Stephanie Metz: In the Glow expands conventional definitions of the feminine and explores how edgy softness can hold space, command presence, and provoke thought.
The exhibition will be on view from September 14 to December 29, with an opening reception on Saturday, September 28 from 2 – 4pm.
At the center of Needle to the Groove Records lie four friends whose bonds have been strengthened in the pursuit of amplifying art. “Don’t put any of our jokes on the record,” cautions Allen Johnson.
“Unless they land,” chimes David Ma. The witty banter among Johnson, Ma, Michael Boado, and Jeff Brummett reveals the camaraderie on which the Needle to the Groove (NTTG) label has been built.
“That’s what our vision was from the jump: Let’s find [music] we like. Let’s get it out there. Let’s not be too stressed on [asking] ‘Did it sell out?’ ” explains Johnson. Their business dealings remain casual, as they’re far more likely to talk shop over a bottle of Jameson than to call for a formal meeting. Grounded in a shared desire to not let the business of records ruin their friendships, they’ve developed a broad musical catalog that stands as a testament to the great musical diversity found throughout the Bay Area.
“You can’t pigeonhole us, that’s for sure,” explains Boado, “and we want to keep that going.”
Collectively, the label partners carry deep connections in numerous music scenes. Johnson and Boado run NTTG’s downtown San Jose record shop (Dan Bernal, owner of NTTG’s Fremont location, is a silent label partner). Boado, a fixture in the local club scene known as DJ Basura, is a partner at The Ritz in downtown San Jose. Ma is a renowned music journalist who recently began teaching a hip-hop history course at San Jose State University. Brummett has been a musical mainstay, contributing to numerous local bands over the years.
“It’s a crazy feeling when someone that I don’t recognize walks in and asks for something specifically on the label. I’m just blown away.”
Allen Johnson
Soon after opening NTTG’s downtown San Jose location, Johnson and Boado wanted to branch out. “There was an appeal to do something that had a higher ceiling and could correspond with the shop,” recalls Johnson. In the early 2000s, he ran Birthwrite Records out of his apartment while living in Chicago, and he remembers the struggle of selling releases without a true place of business. After reading about the history of Stax Records, which started when the now legendary label opened a recording studio in the back of a record shop, he saw how their storefront could double as label headquarters, offering visibility for their efforts.
Since 2016, NTTG has released nearly 40 titles of varying formats and styles. There are the overlooked gems: cassette-only releases like Kiri’s ambient Practice Bird Heads and the Apatheater EP, a collaboration between DJ Platurn and rapper Edgewize. There’s the unexpected home run: Prince Paul and Don Newkirk’s By Every Means Necessary, Vol. 1, the soundtrack to a Netflix documentary on Malcolm X. There’s the rising creative voices of Modesto Latin rockers Valley Wolf, and Bay Area-based beatmakers Mild Monk and mint.beats. Diamond Ortiz, the most-released artist on the label, is a g-funk diehard and master of the talk box.
“Our eclectic tastes are represented in the artists [we support],” notes Brummett. “I think we’re kind of celebrating our differences.” The imprint’s musical variance has become their hallmark. Ma states their hope is for the label to be trusted by listeners, no matter the release. “Hopefully [the label logo] becomes like a seal of excellence,” he says.
“I think we want to be there for the deviations,” adds Brummett, highlighting how much the label believes in letting artists be themselves. “Strange Things” by producer and songwriter B. Lewis is arguably the most mellow track in his discography, while “Jaan e Jaan” by Aki Kumar adds a dash of dusty Bollywood funk to Kumar’s otherwise blues-centric persona.
While all four stress that the label is a labor of love, they also view their work as a distinct privilege that lets them shed light on the efforts of unsung creators. It’s a point that hits home for Brummett, since numerous friends and fellow musicians have found an outlet in NTTG and its offshoot label, Slow Thrive, which releases projects from DIY bedroom artists and under-the-radar bands.
“Those are the guys that mean the most to me because they obviously care. If you are not getting any attention or money, and you’ve been doing it for 15 years, this must mean a lot to you,” he shares. “We get to curate that to the world.”
Next year, the label plans to roll out Valley Wolf’s long-awaited full-length debut, which features sessions produced by Chicano Batman’s Eduardo Arenas. It will also be time for Johnson to step back into the limelight as a creator. He’s set to release Starduster, an EP from legendary rapper Casual, featuring beats from Johnson under his alias, Albert Jenkins.
The label may still have plenty of work on the horizon, but that doesn’t prevent Johnson from stepping back and feeling a great sense of pride every time they sell one of their titles at the shop. “It’s a crazy feeling when someone who I don’t recognize walks in and asks for something specifically on the label,” he shares. “I’m just blown away.”
Each year since 2018, the City of San José’s Office of Cultural Affairs has selected a number of artists in a variety of disciplines to be named creative ambassadors. These artists all have deep roots in the city and have shown creative inspiration in their fields, as well as a passion for connecting with the local community through their art.
The role of the creative ambassadors is “to champion the power of creative expression and engage members of the public in finding their creative voice.” They serve for one year and are given the opportunity to create public projects whose aim is to bring together members of the community as active participants in art. They also serve as a voice of the city’s cultural vibrance by engaging on social media and participating in person in a variety of city events through media interviews and elsewhere.
We are please to announce the City of San Jose 2025 Creative Ambassador Applications are now open. More information and application at: https://bit.ly/SJCreatives2025app
2024 Ambassadors
Alice Hur
Dancer Alice Hur is the creator of the grassroots event series Waack, Crackle, Lock!, which takes place in Oakland and San Jose and features waacking, a dance style that evolved from punking and incorporates dramatic poses, storytelling, and rapid arm movements synchronized to disco beats. Highly active in the street dance community, Hur has participated in battles throughout North America.
“Dance should be for everyone. Creating partnerships and highlighting waacking through these channels can help broaden the audience for this art form.” -Alice Hur
Pantea Karimi
Iranian-American multidisciplinary artist Pantea Karimi’s work explores the history of medicinal botany and geometry using virtual reality, performative video, animation, sound, print, drawing, and installation. Her works have been exhibited internationally, and she has received numerous awards and residencies throughout her career.
“Empathy is crucial in understanding different viewpoints and building strong relationships within the community.” -Pantea Karimi
Deborah Kennedy
Deborah Kennedy is an artist and author who communicates complex social and environmental themes with her intricately crafted, conceptually based installations, books, and performances. She brings visual drama and compelling experiences to viewers in galleries, museums, and public spaces.
“Art is a way for us to process and advance our emotions and understanding of ourselves and our increasingly complex and challenging times. Our community can use all the poetry and art we can make available!” -Deborah Kennedy
Rayos Magos
Mixed-media artist Rayos Magos uses symbolism in his work as a way of exploring the personal, spiritual, and communal elements of the human experience, tackling topics of mental health, social justice, and self-representation through collage, printmaking, painting, sculpture, and storytelling.
“I believe that in those moments of cultural exchange, art becomes a powerful vehicle for connection and communication. I feel that art acts as a bridge to connect us with each other, especially when we don’t speak the same language.” -Rayos Magos
Yosimar Reyes
Yosimar Reyes is an acclaimed poet, public speaker, and independent artist whose work looks at themes of migration and sexuality while celebrating and honoring elders and attempting to further intergenerational connections within our communities.
“I [hope] to align my vision for a world where immigrant labor, immigrant voices, immigrant lives, and immigrant contributions are recognized as integral parts of the city.” -Yosimar Reyes
*The article originally appeared in issue 5.1, “Sight and Sound,” 2013
From his 90s exploits at Ajax to the more recent Naglee Park Garage, Chris Esparza’s impact on downtown San Jose has come in many phases. He looks to take his next step with Blackbird Tavern.
Long-time downtown ambassador Chris Esparza remains one of the most connected people in San Jose. He’s built his Rolodex organically after having a hand in several local ventures past and present, among them Ajax, Naglee Park Garage, Giant Creative, Fuel, and soon-to-open Blackbird Tavern.
Though a local, Esparza was never able to call one particular neighborhood home growing up. Attending five different schools over seven years, including a two-year stint up in Auburn, California, the frequent moves never allowed him to settle in. “It was five years of never knowing where my class was, of being new and uncomfortable,” Esparza recalls. “In a lot of ways, that probably led me to producing events and hosting people.”
After graduating from Gunderson High in 1985, Esparza spent time at both West Valley and De Anza College, though he admits he had no direction at the time. A year later, he got a job working at Santa Clara club One Step Beyond. It proved to be the job that changed his life.
“It was my first exposure to the young twenty- and thirtysomething alternative life—the goths, the skinheads, the mods, the punk rockers, the death rockers, and everything in between,” he remembers. He saw the club present everything from metal to English soul and rockabilly, witnessing sets from The Red Hot Chili Peppers, the Ramones, Megadeth, and Fishbone. The work inspired him to move to San Francisco, where he worked for two years.
However, when his mother passed away, he felt a need to get away. “I took the opportunity to be somewhere else at Christmas time,” he says. Buying a one-way ticket to Europe, he traveled through Spain, Belgium, and Scotland, picking up work wherever he could. Upon his return, he decided he wanted his own club.
In 1991, Esparza and business partner Chris Elliman opened Ajax. During its mythical four-year run, the venue hosted the likes of The Fugees, The Roots, and Ben Harper, establishing itself as a destination for forward-thinking cool. It attracted all pockets of the downtown scene during San Jose’s “Four Corners,” 90s nightlife heyday. Esparza admits he was the social creature of the group. “In a way, I was a natural doorman,” he says. “I liked greeting people, getting them excited about what we were doing, and telling them when to come back.”
Looking back, Esparza sees his Ajax period as a time when he and Elliman could seemingly do no wrong. Arriving at a time when the area was just starting to become Silicon Valley, the low cost of living fostered plenty of nightlife. Ajax was championed by local creatives. “I think they trusted us to curate night after night,” he says. “We said, ‘Look, I know you’ve never heard of Ben Harper, and no one else has either, but we heard this guy’s cassette tape, and I’m telling you, don’t miss this.’ And they would show up.”
Sadly, the club’s four-year run came to a close after negotiations with the space’s owners fell through. Esparza was effectively locked out, with the space maintained by the owners. In nine months, the space was vacant.
Two years after the demise of Ajax, Esparza and a similar cast of partners returned with Fuel, an international café in the current Blank Club space. It showcased a similar vibe, though it wasn’t exclusively a club. “It was for an adult that wanted a beautiful space that wasn’t as easily defined as a café or nightclub or restaurant,” Esparza says. “It was literally all of those things.” Boasting a painted globe on the ceiling, it was conceived from the ground up and seemed primed to tap into the same crowd that made Ajax such a success. Yet, where Ajax could do no wrong, Fuel’s four-year run was mired in constant, needless self-reflection. The message was the same, but somehow, the crowds had dried up.
After coming back to the fold with much more business savvy than he had at Ajax, Esparza struggled to understand why Fuel was failing. “It was a business learning experience,” he says. “You can be good, and you can be the smartest guy on the block, but if you don’t have a little bit of luck and timing on your side, it doesn’t matter who you are.”
“YOU CAN BE GOOD AND YOU CAN BE THE SMARTEST GUY ON THE BLOCK, BUT IF YOU DON’T HAVE A LITTLE BIT OF LUCK AND TIMING ON YOUR SIDE, IT DOESN’T MATTER WHO YOU ARE.”
-Chirs Esparza
In retrospect, Esparza ties in the trouble with the economy. In conjunction with the tech boom, rent skyrocketed, stealing spending money from the venue’s target audience of local creatives. At the same time, the steady rise of illegal downloading significantly changed how artists toured. Suddenly, a $300 show became a $3,000 show, and Fuel couldn’t keep up with the discrepancies. It closed its doors in 2001, an unsung gem that was never able to find its niche like Ajax so easily had.
During his days at Fuel, Esparza began to be approached by organizations to serve as a creative consultant, leading to the creation of Giant Creative. Going twelve years strong, Giant is now responsible for KraftBrew, Winter Wonderland, and the Great Glass Pumpkin Patch in Palo Alto. The outlet became a necessity when Fuel was struggling. It’s since become his main gig, allowing him to help anyone from small businesses to the city of San Jose.
In the restaurant realm, Naglee Park Garage has been Esparza’s latest success. He lovingly calls the 30-seat bistro “the tiniest restaurant on the face of the Earth.” Despite its limitations, he, business partner Brendan Rawson, and head chef Louis Silva have made it a signature downtown eatery.
After the space, a former service station, suffered a series of failed business ventures, its owners decided to wait until the right offer came around. They were envisioning an Americana-themed restaurant with a great selection of beer and wine. As luck would have it, that was exactly what Esparza, Rawson, and Silva were looking to pitch. Luck returned years later when Guy Fieri’s Food Network show “Diners, Drive-Ins and Dives” called. Their segment led to national exposure, and repeat showings now result in a spike of emails requesting the location’s fabled ketchup recipe.
Still, Esparza sometimes has trouble making sense of their subsequent success. The show didn’t change their formula; it only got the word out. As he maintains, “We were great before ‘Diners, Drive-Ins and Dives.’ Why does it take national television to tell you to go eat there when you live in this town, and there aren’t many choices?”
Yet even with his string of successes, his best conception may have yet to officially begin. Esparza and Rawson are ready to bring their savvy to downtown’s epicenter with Blackbird Tavern, a restaurant and café located along Paseo de San Antonio that looks to appeal to out-of-town business folk and locals alike. Much like Ajax and Fuel, he wants the venue to offer great food, music, and conversation for patrons.
Patio seating is set to spill out onto the Paseo. Plans are in place to serve wine from vineyards in the Santa Cruz mountains, and their bar will offer a well-curated selection of craft brews and California spirits. Esparza even hopes to pair food with music. For him, the value in the idea goes both ways—patrons get an all-encompassing dining experience and those behind the scenes remain on their creative toes.
Some speak of the Blackbird space as cursed, the speculation stemming from a string of franchise failures over the past decade. To counter the talk, Esparza offers a history lesson, noting that a taqueria lasted in the space for twenty years, making it through massive downtown light rail development before those three failed. He attributes the failures to bad business strategies. “I know why they closed and I know what they did wrong,” he says. “I won’t make those mistakes.”
A lot has changed since his first days working at One Step Beyond in the mid-80s, when he discovered a wealth of alternative culture. He’s learned plenty in the process, but what rings loudest for him remains the people he’s helped bring together. As a teen who constantly struggled to find his place, Esparza finds comfort in the fact that he’s been able to create spaces where others can find theirs.
The article originally appeared in issue 5.1, “Sight and Sound,” 2013
*We post this with a heavy heart at the passing of my friend, mentor, and fellow progenitor of culture, Chris Esparza. Content Magazine and I personally have received so much from the friendships and connections that Chris created. I will miss him. We will miss him. But the world, and especially Downtown San Jose, is better because of his life and work. We respect and thank him, say goodbye, and rest in peace, my dear friend.
Daniel Garcia, Aug. 2024
Skateboards to Stencils
Growing up in the quintessentially suburban Almaden Valley of San Jose, professional skateboarder and artist Jason Adams was always drawn to the raw vitality of punk rock and its striking aesthetic, or really anything that stood in opposition to the smothering suburban splendor. Around the age of 13, Adams was introduced to the subversion of skateboarding, something that would soon become one of his life’s great loves—so much so that by age 16, Adams was, for all intents and purposes, a professional skater, with sponsors from the likes of Ventura, Santa Cruz, and more. Now at age 45 and basically retired, Adams is considered one of the most influential skateboarders of all time for his raw power, speed, and creative eye in conquering seemingly any obstacle. These characteristics also define his art, which consists mostly of layered stencil portraits of musicians and other cultural figures. Adams first got into skating as an outlet that transformed into a career and then into art, which transformed the same way. For the future, Adams just hopes to find another outlet—provided it doesn’t replace art as his career.
“As much as I would try, I was never good at traditional art. Drawing, painting, sculpting…I never showed a knack for it, and it was frustrating because I loved art. It wasn’t until my late twenties when I had a young daughter and was stuck at home with a leg injury, that I started messing around with making stuff, xeroxing, and stenciling little things. I didn’t consider it art; it was just stuff I was making. Then I found this book of stencil art that showed all this work, and it blew my mind. It opened the possibilities of what can be art and really ignited my artistic purpose.”
Kimberly Snyder developed a love for creative artmaking from a young age and was inspired by sewing and crocheting with her grandmother. Her passion for art history began with classes at the University of Santa Cruz (UCSC), where she explored the narratives, historical contexts, and rebellious nature of some artworks. These combined interests eventually led her to a career in art museums.
Snyder began her journey at NUMU as a curatorial intern in 2014. She has held various positions before, most recently becoming the executive director. Through her work at the museum, she discovered a love for building connections with volunteers, members, and staff while spotting their potential contributions to the organization. Over the past ten years, Snyder has seen the growth of programs such as NUMU’s Annual Juried High School ArtNow Exhibition. This educational program provides student artists real-world experience by participating in a juried museum exhibition.
As executive director, Snyder aims to bolster NUMU’s community presence and elevate its Bay Area profile through strategic programming. She envisions the museum as an interactive hub that continues to engage with Los Gatos’s history. She hopes to enhance existing programs, such as establishing a council of teachers and producing an ArtNow retrospective exhibition celebrating the program’s impact on students.
In our conversation, we discuss Snyder’s journey to becoming NUMU’s executive director, her experience as a mother, her hobbies, which include cooking and bringing folks together, and the words she tries to live by: “It’s not about waiting for the storm to pass; it’s about learning to dance in the rain.”
Join New Museum Los Gatos for its upcoming “Boundaries: the 4th Annual Experimental Exhibition,” produced in partnership with genARTS Silicon Valley and opening on July 19.
OPEN HOURS Apr-Oct THU – SUN 10 AM-4 PM Sep-Mar FRI – SUN 10 AM-4 PM
A (Still) Life of Avocados, Lemons, Oranges, and Strawberries.
The morning before an art event, you might find James Mertke unloading the Tetris puzzle of art pieces and display shelves from his car. It’s been a little over a year since James started participating in art markets, and although he’s still learning the ropes, he’s grown a lot since his first event. He’s created an eye-catching display with hand-painted signage and a variety of shelves.
James can’t remember a time he wasn’t painting. He loves pushing color vibrancy and emphasizing shadows. “I’ve landed on acrylic paints because I enjoy the vibrancy that can be achieved and the fast drying times that encourage me to work quickly and deliberately.”
Talk with James for a few minutes, and you’ll find there’s a story behind each brightly colored still life—sliced fruit, donuts, Botan Rice Candy, strawberry “grandma” candies—simple and happy childhood memories captured on canvas. “That’s one of my favorite things about the things I paint. Just on the surface, it’s a lemon to someone. But when I tell them the story about the lemon tree, maybe they’ll share something about how their grandparents had a lemon tree that they remember.”
During high school, academics became the priority while art took the back burner. James discovered a love of mechanical engineering in 2018 at Santa Clara University. Practicing art became something reserved for weekends at home. But when many doors closed during the pandemic, a door opened for James to pursue art. Commuting time could instead be dedicated to painting.
Looking for new ways to practice his craft, James noticed a 100-day painting challenge on Instagram. Over the summer, he painted a new piece every day for 100 days in a row. With a time constraint, he spent less time adjusting the same painting and simply applied different techniques to his next piece. The subject of his paintings also shifted. “Before the pandemic, I was mostly painting ocean scenes…I would take reference photos when I went to Santa Cruz or Monterey…When the pandemic happened, I started transitioning to the still lifes because I was looking for things around my house to paint.”
A prevalent subject in James’s art is lemon slices. He finds eye-catching glassware from the thrift store, arranging and rearranging lemon slices around them to get the right reference shot. James details the strong shadows and vibrant yellows in his art, but the connection behind the lemons is personal and sweeter. The lemons come from the tree in his grandpa’s backyard. “I always say it’s a giant lemon tree, but it’s a dwarf one—I’m taller than it—but it’s the most prolific thing,” he says. His grandpa remains one of James’s biggest supporters and is always thrilled to offer him lemons. After an art market, James will call him to share how it went. “He likes hearing when I make a sale…he’ll be so excited and smiling all the time.”
After the 100-day challenge, James improved his skills—and his inventory. “I had boxes and boxes of paintings.” He made it a project to get himself into events and shows to sell his work. Since James didn’t study art or take any art classes, he didn’t naturally find himself surrounded by an art community. He’s worked to find community by joining his school’s art club, frequenting art events, and exchanging art pieces with new friends. The art community he’s found is extremely supportive. “Art is about abundance. There’s not limited space for all the artists,” he explains. “The more art people create, the more opportunities people create for people to appreciate art, and the more people appreciate art, the more people will want to support artists.”
Early this year, James was invited to show his work at the Elliott Fouts Gallery in Sacramento. His pieces have been curated into an exhibit titled, The Still Life. James also connects with the local community for opportunities to display art at businesses like Voyager Craft Coffee and Fox Tale Fermentation Project.
Recently, James introduced mechanical engineering pieces into his work by snapping reference photos in the machine shop for mechanical engineering–themed paintings. He submitted a series featuring LED lights, electrical resistors, and 3D-printed items to an art show sponsored by the School of Engineering at SCSU to celebrate the art of engineers. The paintings were acquired by the Department of Mechanical Engineering and now hang in the office.
Mechanical engineering and painting used to be two unrelated interests, but James has found they go hand in hand. “I’m an artist and engineer. I feel like when people think of engineering, it’s all math and logic…but I also like expressing my creative side,” he says. “Engineering is creative too, in a different way. I think engineering and art coexist and create some really cool combinations.”
Content Magazine and The Cilker School of Art & Design at West Valley College in Saratoga are not just partners, but a community united in their support for South Bay Artists. Over the past few years, this community has grown, coming together during the changing seasons to celebrate emerging, established, and student artists. Each year, the Cilker School of Art & Design graduation Expo has expanded, with their new visual arts building becoming a keystone fashion show. In 2024, the expo reached new heights, expanding to include the School of Science & math and culminating in their inaugural STEAM’D Fest.
The 2024 collaboration featured campus-wide activations that included physics and chemistry demonstrations, birds of prey raptor show, a visual arts student gallery exhibition, [a diverse collection of artworks showcasing the talent and creativity of our students], and a fashion show in tandem with the Content Magazine 16.3 pick-up party. The show opened with performances from the alumni ensemble “Hearts Matter,” gallery tours, food, and drink, along with featured creatives The Coterie Den and visual artists RC and Xiaoze Xie.
Guests gathered at 8 pm for the fashion show, hosted under a hundred-year-old oak tree at the new second-story visual art building courtyard. Opening remarks recognized esteemed professors who would be retiring at year-end, and a member of the Muwekma Ohlone tribe provided a land acknowledgment that recentered guests. Models took the stage, strutting the runway adorned in student designs and accompanied by projectors and a lights show produced by engineering students.
The end of the evening was marked by performances from Ambervox, which had guests dancing in the street. Even as the teardown commenced, guests lingered, connecting around the evening’s events. Your presence and participation made this event truly special, and we appreciate your support in making it a success.
This ongoing collaboration with West Valley College is a beacon of aspiration and inspiration, bringing together creatives of all skill levels, genres, and walks of life. It’s a testament to the vibrant and diverse local art community, a community that Content Magazine has long been dedicated to fostering and celebrating. Join us in this celebration of local talent and inspiration.
Get ready for our next Pick-Up Party, 16.4, “Profiles,” which is set to take place on August 22nd at The School of Arts and Culture at the Mexican Heritage Plaza in Eastside San Jose. This event promises to be a thrilling celebration, showcasing the 2024 Content Emerging Artist Award Recipients. We can’t wait to see you there!
West Valley Colleges CILKER ANNUAL ART+DESIGN EXPO ’24 at West Valley College in Saratoga, California on May 16, 2024. (Stan Olszewski/SOSKIphoto)
Our job is to ask the questions that the audience is thinking so that we can all connect with what the artist is thinking.
-Lauren Schell Dickens, Chief Curator San Jose Museum of Art
The current San José Museum of Art Exhibition, Seeing through Stone, is on view through Sunday, January 5, 2025.
The stories told by museums hold profound implications for how society understands history and power dynamics. San José Museum of Art Chief Curator Lauren Schell Dickens has partnered with The Institute of the Arts and Sciences at the University of California, Santa Cruz, and Santa Cruz Barrios Unidos to curate the museum’s current exhibition, “Seeing through Stone,” part of their ongoing Visualizing Abolition series. At the heart of this project lies a critical examination of the agency wielded by artists, activists, and institutions in imagining a world without prisons.
Seeing Through Stone challenges dominant narratives surrounding incarceration and stands as a testament to the power of art in confronting societal injustices. Featuring the works of 80 artists, It delves into themes of prison abolition, offering a platform for marginalized voices and a vision for creating a world beyond prison walls. Through poignant imagery and evocative installations, artists provoke viewers to confront the harsh realities of the prison-industrial complex while envisioning a world free from the constraints of incarceration. By centering the experiences of system-impacted individuals and their allies, the exhibition aims to spark dialogue and catalyze action toward dismantling oppressive systems.
Visualizing Abolition extends beyond the confines of the museum walls by fostering networks between abolition activists and artists. Through public programs and engagements, they seek to deepen community involvement and amplify the voices of those affected by incarceration.
Lauren Schell Dickens, most recently featured in Content Magazine Issue 15.4, “Profiles,” was born in the South Bay and raised in Sonoma County. She received a BA in American Studies from Yale University and an MA in Modern Art History, Critical Studies from Columbia University in New York. Her original interest in lighting design for theater arts set the stage for her interest in the work required when sharing an artist’s work. As a curator, Lauren weaves together the voices of artists, creating narratives that hopefully have a transformational effect on viewers.
In this conversation, we discuss Lauren’s Journey to becoming a curator, the transformative potential of art in fostering collective imagination and social change, the importance of artists in challenging normative representations of prisons, and specific installations that guests should look out for.
Join The San José Museum of Art on Friday, June 21, for live musical performances that will activate the artworks in SJMA’s exhibition “Seeing Through Stone” in collaboration with the City of San José’s Make Music Day Celebrations. Acclaimed composer and theorist James Gordon Williams, assistant professor of music at UC Santa Cruz, will perform an improvisational piece using a sculpture by interdisciplinary artist Maria Gaspar made of iron bars from the Cook County Department of Corrections, the largest single-site jail in the US. Experimental composer and visual artist Guillermo Galindo will perform a piece on his artwork, Llantambores, an instrument made of materials found at the US-Mexico border.
At first glance, the Space Palette might appear to be an alien device. It consists of a large, oval frame filled with a series of holes (4 large and 12 small). If only observed, its function will remain a mystery. However, once you physically interact with the object, its purpose is revealed. By passing your hands through the smaller holes, different musical sounds are selected, while passing your hands through the larger holes allows the instrument to be played. Multicolored, abstract graphics on a nearby screen visually reflect your choices. Though the origins of the Space Palette may seem extraterrestrial, it is actually one of Tim Thompson’s many interactive installation pieces.
How would you describe your artwork?
Before 2002, I was a musician who developed nerdy software for algorithmic composition [the creation of music through the use of algorithms] and real-time musical performance [music performed through immediate computer responses]. This software was a platform for my creativity.
Since 2002, the first year I went to Burning Man, I’ve been developing interactive installations and instruments as platforms so others can be creative. Burning Man provides powerful inspiration, virtually unlimited and uncurated opportunities, and a large appreciative audience for interactive artwork. While music is still a key aspect, my artwork has expanded to include graphics, video, and physical structures.
Three-dimensional input devices are particularly interesting to me. Using a 3D input device can be as transformative as using a paintbrush instead of a pencil. The potential for 3D input in uniquely expressive instruments is exciting and only beginning to be realized.
You often combine art, technology, and music. What are some of the challenges of working with these mediums?
Dealing with complexity is a primary challenge. My installations are often intended to be “casual instruments” that can be enjoyed immediately, analogous to “casual games,” like Angry Birds. A simple interface is key to this, but simplicity shouldn’t limit an instrument’s creative use or depth of expression. I often make a comparison to finger painting—one of the simplest creative interfaces around. No one needs to be taught how to finger paint. A child doesn’t even need to be able to hold a paintbrush. Yet [finger painting] allows a depth of expression that can satisfy any artist. One of my most successful pieces is the Space Palette—its interface can essentially be described as finger painting in mid-air, where the “paint” is both visual and musical.
“Using a 3D input device can be as transformative as using a paintbrush instead of a pencil.”
Tim Thompson
In technology-based artwork, a simple interface usually corresponds with a great deal of underlying complexity. I have a lifetime of programming experience, so I’m well-prepared to deal with that complexity. I sometimes use a complex interface to contrast and complement a simple interface, incorporating both in the same artwork. The more challenging aspect for me is selecting the type of technology to use. New sensors and displays are being invented at a dizzying rate. It’s easy to find yourself always investigating the latest technology and never finishing anything. Deadlines work well to combat this tendency, and events like Burning Man make excellent deadlines.
What does being creative mean to you?
Being creative means creating something that didn’t exist previously, which applies both to me and the people using my installations. Up until recently, most of my efforts involved creating music and software out of “thin air.” With the help of TechShop San Jose, being creative with physical things is becoming easier and easier.
What are your plans for the future? Where do you think your work is going next?
I have been using and exploring three-dimensional input devices for over a decade. I will continue to explore their potential for the foreseeable future, in both casual and performing instruments as well as installations. I’m particularly looking forward to using the Sensel Morph, a new pressure-sensitive pad being developed in Mountain View.
What response are you hoping for when someone interacts with your art?
I want people to realize that they are in control and are creating their own art and experience, especially if they haven’t previously considered themselves a musician or otherwise creative. Most instruments require a long learning curve and finger dexterity, which are barriers to entry for creativity. My casual instruments attempt to break down these barriers without sacrificing the potential for expressiveness or creativity. The response to the Space Palette has been particularly gratifying. The most common things I’ve heard as people walk away from it, smiling, are: “I want one in my living room” and “I could stay here all night.”
Born in Mexico City and currently based in Silicon Valley, Taryn Curiel’s passion for art has been with her since early childhood and has culminated in a body of work filled with sensation and enigmatic energy.
Techniques involving texture, lines, and a muted color palette help her in her signature use of the figure with abstract elements. Her medium is watercolor, but in her own way. With continued experimentation, she is always learning and exploring but remains true to her overall mission: to intrigue the viewer.
Silicon Valley Open Studios 2024 takes place the first three weekends of May and showcases the studios of over 200 Silicon Valley Artists. Weekend three, May 18-19, will be hosted in the South Bay. Thirty-three artists at The Alameda Artworks in San José, including abstract watercolor painter Taryn Curiel, will open their studios to guests on May 18 and 19.
Come closer. Try not to look away. Be confronted, be comforted, hold the question that has arisen between two bodies.
Artists are revered for their emotional vulnerability. Solorio takes it a step further as her chapters evolve from form to form: the outpour of feeling into a journal instigates a ceramic that holds its weight; the finished ceramic asks to be casted into a story; the performance ties all the messages together. By working in different dimensions, Solorio layers the weaknesses of one medium under the strengths of another.
In 2020, Solorio published a performance titled Fruit of Knowledge. In the video, she stands alone in a cage. Naked and blindfolded by choice, she has invited her own body to join her mind in exploring a question together: What if Eve’s choice to eat the fruit was favorable? Above the cage hangs an apple—the symbol of freedom, awareness. At the sixth hour of performance, Solorio reaches up and eats of the forbidden fruit.
What an audience perceives can spark a beautiful exchange of prompt and perception. And yet, what the audience rarely sees is the labor for the art to exist. For her seven-minute video, Solorio received three days of migraines from dehydration and exhaustion. Yet, when the time comes to channel another question through performance, Solorio will gladly do it again. “I don’t feel protected while doing my work,” she shares. “I get stronger from doing it.”
She is driven by the intrigue of self-discovery. Strength grows through the pain of shedding the social constructs pressed upon us since birth. In another performance created during the pandemic, Perpetual Cycle, Solorio filmed herself again. The video shows her running—which, true to life, is a practice she keeps six days of the week. The following scene shows her eating, but chewing away at excessive amounts of food. Then, a toilet: Jackelin heaves and vomits orange liquid into the bowl. At long last, she stands, sucks in her stomach and smiles at the mirror.
The idea for this performance came during a run: “I asked myself, ‘Why am I running so much? Am I addicted to it?’ ” After all, when she started running at 13, her goal had been to lose weight, pressured by unrealistic expectations. Though her daily run evolved into a life-giving ritual, she continues to hold herself accountable through her art. “This came from a real space,” Solorio emphasizes. “I really did binge. It was hard, but necessary.”
Solorio challenges the male gaze and the patriarchal arm of religion in her physical art forms as well. The body, bare under the gaze of other eyes, speaks of attraction as much as it does repulsion. Sculptures of clay and human hair, such as Solorio’s ceramic vagina collection, are as wondrous as they are shocking. In a recent series, a photo documentation of The Last Supper creates an alternate history: The female body, recast as the pope or as Jesus Christ herself, reminds us all to ask why. Why are things the way they are, and what keeps them that way? “I researched,” Solorio says. “I found that a woman could be pope, but the current pope needs to declare it. And no one will go against tradition.”
What once protected now provokes. Solorio was about six or seven, living with her grandmother in Mexico, when she was first punished by gender tradition. Her grandmother chastised her for playing on the soccer field—a place for boys and men, not girls—and sent her to her room. There, she kneeled and prayed to the Virgin Mary and Jesus while her grandmother disciplined her. “She left some welts. Then I had to go to catechism school.” Solorio went, but she purposefully donned a pair of booty shorts that revealed the marks.
Before arriving fully in her role as artist, Solorio taught preschool for 10 years and served as a preschool director for five. Currently, she is a caregiver of three girls under five years old. “I give it my all. Being around children so much, you can become like them,” she laughs. “I lack a social filter sometimes; I don’t want to be contained. I want to be childlike and free.”
The common threads of playfulness and honesty are woven through all her endeavors, especially her artmaking. Solorio rejects a strictly linear approach to self-reflection. “I’m always connecting to my old self,” she says. “We’re all intertwined.” The first version of herself, the dreamer, holds hands with the pessimist born in hindsight. “My very first love was murdered, and I was trying to find this lost love,” she shares. “Looking into the past…I grew up very poor. With not a lot of great male figures in my life. You start thinking about all the bad things, you know?”
But she has also opened herself to hope, which frames her defiant spirit. “I’m in a good state of life where I know myself,” she smiles, “And I will not stay quiet now.”
The first thing you may notice about Stephen Longoria is his gentle Texan accent. In his friendly manner, he’ll be quick to tell you about the craft of printmaking, his love of drawing his cat—or a one-eyed version of it—or his affection for his Texas hometown just north of the Mexican border.
While he doesn’t display anger on the outside, he says it drives his creative process. “Sometimes I get angry, and I just need to draw.” His stark black drawings tell the story about the sardonic state of mind in which he creates his art.
Today, Stephen is the San Jose–based owner and operator of Skull on Fire Studio, a printmaking shop downtown specializing in producing T-shirts and totes for artists and musicians. He describes his business as a punk rock business that operates more like a tattoo shop than a print studio, and he keeps his prices low to support his clients. “I try to keep it non-commercial,” he says before checking himself. “I guess that sounds pretty hipster.”
Screen printing is a complex process and supplies are expensive. It involves applying a photosensitive emulsion to a fine mesh and repeating the process for each layer of color added to a print. One mistake can cause your profit for a project to shrink drastically. Because of its cost, it’s a dying art in the Bay Area. On-demand digital printing is cheaper and faster, but it lacks the craftsmanship and vibrancy of hand-screened prints. The craft, he says, motivates him more than the money.
While his business takes up most of his time these days, Stephen still finds time to draw and make prints of his own art. His Instagram feed reveals his stylized approach to snakes, eagles, and ancient warriors. There’s no real inspiration behind his art—he just draws what he feels. “I try to draw what makes me happy. Sometimes I wake up and say I’m gonna draw snakes today, and that’s what I do.”
There’s a fantastical style to Stephen’s art that’s reminiscent of both Aztec pictographs and traditional Japanese illustrations. While he doesn’t actively emulate these styles, it makes sense that a kid who grew up in a Texas border town in an age in which pop culture was dominated by anime may subconsciously blend these aesthetics. In one drawing, a sharp-cornered cactus grows from a clay pot. In another, a roaring Godzilla emerges from the sea.
What he is actively trying to create is art that resonates with music from his teenage years. He says bands like All-American Rejects and Death from Above were defining for him as a young artist, and the feeling of that music is something Stephen tries to capture in his art.
His drawings—at least the ones he’s shared—are mostly monochrome, which makes them easier to print. While they look like they’re drawn in deep black ink, these days, Stephen is entirely digital. “I’ve given up on ink,” he says. Now, he draws in pencil, then traces the drawings in Illustrator and prints directly onto a film that can be transferred to a screen.
While Stephen is humble about both his art and his business, he has a lot to be proud of. Making a living as an artist in the South Bay is an impressive feat, and Stephen knows where his motivation comes from. “I’m pretty motivated by resentment,” he says again with a friendly laugh. “Being told I can’t do something has gotten me to where I am today.”
Kim Meuli Brown is an artist and graphic designer whose journey began with a Bachelor of Science in Textile Design from UC Davis. Inspired by nature, Kim’s creations blend traditional textile techniques with contemporary innovation. Her canvas, often cotton, silk, or wool, becomes a testament to the beauty of local flora, adorned with natural dyes and botanical prints. Her current focus on fiber arts celebrates sustainability, weaving a narrative of harmony between humanity and the environment.
Silicon Valley Open Studios 2024 will take place the first three weekends of May and showcase the studios of over 200 Silicon Valley Artists. Weekend two, May 11-12, will be held in the Mid-Peninsula region, and Weekend three, May 18-19, will be hosted in the South Bay. Thirty-three artists at The Alameda Artworks in San José, including textile artist Kim Meuli Brown, will open their studios to guests on May 18 and 19.
René Lorraine Schilling-Sears, a graduate of San Jose State with a BFA in Pictorial Arts, has moved from oils to watercolor and pen, giving a voice to what she sees.
Was there a time when you had that “aha moment,” when you released your voice?
Yeah, absolutely. I had an instructor when I was at San Jose State who really got through to me. It was one of those things where you’re working on a painting and you finally see something that you hadn’t felt for decades. It finally just happened on the canvas.
Do you remember what that painting was?
Yes, I still have it too. I was working on my BFA show. My whole series was about body art, tattoos, piercings, things like that. That’s what I had been working on for the last two years at that point. It was a single fingernail. I was working on painting a hand. It was a single fingernail, and it was like, “Oh, this is what I want to do forever.”
When you look back at that piece, what’s your feeling about it?
I am in love with that piece so much that I feel like I’ll never be able to top it for myself. I’ve been offered a lot of money for it. There’s no way. It feels like my firstborn child, because I had such a connecting moment to it. It’s going to stay with me forever.
What was that about? Was it the type of technique that you used?
That’s hard. That’s a hard thing to put into words. At that moment, I felt I finally believed in myself with the title of “artist.” I was satisfied with the work that I’d done to the point where I felt like I could finally own the title artist, because that is always a struggle.
When you grow up in the Bay Area with a lot of amazing artists, you see so many paintings and artworks and people really making it happen. You think, “How am I ever going to compete with them?”
You have three different styles in your portfolio: oil, pencil, and watercolor. Which is your favorite?
I prefer watercolor and ink, which is crazy, because when I started painting, I never thought that I would do watercolor or watercolor portraits. It was the furthest thing that I thought I would ever be interested in. I was always just an oil lover and a canvas lover, but I think there’s something very intimate about sitting down with watercolor and ink, something that seems more personal. I like that. Oil is fun, too, but at this point to me…I’m just not personally as connected to it anymore.
Your watercolor ink portraits have a very unique aspect, with the subjects’ faces missing. I hear it is because of a degenerative eye disorder, is that right?
I have neurological issues. I have a cyst in my brain that causes balance issues and visual disturbances. The left side of my temporal lobe fires at half the rate that the right side does. There’s some disconnect there. Also, I have holes in my vision.
Some days, it’s like I’m looking through a wheel of Swiss cheese. It started in 2011. The doctors still are not really sure what it is. The holes in my vision, they’re not really sure where it stems from. They think it’s related to the other things that are happening. It’s really difficult to explain to people and hard to convey what I am going through, so I really wanted to put that on paper.
Why are you choosing this particular medium—pen and watercolor—for these portraits?
One of the reasons I do pen and watercolor in the same piece is because I feel a lot of times when I can’t see very well, it’s hard to feel grounded. I use the watercolor to show and convey that whole feeling that things are happening. When you work with watercolor, things will just happen that you can’t pick up off that paper. You can’t wipe it off. That’s how I feel with these spots in my eyes. They’re not going away. I can’t wipe them away. The hard lines that I use, that are more pencil or Micron pen, are my way of conveying those moments that are calm, that say “Everything is in place.” That’s how I’m trying to meld both of those together.
How does it feel then, when people are attracted to your work and find out your story? Is there a little bit of insecurity or concern? Are you wanting to share it?
Personally, I feel that things are less scary when you talk about them. On the one hand, I wouldn’t put the story out there, but on the other, when I did the show here, I titled it with the condition that I have. It gave me the chance to talk to 30 people—strangers—about it.
Putting it out there is easier because when I talk about things, I feel like they’re less scary. They don’t seem as crazy. At the same time, I don’t want my work to be all about my condition. I don’t want people to only pay attention to it because the story has a really personal health issue involved.
I imagine you don’t want your health issue to be the reason people notice your work, but it is part of your story. I was very attracted to your work, knowing that you had neurological issues.
It’s hard. It’s a hard balance. I think, for the most part, people…like you just said, you liked it before you knew the story. I hope that continues, but at the same time, it’s also really cool. I’ve met some cool people who have similar conditions. They can see that within the art. They can relate to it.
You’ve had this current series. What are you working on now? What’s next for you?
I’m still expanding this series, but I want to bring more medical devices and machinery into it. I have a show coming up in the fall in San Francisco, so I’ve got about eight months or so to finish this body of work, or at least a couple new pieces. That’s what I really want to do. I want to bring the medical equipment side to it, just to evoke more of those feelings, and get more people to be able to connect with the pieces. A lot of times a portrait is a portrait, and you need something else in there to show or help along the thought process. I think the juxtaposition might be just right.
What’s the greatest lesson you’ve learned in life through your painting?
What I always come back to is a moment in college, where a professor told me to eliminate something from a painting, and I did it without even thinking. I hated that painting from that moment on. I could never get that piece back to what I wanted it to look like.
I always go back to that moment, in all sorts of experiences, and remember to always stop and think and not take somebody else’s opinion without really figuring out if it’s right for you. It’s interesting that I learned that through painting.
Episode #112 – Zach Waldren, Tailored By Design LLC
Zach Waldren founded his consulting business, Tailored by Design LLC (TBD), with a passion for customized user experiences.
As a kid, Zach loved going to Disneyland, where he noticed commonplace items in the park, such as trash cans, were designed to blend in with their themed surroundings. Inspired by Dinsney’s level of attention to design detail, Zach became interested in tailor-made user experiences, ultimately leading him to open his own consulting business in 2018. TBD helps clients, from restaurant operations to hospitality services, achieve their business goals by curating their customers’ experiences.
Zach sees San Jose as his own Disneyland, with challenges in hospitality and endless potential in the exciting and vibrant scene. Zach focuses on culinary experiences since food has a unique way of translating culture into experiences and stories. He believes food is a chance for San Jose to differentiate itself as a city through its cultural diversity. Zach connects his various experiences in marketing, hospitality, and DJing nightclubs to analyze the problems faced by his clients.
Nowadays, food can be viewed as both nourishment and entertainment. Zach hopes to leverage both aspects of the culinary experience by producing Silicon Valley’s Taco Throwdown. Zach believes there’s no better way to bring people together than having 20 tacos in a building on the weekend of Cinco de Mayo. The plan is for people to enjoy tacos while cheering on a competition that will crown a Taco Throwdown champion.
Join Zach Waldren on May 4 from 11am to 5pm at Blanco Urban Venue for the FIRST Silicon Valley Taco Throwdown.
In our conversation, we discuss Zach Waldren’s 20-year background as a wrestler and referee, his experiences as a DJ through his college years, and his belief in family and Christianity.
Matt Kelsey, Printers’ Guild Member & Jim Gard, Chairman of the Printers’ Guild
For twenty-two years, volunteers at the San Jose Printers’ Guild have kept the art of printing alive.
In a world where books can be downloaded in digital format and sending messages is as easy as tapping on a phone screen, Jim Gard, chairman of the Printers’ Guild, and guild member Matt Kelsey, shed light on how the printing press serves as a reminder of the days when communication required a concentrated effort and skilled craftsmanship.
Jim, you have been with the Printers’ Guild since the beginning. Could you share a little history on how the Printers’ Guild came about?
Jim: The Print Shop exhibit opened in the ’70s, and although the San Jose Historical Museum had some volunteers, they worked independently and lacked organization. In 1992, the museum staff, as well as some of the printers, met and formed the Printers’ Guild to provide consistent printing demonstrations to the visiting public. From then on, the group has met monthly, maintaining a shop volunteer schedule, creating, printing exhibits, and repairing and acquiring equipment.
What types of equipment are used in the Print Shop?
Jim: Letterpress. We have small, table-top Kelsey presses, a Chandler & Price Pilot press, and some cylinder proof presses. But our main attraction is the F.M. Weiler Liberty press, circa 1884. This heavy floor model press gives visitors a close-up look at the workings of a treadle-powered “jobber.”
What are demonstrations at the Print Shop like?
Matt: Members of the San Jose Printers’ Guild continue to practice the skills mastered by printers of old, using some 200 cases of metal and wood type, including many rare and antique designs. The best experience, though, is when we put the Pilot press right up to the railing and let visitors operate it themselves.
Matt, you are the lead organizer for this year’s Bay Area Printers’ Fair, an event that celebrates letterpress printing and related arts. Does this event bring us back to the roots of graphic design?
Matt: Yes, the Printers’ Fair takes us back to the time when the printer was the graphic designer. The printer knew what sizes and styles of type were available in the shop and knew how to combine them to create the right look for the customer. A lot of graphic designers today really enjoy getting away from the computer and getting back to the roots of handling handset type and impressing ink into paper instead of manipulating pixels on a screen.
For visitors and Guild members alike, I am sure there is a bit of nostalgia that one feels when observing and participating in the printing process. What do Guild members and visitors take away from this shared historical experience?
Jim: The Guild brings together these enthusiasts with a purpose, which they can share with each other and the public.
Matt: Guild members enjoy keeping alive the “black art” using the same basic technology pioneered by Gutenberg over 500 years ago. I have taught a number of workshops at the Print Shop, and I am always energized by the enthusiasm and creativity of the students. In one day, they learn to handset type and arrange a short poem or quotation into an attractive layout. Everyone goes home with a feeling of creativity and accomplishment.
With technology constantly advancing, what does the art of printing serve as a reminder of?
Matt: The museum Print Shop replicates a typical print shop of the early 1900s, where local businesses would go when they needed flyers, stationery, business cards, labels, and myriad other forms of ink on paper. Now we think of a “printer” as a machine connected to the computer, that quickly produces copies on command; a hundred years ago, a “printer” was a skilled craftsman who consulted with the customer about their printing needs, found the right sizes and styles of type to design and compose the text from handset metal type, printed a proof for the customer’s approval, and then carefully prepared the job for press.
Jim: The art of printing serves as a reminder of the labor that was once involved in communication. With all this handset type, there used to be a lot more people involved: specialists in typesetting, press operation, proofreading.
Matt: It is a reminder that, back then, printing was an act of freedom. In the words of journalist A. J. Liebling, “Freedom of the press is guaranteed only to those who own one.”
Article originally appeared in Issue 6.2 “Device”
Print Version SOLD OUT
SVCreates Content Emerging Artist 2023
Fish swim, birds fly, and human beings create.
In an unassuming suburban garage in South San Jose, a music studio is tucked in parallel to a parked car, storage totes, and hanging bicycles. Often, you can find a poet getting active in the studio, chipping away at refining his craft, hoping to carve Corinthian columns from a career in acting and music. This creative headquarters is home to Davied Morales, AKA Activepoet.
Davied Morales is a San Jose–born actor and rapper who has worked for numerous Bay Area theater companies, appeared in television shows, commercials, and various short films, and amassed tens of thousands of followers across social media. The COVID-19 pandemic allowed Davied to focus on the “why” behind his work. He explains, “I was able to learn more about the business and understand why I want to do this work. I want to inspire people who look like me, and let people know that they can do it too.”
Raised by a single mother after his father’s untimely passing, Davied had to grow up quickly at a young age. He notes, “I know what a bad day looks like. I always try to be extra positive because I know life’s hard.” His work’s light-hearted joy and humor can be traced back to the shows he watched as a kid. He observes, “Shows like Kenan and Kel were huge for me. They represented a space for being goofy on TV. I loved it because there wasn’t as much violence or the huge political problems you see in our community. We’re always getting killed on TV. We can be anything we want, so why can’t people of color just have friends and tell cool stories about what we can do?”
“Everyone deserves to be creative. Creativity is a fundamental truth for all of us. We say in our work that fish swim, birds fly, and human beings create. That’s what we do.”
Along with manifesting positivity through his craft, Davied also works as an improv facilitator for San Jose’s Red Ladder Theatre Company, a social justice company with whom he leads workshops for men and women experiencing incarceration. When talking about his work in California prisons, Davied adds, “Everyone deserves to be creative. Creativity is a fundamental truth for all of us. We say in our work that fish swim, birds fly, and human beings create. That’s what we do. The best feedback we’ve received was from an attendee who said that for two hours, it felt like they weren’t in prison. I want our participants to know they’re still in touch with their childhood selves. There are bright spots in this world, and I want them to see that.” Moving forward, Davied is developing a catalog of music and content focused on sustainable production and consistency that fans of his work can rely on. The work he puts in now is meant to create an infrastructure that will support more extensive projects in the future. You can follow Activepoet on all platforms for valuable information, a behind-the-scenes look at the industry, and something to make you laugh. Davied Morales continues to prioritize art in his life and wants to make art a priority in the Bay Area.
Pick-Up Party 16.2, “Sight and Sound,” was the 12th anniversary celebration of Content Magazine featuring the innovative and creative people of Silicon Valley. The party was an ambitious collaboration among venue host Creekside Socials, event designers Asiel Design, Filco Events, and Illuminate SJ Now!!!, along with supplied food by Barya Kitchen ,and the dozen or so creatives featured in the magazine, who displayed their work.
Creekside Socials is a Google project managed by Jamestown, activating San Jose’s Downtown West. They have a full lineup of community events and workshops scheduled for 2024.
Our Pick-Up Party was the first event of its kind held inside Creekside Socials and was a fantastic opportunity to activate the warehouse at 20 Barack Obama Blvd. With support from our partners, we brought in a stage, lighting, and projectors that illuminated the sights and sounds of Issue 16.2. We even introduced our partnership with Needle to the Groove Records, which made our long-dreamt-of flexi-disc magazine insert a reality.
Guests were treated to a live studio pop-up hosted by Brittany Bradley, a wet plate collodion photographer, performances by 2024 Poet Laureate and Creative Ambassador Yosimar Reyes featuring Ivan Flores of Discos Resaca, Srividya Eashwar of Xpressions Dance, singer-songwriter Amara Lin, Needle to the Groove Records, and Kid Lords who closed out the night. In addition, six visual artists featured in the magazine displayed their work, including 2024 Creative Ambassadors Deborah Kennedy and Rayos Magos, Shaka Shaw, and Girafa.
This evening brought together various genres and mediums of music and visuals, exposing individuals to creativity they may not have been otherwise exposed to. Our goals of creating a magazine real-life experience were highlighted by our fantastic community of creatives, supporters, and partners who are essential to Content Magazine’s future.
We at Content Magazine are grateful to all the artists, partners, members, and community for your support in this project to give visibility to the artists of Santa Clara County.
We hope to see you again on May 17th at the West Valley College School of Art and Design for Pick-Up Party 16.3, “Perform.”
Musician – Amara 林 | Videographer – Victor Aquino | Photographer – Britt Bradley | Rapper – Chow Mane | RecordLabel – Discos Resaca Collective | Dancer – Srividya Eashwar | Artist – Girafa | Rap Crew – Kid Lords | Photographer – Josie Lepe | Artist – Julie Meridian | Record Shop and Label – Needle to the Groove Records | Illustrator – Shaka Shaw | 2024 San José Creative Ambassadors – Dancer – Alice Hur – Artist – Pantea Karimi – Artist – Deborah Kennedy – Artist – Rayos Magos – Storyteller – Yosimar Reyes
SVCreates Content Emerging Artist 2023
Such is Life
A wheat-pasted poster on a San Francisco sidewalk may be commonplace for 99 percent of passersby. For photographer Dan Fenstermacher, the details caught his eye from across the street: an ambiguous lower body clothed in shorts and walking shoes—leg tattoos exposed—standing on a trail with marketing copy that read “on the path to zero impact.” Dan also noticed a burly, shirtless man thirty feet away walking towards the poster; he had patchy body hair on his chest that shared an uncanny resemblance to a smiley face. Dan hurried across the street to catch the convergence of the two. The photo he captured juxtaposes a hipster on a hike with a shirtless man on a city street—both of whom are uniquely getting in touch with nature—and puts a humorous spin on the sustainability marketing technique of showing people experiencing the outdoors. The composition plays with body level, placing the lower body on the poster in line with the man’s upper half. While any similarity between those two figures could be viewed as an abstract coincidence, Dan sees potential in layering and capturing dissimilar details with eye-catching composition to create something new, authentic, and often funny.
Dan Fenstermacher is a burgeoning photographer with internationally recognized work. He’s also a professor and chair of the West Valley College photography program, a contributor to The San Francisco Standard, and a volunteer photographer for the Make-A-Wish Foundation. Dan’s projects blend street photography and photojournalism with clever juxtaposition; his photos are most known for their vibrant colors, use of flash, and humorous composition.
Originally from Seattle, Washington, Dan obtained a bachelor’s degree in advertising from the University of Idaho before moving to Los Angeles to pursue a career in marketing. While there, he realized that advertising has less to do with creative ad concepts and more with market research, data analysis, and spreadsheets. Dan recalls, “I hated it. I started taking photography classes at night through a local community college while doing those advertising jobs. I had a roommate at the time who went off to Korea to teach English, so I figured I could do the same thing.” Dan went on to use his community college photo credits to teach fine art in China, aided by student translators. Later, he enrolled in a graduate photography program at San Jose State University.
“Traveling makes me feel alive. When you experience a new culture, it’s like getting to experience life again for the first time.”
Dan’s photography is rooted in detail and captures reality at the core of often misunderstood situations. “I have always been an observer,” he says. “I tend to notice things that most people wouldn’t consider. I like to combine street photography with journalistic documentary themes.” Each of Dan’s projects captures a range of topics and manages to juxtapose conception with reality. His project documenting seniors in Costa Rica contrasts American society’s fear of aging with the joy and experience seen on the faces of the elderly. His “Streets to the Dirt” project documents Black cowboys in Richmond, California, and shows that cowboys are not just White men in movies. Dan continues to broaden his photo expeditions, explaining that “traveling makes me feel alive. When you experience a new culture, it’s like getting to experience life again for the first time.” Dan’s career as a photography professor allows him to embrace his passion while surrounded by inspiring up-and-coming student artists. Dan aligns his trips with his school schedule and plans to travel to Guadalajara, Mexico, to document mariachi culture. His next goal is to produce his first self-published photo book.
Dalia Rawson is the South Bay’s authority on all things ballet. A longtime performer with the now-defunct Cleveland San Jose Ballet Company, the Saratoga native has performed for numerous companies in addition to holding backstage management positions with the Silicon Valley Ballet. With the closure of that company, Rawson founded The New Ballet School in March of this year. Less than a year later, the school has grown to over 300 students and is the only school on the West Coast that’s been certified by the American Ballet Theatre. The New Ballet School’s first production this winter, featuring Rawson’s choreography, will be a San Jose–inspired rendition of The Nutcracker
“It’s been since 2006 that I last danced professionally. Of course, I miss it, but the career doesn’t last forever. I was just really lucky to work with people I looked up to. It’s been 11 years now, but I certainly get a lot of joy and inspiration from teaching young people and working as a choreographer and director. Our newest production is the San Jose Nutcracker, which tells the classic story with local inspiration. Set in the city around 1905, it will feature a glowing replica of the historic San Jose Electric Light Tower, as well as the historic skyline. It’s something I’m really excited about.”
Trevor Jones is a family man, building designer, and co-owner of Minnow Arts Gallery in Santa Cruz, California. Trevor was born and raised in Cupertino before studying economics and international studies during his undergrad and earning a master’s in architecture from the University of Oregon. Trevor describes the 15 years he lived in Portland, Oregon, as the “cauldron of his life as a creative person.” Inspired by Portland’s DIY art, design, music, and skateboarding scene, he imbued collaborative and process-oriented principles into SpaceCamp Studio, his design-build practice where he works as principal designer and general contractor.
Trevor moved to Santa Cruz in the early 2010s to continue his work at SpaceCamp, raise his family, and, as a surfer, live a coastal lifestyle. He met Minnow Arts Co-Owner Christie Jarvis through a mutual friend and artist, Jeremy Borgeson. Christie, a landscape architect, ceramicist, and filmmaker, was looking for office space, and Trevor had an office in the barrel aging warehouse of Humble Sea Brewing. It didn’t work out for them there, but it led Trevor and Christie to look for an office together. They eventually found and leased the space that became the Minnow Arts Gallery.
Trevor and Christie began hosting exhibitions that featured work from friends and artists they were connected with. Since then, Minnow Arts has been working to create an inclusive and supportive gallery focused on supporting the local art scene in Santa Cruz and giving opportunities to local and regional artists. Rather than having a strict mission statement, Minnow Arts stays true to its DIY roots and takes a more flexible approach to exploring what the space can be through different shows and events. They also aim to make exhibiting art more approachable and demystified for artists. Trevor sees his role as a “companion” to artists.
In our conversation, Trevor shares his approach to building design, reflections on the journey that led him to co-owning a gallery, and advice for anyone hoping to ‘do it themselves.’
Join Christie and Trevor at Minnow Arts Gallery on Friday, January 5th, for First Friday Santa Cruz as they open a retrospective exhibition featuring artwork from Good Knife Studio Creative Director Juan Llorens, a Buenos Aires-based artist who designs and illustrates work for Humble Sea Brewing’s cans, bottles, and marketing materials. Frank Scott Krueger from Humble Sea Brewing is collaborating with Juan to curate the show.
Wisper’s life resembles an uncanny stack of page-turners. Conversations with him dredge up metaphors, tuned specifically to the relationship between identity and outcome. Subjective as art and truth may be, the sublime coincidences within his experiences hint at more.
As teenagers, Wisper and his best friends—Sno, Poe, Shen Shen, and Bizr—formed the intersection of two arts groups: Together We Create, a collective of muralists (est. 1985), and LORDS Crew (Legends of Rare Designs, est. 1986), a graffiti crew whose members grew out of San Jose and drew international attention. For this tight group of young, talented artists, the potential for fame was palpable. But certain threads split the chapters of their lives into unraveled dichotomies. For Wisper, a path of criminality handed him a prison sentence of 26 to life—ultimately, an unknowable length of time for truth, beauty, justice, and their rivals to battle through his mind like restless gods.
He vividly remembers the first time he caught injustice red-handed. As the middle sibling in his mother’s home at the time, it baffled him that after his father’s death, social security payments owed to his mother—$300 per child—couldn’t bring the family clothes, food, or rent installments. He and his brothers were eating rice every day that summer. Then one night, as he performed his usual chore of cleaning his stepfather’s car, he found Burger King wrappers. Claims didn’t match the evidence.
“If you can learn how to operate from a place of peace while creating art, you can learn how to operate from a place of peace in all aspects of your life.” _Wisper
There was little he could do about it, other than rebel. As a creative kid with a knack for detail, Wisper looked for his identity in spaces where originality shined. In the world of hip-hop, among b-boys, DJs, and rappers, Wisper was hooked by the wave of graffiti that made its way over from the East Coast, bringing with it a culture that admired innovation. As the LORDS Crew formed and grew its membership, some of his friends and fellow founding members went to vocational school to pursue graphic design.
But for Wisper, gang membership stood out as the most attractive option. “Everything I was seeking—unconditional love, loyalty, recognition, notoriety, reputation, education—they were giving it.” His gift for teaching was cultivated by their discipline. He could come up with illustrations and analogies to help someone else learn and memorize the codes of membership, without having to write a single word.
The last year Wisper did graffiti was 1988. The following year he was arrested. Once inside prison, faced with a life sentence, he found no reason to change. To survive, he leveraged his street education and climbed the ranks until he was running the yard. The attention and his gang affiliation eventually sent him to solitary confinement in 1994, with other men in solitary confinement “deemed incorrigible.”
In the monotony, Wisper contemplated the value of his life. His path into crime had been a gradual progression of “becoming more and more empty.” As he explains today, “People who commit crimes don’t understand value. If I steal from you, if I vandalize your house…I don’t value you as a person. If my life doesn’t mean something, no one else’s does either.” Even a cup, he reasoned, had worth. It was created for a purpose. Yet like a cup left on the shelf, here he was, a human being locked away in sensory deprivation. If his life had purpose, it couldn’t come from this environment, not from his upbringing, his heritage, or ideologies—which he had been willing to die for. And which he was still affiliated with.
He knew he wanted to change, but change only began when he mustered the courage to revoke his prison gang status, fully aware of the punishment to follow.
Wisper credits supernatural intervention in the events that actually occurred once he lost his status. By the code, he should have died in prison—killed by his own cellmate to protect the rest of the gang. But his life was spared. By the law, he should have been rejected for parole. Involvement with prison gangs was deemed a greater offense than the crime that sentenced him in the first place. But the inmates who would have reported him had been removed from the yard weeks before his arrival.
By the time Wisper came home in 2013, nearly 24 years had passed. His former collaborator, Bizr, had written “FREE WISPER TOUR” on every art piece until Bizr’s passing in 2013, eight months before Wisper’s release. Of the friends who had kept in touch with him, Mesngr was the only one still in San Jose, doing art shows. As he slowly readjusted to life back in society, Wisper decided his goal was to “get my art out, make some money, provide for myself and my family.”
Wisper began looking for opportunities, at times initiating them by reaching out to connections and bringing plywood for the artists to live paint on. As he formed the groundwork to revitalize Together We Create, he also accepted opportunities to speak at high schools and colleges. There were youth who wanted to learn graffiti, and Wisper saw the chance to share about his mistakes so they could make better decisions.
“That’s where I developed a curriculum of teaching peace,” he explains. Acting from a place of courage is revered, but in that state, fear is still present—“you’re acting in spite of fear.” He teaches his mentees to accept responsibility for where they’re at and to apply a faith-based practice until they can believe in themselves. “If you don’t know who you are, you can’t create unique art.”
There are still threads to unravel. To this day, he fights to control the blaze of anger that slices through at injustice. Just like in his youth, he feels the pressure to stay on guard, to secure himself and his safety. “After 24 years of living like that, you don’t just come home and start expressing emotions.” But he knows himself, and he values his life. That deep sense of peace is unshakeable. Hanging around Wisper, friends might not notice how calm and collected he is until he laughs—then, they’re caught by the irreversible, unforgettable belly laugh flying out of him.
This year marks nine years since his release—nine years of using his freedom to help youth secure their self-identity. Often called on to speak and share his story, he is in the final stages of publishing three books that he hopes will aid their discernment. Wisper believes that all people hold a sense of justice, beauty, and truth—but an absence of self-identity spawns a perilous emptiness. “If you’re empty your whole life,” he says, “you don’t know what full is.”
His mission now is to inspire others to create art from a secure sense of identity, free of the pressure to fit a label or hide under a mask. “If you can learn how to operate from a place of peace while creating art,” he promises, “you can learn how to operate from a place of peace in all aspects of your life.”
As is the case with many a music fanatic, Kia Fay’s intimate relationship with sound stretches past the point of tangible memory. She remembers learning rhythm (and math) from beating on pieces of cardboard as a child, of singing practically her whole life, and the music of Michael Jackson, Duran Duran, and Beastie Boys being her first musical totems.
Coincidentally, it was her love for the immortal MJ that first got her on stage with Ash Maynor and Ghost & the City (GATC). They needed a singer for a Halloween show, and with “Thriller” on the set list, Fay jumped at the chance to sing her idol’s music. “I was like, ‘I get to wear a costume, I get to sing MJ. This is all golden,’ ” she fondly recalls. “I didn’t realize that was an audition of sorts.” That guest spot was the first collaboration in what’s now been a six-year journey with the group, whose sound features a brooding musical stew of soulful, jazzy, and electronic components.
The Time EP—which earned the band accolades from Afropunk and Bust magazines and slots opening for Hiatus Kaiyote and the Internet, has brought the brightest attention yet to GATC, whose latest album is the result of, in Fay’s words, an “executive decision to do only what we wanted in its pure form.” It’s their first work to feature Fay’s full creative input and the most direct outgrowth of her “mind-fi” with Maynor, the term for their near-telepathic musical connection. “I don’t fit specifically into one box or another in a lot of respects, so it’s cool to finally be able to make music where I don’t need to try to anymore,” notes Fay with a laugh.
Accepting authenticity rather than fighting it is a huge theme in Fay’s story. Despite years in choirs, she noticed that she never got to solo until she was at UC Berkeley singing with the female a cappella group the California Golden Overtones. It was a refreshing change for her voice—full-bodied, emotive, and powerful—to take the spotlight. Her voice feels like GATC’s secret ingredient, with the music seemingly shaped around her distinct delivery.
Yet music hasn’t been her only outlet for authenticity. Since relocating to San Jose, she’s also established herself as the Curl Consultant, advocating for clients to celebrate their hair in its natural state rather than modifying it to conform to societal standards. “I joke that it’s driven by stubbornness, but it seemed unacceptable to me that in a space as diverse as San Jose, with as many different permutations and beautiful combinations of humans that we have, there weren’t more folks dedicated to encouraging people to exist in their natural state as it relates to their hair,” says Fay.
“I don’t fit specifically into one box or another in a lot of respects, so it’s cool to finally be able to make music where I don’t need to try to anymore.”
She first started working with hair out of necessity. Fay spent time doing theater, where she became the de facto stylist because no one could properly style her hair. However, she never saw the trade as a viable career option until her move to San Jose propelled her to be the change and to establish a space the city desperately needed. “The bulk of the feedback I’ve received has been that the work I do is liberating,” admits Fay. “That’s the best-case scenario for me: freeing anybody from a restriction they thought they had that was only an artificial restriction. Hopefully I can plant that seed for other folks, and they in turn will stand as beacons wherever they are.”
As a person of mixed descent who struggled over the years with where she fit in, Fay’s now using her two creative pursuits to help others recognize and celebrate their own unique tastes and identities through communion and connection. “We have to stop being so wedded to [the idea that] ‘This is what beauty looks like. This is what music looks like,’ and just accept beauty when we see it and hopefully foster what comes naturally to people and stop encouraging them to resist their more authentic selves, in any capacity,” she says.
Tracing Roots: Trinh Mai Finds the Beauty in Life through Honoring Cultural Heritage
Heart first, Trinh Mai aims to bring people together through art. Finding comfort in color and peace in faith, her multidisciplinary works honor her Vietnamese cultural heritage and shine a light on larger stories of shared humanity.
“We have to draw strength from our community work, the people we love, art, and hope. We are drawing from a transcendent source. All beauty comes from that process of discovery.”
-Trinh Mai
Trinh Mai’s love of art is deep, rooted in family history, connecting past and present. As Trinh describes, she thinks in branches—uncovering stories—in search of healing, hope, and community. Her art is a prayer, a process of discovery, honoring her cultural heritage and family.
Shaped by her family’s experience escaping Vietnam during the War in 1975, Trinh uses art as a language to connect hearts to the stories of loved ones. Having passed through many countries, including the Philippines and Guam, on their journey to the United States, Trinh’s family arrived in Pennsylvania at one of four refugee camps in the US at the time. Born in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, Trinh moved to Southern California at a young age and lived with extended family while her parents moved to Silicon Valley during the ’80s tech boom to find work. Trinh attributes her creative energy to her parents, who were both very meticulous, creative, and clever. Her dad nurtured a green thumb and loved cultivating bonsai trees. Trinh’s love of nature and desire to connect to the land threads through her work in symbolism and materiality. Trinh co-creates her art with history, informed by the heirlooms and stories of her family and the deep feeling of responsibility to honor her culture and share that love with the wider community.
“One of the things that the elders and people in general fear is being forgotten. And not just that they are forgotten, but their history is forgotten, the history of [their] people, the ways that [they] arrived here, traditions, food, family lineages, and the sacrifices they made. What a shame it would be to forget about the sacrifices that were made for us to be here. My fear is that their fear will be realized. It’s both a blessing and a burden to carry this responsibility to share. But one of the things that has encouraged the elders through my art is not just that they see themselves and I’m honoring their lives, but also knowing that the younger generation cares and wants to carry on the history. When families see heritage being passed down and honored, it takes that fear away. And it’s not just descendants that are inheriting that culture, it’s also the wider community that we are sharing it with.”
Trinh’s favorite mediums are oil paint and charcoal, but oil on canvas is her first true love and how she found her voice. Trinh’s love of oil painting began at San Jose State University (SJSU), creating abstract paintings. Painting on large canvases felt like creating an all-encompassing environment that she could step into. During her studies at SJSU, Trinh encountered a Mark Rothko painting at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art. Initially skeptical of his work, seeing it in person was a very pivotal and transformational experience for her. It opened her eyes to how art could convey spiritual essence through color and form. Finding herself standing in front of the Rothko painting, Trinh was “consumed by the cadmium red.” Describing the experience as deeply real, it opened her heart to what she wanted her work to accomplish.
“I wanted to make paintings like that, so true to what they are that they speak for themselves. I would like for whatever spirit is living inside the painting to speak. I don’t need to be a part of that conversation, but I think maybe my role is to have an intimate relationship with the work, and then the work has its own relationship with the viewer.”
Trinh describes her relationship to art as “salvation to the fullest,” born out of a desperate need to find comfort through life’s hardships. Through abstract art, Trinh found her footing and fell in love with the comfort, light, and life that art brought about.
“As I started maturing in the art and really taking it seriously, I realized it’s teaching me to see, the art of observation. I realized that was the main lesson, and once I embraced that, I saw how free I could feel painting boxes and spheres.”
As a multidisciplinary artist, Trinh describes her use of various mediums as a beautiful and fulfilling symbiotic relationship, with each medium teaching her unique lessons. She appreciates the labor and lessons that each provides, allowing her to excavate ideas by digging deeply through experimentation. For example, stitching teaches her to slow down, be careful, and have patience. From painting portraits to writing poetry, Trinh creates her work from a place of deep intentionality. Art has opened doors for Trinh to speak to universal truths of unified humanity. “I started discovering things about my family history that are shared by so many other people, not just Vietnamese refugees, but people all over the world.” Motivated by a desire to serve the community, Trinh finds purpose in discovering the beauty of life that can arise despite tragedy. “I feel that my responsibility is to offer life to stories to give comfort to other people.” Art gives life back to objects and stories and sows seeds for future generations. Sharing these stories cultivates a shared cultural heritage.
Driven to discover what it means to have an intimate relationship with God, Trinh is deeply thankful for her faith and the peace and purpose that it brings her in daily life. For Trinh, it all comes back to an essential question: “In the midst of life’s trials, where do we turn for strength? We have to draw strength from our community work, the people we love, art, and hope. We are drawing from a transcendent source. All beauty comes from that process of discovery.”
IKUKA pastry and dessert shop at State Street Market in Los Altos takes its name from the first syllables of the Japanese words imo (sweet potato), kuri (chestnut), and kabocha (pumpkin). The goal of its creator and general manager, Miyuki Ozawa, is to bring the namesake flavors popular in Japanese baking to the South Bay.
Miyuki created the idea of IKUKA alongside her mother, Kuniko Ozawa, a prolific Bay Area restauranteur. In addition to Kuniko’s five other South Bay Japanese American restaurants, including Orenchi Ramen (also at State Street Market), Sumika Grill, & Ogiku Kaiseki, Miyuki is putting her stamp on Japanese cuisine in the Bay. IKUKA offers the deliciously starchy and subtle sweetness of imo,kuri, and kabocha as well as other favorite deserts from Japan such as the beloved Mont Blanc, burnt basque cheesecake, mini croissants, and mochi bread in hopes that patrons can experience delicate texture and sweetness of authentic Japanese pastries that bring out the natural flavors of the ingredients.
Try IKUKA at Pick-Up Party 16.1 This Thursday, November 30th, 6p-9p at State Street Market. Content members will receive a complimentary taste as a toast to their support of South Bay Creatives.
Not many folks can say they have evolved—if not created—a new type of art. But starting in 1973 when Roy Hirabayashi cofounded San Jose Taiko, a professional performing company, Roy and PJ Hirabayashi have cultivated a new Asian-American art form. Taking the traditional rhythms of the taiko—a type of Japanese barrelshaped drum—and infusing Western and other musical influences, San Jose Taiko pioneered the American taiko sound, which has since been met with traditional Japanese approval. The Hirabayashis have performed around the world, receiving countless commendations both for their efforts in cultivating and showcasing a new art form and for consistently advocating for San Jose’s Japantown. These awards include arguably the highest arts honor awarded in the United States—the National Endowment for the Arts National Heritage Fellowship in Folk and Traditional Arts, in 2011—as well as the highly prestigious City of San Jose Cornerstone of the Arts Award, in 2016, for enduring and effective leadership in the arts.
“In the early ’70s we worked with the Buddhist temple in San Jose, and the minister there was really interested in doing something to bring more youth back to his temple. He suggested we look at using the taiko—the Japanese drum—as perhaps a way to do that. So we started with the intention of involving the youth, but it rapidly became more of a community group because people in the area heard about what we were doing and wanted to come check it out and participate. We use the taiko as a tool to organize people, but it has also given us a chance to learn more about our heritage.”
Episode #103 Carman Gaines, Associate Director of Local Color
When asked to describe the San José art scene, Carman Gaines uses words like ‘passionate, diverse, obsessive, and community oriented.’ One could argue that those words also best describe Carman’s life view and journey to the present. Born and raised in San José, Carman tries to squeeze the most out of life for herself and in honor of her ancestors. Carman has an intentional approach to spending her time and the opportunities she pursues but balances those things by focusing only on what she can control.
Carman studied art history and photography in college, learning its potential to impact lives and document history. However, she accepted early on that photography was not how she wanted to survive in a capitalist world, opting to use it as a form of catharsis and personal growth. That realization did not stop her from popping into different art spaces, dropping off resumes, taking unpaid internships, and commuting to a gallery job in San Francisco for a few years before tenaciously pursuing a position at Local Color that would bring her career in arts administration closer to home.
In the years since Carman began working for Local Color, she has taken on the role of associate director. Although her work often requires trips to what she calls ‘Grantland,’ a destination of administrative paperwork and potential funding, she relishes the opportunity to provide artists and organizations a platform to impact the community through art.
While Carman supports the art community through her career, she is also working towards a future that involves a farm, airstream, dismantling capitalism, and mutual aid. In her new podcast, ‘Plan and Story,’ Carman sits down with folks in the community to discuss their visions for the future and the sometimes unforeseen road that will take them there.
In our conversation, we discuss Carman’s journey to working for Local Color, her experiences as an artist and arts administrator, and her inspiration and approach to life.
Join Carman this Friday, October 27th, for Local Color’s annual 31 Skulls fundraiser. This fundraiser supports local artists and helps fund this woman-powered organization, fostering connections between artists, people, and places.
Ezra Mara was born in Russia, where she received her MFA before moving to the US more than 20 years ago. Her work has been shown in galleries across the country, as well as in Moscow. Her quarantine oil-on-canvas series, Ana’s Days, shows the same woman posing against a variety of backgrounds, her expression stoic and resigned.
“I, as never before, felt and saw how our ‘raw’ reality turns into what we call ‘life’ only when filled by human presence and human intentions,” explains Mara. “That gave me an idea to make a series of paintings where the same female character in the same outfit appears in each piece, only her poses and background changing. Her figure occupies a large space in the composition, which gives a feeling of a tightly confined space, a nod towards the situation of isolation.
“During the quarantine, we often wake up with the feeling that every new day repeats the previous one. For me personally, this feeling was an impetus to the realization that…we are solely responsible for our own lives. Even restricted by the four walls of our apartments, left without live communication, we must create our days again and again, filling them with meaning and beauty.”
Mara’s time in the crisis began with a transition from one health scare to another.
“In early March, I had a heart operation. The day after I was discharged from the hospital, quarantine was announced.” The first days and weeks were filled with fear and anxiety for Mara. She began making small drawings, one per day. The drawings gave her strength, and the feeling of uncertainty and confusion began to recede.
“The beautiful spring supported this state of my mind. I have never walked so much…never paid so much attention to the beauty around me. The walking route was short, and I watched the bloom of every tree, every bush, and every flower in my path.
“I did not feel the severity of isolation. I am a person who never gets bored staying alone. I had books, movies, video lectures. I had my paints and pencils, canvas and paper. I had social networking. My old friends living abroad became closer to me than my next-door neighbors. It so happened that due to the cancellation of a flight, our family reunited. I got an opportunity to enjoy the time spent with the whole family for a month and half.”
An artist’s role in moments like this, says Mara, is to use their talents to reflect “life on a raw canvas, so we are able through our internal resources to create our unique days, [to] make our days.”
#69 – Conrad Egyir Conrad is a Ghanaian artist based in Detroit, working in figurative narratives of the African Diaspora. His work blends religious and West African folk iconography within domestic scenes, portraying a deep understanding of the history of portraiture. He utilizes shaped canvases and relief elements to reference stamps and postcards as metaphors for migration; journals, books, binder tabs, and chapters as metaphors for time and the archiving of ideas.
In our conversation, Conrad discusses his process, the inspiration to this current series as well as his guiding life philosophy.
His exhibition will be on view in the ICA San Jose’s Main Gallery in conjunction with Conrad Egyir: A Chapter of Love, a Facade Project at the ICA San José through February 20, 2022.
Conrad Egyir: A Chapter of Love and Conrad Egyir: Chapters of Light are generously supported by program partner Facebook Open Arts, The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts, Pamela and David Hornik, Tad Freese and Brook Hartzell, and Applied Materials. Follow Conrad at @conrad_egyir and conradegyir.com On view at Institute of Contemporary Art San Jose (https://www.icasanjose.org)
This episode’s music is “408” by Jack Pavlina. read more about Jack in issue 14.1 Winter 2022, released Date Dec. 9, 2021 Follow Jack at @jackpavlinamusic Spotify: https://bit.ly/jackpavlina
Sawyer Rose is a sculptor and installation artist who has been working on a project called the Carrying Stones that is currently on display at the NUMU through January 23, 2022.
The Carrying Stones Project is about inequities that women suffer from in the workplace, society, and home. So what was the impetus to begin the Carrying Stone project? When I started the carrying stones project, I had a toddler and an infant at home. And I was drowning under the weight of both my paid work and my unpaid domestic labor. And I tend to be a researcher. So, I thought, you know, if I’m having this much trouble with the advantages that I have, this must be a story that goes a lot deeper. So I started researching and found that Yeah, it is. And that’s how the carrying stones project began. When did that begin? That was in 2014 when I started the research, and the first piece was in 2015. And what was the first piece? The first piece is not here; it was a 20 foot long 1000 piece sculpture that recorded the working hours of 47 different women in the workforce who also had children. Not all my work is about women with children, but that one was 1000 out of 1000 tiles representing 1000 women’s work hours.
And so the idea of stone or the weightiness, what are you communicating with that? The title carrying stones comes from a Portuguese expression that I heard in Brazil. And sometimes, when you ask a woman what she’s been doing, she’ll say, oh, I’ve just been carrying stones. And that means she’s been at work at our paid job all day. And then she comes home and is the pillar that holds up her family. So, I thought, oh, wow, that’s really fitting for this topic. That was very much in my mind at the time. And so, when I did begin this project, it seemed the perfect name.
So, then your own personal journey and period stone were when you were working at a professional life and domestic responsibilities and stuff like that.
What some of the different kinds of stories and research that you found that were similar, but then other stones that other people were carrying the two, were surprised at or say, overwhelmed you? As I started looking for different women’s worth stories, I learned how many similarities there are and how many vast differences there are both at the same time. And so, the topic began to feel really juicy to me because it is very multi-layered. So, what I learned was that women who have caring responsibilities either for children or for elders are affected, across the board, by many different age groups. But I also learned that women of color disproportionately affected women in low-paying jobs are significantly affected by women’s labor inequity.
And, and I started learning about just, you know, out of my interest, like, what could be done about that, you know, once we knew these facts, and we told these stories and put a face to these facts.
What can be done? You know, what can be done to kind of, like, take some of those stones away, right? So, certainly, within your household, redistributing the labor, that’s, you know, seems the obvious first step. Still, on a broader level, engaging girls from the time they’re young in leadership programs is essential. You know, if you can see it, you can be it. And in the workplace, true allyship is really important. And when I say true allyship, it means paid maternal leave, paid paternal leave – that is just as important if you’re asking people to divide the work. It also means rearranging things for women in low-paying jobs, like, you providing health care for less than 40 hours a week jobs, providing childcare, or, you know, help with elder care for people who need that, you know when you’re making very little. Then you have to miss because of family responsibility, that you’re making less still. So.
Talk about your work as an artist. Do you see yourself as a catalyst for change in society or a mirror? How would you even describe “Carrying Stones”? A commentary? You know, yes, it’s a commentary. Yes, it’s a mirror. But my particular interest is in education because when I started this, I was only dealing with one audience member, and that was my husband. And really, myself, and I thought, well, these are all fascinating statistics. But statistics are numbers, and they don’t have names and faces and stories. How can I humanize these numbers and really build bridges to people who don’t know anything about the topic yet? So for me, it’s bringing awareness.
When I build my pieces, I purposely build them to be aesthetically pleasing, and they attract you visually because I want you to come up close. And then I want you to look at the wall text and go, Oh, wow, I had no idea that that’s what this was about. And now I’ve learned something, and I do get that reaction all the time. And that, to me, is winning.
Would you say that your art practice is driven to educate? Would you say that’s kind of like your personal voice and mission? It always has been. I can’t stop giving people my opinion on things, it seems. Before I started the scaring stones project, the series of work was about California native plants. And when endemic plants, you know, there were only found in California, we’re going extinct. And that all started because, you know, I had this amazing plant in my front yard, and I looked it up, so again, it led from research to Hey, I found out something, too. Oh, y’all gotta know this.
Let’s talk about a couple pieces in particular. Yeah. Okay. So, the way the sculptures in the show work is, I first find a woman with an interesting work story. And mainly a story that has some sort of angle that I’d like to share with people. So, this woman, Lauren, is a professor of African American and US history, but she’s also the mother of an elementary school-aged child. And the thing that I find interesting is that women in academia are very, are typically undervalued; they’re promoted less often, they’re paid much less. And she feels that. So, what I do once I find the woman whose story I want to tell, I developed a timekeeping app that they can just have on their phone. And, over two weeks or so, they tell me hour by hour, how much paid labor they’ve done, how much unpaid work they’ve done, and when they’ve done anything else, other than sleep. So I translate that then into one of these large-scale sculptures. And in the case of Lauren’s piece, I made it look kind of like books because you know, she’s in academia, and that really worked with her personality.
In this particular piece, the brown books are her paid labor, and the white books are her unpaid labor. And the very few spaces that you see in the matrix are the hours where she was doing anything other than work. And so, you got to remember that anything other than work means you see your friends, but it also means getting your exercise going to the dentist. It’s anything, so the whole rest of her life is in those very few spaces.
So, that personal work is like brushing your teeth? And exercise isn’t considered as personal work; that’s just other survival.
Describe what the categories of personal work are there? Well, so there are really only three categories. There’s working for pay, working for no pay, and then everything else, including brushing your teeth taking your shower.
This is Darlene. She’s a educate. She works like six jobs. Darlene is an absolute powerhouse. She is a teaching artist. In addition to her own studio work, she has taught in the Oakland schools. She teaches at a nonprofit she teaches to adults with disabilities. She you know, at the time when I made this piece, she was working six different gigs.
Just to both follow her passion and to make ends meet. And one of the things that interested me in this piece was taking a deep dive at volunteerism because volunteerism statistically falls disproportionately to women. You know, it’s work. It’s caretaking work for the larger community. It’s work that has to get done. And Darlene is one person who takes it on. And doesn’t get paid. And so, her sculpture works the same way that they all do.
The gold sacks represent her paid labor, and you can see that there’s a rock inside each one like she’s collected that piece of money. The Silver sacks that looked like the bottoms have ripped out are her unpaid labor, and you can see the stones on the ground underneath. Like she hasn’t collected that money. And the spaces in the matrix are the hours when she was not working.
This piece is called Tracy, and she works full time as an attorney and mother to an eight-year-old daughter at the time, who is a budding martial arts star. So, you know, she has that responsibility to get her to all the practices, training schedules, and tournaments. And I thought that was a really interesting work story, not one you hear every day.
The reason I chose the forms in this Tracy, her personality is very hard to say. She’s rather stage she’s very calm, her Demeter demeanor is grounded. I chose the mortar forums for her work because she is a fairly serious, grounded person, and that seemed to fit, and then the metal wireframes are her unpaid labor. But again, geometric, regular. She is the steady hand on the wheel. So, her piece reflects that in the aesthetics I’ve chosen, the way I think about it is I can choose anything. So, you know, how do I justify it against the personality of the person?
Each piece has little easter eggs in it about the woman that’s about. So, it’s nothing that you would know, maybe unless I told you, but I put little details in that reflect each woman’s personality. She told me her favorite color was this beautiful, bright blue. And I said, Alright, I can work with that.
In the Lauren piece that I was talking about before, I made the sizes of the books. The brown books are the sizes of academic publishing standards. And the white books are the size of children’s books, publishing standards. So, there’s each piece has little things that, you know, besides the larger things like the materials and the colors that I use, you know that every choice that I make, I try to make it reflect the personality of the woman that the piece is about.
Stacy Frank is a printmaker based in Santa Cruz. She has been working on paper since 1994. What Stacy loves about printmaking is the process and the technique involved. She did some darkroom photography in college, but after graduating, Stacy learned about printmaking which seemed like a perfect combination of her scientific illustration and photography processing.
“One thing I love the most about printmaking is the big reveal.” -Stacy Frank
Over the last three years, Stacy developed an entirely non-toxic techniques that are fast and get quick results—using a process of cutting out stencil boards and using those stencil boards as masking and printing elements. Stacy then runs them through the press several different times. Using various combinations of inks and layers, she achieves beautiful ghosting and offsetting patterns from the stencils. Though the results can be unexpected, that enhances her love of the “reveal. But that is what gives Stacy joy in her process. “You never know exactly what you’re going to get sometimes; it’s fantastic, sometimes it needs a little work, but it’s always so satisfying.”
See more of Stacy’s work and her workshop at StacyFrank.com
Each October, Stacy participates in Santa Cruz Open Studios, where visitors experience artist workspaces, watch art demonstrations, view and purchase original art.
Martha Sakellariou is a 49-year-old artist who began her journey earning multiple degrees from the Athens School of Fine Arts in Greece. She went on to obtain her MA in printmaking from the Royal College of Art in London. In 2005 she worked as the Creative and Art Program director for a climate change awareness program for Friends of the Earth, London. In 2013, her family moved to the Bay Area where she now holds a studio space as an independent visual artist with the Cubberley Artist Studio Program in Palo Alto.
Sakellariou’s work has strongly focused on the concept of home and the tensions, realities, mythologies, and allegories of everyday life—the rituals and relationships which shape what we consider our shelter. The shelter-in-place order has certainly challenged the process by which she composes her art, as the dynamics with family and her own internal dialogue reshape what “home” means. The concepts that had previously brewed and steeped internally have now played out in a myriad of forms, manifesting with new meanings. The very act of quarantining at home brings an unprecedented emotional toll, especially in the face of ongoing uncertainty. While intense, the situation has led Sakellariou to moments of profound creativity and learning opportunities. In her mind, reality is “a dichotomy—dream and nightmare scenarios overlapping—so I understood the significance of that moment not just empathetically but tautologically.”
“Nobody should direct what art should be, where it should take place, when and how and by whom it should be done.”_Martha Sakellariou
At the beginning of the pandemic, Sakellariou was in survival mode, shifting her attention to recalibrating home life and observing the world in transition. During her daily walks, however, her artistic instincts called to her, creating a need to communicate something significant. She came upon a serene and beautiful home, envisioning the image of a woman blowing a balloon projected onto the house. After introducing herself to the homeowner, she created a photo mural on the house of the woman inflating a balloon. “The balloon represents a bubble—a place of safety, protection, and containment, but also implies life in an echo chamber, isolated, disconnected from reality.” This beautiful overlay of realities speaks powerfully to many in their current situation. Even in isolation, Sakellariou has found a way to engage an audience and the wider world. She has since created a total of six temporary photomurals on various houses in her Palo Alto neighborhood, which just goes to show that art can be created anywhere. “Nobody should direct what art should be, where it should take place, when and how and by whom it should be done.”
Chris Elliman moved to the US from England in his teens when his father landed an industrial design position at Apple in 1985. Through his creativity, talent, and persuasive persona, he finds himself thoroughly linked to the creative culture and history of the South Bay and Downtown San Jose.
Disregarding high school, Chris landed in the middle of San Jose’s skateboard scene and began hanging out with Corey O’Brien, Steve Caballero, and Ray Stevens II (Faction and Los Olvidados). The latter was one of the first people Chris met when he came to San Jose.
In the early 1990s, Chris found himself working as a decor designer at the now-defunct nightclub One Step Beyond, occasionally DJing with records he had acquired while a display artist at Tower Records on Bascom Avenue in Campbell.
Moving on to Metro Newspapers as a graphic designer, he met Chris Esparza (owner of Naglee Park Garage and Giant Creative). The two of them developed underground parties called the “King of Club,” which they used to co-found the club Ajax (pronounced “Ai-yax”) in 1991. Named after the Dutch football team, the now legendary South First Street club, formerly located above Cafe Stritch, closed in 1995.
Searching for what to do next, Chris nearly headed to Portland, Oregon, but was offered a warehouse space in the American Can building on South 5th and Virginia. He has both subleased it as an artist collective and used it as a studio himself for the last 30 years.
In his studio, lightly littered with a design and visual history of San Jose and framed by shelves of albums, Chris speaks about his paintings. (We’ll save his cycling and graphic work for another time…)
“Life cycle”
I think I have the courage to make many mistakes, which allows me to grow from those mistakes. What I paint is life—my surroundings, what I see, people. I like to think that, in every one of my paintings, I am communicating about culture…I think paintings should say something.
I’m not saying there’s anything wrong with aesthetically pleasing paintings. Aesthetics is a great thing. It’s got its place. I’m OK with that. Sometimes, I do things that are strictly aesthetic, but I like to think that most of what I do has a social or political charge to it, a psychological charge.
I’m looking at society and what is almost an illness or a psychological situation. I feel like I’m trying to paint a little bit of that into each piece, so there is definitely something behind every piece.
I like to say that most of these paintings—maybe all of these paintings—are like portals.
There’s a flat surface that you see, but what is really taking place is what is behind that surface. There’s a story.
With abstract painting, abstract art, you bring your story to it and it completes the paintings. I feel like everyone has a story and these paintings get completed with their stories.
It’s like truth. Everyone’s got their own truth. Truth’s ever-changing…
“Systematic Deconstruction”
This particular painting is not actually completed. My concept of finishing this painting is when someone purchases it, we’ll go to a target range and we’ll shoot. I’ll allow them the choice. They can shoot holes through it, which would be ideal. That way, they have now become a part of this piece. Or we’ll allow the instructor or whoever it is to do the shooting [laughs] if they don’t feel like doing it.
“America: Stars and Strikes”
The Mickey Mouse and the figures, which were a couple of friends who modeled for me, represent for me…what was behind this is “American Apparel.”
You’ve got two young models, fairly innocent in their attire, which is just underwear, yet provocatively posed.
In America, everyone’s trying to be a celebrity or successful, so there’s a fine line in Hollywood between starting out as an innocent Disney character star and then moving over into pop music or movies. Those who “make it” are the stars. Those who don’t are the strikes.
The innocence is in the Mickey and Minnie Mouse. It represents what is behind this American Apparel. There’s a fine line…that goes down the path of, “I didn’t make it in Hollywood but I became a porn star,” or “I became a sleazy magazine advertising model.”
For me, it’s just a hard hit on Hollywood and the media and what drives people.
“A Visual Discourse in Non-objective Cageian Randomness”
Right now, I have moved on to what is a “Cagean” philosophy, from John Cage, the composer, who was a Buddhist practitioner and who studied “randomness.”
I’ve been exploring John Cage and his thoughts about randomness in a few pieces. He composed music randomly because he felt that was more natural, and I felt like that’s what I was doing. I read this book on John Cage so I could understand him better. I felt like there was a great connection. I was actually doing what he was talking about through some of these pieces. Then I thought I’d explore it a little bit further.
Then the X’s. Yeah, I created the X’s, so they’re all the same size. I cut them out and threw them down, and allowed them to land randomly. There are 27 X’s because I’m very fond of the number three. Those X’s were thrown down randomly, and wherever they land, that is the serendipitous part, the randomness. They just land, and I’m not going to dictate that.
Those colors aren’t my favorite colors. However, I did have those colors. I had at some point chosen those colors. Since I have these pots of paint, I decide to randomly select this bunch of paints and looked at them and said, “OK, I’m going to use those.”
As a designer, I’m fighting it a little bit, thinking to myself, “Oh, I wish I hadn’t had that color.” [laughs] But I’m going to go along with the experiment, exploring, and I’m going to allow that color to stay because that’s what Cage was doing.
“Serendipitous Deconstruction no.2: Pussy Riot”
I had loosely called it “Serendipitous Deconstruction” because I was deconstructing what I was building. Serendipitously finding interesting things in the piece, and allowing what I thought was interesting to remain.
Each time I did something, I allowed the interesting portions to remain, so it was serendipitously deconstructed.
“The World is Flat But It’s an Un-level Playing Field”
This is geographical. It is all the countries of the “round of 16” of the World Cup, placed geographically. Russia, Japan, Korea, Australia, Argentina, Chile, the United States, and Mexico—all connected to the nations they played against. Each game is strung up together.
I changed the colors in the spaces, but all of these shapes were created because of the outcome of the games. I mean, anyone could have won the World Cup, right? Random.
That’s the eye of the artist—you recognize what could potentially become art.
The Voice of San Jose
Originally appeared in issue 5.4, “Form,” 2013.
Bob Kieve has been in a love affair for almost three-quarters of a century. Even at the age of 91, Kieve nourishes that love as president of Empire Broadcasting, which owns KLIV-AM, a news radio station, and Hot Country 95.3 KRTY in San Jose.
The San Jose segment of this love affair began in 1967 when Kieve bought radio stations with business partner James M. Trayhern Jr. Although programming has transformed through the decades, today KLIV is Silicon Valley’s only all-news radio station.
Back in 1939, when Kieve was a freshman at Harvard University, he started working for the college radio station and quickly fell in love with it. “I thought, ‘Gee, that’s sexy,’ and I went for it.”
After graduating in 1943 with a degree in English literature, he found a way to continue that love affair—he wanted to travel, use his ability to speak German and work in radio. So he signed up with the US war effort, where he was promptly sent to Spain and worked in the Office of War Information. The fact that he didn’t speak Spanish was irrelevant. “I wanted to get involved with my love, radio,” Kieve says.
He spent three and a half years in Madrid with propaganda programming during the war and later helped start Madrid’s first Top 40 radio station. To this day, Kieve says, “I am known as the father of Top 40 in Madrid.”
A brief detour from the radio had him at the front door of history. Thanks to his boss in Madrid, who went on to be chief speechwriter during Dwight Eisenhower’s campaign, Kieve landed in Washington. “I was the guy who had a very important job. I was the guy who drafted letters to people who celebrated their 50th wedding anniversaries.” Copies of letters that Kieve composed, marked in Eisenhower’s handwriting, adorn Kieve’s office walls. “Eisenhower edited them. He wanted it his way.”
After serving under press secretary James C. Hagerty in the early 1950s, Kieve returned to local radio in New York state, in “Rottenchester,” as he put it. After several years, when that station was sold, he and a couple of coworkers decided to buy their own radio station. “We didn’t know where the hell we were going to get one,” he says. They got word that one was available “somewhere near San Francisco.” That “somewhere” was San Jose, and he has continued in radio ever since.
A now-familiar KLIV voice was on the air back then. “John McLeod was the only person sitting in the studio on July 1, 1967, when I first took the key and opened the radio station,” Kieve says. Today, McLeod reports weekday traffic from 6 to 10 am and 3 to 7 pm. Empire Broadcasting now has 50 full- and part-time employees.
The programming has changed over the years. First, surfer music (think Beach Boys) led the play list, then Top 40 and disco. At one point, “the music of your life” had its turn (that translates into Sinatra and ballads; “That didn’t work,” Kieve recalls), and eventually, news radio.
The news radio format has stuck since 1982, concentrating on San Jose news, weather, traffic, and sports. KLIV broadcasts all San Jose Earthquakes games as well as San Jose State University football and basketball. “It’s working, but it’s not a money maker,” Kieve concedes. “KLIV is a station that we like to see break even. We’re trying to establish ourselves as the San Jose station. If we’re going to go all news, we better have a niche.”
Right now, that niche is everything San Jose. Approximately every seven minutes during the day, KLIV broadcasts live local traffic reports. “Look out for a garbage can on the first lane,” one recent report shared.
“Through [radio] you can communicate with a large number of people in a community and hopefully have some impact.”
A segment called Economy and Silicon Valley airs weekdays around 55 past the hour, from 5:55 am to 9:55 pm and various times on weekends. Find out about the local pollen count at 7:45 am weekdays, and stock reports that focus on Silicon Valley stocks air weekdays at approximately 25 minutes past the hour from 7:25 am to 6:25 pm. There’s even news about produce about 43 past the hour from 9 am to 6 pm weekdays, when Phil Cosentino from J+P Farms presents tips and information about fruits and vegetables during The Produce Report.
Kieve broadcasts his own particular views in his commentaries, which end with, “This is Robert Kieve, and that’s a personal opinion.” His commentaries air on KLIV, KARA, and KRTY in San Jose, perhaps once a week, sometimes three times a week—really, whenever inspiration strikes. Recent topics have included the gentlemen’s club downtown, Cindy Chavez, pension reform, local airports, and his own pet peeve, signs. “My big issue is signage. One of
the mistakes our city and county in general, make is that they restrict signage. They’re restricting commerce.”
Today, even after 74 years in the business, Kieve does not have all of the answers and ponders the future of radio. “It’s going to have to morph in some way because of the presence of the Internet,” he says. To that end, Empire Broadcasting has embraced the World Wide Web and has three Internet-only stations: head to everybodysmusic.com, where you’ll find Beethoven Only, KRTY Classic (country), and Big Band Central.
“I was looking for something at the time. I realized it was possible to have other radio stations to take advantage of the Internet. Wouldn’t it be sexy to have all Beethoven?” He says that station has more listeners tuning in from Europe than it does here in the United States.
So why does he love radio? “The fact that through it you can communicate with a large number of people in a community and hopefully have some impact.”
Kieve’s own personal impact won’t end anytime soon, despite turning 92 in November. “I really don’t have my eye on retiring. What the hell would I do?”
Askull, a pelvis, some vertebrae—warmly familiar ivory tones and archetypal shapes resonating deep in our memories. Looking closer, the shapes lack the sharp edges of bone. They are fibrous and irresistibly tangible. Stephanie Metz’s studio is filled with such contradictions. Can bone be soft and warm? Can folds of flesh be firm? Everything requires a second look. Each piece provokes.
Bay Area native Metz grew up in Sunnyvale. After studying sculpture at the University of Oregon, she settled back in San Jose with her high tech husband. “When I came back, I didn’t have any connection with anybody art-related around here,” says Metz. With a vague inclination toward animatronics, she put together her portfolio and ended up getting a job with a company in Hayward that did themed environments like the pyramid outside of Fry’s Electronics. She enjoyed the hands-on making part of the job the most, she says. “Just getting back there and doing huge things out of Styrofoam with a chainsaw.” Being told how to produce something was less enjoyable, and the job only lasted a year.
“It’s like alchemy—you take it from one form, and then you do something to it, and it’s another form.”
Metz next tried her hand at working in a frame store. “It was good and it was maddening,” she says. The job brought her into contact with WORKS San Jose, where she did everything from writing grants to becoming president of their all-volunteer board. “It was a good learning experience from the other side in knowing what it’s like to hang a show. I feel as artists we have to work twice as hard to show that we are responsible, thinking business people.”
At the frame shop, she first came across her medium of choice: wool. Someone gave her a Sunset Magazine article about making a little drink cozy out of felt. By simply wrapping a cup in wool and dunking it in hot soapy water, a solid thing could be created. “I was thinking it’s like alchemy—you take it from one form, and then you do something to it, and it’s another form. I went to a local yarn store and was immediately directed to a book on needle felting.”
The process proved fascinating and infinitely variable. By compacting the fibers together with a needle, the resulting felt can be shaped into any form Metz imagines. It can be built up or stripped down, compacted as densely as she desires. “For me, a lot of it is the dichotomy between hard and soft, and sharp and round,” says Metz.
To create the felt, Metz forces the fibers together with really sharp needles notched in one direction. The scales on the fibers interlock and hold tightly together. Although the concept is simple, it affords Metz almost infinite control. Even large forms don’t need much structure because the tightly-bound network of fibers creates its own armature.
Challenging the way humans have shaped their environment is part of what drives Metz. “It came together in a really nice way to use this organic, really alive-looking stuff to talk about how we shape the world around us.” Her “Teddy Bear Natural History” series explores the anatomy of a found teddy bear with distended snout, oversized eyes and sharp teeth normally hidden behind the fur. Metz explains that the teddy bears evolved out of her experiments with sheep skulls because she was “interested in looking at the hardest part of the animal and making it out of this soft material, but also giving them teeth and thinking about the fact that they’re based on this real creature that could eat any one of us.” The toys mirror the way our culture morphs unpalatable predators into more socially acceptable shapes.
But not everyone feels comfortable with the bears. “Just like with all my work, I find out who’s kind of a kindred spirit and who’s not. Some people see these [skulls] as signs of death, or the death of a childhood icon, and I don’t see them that way at all. For me, they’re specimens of life. Looking at bones talks about what happened in life. It’s not death and gore. It’s the evidence left behind.”
After two years at WORKS, Metz had her first child. Some of her peers made comments about choosing children over art as if the two choices were mutually exclusive. “That probably made me work harder,” says Metz. “I still have things that are galvanizing to me and I feel the need to make something tangible.”
One of Metz’s pieces was featured in the “Milestones: Textiles of Transition” exhibition at the San Jose Museum of Quilts and Textiles (July 21, 2013). From the “Pelts” series, the work featured a baptismal gown fringed with hair. “When I had kids, suddenly I was so in touch with the fact that I am a mammal,” says Metz. “One way we differentiate ourselves from other mammals is we change our hair for aesthetics. Try to grow it in certain places and not in others. I was having the hair come through different clothing pieces as if it were trying to reassert itself—like ivy or moss.”
Having a home studio, Metz’s kids find it “totally normal for mom to be poking wool in the back room.” Her older son loves to draw and already identifies himself as an artist. Her children respect her space and, much as they want to try, she never lets them near the needles. “After ten years of doing it, I still poke myself and it is wickedly painful.”
Her work is becomingly increasingly abstract and large. She is exploring new ways for people to interact with her pieces. “From further away it looks kind of cool and minimalist, clean lines,” says Metz. “But when you get up closer, you see this texture and want to touch it—although you know you’re not supposed to. It makes you think about how physically present it is.”
There is no mystery about her process. Metz has painstakingly documented her work in time-lapse video. “Art is so alienating to people so that’s why I talk about how I do this. I want it to be an entry point, so people can interact with it and feel like art is a part of their lives.”
Metz’s work is certainly physical. It has weight and texture and tugs at something deep in the psyche. Much of it makes me smile. “That’s what I hope to affect in people—that they take a moment in their life and see something differently.”
The article originally appeared in Issue 5.2 “Invent” Print issue SOLD OUT
Suhita Shirodkar, a local artist involved in the Urban Sketchers Movement, fills the pages of her journals with watercolor sketches capturing snippets of everyday life. Rather than rough pencil-drawn outlines, Shirodkar composes intricate watercolor sketches of her surroundings, such as the façade of the historical California Theatre in downtown San Jose (pictured below).
What is the Urban Sketchers Movement?
Urban sketching is about drawing on location, drawing the world around you, and creating visual storytelling and reportage. It is different from other forms of drawing on location, like plein air painting, in that it is not just about color, line, tone, and painting, but also about being a part of the world around you, and sharing it through your sketches.
How did you become a part of the Urban Sketchers Movement?
I always drew in a sketchbook, and while some of my work is purely from my imagination, a lot of it is just capturing snippets of life around me. One question I constantly got when I drew was “What will you do with these? Will you make paintings of them?”—which really confused me. I see what I create in my sketchbooks as my art; it records how I see something or react to my environment in the moment. To refine, gloss over, or recreate a more “finished” form would be to lose that first, immediate, and fresh vision.
I found the work of urban sketchers on Flickr and found that there was a growing community of people worldwide who did just what I did. So, I started sharing my work online through their Flickr group and found this treasure trove of a community!
“Watercolor seems to have its own mind.”
-Suhita Shirodkar
How do you choose your locations?
Sometimes I choose locations based on an idea or a current obsession. Right now, I am on a hunt to find the fast disappearing artifacts of a time before Silicon Valley was as it is today: vintage signs, old-fashioned diners, old buildings…things that harken back to an earlier time, a different aesthetic, and just a very different place than what Silicon Valley is now.
Often, I don’t pick my locations; it is just where I am. I draw on family vacations: Mexico, Hawaii, India, all of it makes its way into my sketchbook. I draw at home. I enjoy it all; it helps me look at the world around me with the fresh and inquisitive eye of a traveler.
And then there is just my everyday life: I sketch in parking lots, when I have 20 minutes before a meeting, I sketch my kids as they play, as they eat dinner. Everything is fodder for my sketchbook. It’s a visual diary I look back at over time.
What is it about vintage signs and landmarks that attract you?
As a first generation immigrant that has only seen Silicon Valley in its present incarnation [Shirodkar moved here from India in 2000], it is fascinating to look at these landmarks and buildings that speak of a different time. It is also sad to see how quickly they are disappearing and being replaced by homogenous malls, parking lots, and chain stores. I feel a need to draw them all before they are gone.
I have only been drawing and blogging these vintage signs for a couple of months now, but I already have people writing to me to tell me about signs in the area I haven’t drawn, things that are going to be torn down, sold, closed…I love that connection with people, that sharing of knowledge. I love that people actually want to see me go out and sketch something they remember from a long time ago. It speaks to the power of a sketch, that someone might want to see this place captured as I see it.
How long have you been painting?
I have drawn and painted most of my life, but this current form of working on location in watercolors? I’ve been doing it for almost five years.
Why watercolor?
Watercolor is, perhaps deceptively, simple and versatile: I carry around a compact little kit with me everywhere, so I can paint as soon as something catches my eye. Watercolor also reacts beautifully to the environment. For example, on a muggy day, it sits wet on the page, refusing to dry, and I’m forced to work wet-in-wet, resulting in a piece that reflects the day.
Watercolor seems to have its own mind. You never control it completely, but it often surprises you with beautiful mixing and textures. The accidents and mistakes, the stuff you cannot correct and cover up in this transparent medium, I love those. They say so much.
Shirodkar’s book of vintage San Jose signs in urban sketches, Sign of the Times, can be purchased on her Etsy site.
Article originally appeared in Issue 6.2 “Device” Print version SOLD OUT
RRedemption Boutique owner Tammy Liu has watched the items we buy become increasingly disposable. While a low-priced tee from your local big box might work as a one-off, she believes, a beautiful garment made by hard-working, passionate hands can become a keepsake to treasure forever.
Liu’s mother was a maker. When she and her husband moved to the US from Taiwan for her husband to attend college, they brought everything she had made with them: clothes, curtains, an entire household. They didn’t have the luxury of discarding their belongings to later replace them; nor could they ever replace what Liu’s mother had lovingly made.
When Liu was two years old, her mother made her a plaid velvet dress with lace tulle lining and a Peter Pan collar. Liu says, “The dress that my mom made me—it made my year.” Over time, Liu became more conscious of the meaning behind the items her mother made—this appreciation for scarcity became the root of her buying mantra.
Inspired by her mother’s craft, Liu’s been determined to work in fashion and open her own store since she was a child. After graduating from Cal Poly with a business degree, she began working in a small Bay Area–based boutique as a sales associate. She was soon managing several stores and ready to break out on her own.
“It had always been a solo mission,” says Liu. But then Liu spent a year in Australia, where she met Dave MacGregor-Scholes. Connected by their mutual love of “thrifting,” they discussed Liu’s ideas for her dream clothing store and expanded the concept into a lifestyle emporium, one that would promote quality over disposability and offer ethically, locally made goods instead of generic products.
Back in the US, Liu had to find the right location to make her and MacGregor-Scholes’s vision a reality. While Liu was considering how much capital would be required to launch a startup given pricey Bay Area rents, the downtown Campbell space practically fell into her lap: 1000 square feet of shop space in a prime location on Campbell Avenue.
Liu’s customers endorse her ideals and support local, handmade goods. Says Liu, “The majority of my customers are just like me: 30-somethings who want to feel good about their purchases.”
Documentaries about poor working conditions in clothing factories inspired Liu to research production methods. Wanting to reach artists who could produce merchandise for her space, she started looking for creative craftspeople in California. “I wanted to design a collective space that showcases the talent all around us,” says Liu.
Liu made it her mission to personally meet every artisan and visit his or her workshop. By being selective, she hoped to find people who shared her passion for quality.
When she finally opened in May 2015, she had 40 vendors—now the total is closer to 60. Many of these artists donate a portion of their proceeds back to the community.
All of the bath and body products are fair trade; the display fixtures in the shop were made from reclaimed wood. The unfinished edges and stark geometric shapes echo the simple message of finding value in all kinds of materials.
During her thrift adventures in Australia, Liu developed an eye for good recycled clothing, too. “I don’t shop in department stores,” she says, “because I don’t want what everyone else has.” Her store features a section for recycled clothing that she’s sourced from antiques and estate sales. The racks are filled with men’s and women’s lines that are manufactured in California, using local materials and fabrics.
The positive response she has received from the community so far reinforces why she opened the shop. One customer emailed to praise her excellent sales associate. Liu laughed about this as she’s the only employee, working seven days a week.
The longer the shop has been open, the less research she has had to do. Customers bring in products and vendors. While Liu would like to take some time off occasionally to take her dogs to the beach or catch up on laundry, running Redemption has never felt like work.
“This is the happiest I have ever been,” Liu says. “I am exactly where I wanted to be.”
President Dwight Eisenhower established the sister city program in 1956 to foster global awareness and peaceful relations. A design team from Okayama, Japan, one of San Jose’s sister cities, presents their view of their hometown.
Often called the “Gateway to West Japan,” Okayama is a quiet, modern city that serves as a transportation hub for travelers moving from eastern and central Japan into the further reaches of western Honshu, Shikoku Island, and Kyushu Island. The central area of the city is easy to get around via the well-developed transportation system that features local and high-speed trains, streetcars, buses, taxis, and rent-a-cycles. Incorporated as a city in 1889, when Japan moved from a feudal system to a centralized government system, the city actually has a much longer history which extends back to the Sengoku Period (1467-1603).
Although the surrounding area was and is farmland, the city has played an important part in history and boasts a castle that attracted important political figures in the past, such as the Ikeda clan, who developed the economic and cultural status of the city under their rule between the 17th and 19th centuries. Currently, Okayama Castle attracts only tourists, but it’s considered one of the top castles in the country. The main tower (and most of Okayama city, for that matter) was damaged during WWII when the city was largely destroyed after having been bombed by the US Armed Forces. However, two of the watchtowers survived and have been designated as Important Cultural Properties by the government’s Agency for Cultural Affairs, and the damaged sections have been restored.
Geographically, Okayama falls in the humid subtropical zone: although it does get chilly in the winter months, the summer months can get hot and very humid. Okayama enjoys relatively low rainfall year round and is known as hare-no-kuni, which means “Sun Country.”
While the municipal and the prefectural governments have been working diligently to post multilingual signage around the city, Japanese is the only language spoken and understood by most of the population.
Although there are pockets of history sprinkled throughout the city in neighborhoods that were not damaged by bombing, visitors will want to head to the suburbs to enjoy the city’s best historical features.
Points of Interest
Okayama has many historical points of interest, with Saidaiji Kannon-in being one of the most intriguing. This small, quiet temple dedicated to the Buddhist deity of Kannon is also home to the oldest and largest Naked Man Festival. The 500-year-old festival, in which nearly 10,000 men dressed only in loincloths participate, is held late at night on the third Saturday in February of every year. The men compete for two lucky sticks that also carry a large cash reward for the winners.
The Saijo Inari shrine and temple complex is a great location to visit any time of the year, and boasts the largest torii gate in West Japan. Visible for miles around, the giant torii gate beckons to visitors. The shrine is dedicated to the Shinto fox god Inari, the patron deity of business, which is appropriately ironic as the souvenir shops leading up to the shrine are fantastic in number and variety.
Visitors would also do well to stop in at Kibitsu Shrine, which is located near Saijo Inari. Folklore sets Kibitsu Shrine apart from other shrines: legend holds that a demon’s head buried under the temple causes a cauldron to ring out during fortune-telling ceremonies. The shrine dates from the ninth century and exhibits many unique architectural features, several of which are registered as Important Cultural Properties.
Dining
For a taste of fresh, local seafood, stop in at Tontonme in the southern part of the city. This seafood restaurant is known for its sashimi and sushi made from fish harvested from the nearby Seto Inland Sea.
For another healthy option, Okabe in central Okayama is a long-standing tofu shop with attached home-style restaurant. The restaurant has counter seating only and there are only three main menu selections, but you can bet the food will be fresh, delicious, and surprisingly filling.
For secret hideaway dining, Balloom is the place. This elegant and cozy little cafe/restaurant/bar serves up fresh and healthy meals made with ordinary but fine-quality ingredients. Guests can enjoy a selection of fine wines, draft beer, cocktails, drip coffees, herbal teas, and imported sodas. Lunch and dinner are served. Tapas and pinchos are available in the evening.
Shopping
For shopping, AEON Mall Okayama is a must-visit. Newly completed in December 2014, this shopping mall is one of the largest and top ranking in the country. Visitors can find an array of boutiques, interior shops, restaurants and food courts, a movie theater, and many other shopping options. The wine shop on the first level includes a winetasting vending machine.
Okayama has a number of covered shopping arcades, and Hokancho is one of the older ones. However, a recent influx of young, hip shop owners have breathed new life into this arcade, making it a great place to explore. Check out the eclectic mix of cafes, green grocers, boutiques, book and toy stores, dish supplies, bakeries, etc.
Nightlife
For a relaxing end to the day, stop in at Padang Padang to unwind. This chic little bar in the heart of the city also serves up European-style fusion cuisine selections made from top-quality local and imported ingredients.
Beautiful Places
Any itinerary should certainly include Korakuen. With a history of over 300 years, it is one of the top three traditional gardens in the country, and is well known for its use of “borrowed scenery”: in this case, Okayama Castle becomes part of the garden scenery despite the fact that it is a separate property. The garden is spacious enough to accommodate large groups while still imparting serenity.
Off the beaten track, the beautiful Sogenji Temple pleases the senses at any time of the year. Surrounded by tall trees and Maruyama mountain, this Zen temple of the Rinzai sect is near the city but feels secluded. Zazen sessions are open to the public on Sundays.
Kaigai Connection
We are a small branding company specializing in helping local businesses get their product overseas. We help customers with foreign language support, out-of-country PR, homepage and business document design, and nonnative staffing. We also work with a large, local tourist agency to bring visitors to Okayama and the surrounding prefectures.
Heath Winer and head coach Michael Botenhagen talk about the art of Fencing. Founded in 1981, the Fencing Center (TFC) is a non-profit club dedicated to furthering the development of the art and sport of fencing at the local, regional, national and international levels. Aside from coaching youth towards competitions, they also help coaches attain their credentials as well. For more information on the Fencing Center of San Jose, visit their website at fencing.com
TIPS and TERMS
Advance: take a step forward (toward one’s opponent) Beat:a sharp tap on the opponent’s blade to initiate an attack or provoke a reaction Engagement:contact between the fencers’ blades En Garde:position taken before fencing commences Épée:dueling sword, heaviest of the three weapons, V-shaped blade and large bell guard for protecting the hand Feint:false attack intended to get a defensive reaction from the opposing fencer Foil:court sword, lightest of the three weapons and blunted tip Guard:part of the weapon between the blade and handle Parry:defensive action where a fencer blocks opponent’s blade Piste:French term for fencing strip, the perimeter where actual fencing takes place Recover:return to the en garde position after lunging Saber:light and fast weapon, V-shaped or Y-shaped blade and used for cutting and thrusting
Scoring
Foil:fencers score points by landing tip of blade on area along torso from shoulders to groin in front and to waist in the back. Arms, neck, head and legs are off-target. Saber:fencers score points by hitting with point or edge of blade on target area above the waist, excluding hands. (Both Foil and Saber must follow right-of-way rule: the fencer who started to attack first will receive the point if they hit a valid target, and that their opponent is obligated to defend themselves) Épée:fencers score points by hitting their opponent first on any part of the body.
Workouts in San Jose have just become a little more interesting.
Touchstone Climbing has opened a rock-climbing gym downtown. Located at 396 South First Street, The Studio is the only gym of its kind in San Jose, and only one of two in the entire South Bay. It features forty-foot high walls and over 11,000 square feet of climbing terrain.
The Studio takes its name from the classic movie house in which it has been constructed, the Studio Theatre. Long since converted into a nightclub, the building’s large and once brightly lit sign remains above the front entrance. Attractive as a climbing gym because of its large space and high ceilings, the interesting location and classic sign make The Studio unique and help it fit into the environment of downtown San Jose.
Touchstone CEO Mark Melvin and his wife, Debra, have been avid climbers since high school, and according to director of marketing and social media Lauryn Claassen, they often dreamt of creating a home for “climbers who love to climb.”
The Studio was not only built with climbers in mind, but by climbers themselves. Mark Melvin actually welded the walls, and as Claassen points out, “It’s an awesome company. Everyone who works here climbs.” She believes the environment makes it easy for everyone to have a great experience. The last time new member Cody Kraatz climbed was 2010, and he describes himself as “no expert.” He enjoys his workouts because they remind him of the outdoors and “there’s a point to it.” Kraatz admits, “It’s not the tallest set of walls in the area, but because I live downtown, it’s so convenient. I could climb on a first Friday, sauna, yoga, shower, and then hit the street with my friends to check out the music and art on South First.”
The Melvins founded their first gym in 1995, in the Mission District of San Francisco. Before the formation of their company, there were so few indoor climbing options that the new gym hosted the National Championship of the sport within a month of its opening. Touchstone now has seven locations in Northern California, making it the largest indoor rock climbing company in the United States.
There hasn’t been a climbing gym in San Jose for nearly four years, but The Studio isn’t the first venture downtown. In 2003, the company opened Touchstone Climbing and Fitness San Jose, a bouldering-only gym located across from Camera 12, and only about two blocks away from the new gym location. The smaller gym was forced to close in April of 2008 when there simply wasn’t enough room to accommodate all of the gym’s members.
Bouldering differs from the more traditional roped climbing in that it is done almost entirely freeform, or without any climbing gear. Referred to by climbers as “problems,” the bouldering courses don’t reach the extreme heights of the typical roped ones. Climbers can simply let go and fall to the padded floors when they reach the top. Kraatz is impressed with the new space. “Very nice bouldering area, too, catering to all the old guard that used to climb when Touchstone had a place on El Paseo de San Antonio.”
Though the focus is on roped climbing and bouldering, The Studio will offer other fitness options. Yoga classes are already open, and the company is planning kickboxing, Pilates, and core fitness classes as membership increases. Exercise machines have been set up on the second floor, which allows guests to watch climbers as they work out. There are also plans to establish youth classes, summer camps, and climbing teams in San Jose as soon as there is enough interest. Claassen, a coach of one of the company’s many youth teams, says rock climbing is a “great outlet for energetic kids.” First-time visitor Liz Sandberg, a mother of three boys, agrees, saying, “It’s fun. They want to keep coming back.”
The Studio will also incorporate a wireless café, built into its climbing walls. A large cutout in the main wall opens up almost like a balcony, giving café-goers a clear view of climbers making their way to the top. Claassen says that a quiet place became a necessity for their members because the gyms “become people’s homes.” The Studio’s café isn’t completed, yet, as parts of the gym are still under construction. Claassen hopes that the gym will be able to remain open during construction and that hours and membership will increase once the building is finished.
Climbers can become members for $69 a month or $759 a year. Membership includes access to all Touchstone gyms and the use of any of their facilities, including drop-in fitness classes, rock climbing, and exercise machines.
The Studio also offers individual day passes, which run about $18. The passes allow the same all-access use of the gym that memberships provide, and newcomers can sign up for a full “Intro to Climbing” class for $11 more.
There is one catch for those looking to drop in for a day of rock-climbing fun. For safety reasons, climbers must pass a few tests to climb on their own. The required skills include tying knots, attaching the harness, and belaying a climbing partner. This may sound difficult, but it only takes about three minutes. Kraatz says, “As long as you pay attention in the training class, it’s easy stuff.” Once the tests are completed, climbers are certified and receive a card verifying their ability to climb without staff assistance.
Claassen says The Studio is meant to attract members from “all across the board,” welcoming young professionals, college students, families, and seniors. The Touchstone team wants to reconnect with the community and is hoping The Studio will introduce rock climbing to many newcomers, as well. Everyone’s needs are met, whether the goal is getting in an interesting workout, sampling rock climbing without a trip to the mountains, or just having a day of fun.
Article originally appeared in Issue 4.2 Vacation (Print SOLD OUT)
It’s about what you give back and how you change and help other people to become their best selves. I just want to give to others what they have to me.
Bay Area curler Gabrielle Coleman stands out in a sport that doesn’t.
Most Tuesday nights, Gabrielle Coleman can be found inside Stanley’s Sports Bar at Sharks Ice in downtown San Jose. She doesn’t drink, she’s not an employee, and she says she’s never been a great skater either. She’s not there for the hockey. She’s there for curling.
Once a week from 9:30pm to 11:30pm, Coleman and 40 or so other curlers join up at Sharks Ice for a curling league and a good time. Coleman, however, has aspirations that many of her co-competitors do not. The 33-year-old is such a good curler that she’s competed at the national level, even reaching the US Olympic trials in 2009.
Yes, her sport is curling, that shuffleboard-like ice sport that draws a lot of attention every four years when the Winter Olympics come around. But most of the time, it is forgotten here in the United States. There are a little more than 16,000 curlers across the country on record. Canada, regularly the favorite to win gold at the Olympics, has approximately 1.3 million by comparison, despite a population that is little more than a 10th of the size of the United States’.
Coleman and her coach Barry Ivy are part of one of the largest clubs in California, the San Francisco Bay Area Curling Club. Established in 1958, their mission, along with the rest of the United States’ curling community, is to help the sport grow. Recently, it’s worked. Participation has grown by more than 50 percent since 2002, with an even more impressive 16 percent jump from 2010 to 2011.
For Coleman, it isn’t just the country’s reputation she’s trying to improve, but her specific region’s. Ivy calls the West Coast “the boonies of the curling world,” and while this statement is in jest, it’s not far from the truth. There are very few competitive curlers from the country’s Pacific coast. In fact, just one of the 10 teams at the US Olympic trials in 2009 was based west of Bismarck, North Dakota. Most are located in the country’s longtime curling hubs like Minnesota and Wisconsin.
Coleman, a Mountain View native, was a part of that sole western team, based in Seattle, Washington. She was also the lone competitor—of 42 total—who resides in California. It’s that obstacle that makes her curling commitment so much more demanding.
Paying out of her own pocket, she flies to Seattle or Vancouver almost every weekend from August to March for training. During competitions, she has to take time away from her work at NBC, which she credits as being not only accepting and understanding of her love for curling but “enormously supportive.” She doesn’t mind the commitment though and finds the bright side to her travels. “It’s like a mini-vacation every week.”
Other curlers live nearer to facilities dedicated to curling, and those among the highest ranked teams receive funding from the US Olympic Committee. Coleman and her teammates do not. As Ivy puts it, “People who play at a dedicated facility can go down and throw rocks at lunchtime for an hour.” The lack of practice time Coleman can get during the week presents a real challenge that other curlers, even in Seattle, don’t always face.
But while they have their advantages, Coach Ivy believes Coleman has some of her own. “If the rest of the United States curling world at the elite level was as committed as Gabrielle, we would be winning Olympics,” Ivy says.
The competition hasn’t always been that strong. Just seven years ago, Coleman attended her first curling event, just hoping to have a fun experience. Challenged by her brother that she couldn’t make nationals, she decided it was on. Within a year, she was competing at the women’s club nationals, who had trouble fielding enough teams for their 10-team tournament. That year, only seven teams had signed up to compete. This year, there are 18 teams vying for those 10 spots.
The US Olympic trials have also grown more competitive in recent years. The field of 10 from 2009 has been trimmed to just four for the upcoming 2013 trials. For Coleman, this means getting back will be harder than ever. In 2009, her team finished eighth, which wouldn’t be good enough to qualify this time around. Coleman knows her team has to win at nationals to qualify, since two teams have already qualified and the national governing body chooses the fourth.
She gives her team an outside chance at coming out with the win if they “have a good week.” Ivy is especially high on their chances. “Don’t let her fool you,” he says. “This is definitely doable for Gabrielle.”
While the increase in the sport’s popularity has made her goals more difficult, the NBC Bay Area morning show director is ecstatic to see so many new curlers, not only at her own club but around the country. As a member of the board for SFBACC, growing the curling community is important to her. She’s trying to help the club secure ice that’s dedicated to curling for the first time in 20 years, rather than having to share ice time with hockey players and recreational skaters.
Just like the sport as a whole, the Princeton grad has come a long way since 2006. She recalls her first national competition as something of a nightmare for Ivy, who tried to lead four curlers with about three years of combined experience. “I was so lost,” Coleman says. “In my first game, I had to ask my opponent when to start.”
Since then, she’s gone on to write an e-book on her experiences, directed at helping other beginning curlers. Break Through Beginner Curling details everything from curling basics to the confusing nature of large national competitions.
At Sharks Ice, it’s clear how much interest Coleman has in teaching others, taking time out to encourage a teenage girl who was just watching to give it a try. But while there is an inclination to teach, she also hopes to curl competitively for a long time.
The sport keeps drawing her back because, no matter how good she gets, she feels there will always be a new challenge. “Everybody who’s any good can throw the stone accurately,” she says. “It’s the complexity and the strategy of the shots at the higher levels that keep getting tougher.”
The unity and bond of a team is another aspect she loves. For casual observers, the team aspect might not be as obvious on TV as it is to those who know the game. “From the instant I release the shot, me and my teammates are communicating,” Coleman emphasizes. “It’s like any other team sport. We can’t win unless we’re all on the same page.”
On the ice, that communication is unmistakable. The sweeping of the ice, one of the most unusual aspects of the sport, relies on it. If their timing on when to speed up or slow down the stone is off just a little bit, the shot could end very differently.
Whether her team wins or not, Coleman hopes she and her teammates can be good examples of the increasing geographical diversity of the game in the United States. She also recognizes that her personal success can help grow the sport on the West Coast, especially in California.
“For me to win, for us to win, it would be a big deal,” she says. Both Coleman and Ivy believe that that kind of statement at nationals could lead to big improvements in not only her own curling environment but the West Coast overall. It would go a long way towards helping to find the dedicated curling ice SFBACC is still looking for.
From experience, Ivy knows that a lot of clubs don’t go to the lengths that SFBACC does. They require lessons for those wanting to join any of the club’s leagues, and Ivy knows they lose some curlers because of it. But he and Coleman both have a strong interest in passing the culture of curling on, and they want to do it the right way. “A lot of clubs will say ‘wing it’ and send you out on your own,” Ivy says. “We want to teach.”
Coleman remembers going to those training sessions and finding much more help than she thought she would. Though it was swarmed with close to 200 people, she said important members came up to her encouraging her to stay on because of the lack of women in curling. Ivy was one of those early tutors that kept her confidence and interest high, even if it was her brother’s challenge that made it stick.
With some of the founders of the club having moved on, Coleman calls Ivy the “resident expert” and lists him as her greatest inspiration on her USCA profile. She wants to give back, just like he has to her. “Even though it is about trying to be the best curler you can be and winning medals, it’s not really about that,” she says. “It’s about what you give back and how you change and help other people to become their best selves. I just want to give to others what they have to me.”
Growing up in the Bay Area, newspaper readers got to know Herb Caen and Leigh Weimers over their morning cup of coffee. That’s how it was. Regular columnists became old friends or the source of a good argument. Relative newcomer Sal Pizarro is only forty years old and just six years into the job, compared to Weimers’ forty year tenure. Pizarro is still finding his voice, both in print and through new forms of social media. Published six days a week, his Around Town column for the Mercury News is witty but never opinionated. When will he bring on the funny or unleash the grumpy old guy in the corner?
“I have been doing the column for six years, but I don’t feel like I have earned the right to be that crotchety yet,” asserts Pizarro. “It is being encouraged at the paper for me to insert more of my own voice into the column. I didn’t want it to be that suddenly you’re going from Leigh to this guy, and we don’t know who he is. I feel more comfortable making comments about what I perceive going on in the city. Taking what people tell me and sort of throwing it through my head and saying, ‘Here’s the word on the street.’”
So how will Pizarro make the column his own? Could he become a gossip columnist? He answers, “That’s so funny. I ask people who say they wish my column had more gossip in it, ‘What do you think is gossip? Do you want to know who’s dating who?’ Because no one really cares. It’s just not that kind of community.” Just by talking to so many people, Pizarro knows the local community well. “People are very comfortable telling me things because they’re pretty sure I’m not going to print it. And that’s something Leigh taught me: always know more than you write. So I sometimes know things that I really can’t write.”
But he still comes across as someone with a genuine desire to get positive news out there again. “My goals are to be entertaining and informative, and a lot of times that translates into being the person who writes about the good things. I happen to love that idea because I’ll say, ‘If I don’t write about this, no one else is going to.’ A missing girl in Morgan Hill is going to trump a lot of things I write about. It’s going to take up three reporters that aren’t going to be able to cover the Boy Scouts Character Awards. So I like doing that.”
He also likes being a stay-at-home dad with an 8-month-old son and a two-and-a-half-year-old daughter. Pizarro does diapers and daycare from 7am until 3pm when his wife comes home from work as Public Relations Director for Presentation High School. They chat together and do a little download of the day’s events before he sets off for his job, which he will work at until late. His parents chip in and watch the children two mornings a week, which frees him up for the occasional morning interview or charity luncheon. Most of his writing is done at night in his converted office in the garage. His daily deadline is noon, so he can edit and read through his column the following morning during naps. “Not mine,” he quips.
The social butterfly lifestyle is not so easy when combined with caring for children all day. “Some days it’s really exhausting. I can be with the kids for basically nine hours, and then I’ve got to go to an event. But, on the plus side, after nine hours with really small kids, it’s nice to be able to talk to adults and have a glass of wine,” Pizarro says with a grin. “I get to spend a lot of time with my kids, so any time I think about complaining about my job and my hours, I just think: I get to spend all day with my kids and how many guys do I know who get to do that that aren’t collecting unemployment checks?”
When Pizarro gets dolled up for a Saturday night event, his daughter Mia often asks him if he is going to a wedding. “I don’t know where she picked that up. No,” he says. “Daddy’s going to work. I feel especially guilty because before we had kids, my wife used to go to a lot of these things with me, and it was great fun, and now we pick our spots carefully. It’s partly her choice, too, because she says if we’re going to use up a babysitting chip, then she doesn’t want to be going to work. Let’s go to a movie or dinner.”
While he relishes the flexibility of his job, Pizarro also misses the structure of his thirteen years working as an editor at the Merc—starting work at 4pm and clocking out by midnight. Many of those years were spent as Leigh Weimers’ direct editor. “Those years really prepared me. I’ve learned how [Leigh] took something and made it briefer. That’s the challenge of writing in this space. I have about 450 words a day. I try to fit as much as I can in. I will spend a lot of time trimming things down, and sometimes an entire item will go away because it’s sort of like doing surgery: once you’ve had to cut off both legs and both arms, what do you have left?”
Some of what Pizarro writes about comes directly from real people who call or e-mail and say, “I know about this thing that happened. It’s kind of a funny story. Chances are, if I’ve got room, I’ll get it in.”
A big chunk of his work concerns deciding which event to attend. His record is four in one night. “I don’t recommend that. It was crazy—downtown San Jose, Palo Alto, Mountain View. Driving all over the place and then stopping in at an event for an hour, and then moving on to the next thing. Politicians do that all the time, but it’s a little easier for them because all they have to do is shake a few hands, and then they can leave.”
Unfortunately, Pizarro has no entourage driving him around or sorting his mail. “If I had dreams, it would be to have an assistant of some sort. I always read about how Herb Caen had somebody going through his mail, taking his calls. Having the same general type of column, people make that assumption. Clearly you must have a staff. No, I don’t.”
Driving around is not so difficult because he knows the area like the back of his hand—Pizarro grew up in San Jose. “Being downtown in San Jose in the 1970s was, well…dangerous is a kind word. One of the reasons I transferred from San Jose State to Santa Barbara was because downtown San Jose wasn’t really there yet. The Jazz Festival, Cinequest, and Music in the Park all started in the ’90s because there was nothing to do. Now it’s changed with Sofa District getting going, cool places to eat. Eventually, San Jose grew on me to the point that I did not want to leave.”
But the future is uncertain for Pizarro—at least in print. Pointing at the paper, he says, “I think you will be surprised if we have that ten years from now. If you had said that to me when I started in 2005, I would have laughed and laughed and laughed, but now it is where we are. We have a point where we need to figure out how to make money digitally. It’s not just online ads; it’s a whole host of possibilities which aren’t just print advertising. That’s the joke. If Fry’s or Macy’s goes out of business, we’re in a lot of trouble.”
Pizarro’s tenure began during the recession, and he admits, “It’s strange thinking that I’ve only really done this job during hard times. I’d be really interested to see what things are like when the economy is up because it makes people a lot happier. I can’t imagine how many times I have written ‘despite the current economic woes.’ I might as well have that saved on a copy-and-paste.”
Many of the colleagues Pizarro began working with twenty years ago at the Merc are gone. “When I started writing this column, we had an art writer…a philanthropy writer, a dance writer. We had more education and theatre writers, and all those positions have gone away. And so everything eventually found its way to me. The reason I am saying this is because during all these bad times, these agencies need more help, and I am trying to get the word out. When things get good again—and I am counting on that they will—the agencies won’t need me as much. Wow, I am going to have some space to fill.”
But Pizarro has a new audience, and it is online. Social media allows him to express himself more freely, without space limitations. He can even crack jokes. “Twitter and Facebook are interesting,” agrees Pizarro. “This is maybe where eventually the crotchety old man will come out one day, but I still feel like it’s better for me to get in someone’s event or an extra few names than to make some joke that I’d have no problem making on Twitter or Facebook.”
Take last Friday night, for instance. Pizarro was covering a fundraising gala. “I was one of the few guys wearing a tie because it was all venture capitalists and they are all in shirts and sport coats looking hip. That’s what I was tweeting about. ‘Man, I am the only one wearing a tie.’ Or ‘MC Hammer’s here.’ So I am tweeting all these things, but none of that got into my column because that’s not about their organization—it’s just me making funny asides. I hope at some point we have someone covering their event and writing a story about what they do, and then I don’t have to carry that weight, and I can say okay, here’s what was fun about that. They had the most crazy expensive scotch I’ve ever seen at an event. They made fun of Jack Dorsey for wearing jeans by pointing out that Reed Hoffman from LinkedIn didn’t.”
“I don’t miss writing about gossip that much, but who knows, if I do this job for another twenty years, I may have a lot more bile,” says Pizarro. “I may just start writing about all these youngsters who are who knows doing what…I can’t imagine what this place is going to be like twenty years from now.” With any luck, he will be a little more crotchety but still bringing his positive message to a new generation of readers in San Jose and beyond.
Article originally appeared in Issue 4.2 Vacation (Print SOLD OUT)
Lacey Bryant’s curiously innocent demeanor, cloaked in an army jacket and paint-spotted boots, does not convey the depth of her talent or the grandeur of her paintings. San Jose is privileged to have Lacey and her work so accessible. For art enthusiasts, she is someone not only to watch but also to get to know.
Your work has been described as “cute and creepy.” How did that style come about? I guess I like the contrast. I think things are more interesting when there is a duality to them. If it is just one or the other, I would be done thinking about it pretty quickly. I like that kind of tension between things. I am not necessarily trying to make things hyper-cute. I like drawing things that are pretty, but at the same time, that’s so boring to me. The “weird” is always something that I have been interested in, and it took a while for that to come out in my work because I thought, “Oh, no one wants to see that.” But since I have been putting out more of the things that I think are great and weird and cool and I don’t care, people have actually really responded to it.
Your painting includes innocent characters and then things like birds flying out of their faces or berries that resemble blood. What’s your creative process in doing that? Oh, dang, that’s a hard one. A lot of them are just images that sort of pop into my head at random. I use a lot of imagery over and over again—things that I think are interesting or kind of symbolic of many things at the same time. It makes it more interesting, I think. The more things something can mean, the more interpretations the painting can have, and the more people are going to think, “Oh, that’s me.” So I like birds a lot; I like fruit a lot. Fruit is so cool. It means so many things to me, but when you combine these things in certain ways, they just become so much more interesting.
How intentional are you in that? Are you trying to say that you want the contrast, or do you think, “I enjoy this”? Where does that little nugget of inspiration come from? Or is it art school? Haha, no, it’s not that. It kind of evolved naturally with things that I like, but at the same time trying to make paintings that say a little bit about life and emotion. My paintings are very emotional. A lot of times, it’s just about a feeling of expressing some sort of longing or mourning and changing or shifting, just different feelings. A lot of things are hard to put into words. I try to put them into pictures instead. People can see the picture and get the words for themselves.
So the images communicate more of the emotion but not necessarily a story. Yeah, but they feel like a story to me in a way. You can look at them and wonder what just happened, what’s about to happen, what’s going on in this image. You have all you need to say, “Okay, I could leap from this to this.” It’s more interesting and reaches more people if they can bring their own context into it.
So when you come to a painting, you’ve got your canvas, and you’ve got your paints, and you’re sitting down…do you have a story that you are coming into it with, or is it more like how different artists talk about how the canvas brings it out? How do you come to that? I usually spend a lot of time in my sketchbook. I draw a lot of little tiny drawings. I will fill a page with just a whole bunch of things, and I’ll have an idea. Right now, for instance, I am interested in things with two figures. I’m interested in their relationships and how they are interacting; a lot of them end up looking like two of the same person. I’m not sure if they are twins or if they are just different aspects of the same person or if it’s all in their heads. I guess I usually don’t really know what’s going on because I don’t want to pin it down. But I’ll draw a whole page of something and pick out the ones that I think would be really interesting to take further. And with paintings, too, a lot of the time, I’ll make a small painting, and it will really work, so I’ll make it bigger so I can get more into it.
So you go down a path of noticing that something is interesting and then go on from there. I definitely notice things a lot. I go hiking once a week with a couple of friends, and I’m always out there taking pictures. I have a huge fascination with crawling things like little bugs, so they make it into my work a lot.
Do you think in your paintings it is just a curiosity that you have or a fascination or a longing/searching…or all the above? Yeah, it kind of goes back to the whole contrast thing because there are so many bad things that happen. The world has so much horribleness in it that we focus on that a lot. But if you get down to these tiny little crawling things, you get this sense of awe like, “Oh my God, there are these little teeny tiny things that survive somehow and are really magical.” And even things that are often thought of as ugly—for instance, cockroaches—I think they are fascinating. I think spiders are really cool. People think that’s the creepy stuff, and I think it’s really cool. There is this whole other side of things.
I love that about your work. It is full of emotion and tugs on so many different levels. There is such playfulness. Do you find yourself returning to some of those figures out of security, habit, or a desire to grow in that area? Usually it’s about taking an idea as far as I can take it. Then once it gets a little stale, I will move away from it. If I really like a painting, I will want to do it again but in a slightly different way to see if it still works. A lot of times I will repeat it on a larger scale so I can get more detail. A lot of ideas that I had and did in a simpler style, I want to bring back and try with a better background. You can change the mood so much with just changing the setting behind someone.
I have actually been doing the people in my paintings a lot older lately. I did the kid thing for a while and now am more interested in a slightly older mentality. The commission piece I am working on now was actually a guy who came in and saw a bunch of my paintings and said he would really love me to paint him as a kid, so he brought in a picture of himself as a kid. Most of the time when I paint people, I don’t have a model. I usually just make them up, and, for the most part, I can kind of fake a face, but they all end up looking like me a little. So I have been trying to explore other faces. I have actually been bothering people that I meet and asking them if I can get a picture of them.
You are exploring. What are you proud of recently? And then what do you want to explore more? I am not sure. Adding background and adding space, paying attention to the whole picture and not just the subject, has been a big step for me. It’s really something that I think has made my work more interesting to me and hopefully to others. I am using more actual people. A lot of the times when you are making people up, you still have to go to the mirror and see “how does the elbow bend like this?” and see how things actually work. To some degree, I like a bit of distortion in my images. So if you go and measure them, they are not quite right. But I like for things to be a little off sometimes. It’s interesting to me, and it gives it a bit of character when you let things be more exaggerated. But I am starting to move in the direction of using actual people. It’s kind of hard for me because I’m not super outgoing about going up to people and saying, “Hey, can I take pictures of you?” But I am getting to where I am doing it just to bring in more faces and more people.
I want to keep going in that direction right now. I am really interested in pushing the humanity of my characters a little bit so that they feel even more real. Not necessarily “real” as in realistically painted, but just real emotions.
