Glitch: a harsh term for the beautiful errors bred in the formidably rapid tide of new technologies. What resembles the machine’s first serious grasp of art begins as a mistake, a failure of precision or control. Where machines express error and humans express precision, the fertile world of glitch art thrives. Sacramento’s John Horton has occupied this territory for some years now, rendering the futurist lines of digital flaws in traditional paint-on-canvas works, weaving wildly new musculature atop the sturdy bones of a tried-and-true medium.

Steeped in the ephemeral and impious spirit of cyberpunk, Horton’s painting’s flit between different modes with the speed of a psychic TV channel enmeshed in the bionic viewer’s neural network. The variety unfolds in the ambient glitchscape of Foreign Tongues, the lysergically comical take on classicism in Reference the Future, and the sheer wet horror of organi-digitalization in Conflict and Savage Beauty. These paintings capture the emotional spectrum of a world that has just witnessed a formerly unknown cyberculture swiftly become everyculture in just a few decades. Whether fueled by the ecstasy of future potential or trapped in the scream of unstoppable metamorphosis, Horton’s works are artifacts of the technological and cultural upheaval occurring every nanosecond.

Some of his paintings, like the aforementioned Savage Beauty, explicitly reference the burgeoning art of 3D printing, a format that Horton has been mastering on his own personal printer. One recurring motif is the skeleton, specifically the skull—a structure molded in the world’s original 3D printer, and one specifically shaped to hold the painter’s most precious tools: the eyes. Horton has an instinctive trust in the viewer’s eye and what pleases it, and his creations reward the look for its own sake, drawing every ounce of color and enjoyment out of the subject. The handle of his online portfolio, “Hightech Lowlife,” is taken from William Gibson’s succinct description of the cyberpunk ethos. One could say that in Horton’s case, it also aptly describes the employment of cutting-edge techniques to sharply outline the surging landscape of the “lower” sensory world. It is the human edge of the paintings that truly place Horton proudly within a cyberpunk continuum.

Keeping his chops razor-sharp through commercial work and mural commissions locally and around the country, Horton is a dynamic character, as adaptable and tireless as his artwork.

Earth Astronaut

Let’s start with “Hightech Lowlife.” The term originally began as a descriptor for cyberpunk as a genre or aesthetic. What is your personal take on cyberpunk? How do you define it, how does it applies to your art, when/where did you first encounter it?
I’ve always been a fan of sci-fi and cyberpunk themes. Robotics. Cybernetics. Urbanization. Class warfare. Dystopia. Transhumanism. For me, cyberpunk is weird blend of romanticism for tech and a distaste for it at the same time. I first came across it in Japanese cartoons like Bubblegum Crisis and Ghost in the Shell … eventually finding Blade Runner, which led me to discovering Philip K. Dick and William Gibson in high school. I found myself getting into music like Autechre and Aphex Twin, Dieselboy. Japanese cars. first-person shooters. It all kind of went together. I was always into drawing, eventually painting, and the rebellious spirit and techno-romance of cyberpunk found its way into my artwork.

In 2005, I was uploading an image to my website and I mistakenly used the wrong unicode; the image showed up pixelated and distorted. “Beautiful,” I thought to myself. I spent the next few months perfectly rendering this “glitch” painting. It was a challenge so I kept going with it, corrupting files and painting the results. Over time, I realized that replicating the digital aesthetic and errors using traditional painting methods was somehow a critique on technology and society. Half of me embraces our advance into the future, but the other half is a Luddite who prefers an old-school airbrush over the Photoshop equivalent.

Falling

I’m especially drawn to the pieces Falling and Conflict—simultaneously visceral and ultra clean. They also seem to stand apart stylistically from the rest of your online portfolio. What ideas went into these?
Art is about escapism for me. I have always had this pull toward wanting to paint dark imagery and feeling guilty about it. That series of paintings was me working through some weird times in my life and wanting to create beautiful chaos. Tedious, cleansing work. I never planned to show them publicly, but after making a handful of them, that style has worked itself into my normal breadth of work.

Are you working on anything lately? What ideas are currently fueling you or your work?
Lately I’ve been trying to paint larger! More murals and bigger canvases. Something happens when you stand in front of large artwork. Right now I’m trying to push more chaos into my work. For years I made ultra-rendered, ultra-refined paintings, but recently I’ve been incorporating more large, messy, gestural brushstrokes to add contrast and spontaneity.

Reactive Refractive

You’ve worked in 3D printer art for awhile. The technology strikes me as one of the most radical developments in art, among other things, in the 21st century. What’s your take on it and its potential?
3D printing changed the manufacturing process in a lot of ways. We can now make things at home—customized, unique objects on demand. I’ve had my FDM printer for five-ish years now and I can honestly say I would never live without one. I’ve used it to make small art sculptures, repair things around the house, even some custom motorcycle parts. The potential is endless! It has uses in the medical field, space travel, automotive, they can even 3D print lenses for glasses and telescopes.

Being highly prolific and experienced in both personal and commercial projects, do you have a process/routine for “getting your head in the game” depending on what each piece calls for?
Art is all I know now. I’m very passionate about my work, so I don’t really need to search for inspiration. Of course some commercial projects are harder than others to get excited about, but it’s the process that I enjoy more than anything. I’ve always lived by this quote from Chuck Close: “Inspiration is for amateurs; the rest of us just show up and get to work.”

Photo by Nickie Robinson

Do you have a favorite personal project? A favorite commercial one?
My mural for [2017’s] Wide Open Walls festival [at 20th and I Street] was a blast! It was great to have an opportunity to work on such a large scale and with so much creative freedom. I got to operate a 40-foot diesel boom lift, so I was stoked.

What is the most frightening thing about present-day cyberculture? Most exciting/intriguing thing?
Cyberculture is a crazy thing! 3D printing, VR, AR, “smart” stuff, automation and of course social media. Most tech advances I think are pretty cool, but some are definitely frightening. I’m most scared of the rapid rate of connectivity in new fields. Think of how much damage someone could do if they could hack your car while you were driving! Not to mention smart locks on homes, or how millions rely on medical tech to survive. Hopefully I’m gone before the AI uprising Musk and Hawking are worried about comes true.

Reference the Future #1

Keep up with artist John Horton by following him on Instagram (@Hightech_Lowlife). Horton’s latest exhibit, Beep Beep Boop, is on display Oct. 22 – Nov. 15, 2018 at the University Union Art Gallery on the Sacramento State campus. Opening reception is Oct. 25 from 6 – 8 p.m. Both the exhibit and the reception are free and open to the public. Learn more at Theuniversityunion.com.

**This piece originally appeared in print on pages 18 – 19 of issue #259 (Feb. 12 – 26, 2018)**

Zahra Ammar makes thriving in a world of chaos look easy.

On the inside she is chaotic, unplanned and has a catalog of creative ideas waiting to be set free. On the outside she is calm, cool, collected and truly a humble person. She likes to channel her creative ideas with paper through an art form called quilling.

For having such a “chaotic” mindset, the art of quilling involves meticulous cutting, measuring, rolling and gluing of paper. In the end, each tiny strip of paper comes together to form a beautiful piece of art that is full of texture, depth and can have multiple interpretations. When you first glance at Ammar’s work, it’s almost hard to believe that the entire piece, from top to bottom, is primarily made from cardstock. She is able to create intricate designs, shapes and images that seem they could jump off the board and come to life.

Submerge caught up with this artist, poet and idea-machine to talk about her upcoming solo exhibition at Sacramento State, Spring Delusions. The idea of finding tranquil beauty in a crazy world is a thought that she has been “germinating” on for a long time. Growing up in Pakistan, then moving to Saudi Arabia, then the Bay Area and now Sacramento, Ammar first found her love of chaos as an English Literature teacher in the words of T. S. Eliot.

“I read The Wasteland, and it just bothered me. That book really bothered me so much even to this day, in a good way and in a bad way,” she explained while sipping coffee. “But the more you go over that piece of work you realize that there is so much that he is trying to portray in chaotic matter.

Because you cannot see beauty if there is no contrast. You need to have that emergency that everything is going to wilt away.”

When Ammar moved to the United States, she not only took a big risk in uprooting herself, but she took a big risk in becoming serious about her artwork. All within 2016, she moved to a different country and became a self-published writer with her first book of poetry, also called Spring Delusions. When most people get completely broken down from stressful situations, Ammar gets things done.

“Procrastination is such a good friend that keeps coming back,” she said.

With a Bachelors in Business and MA in English Literature, she decided to take the plunge into the art world and let her ideas with paper run free.

“I really wanted to get into this [quilling], and I knew I had it in me, but it’s such a risk right?” Ammar said. “And you keep hearing it’s really hard to make it as an artist. I had no idea what I was getting myself into.”

Without taking that risk, Sacramento would not have the opportunity to view her colorful and lively pieces. The giant images that she creates are symmetrical and geometric, but still maintain a natural creative flow. Behind these intricate pieces are basic tools: white glue, paper, your hands, and time … a lot of time. These massive colorful creations can take a few days to an entire month to complete.

Throughout the years, Ammar has mastered and refined her skill in working with paper, developing her technique, style and skill. At first she started with origami, then moved to geometric shapes and now her main focus is quilling.

“I really can’t be faithful to one specific thing so I keep doing what I feel I want to explore,” Ammar explained.

From creating little paper butterflies on top of presents for her friends and family to creating geometric art that can stand more than 4 feet long, artwork so large she had a hard time fitting the entire piece for an Instragram shot. Now when she is working on a project she “jumps out of bed” from excitement just to get back to work. And she can find inspiration everywhere, even while taking a road trip and looking at shrubs along the highway.

“I usually don’t wait for inspiration. People think that inspiration is something that geniuses only have or something that creative people have but it doesn’t happen that way,” Ammar said. “You have to sit down and do the work and when you are working it’s when ideas are going to creep up. If you don’t pick up a pen nothing is going to flow out.”

But at times Ammar cannot find the right words to flow out onto pen and paper, so she has found art to help express herself. It’s hard to imagine someone who speaks four different languages fluently (English, Gujarati, Urdu and Hindi) would have any trouble finding words to express her creative ideas, but that’s where quilling comes into play.

“It’s things that you cannot put into words,” Ammar said. “At times I’m grasping for words for things that I cannot define. Art does that for you.”

With well over 7,000 followers on Instragam, @zahraammarart is gaining ground with her artwork via social media very quickly. Even though she’s only been on Instagram for the past year, she has made connections with people around the nation, sold art and even booked her upcoming exhibition using Instagram.

She is hoping her artwork will not only last for the Sacramento State exhibition, but to last for years to come. The idea of a paper art being “archival” might seem unlikely, but by choosing to use acid-free and liquid-free papers, Ammar is hoping her work will still be around for the next generation of artists.

“It’s not something that’s disposable; it’s there to last. It’s there to inspire,” she said.

In our world of new, replaceable and expendable, building everlasting art in the 21st Century seems like a challenge, but challenges do not stop Ammar, they only inspire her. She not only hopes to get inspired but hopes to inspire others around her to think or create. It’s not easy for an artist to imagine someone not appreciating their work or even admitting to it, but this young quillist has a different take on any criticism that might come her way.

“And it’s open to interpretation, not everyone has to like my work. I understand that,” Ammar explained. “But even if someone doesn’t like it, that’s a good thing because it’s better than being indifferent. It made the person do something not to like it.”

Not liking or appreciating Ammar’s work seems near impossible. She has created a model brain made out of paper by referencing medical diagrams, created a paper building with detailed architecture features and even a typographical paper cut of Lake Tahoe. Ammar’s pieces are larger than life, imaginative and might even help you find the beauty in unexpected places.

Zahra Ammar’s Spring Delusion exhibit will be shown at the University Union Gallery at Sacramento State from Aug. 27–Sept. 20, 2018. An opening reception will be held on Aug. 30 from 6–8 p.m. The reception and exhibit are both open to the general public. For more info, such as gallery hours, go to Facebook.com/sacstateunion. You can follow Ammar on Instagram @zahraammarart.

**This piece first appeared in print on pages 12 – 13 of issue #272 (Aug. 15 – 29, 2018)**

After missing 2017’s Wide Open Walls, this year’s event will feature the abstract and melancholic designs by new Sacramento local (by way of China) Lin Fei Fei. At the moment, she’s painting her mural outside Holy Diver, one of Midtown’s raddest music venues for performances local and beyond.

Lin produces work that consists of wistful interpretations of the human body and intense emotions within the psyche. The artist is more than stoked to participate in this yearly occasion spotlighting creatives from around the globe, and hopes her mural will complement the atmosphere of the venue she’s painting.

“So far, so good. I’m really trying to speed up the process so it’s finished in time for Wide Open Walls,” Lin remarked to Submerge on the progress of her piece. She continued, “The theme of the mural involves the concept of humans becoming reborn. While having that in mind, I’m also including elements that I think will match the the musical atmosphere of Holy Diver. I want it to be positive and fierce. Something special for the building. The images will involve a kind of screaming war between figures.”

In this new Sac local’s signature style, the design will include minimal color. Lin usually commits to about three shades in her work, this way each symbol is distinctly distinguishable to the viewer’s eye. While utilizing black and white paint, as the artist does frequently in her large-scale works, she plans on the addition of the color red to especially stand out.

The deep cardinal hue is not only reminiscent of Holy Diver’s iconic neon sign, the depth of the tint also represents intensity, passion, strength, power and attention, which are prevalent at any adrenaline-fueled concert filled with people who want to light the ground on fire (figuratively, of course).

Waiting#4 | Oil, spray paint on paper | 2017

Much of Lin Fei Fei’s work features a darker perspective, with hauntingly exquisite reflections of the human form. She pays full attention to every curve, edge and wrinkle of her subjects and illustrates emotions people emit while understanding that the energy of these feelings are never straight, but instead a series of chaotic lines and cuts in every direction.

“When I studied art I was attracted to [human] figures,” Lin expressed. “I feel like the human body is very beautiful. I remember when I first painted human figures I was like, ‘Wow, I want to paint more of these.’ I wanted to know who the people I painted were and are. This shell we have, it’s beautiful regardless of anyone’s standards of beauty. I think no matter what the shape, no matter whether skinny or curvy, the human body is beautiful. I think [painting such figures] is a strong reflective message about ourselves and represents every individual.”

Though some of her projects contain sexualized imagery and dark comedy, some may find it surprising to learn Lin isn’t in fact an entirely gothic individual full of “doom and gloom” as her pieces portray. She is sweet, polite and stays as positive as she can. What attracts her to working in such a somber painting style can be explained by the cliche of not judging a book by its cover.

Bound by Explanation | Oil on canvas | 111″ x 88″ | 2014

When asked about those who influenced her technique, she asserted, “A big influence of mine came from art in Europe during the Renaissance by creatives like Leonardo Da Vinci, Michelangelo and others. I try to blend the old European styles of illustrating the nude form with modern fashions shown by Francis Bacon. While I do this, I blend what I have learned from art of Western civilizations with the movements in works from art of Eastern civilizations such as China, where I’m from.”

Along with combining cultures in her work, Lin blends the objects in her pieces through swirls she paints. Certain parts of the body in these pools are connected to those not usually linked in reality. These curves and the colors she uses, as Lin explains, represent again the types of energy all humans emit.

When explaining her reasons behind this she responded, “Naturally I just do this. Sometimes I don’t even think about it, but eventually along the way as I paint I want to draw something as a swirl or something that shows movement. I look up to the energy and power of human beings. The movements are represented in swirls combined with other abstract stuff. Human figures will always be my thing in art. I always like to combine the chaos and any kind of energy around us in the real world.”

Lin told Submerge that while in China and working on her craft, she was under strict standards of how she could conduct her art. She hated how limited she felt and wanted to be free from such constraints.

She has a series of popular green pieces that she says were so loved by audiences because of their cheerful colors and their invocation of nature. She understands how happiness can be moving but did not want to be limited to only art that was positive.

Collecting the Warmth #2 | Oil, pencil,
paper-cut on tree-free paper, 12″ x 9″ | 2018

“I’ve studied humanities and psychology,” Lin explained. “I have a huge interest in human beings. For myself, I want to speak the truth—the other side of happiness that is intense. A lot of people avoid the sadness or the ugly side of something they don’t want to face that is the truth. But art not only shows the beautiful things, art reflects the world, or how we feel in depth beneath the surface. In China, there is a certain standard and there are many rules you have to listen to. I want to show a different side of our life. It might make people feel uncomfortable, but I truly believe art should be free to show whatever the human feeling is.”

When she first came to California from China, she found a great change in being able to express herself, but not everything came easy. She battled loneliness constantly, and being in a country where outsiders are vilified by its leader had caused her anxiety at the beginning. With these intense emotions, however, she was able to dive into her work with a better understanding of herself and what she is trying to accomplish being away from home.

“Of course I feel lonely all the time and it is very difficult,” Lin said. “When I was in China, I had friends and family to help me in a difficult situation, I never really felt scared because I had them supporting me. I’ve lived in Europe, too, but during study I had my teachers looking after me. In America, it’s a totally new life because you have to completely rely on yourself and you have no friends at all—like literally nobody. But I have to be strong and be tough, and I am.”

To relieve loneliness Lin immersed herself in the Sacramento art community through fellow artist Gabriel Sanford. He and Lin met at a show, and with his help she has connected with many different creatives in the community. She now feels very welcome and hopes to have the ability to do more in the area’s art scene to bridge cultures together.

Breathing… | Mixed Media | Projection | 2018

When it comes to choosing between Los Angeles, Sacramento and San Francisco as a place to live, Lin insisted she would always choose Sac. She finds our city not only affordable, but a great place where she and her husband can start a life together. Being a part of Wide Open Walls means a great deal to her, because it is one way of saying thank you to the community she calls her new home.

“This event is very special for me because I am still new and an outsider in Sacramento,” Lin said. “This community has been really supportive of me and has given me so much love and acceptance. I want to do something to return the hospitality, as a gift for the city and for the people who are here.”

Lin Fei Fei may believe she’s an outsider, but Sacramento considers her a talented local and a part of our continuously growing art scene.

Make sure to visit Lin’s Wide Open Walls mural at Holy Diver at 517 21st St. in Sacramento. For more information on Lin Fei Fei and her work visit Linfeifeiart.com. Wide Open Walls will run from Aug. 9–19, 2018. For more information on Wide Open Walls and all the great artists participating, visit Wideopenwalls.org.

**This piece first appeared in print on pages 20 – 21 of issue #271 (Aug. 1 – 15, 2018)**

Michael Stevens had not yet arrived at JayJay Gallery when I walked in. This gave me a few minutes to take in one of his pieces, which took up the wall to the right of the entry. A wooden marionette with a puppet’s painted head stood on a wooden pedestal, a disembodied hand protruding from the platform palms-out as if giving the “stop” command, behind the puppet a wooden chopping block with a knife stuck in it. On the wall behind, a background of seven dwarf-faced likenesses arranged clockwise served as oil canvases for various scenes. They represented the seven deadly sins, Stevens would later explain, and the piece was meant to symbolize the act of confession.

Stevens considers himself a storyteller, each piece its own short story. After more than six decades in Sacramento, Stevens had yet to run out of stories to tell as we walked through the gallery.

Incident at Beaver Falls | 2008 | 18 in. x 35 in. x 8.5 in.

Ready to talk?
I talk a lot. I teach at Sac City.

How long have you considered yourself an artist?
My first show was in San Francisco in ‘77. Then in ‘78 I did a show in New York, and one of our friends had gone to New York already and met Andy Warhol. So Suzanne and I actually had lunch with him [Andy Warhol] on our first trip New York.

Suzanne is your wife?
Yes. We had been doing art since I got my master’s degree in ‘69, and graduated with an art degree in ‘67. We were doing these large shows in a candy store up in Folsom. Adeliza McHugh ran the candy store. The first 10 years she was showing local work from the Sacramento State professors like Jack Ogden and Irving Marcus. After that she kind of picked up on the Davis stuff when she got Bob Arneson and Roy De Forest. Then after that, the Chicago Hairy Who people moved to town in ‘68, and she started showing Jim Nutt and Gladys Nilsson. So she kept on pushing. When Jim and Gladys and Suzanne and I became really good friends, he [Jim Nutt] bought work out of my graduate show. And he’s a very famous artist, probably the most famous Chicago artist right now. Jim’s pushing 80 and his work goes for $100,000 a pop. We started doing shows at the candy store. My career then really started when Rena Bransten from the Bransten Gallery in San Francisco came up to one of the openings and said, “You need to be in San Francisco. I want you to bring in work.” I ignored her. I got a phone call a month later saying, “Where in the hell are you?” So I packed up some work and showed her the work and did a show with her, and sold a lot of work. People from Chicago came—Betsy Rosenfield, Allan Frumkin—and I started showing in Chicago. From Chicago I went to L.A. Then to Denver. So I’ve traveled around for a long time.

Where did you get your art degree?
Sac State.

So you were born in Sacramento?
No, I was born in Gilroy. Raised in Hayward. Had no choice in it. Then we moved here in ‘55.

We just finished a show in Chico, the new Northern California Museum, which has been open about eight months. I did 14 pieces for that. And I’m working on public art, too. I’m doing a big bronze in September for Sutter Park.

The Collector | 2015 | 28 in. x 22 in. x 5 in.

You’ve been in Sacramento more than 60 years. How have you seen the art community change in that time?
Now Irving Marcus is finally getting his just desserts by having a show at the Shrem Museum. And Irv is in his late 80s. The Sacramento crews that I’ve seen come in here, some are marketers. Some new younger artists who live down at the WAL seem to … How should I put it? A lot of hype? The skills are lacking in a lot of the young people that I see.

Quincy Jones said the same type of thing in an interview recently, about younger musicians no longer having the same skills and fundamentals. Do you think it’s a generational thing?
It’s like the [younger] generation invented sex. I don’t see the passion, I see the hype. Some of these guys are marketers. They dress up real nice with suits and ties and nice clothes. I can’t mention their names, I don’t want to be sued. But I’m aware of them, I’ve seen them, I know who they are.

You mentioned your friend Jim selling pieces for $100,000 each. How do you value your own work?
You work in a vacuum, and I find the vacuum a very comfortable place. Pricing of artwork is really strange. I’ll take work into San Francisco and they raise the prices $2,000. I’ll take work into Los Angeles and they lower it $2,000. It all depends on the market. My concern is, am I duplicating myself as an artist?

Why puppets?
I grew up in the 1950s watching television. So puppets and ventriloquial figures were part of the things that talked at you. People think I find these heads [already painted] so I brought a head to show you. They come like this [unpainted]. And I carve most of my heads. I’ll cut the neck off, take the mouths out, finish the whole thing. And I paint with Rustoleum. Which nobody does, I don’t think. And it can paint on anything—glass, metal, ceramic, wood.

Pilgrim | 2008 | 20.5 in. x 48 in. x 8 in.

It does look like you have fun making these.
I do, and it irritates my wife.

But I get political, too. In my work I have the good and the bad. I was a Catholic. I’m really partial to the Northern Renaissance, the old paintings where they used halos and stuff. And I had to have nuns for teachers back in the days when they were really strict and whipped you. I got whipped for painting the side of the church.

What have some of your students gone on to do?
Well, I had Craig Chaquico from Jefferson Starship in my filmmaking class.

Are you hands-on or hands-off as a teacher?
I’m more of a hands-on guy. I actually demonstrate and show expectations. At City College I teach assemblage, and we did an assemblage show. I would take two classes and send them out to junk stores just to buy stuff. Take a whole week buying junk. And they had better come in with buckets of junk. Once they did, they would then get to swap the materials and make pieces. Then I could give them assignments. Say the assignment was to deconstruct a chair. You take the chair apart, but you have to use each and every part of that chair to construct, say, a figure. Some of the best assignments are just coming up with a good idea and putting everybody on the same page. Then they’re all working together on one thing, they’re learning from each other and getting to see what they’re working with. It’s not one guy over here working with clay and one guy working with paint. They’re all headed in the same direction.

I think the classroom is a theater where you develop a family. I tell them, “When you guys miss a class you’re cheating yourselves. You’ve got this two-hour period of time that is put away for you to create something where there’s never been something there before. And if you cut a class, you’ve blown those two hours. They’re gone, and you can’t make them up.”

The Tourist | 2008 | 10.5 in. x 32 in. x 14 in.

What do you feel you have left to accomplish?
There’s an endless search. I can tell you right now, when I die, I will not have had enough time to do everything I wanted to do. If it’s tomorrow, if it’s 20 years from now. I could go on for a thousand years.

Too many ideas?
It just flies into my head, mostly in the shower. The scariest thing is to finish a piece and have that excitement and joy and feeling of accomplishment. Then what next? You gotta start from scratch every time. That’s the scary part. You wonder if you’ll ever get another idea again. And the harder you think about it in that moment, the further away you are from accomplishing anything. So, I just wait.

And take showers.
[Laughing] Yes. And then sometimes you’ve got nothing to start with so you find one thing. You just find one thing. And that one thing can give you the impetus to finish the story, and put it all together. Sometimes I know what the piece is going to look like and other times, like this piece I’m working on right now, I just started, because I couldn’t wait for an idea to happen. But it happened. It just came together. I think what happens when an artist becomes really secure with himself is you use yourself as your own reference source. I’ll go back and look at stuff, how did I solve that? I think you’re in a pretty good place when that happens.

You’ve proven yourself to yourself.
Yes. And it’s not about showing in a gallery, it’s not about selling the work, it’s not even about fame,
you just can’t stop doing it. You have no choice in the matter.

Check out Michael Stevens’ work at JayJay Gallery (5524 B Elvas Ave., Sacramento) as part of their group exhibit, Monumental, which also includes the art of Roger Berry, Anne Gregory, Koo Kyung Sook and many more. Monumental runs now through April 28, 2018. For more info, go to Jayjayart.com.

**This piece first appeared in print on page 24 – 25 of issue #263 (April 9 – 23, 2018)**

For those unfamiliar, The Philharmonik is a pretty big name in music around Sacramento. His real name is Christian Gates and at 24-years-old, he’s already a multitalented producer, versatile instrumentalist and ambitious vocalist, and at the moment, his creativity knows no bounds. His music is a breath of fresh air in an overly saturated hip-hop mainstream where his deeply personal accounts articulate not only the injustice he sees around him, but also his optimism. Gates finds a way to make the nostalgic traits of each of his songs feel brand new.

On his 2016 rap project, Good People, the beats and content were reminiscent of an Outkast album, but with a Sacramento perspective. Now he’s back to take you on a soul-filled funk quest through his new self-titled album that will be released on March 1. Sonically, it includes R&B, electronic and even folk elements, but listeners may also notice that Gates wants to instill people with genuine hope and bravery.

Gates has been featured on stages at Concerts in the Park and GATHER, and has performed on Good Day Sac, Sofar Sacramento and headlined the James Cavern-hosted Basement Sessions. He has also been featured on websites like AfroPunk.

Gates is working ambitiously to branch out toward something bigger than music, under Sol Collective’s Sol Life record label, he wants to use his platform to help underprivileged communities and make Sacramento truly inclusive.

In recent news, Gates has been in the media for his boycott of Sacramento News and Review’s Sammies, the publication’s annual music awards show. Gates was nominated along with other Sac musicians like Hobo Johnson and Tel Cairo. The show was canceled this year after artists and nominees planned to boycott the event in response to SN&R’s profile of former Sacramento police officer John Tennis, who fatally shot a black man in 2016. Local musicians and activists plan to hold a series of Anti-Sammies events on March 14 and 15 at Blue Lamp, but Gates will not be performing. You can however catch him live at his album release show at Sol Collective on March 3.

Submerge had the opportunity to chat with Gates about his new album, society and his thoughts concerning his Sammies boycott.

We’re excited about the new album release, how long did it take you to get the project together?
I’ve been working on it since July 2016. What’s funny is that I’m always working on music, so by the time my first mixtape [Good People] came out I already had drafts for a couple records that were potentials for this album, but I wasn’t sure. The finished project took about a year-and-a half to two years.

Can you talk about the major differences between Good People and this new self-titled album?
Well Good People was [specifically] a rap album. I feel like that was where I was at [when I made it] … With this album [The Philharmonik] something just came over me where I was going back to my roots with artists I grew up with like Stevie Wonder. All the funk people were in my brain and I couldn’t get it out.

You have a playlist on Spotify titled “My Biggest Inspirations.” I heard Earth, Wind and Fire, and J.Cole among others. But of all the artists on your playlist, Stevie Wonder is on it the most. What is it about Stevie Wonder that resonates with you as a huge inspiration?
He’s just the greatest. His voice is perfect. And the fact that he doesn’t see at all makes it seem like he’s more in tune with the music. He’s just so captivating. He’s just like my biggest inspiration, hands down. All-time favorite.

You open the album with the mellow “Underdog.” But I’m a bit confused on whether the tune is about a single underdog or multiple characters. Can you explain?
It’s everybody. I think everyone has felt like an underdog in a certain way, shape or in life. For me this is how I’ve felt like an underdog. In school I used to get made fun of hella. Just all day getting picked on. I was that guy that would get the most picked on.

On “Pay Me,” your big message is the importance of not being taken advantage of. It seems like you’re saying, “Pay me, recognize me and give me the acknowledgment I deserve.” Is there more to the song?
It’s also my way of saying how much I hate capitalism. I was thinking about having to chase money all the time and the people at the top who have the whole world for them to devour. Is it too much to ask to make enough for me to live on? Like fuck you.

Do you have aspirations other than being a musician?
I want to make a change in this city. Not just like for the music aspect, but just for the community aspect. Because [Sol Collective] they’re doing so much, I want to also pour into that.

Back to the album, is “Momma’s House” [featuring Hobo Johnson] about getting out there on your own?
It’s hella depressing. It’s like at the end of the day, I was a privileged kid. I had a roof over my head and enough food to eat. The only thing was I couldn’t go out much and I had to watch my sister a lot. My mom was single and she had to do the work … The transition into adulthood is very hard. Everybody is getting into debt. The jobs aren’t equating. So on “Momma’s House,” I was like responding to all that by saying, “How the hell do I get out of this?”

“Good Day” is a less upbeat song yet a beautifully piano-driven representation of the challenges you’ve gone through emotionally. You struggle with depression correct?
Anxiety. Yeah, so I wrote that shit at like four in the morning. I couldn’t sleep. I was super fucking depressed. I just wanted to have a good day. Like over the years it felt like it was getting progressively worse especially after moving out. Isolation is almost unbearable.

On “Energy” you tap into your sultry, sexy, and romantic side. Where does that come from?
Incredibly, it came from a platonic place. It’s funny. I just wanted to talk more about just the connection and for me like there are people that inspire that song. Like experiences that I’ve had and I’ve been like wow the energy is really nice here. If you can sit at a bar at Motown Mondays and hold a conversation for the whole duration, that’s a good energy there.

What I get from “Let Freedom Ring” is your experience with racism and injustice from your daily life, or things you see happen to other people, but you sound really confident that there will be better days.
There will be. I wanted it to express how everybody feels ever since Donald Trump has been in office. The racists have definitely come out of the woodwork. So if they are going to come out of the woodwork, I’m definitely going to be more vocal about that shit. I don’t really care who it offends. Like if you have a platform where your voice can inspire people, it’s like your obligation—your responsibility to make sure that the people that are oppressed have some type of liberation in what they hear.

Were you the first to boycott the Sammies this year? Did you know other artists in the community were going to follow?
That shit’s been going on for a while. I’m not [the first]. I just had a big enough platform for people to notice [in the media]. People have been doing that shit [boycotting SN&R and The Sammies] for years … Honestly, a lot of people of color have been boycotting it and were voicing it and have been voicing it. But to be honest most of the white artists that have been doing it [boycotting the Sammies] wouldn’t have done it unless someone really came out the woodwork and really said something about it. And I do feel that way.

So you think it’s a “bandwagon” mentality for certain artists?
I definitely do. I definitely do think it’s a bandwagon. I mean there comes a place where I think racism is wrong, but there’s also a place where now that everybody is on board with this, they are on board, too, because of that. I didn’t give a fuck about any of it. I was like, yo, this is the right thing to do, and if you’re not going to do that it’s fine. But like Shane from Tel Cairo was very authentic [when he boycotted the Sammies]. Like he was ready, he was with me and there were other people that were with me. I felt some of the backlash from it to back down. But I’m not going to back down from it, and I do think we’re going into a good direction. But I think that shit is going to be temporary and I think they [SN&R] are going to revert back to their old ways. At this point I just feel like everything that they do, like the apologies in SN&R have been unacceptable because they haven’t really been apologies.

What do you want to see happen as a result of this boycott?
I want to see that black lives matter, and I want to see black lives inspired. I want to see more inclusivity of black and brown people within artist ranks and I want to see them get more money for it. I want them to be recognized. I want them to be seen. There’s just too much use of the word “diversity” without really having diversity, so that’s my message. You know like, yo, start putting your feelings to action.

Are you performing at the Anti-Sammies?
I’ll be at SXSW during that time. The Sammies got canceled. I guess that’s a start in the right direction. But I’m skeptical and think things will go back to the way they were.

Make sure to check out The Philharmonik’s self-titled album, which will be released on March 1 on Spotify, SoundCloud, Tidal and Apple Music. You can celebrate its release at Sol Collective (2574 21st St., Sacramento), on March 3. Tickets are $12, and Jmsey and Sunmonks will also perform. You can also catch The Philharmonik live on March 9 for an intimate show at Gold Standard Sounds recording studio, or on April 13 at Harlow’s (2708 J St., Sacramento) when he opens for Bilal. For more info, go to Facebook.com/thephilharmonik.

**This interview first appeared in print on pages 22 – 23 of issue #260 (Feb. 26 – Mar. 12, 2018)**

Recall the first moments of waking, when, adrift in the mental flotsam left over from a night of vivid dreaming, you try and sort the pieces together. The half-remembered places and in-between entities that had charged through the landscape of your imagination with such jarring solidity now burn away like soap bubbles in the sunlight of logic. What allows us to weave these strange symbols and portents together so seamlessly in the sleeping hours? In our best efforts to reconstruct a dream, the results inevitably resemble a collage—fragments of wonder, alarm and mystery snatched from the subconscious.

For Angela Tannehill, the results are more seamless than most. In the two-odd years since she began working on her mixed media pieces—found cutouts layered and blended into textured background painting—she has honed a special knack for creating surrealist landscapes possessed of a storytelling power.

A few months back at ArtStreet, one could see small crowds engrossed in the story told by Tannehill’s largest work to date, After Us. It depicts an edenic wilderness of lush growth and harmonious life: peacocks, wolves, hares and snakes frolicking among the littered remnants of human craftsmanship—an ornate chair, a vintage automobile—gracefully decaying in the new unpeopled paradigm. One of the standout works at the month-long event, it left an impression of depth and animacy, as if it might start moving once all eyes are off the canvas. Her back catalog offers the chance to go deeper into this peculiar realm: Manta rays and starlings fly together in the dawn sky, while polar bears and hummingbirds emerge from portals into space. Though architectural wreckage and a disembodied human presence can be found scattered throughout these constellational works, they are always in some way subsumed by the elements; nature has figured largest in her choice of subject, an enduring influence from a childhood in the countryside.

When she’s not piecing together pipedream perspectives and hypnagogic hybrids, Tannehill harnesses her creative powers for community impact, a vocation she labels “design for do-gooders.” This includes designing promotional material for nonprofits like Sutter Health, and creating around 50 book covers for the youth literacy outreach group 916 Ink, which helps young people tell and publish their stories. If the amount of effort expended in promoting creativity in others has a feedback effect, it has surely reverberated loudly in Tannehill’s work, driving her to create more and amplify outward her normally introverted nature.

We recently caught up with Angela to find out about the ArtStreet experience, the value of community involvement and the virtue of the unexpected in her chosen artform.

Turbulence | 2015 | 22″ x 30″ | mixed media on canvas

How did you go about making your piece for ArtStreet, After Us?
It was a little different because they wanted to know what I was going to do ahead of time, and I had to put it together loosely as a digital sketch beforehand. I was really nervous, because it was so much bigger than anything I’d done before. I had to build the wooden canvas. Usually I sit back and filter through all these different magazines and books, and whatever elicits some sort of an emotional connection for me, I gravitate to it, put it down, and if it works, it works. With this one, it was harder to use my smaller scrapbook elements because everything was so large. There’s a big tree in the corner, and since there’s no magazine I have with a tree of that size, I printed out little pieces here and there online to make a composite of a tree. I just had to keep in mind what the theme was, which is being us [people] being taken over by nature. In my other pieces, the theme is pretty loose, and it may end up saying something completely different by the time I’ve finished it.

Would you say that nature is the dominant theme in your work? What pulls you toward it?
I just like how organic the textures are—the movement of water especially. And there’s so much symbolism in nature, water in particular. Then there’s the draw to my childhood, because there was so much nature in my childhood that I don’t have quite as much of now. Our family lived in the country, surrounded by fields. When I was around 10 years old, I would take walks out into the field and go fishing by myself. We were always catching anything that moved. My belief is that we truly are connected with every living thing on the planet. And my fear is that right now, it’s like this heartbreaking connection in a way, because the more we learn—the more we know we’re connected, the more we know that we’re ruining things, hurting the world with our presence and our negligence. We’ve lost our connection in some ways, even though it’s unbreakable, but because we’re ignoring it, we’re ruining it. It’s scary, but at the same time it’s comforting, because nature has a way of righting itself. There’s a counterbalance, and maybe it will make up for whatever we’ve lacked. Maybe we won’t fare so well, but I feel like the Earth will right itself.

Sweet Heart | 2015 | 12″ x 12″ | mixed media on canvas

How did you begin working in collage?
I went to school for fine arts and I got my BFA, but I really didn’t do anything with it for years and years. I went into graphic design, and I did a few things on the side, but what inspired me to get into collage in particular was the work of Jill Allyn Stafford. She was a board member at 916 Ink, where I do a lot of design work. So I saw that, and I had these little three-by-three wood samples I’d picked up at a thrift store, so I started layering things on them. I think the surrealism and the fantasy themes have always been in the back of my mind—the dream worlds.

I like collage better than painting. I can paint, but I could never do exactly what I want with it. Part of the fun of collage is not knowing where I’m going to be later in the work. It has the element of surprise. I won’t know what a piece is going to mean until two elements suddenly come together. When you’re making a collage, you’re bringing with you the history of whatever piece you’ve just used to the other things on the palette, whereas painting is directing from one source—your mind.

Heady | 2016 | 12″ x 24″ | mixed media on cradled panel board

Do you have a method for hunting down your source material?
I have so many collection items right now that I might have to stop, but usually I have to make a trip. I really like getting pieces from the Time Life series, National Geographic of course, and textbooks are great. I have probably hundreds of magazines and books that I use, but lately, since ArtStreet, or a little bit before, I found Flickr commons, and I use that a lot because I can print to size. If you find the right thing and you want it aged, you can make it look aged. The crackle effects come from a paste, or sometimes it’s layered tissue paper.

Do you have any mood music or media that helps your work along?
I watch bad television, but it has to be a specific kind of TV. Have you ever seen the show Supernatural? Cheesy sci-fi or comic book stuff. Something that would be perfect for the 14-year-old boy, that’s what does it for me. It’s light enough where it occupies only a part of my brain, so the other part can go into dreamland and be automatic. But it’s interesting enough, and a lot of the time there’s weird creatures in there, or something otherworldly. I’ve probably watched every episode twice, I just put it on repeat. The only thing I can’t watch at all while working is comedy—it puts my brain into a completely different kind of rhythm, and everything comes out weird and awful. It’s just something about where my brainwaves land, that puts me in a space where I can create without having to think too hard. When I was little, a big influence was Fantasy Island. That, and we also used to have this Saturday afternoon show that was nothing but dinosaurs, monsters and ghost stories. Anything that has mythology attached to it, or a creature feature of any kind, really drew me in. I guess that’s why those types of shows put me in that right frame of mind, because it just takes me back to my youth. I guess I haven’t changed much.

Lady Bird’s Universe | 2017 | 8″ x 8″ | mixed media on cradled panel board

How would you describe the impact of 916 Ink?
Years ago when we started, everybody thought it was going to be a literacy program. And it kind of is, in that there’s reading and writing involved, but what I felt from the beginning that it was going to be, and as it turns out it really is, is kids writing and telling their stories, getting positive feedback and encouragement. You can watch somebody grow, become able to take more chances, have a little more confidence. I swear, you even get a little smarter when you’re allowed to open up, to take things in. You’re not insecure and closed off as much. The kids, more than anything, find this sense of confidence that they didn’t have, and they do better in school and in life. I just posted this the other day, it’s a quote from Rainn Wilson, “If you can tell your story, you can heal yourself.” That’s what’s going on there. I haven’t gone to one of the readings without getting choked up. I’m still fairly new to making art, and I think the biggest thing that encouraged me to start was surrounding myself with people who were positive, encouraging and accepting. That didn’t happen until I started working with 916 Ink. They were great cheerleaders, and they get you to come out of your shell.

Angela Tannehill will be part of the 62 Hues group show at 1810 Gallery, located at 1810 12th St. in Sacramento. The show opens Friday, June 2, 2017, from 6-10 p.m. Tannehill will also be the June guest artist at Studio 10 in Arthouse on R, located at 1021 R. St. in Sacramento. Receptions are first Friday from 6-9 p.m. and second Saturday from 5-9 p.m, with the gallery open on the third Sunday from noon-2 p.m. Find out more at Angelatannehill.com.

**This interview first appeared in print on pages 18 – 19 of issue #240 (May 22 – June 5, 2017)**

“I watched a lot of Care Bears as a kid,” muses local artist Jessica White with a laugh. “I use colors all from that palette, I don’t know if that’s on purpose.”

White is a tattoo artist at Reclamare Gallery and Tattoo. She works out of the Land Park shop with her boyfriend, local artist and Reclamare owner Corey Bernhardt. Born and raised in South Sac, she didn’t make her way to Midtown until a few years ago.

White’s tattoo work is a play on traditional American, a style she describes as whimsical neo-traditional.

“It’s a little bit more stylized than American traditional, and I think I take that neo-traditional concept and I add a little bit of whimsy and an effeminate touch, and so it doesn’t quite look like the standard neo-traditional, it ends up having a little bit softer color palette,” White explains.

Her tattoos retain a youthful, fun playfulness, with a color pallette that utilizes bold, bright blues and striking pinks. If you’ve ever enjoyed the boardgame Candyland just for the elaborate, colorful board itself, you will find something to appreciate in her style.

She has a fun approach to color and pop culture elements, binding them with elements of traditional American tattoos. Her love of coffee and fantasy and cartoons is also evident in her portfolio.

One thing that comes as a surprise when talking to her is how humble she is as an established artist, making a specific point to note her group of friends as influences artistically and just all around. When she started to recall the possibility of pursuing a different career path, you could hear the moment of pause where she, for that moment, tried to visualize her life without her group of friends.

Reclamare will be celebrating their four-year anniversary with a group art show Saturday, Nov. 12, 2016.

“The theme for the show is very loosely surrealism,” elaborates White. “I have a couple digital pieces of mine that I’ll be offering at the show that would fall into that realm for sure.”

Why did you choose tattooing as a medium?
It sort of was by happenstance. I was really into drawing and art in general at an early age, but in my generation I guess, being an artist wasn’t necessarily a very lucrative career, and I was worried about that, so I actually went to UC Davis to study science, because I was good at science too, and I thought, well, I can make a living at that. And fast forward four years, I was pretty miserable, I wasn’t really happy with the path that I was on or what I was doing. So I told my parents that I didn’t want to go to school anymore, and they were really supportive, and then I started getting into photography, and thought that was going to be my artform, and I really enjoyed it, but it wasn’t 100% what I wanted to do. And I got asked to take some photos at a tattoo shop, and while I was there I started to talk to the artists about the industry and what tattooing was like, and I had mentioned that I thought it’d be something really interesting to get into, and they offered me an apprenticeship, and I was there for like maybe two weeks before I quit all of my other jobs. It was called The Body Embellished; they’re not around anymore. I just dove right in, it was different than anything else I had done before. And I really liked that I could be creative and interact with people. I was there for almost a year, and then I went to another shop in Dixon and learned a lot from them as well, before I officially was a tattoo artist.

I think that I was always surrounded by tattoos; my parents had a lot of friends that had tattoos, so maybe subconsciously it was something that I was interested in. At a young age, I didn’t know that tattooing was as artistic as it is. I didn’t know that the industry is as influenced by art. I always thought that it was American traditional and that was it. I had no idea up until I started working in the industry, that there was so much more going on, so many fine art applications being used.

Did you always identify as an artist? Were you creative as a child?
Definitely, I used to draw and color all the time. Specifically, I drew Jessica Rabbit a lot, and I drew this little girl that was from this movie Cats Don’t Dance and I drew the hummingbird from Pocahontas a lot.

My mom Sally White and my grandma Naomi White both painted, and painted around me at an early age. My mom painted things that were a little more storytelling and my grandma did landscapes, so their subject matter didn’t necessarily resonate into my work, but being surrounded by art at such an early time I think was unavoidably influential. My mom was always encouraging me to do art and supplying me with all the tools to do so. I remember her taking me on a trip to see a family friend who was an oil painter, I don’t know how old I was but we all sat at the table and they were trying to teach me how to draw a horse. I actually think I still have that drawing at home, or maybe only the horse she drew, because mine was probably terrible. My mom saved a lot of my early doodles though, I think she was pretty proud.

Unfortunately [my mom] never got to see me working as an artist. She passed away before I received my apprenticeship. But I think that her passing was another moment that signified my departure from a conventional career path and made me want to focus on something more fulfilling. Life is short as they say …

When do you feel like you found your stride as an artist?
I would say I definitely recognized it in 2015, at the end of the year. I looked back and I was like, ”This was the year, this was my year, that things really started clicking, and I really started honing on what my style looks like. And then this past year has been further delving into that, and trying to tighten my portfolio up and really make sure that everything looks like ”Jessica did that tattoo.”

I think that this last year, and the year before, really solidified that this is what I want to do forever. I never thought that I didn’t want to do it, but I was always open to the possibility that there might be something else. And now, I don’t think that I could not tattoo, it would be crazy if I didn’t tattoo.

How different do you think your life path would be if you would have just pursued the sciences?
Hugely different [laughs]. Because I was thinking about going into phlebotomy or pharmacy; I guess phlebotomy wouldn’t have been that different, still dealing with needles. I probably wouldn’t even have the same group of friends, which is really sad to think about, because my core group of friends are huge, are very, very important to me. I didn’t meet any of them until after I started working in the industry, and I think the solidity of those relationships is much due to the fact that I was really coming into my own and being more true to myself, which allowed me to connect with people on a better level. My friend group is very important to me. I don’t know what I would do or be without them and I’m so grateful to have these people in my life.

Who inspires you as an artist?
My main inspiration would be [Reclamare owner] Corey Bernhardt. He is definitely my baseline. His drive and approach to art has definitely pushed me and helped me tremendously. Watching his growth and seeing him strive to achieve what he wants out of himself artistically is extremely inspiring. As for artists whose work I find inspiring: Kelsey J. Beckett, Brandi Milne, Ly Aleister, Kelly Doty and Emily Rose Murray.

What music is on heavy rotation while you work or paint?
There’s a lot of music that inspires me to get down to work. Right now I’m listening to a lot of This Will Destroy You, because Corey listens to them a lot. And this band Eisley, and Radiohead has always been something that I listen to when I work; they are probably one of my favorite bands. My favorite album is OK Computer. There’s also a lot of Sigur Ros and The National. And also Sacramento artists Rituals of Mine [formerly known as Sister Crayon]; I have listened to them consistently for probably the last 10 years.

The Reclamare Gallery Annual Group Art Show is Saturday, Nov. 12, 2016 from 6–10 p.m. at Reclamare Gallery & Custom Tattoo located at 2737 Riverside Blvd. in Sacramento. The show will feature new original art and prints by some of the best tattoo artists in the greater Sacramento area on display and for sale. Find more information at Facebook.com/Reclamaretattoo.

Nightmares and Dreamscapes

Artist Sayako Dairiki would be a therapist’s easiest patient to dissect. She paints her dreams, which she describes as a mix of her environment and her internal struggle, fueled by experiences from her current life, and possibly a past one.

One of her recent pieces, part of her Inner Landscapes exhibition at Pence Gallery in Davis, depicts a dream in which she sees a town floating at twilight, and she hears a voice say, “That’s the place your souls live.” Silhouettes of arches and points huddle close together against a ghostly bright blue background, almost like a traveler looking upon a lit graveyard.

“When I woke up I did a watercolor quickly to remember, and then did the painting,” Dairiki says of her process for the piece, entitled Town Souls Live.

Dairiki’s themes, colors and subjects hark back to medieval European art, says Pence Gallery director Natalie Nelson in her informational piece about the new exhibit. Nelson says Dairiki’s use of brilliant indigo hues and gold leaf, and her paintings of angels, saints, keyholes and archways, are reminiscent of a hidden, ancient realm.

{Memory from Winter to Spring | Oil on linen. 18″ x 24″ /// Spirits: Night in May, California | Oil on linen. 16″ x 20″}

Dairiki says she has only a few explanations for her affinity toward medieval subjects. One reason could be her exploratory trips to Italy with her husband, and the icon paintings in Christianity that always leave an impression. An example is her piece, Night in May, of a robed young woman with straw-colored hair nodding on a crescent moon. The wildflowers on her robes exemplify the rural, natural environment where Dairiki spends most of her time.

Another explanation is her love for the writer Herman Hesse, and particularly the influence of his books The Glass Bead Game and Narcissus and Goldmund, which include medieval, spiritual and self-realization themes.

“They’re not directly following the story but you know when you read a book, you get an image in your mind,” she says. “I try to put those images into my paintings.”

Finally, a third source of inspiration Dairiki calls more fairytale, but has no reason not to believe. She asked a friend, a known psychic, why she has such an interest in medieval subjects, in art and in dream.

“She said I have a past life as a nun in 13th century Northern Italy,” Dairiki says. “That kind of thing is sort of fun to say.”

Not all of Dairiki’s dreams materialize into paintings quickly. She’s still trying to get one on paper that’s been recurring for years, she says.

{Circus | Oil on linen, 18″ x 24″}

“It’s kind of like aged food, like cheese or wine or whiskey; you have to wait,” she says. “You have to let it sit to let it come out. I do kind of the same thing once in a while. Just don’t rush. Let it sit.”

Patience runs deep in Dairiki. She describes moving to her home in Winters as a struggle at first, after having spent the first 40 years of her life in Fukuoka, Japan; New York City; Los Angeles; and San Francisco.

“It took a while for me to appreciate this isolated beauty,” she says of her home in Winters, a sprawling 40 acres of trees, hills and animals. “I grew up in a big city and never was in the rural countryside. Gradually after 10 years I started really deeply appreciating the beauty of nature. It didn’t happen instantly. Now I like to be here. I took root, like a tree. I am a transplanted tree with roots.”

{Moon Drops | Oil on linen, 30″ x 40″ /// Shadow Field | Oil on canvas, 16″ x 20″}

The permanent move to the United States was unintentional, Dairiki says, but when she met the man who later became her husband, she decided to stay, and eventually moved to Winters to live with him and her stepdaughter.

Dairiki spends most of her day at home while her husband, an architect with whom she occasionally does projects like public art, is in town.

“So, I need to deal with my environment,” she says. “When your life is in a difficult place for many reasons, you have to deal with it right? My painting is a really good tool for me to deal with those life issues.”

{Amtrak Depot Seating, Davis}

For Dairiki, those issues over the years have included “living in a different culture, living in a new environment or having a new family.”

“I raised my stepdaughter, for example. Now she is 24 and is fine but when she was a teenager it wasn’t that easy,” Dairiki laughs. “Painting is a really great tool to see myself, to detach and see what’s really going on. The process of painting—mixing paints, grabbing brushes—is very healing for me. It helps me face difficulties visually. Sometimes you have nightmares, but expressing those things and having deep commitment to my painting was great for my life.”

Prior to her permanent move, Dairiki had come to the United States in the late 1970s, around age 20, as a struggling artist with her struggling photographer boyfriend, both trying to make it in Los Angeles and New York.

“He did really cool photography but it was just two young people trying to be artists, and it was tough,” she recalls. “I had a lot of dreams and it was good, but we stayed less than two years.”

Dairiki came back to the United States from Japan in 1994, hoping to see more of the country. She moved to San Francisco and worked at a ceramics studio in Haight Ashbury, and was inspired by her new city surroundings.

Her art, she says, changes given what’s going on in her life and where she is, but it stays the same in the sense that it is always what she dreams in that time and space.

“When I was in San Francisco I was not doing rural or nature,” she notes. “It’s a big city with interesting people and so my art was different. But I always painted the dream world, even [when I lived] in Japan.”

Lately, she is trying more abstract painting, taking her dreams to another level. But, she adds, her real life still offers plenty of inspiration.

One of the most romantic, touching pieces of the Pence exhibit is Moon Night Walk. I had to ask—was that real or dream? Who is in the painting?

“My husband and I take a walk, not every night, but often after dinner, and our neighbor has a walnut orchard we walk by,” she explains shyly. “Sometimes we just enjoy the beautiful full moon and talk about the day. That’s my real experience.”

Dairiki spoke with Submerge the night her exhibit opened. She held an artist talk at Pence Gallery Jan. 17. She says she enjoys talking to people who see her work.

“Different people see things in different ways,” she says. “Sometimes people see things I don’t see in my paintings. I want to enjoy that new image in my painting too!”

{Egg | Westhampton Park, Sacramento}

Take a glimpse into Sayako Dairiki’s dream world through her exhibition Inner Landscapes at Pence Gallery, located at 212 D Street in downtown Davis, through Feb. 27, 2016. Find out more at Pencegallery.org.

Vanity and Impermanence

My first memory of Kim Scott’s work is also one of my first memories of Sacramento.

Scott was showing with several other artists at the Toyroom Gallery back in 2002. I was wandering down K Street with a companion, and we had just started hanging out; you know, when you’re bored out of your mind and you know that the first date was a fluke because now you have nothing to talk about.

The small gallery space tucked into the back of a clothing boutique offered welcome respite from the rain that night. I also hoped it would provide something to talk about. It didn’t. But the art was amazing!

I didn’t know how to form an opinion on Scott’s work other than it appealed to me visually—bold color and subtle gradients, thick, ruby-red slabs of raw steak imposed over heads, all casually occupying comfortable, serene rooms or natural settings. The collision of gems, polished jewels and various cuts of bright red, raw meat create a textural feast, a visual orgasm. Very satisfying.

Scott has been showing and working as an artist in Sacramento, specifically the Del Paso Boulevard area for decades, as well as abroad. She saw the art boom of the ‘80s come to Sacramento, in galleries such as the Acme and Michael Himovitz. She even recently had a retrospective show of her work at the 1616 Gallery.

I turned onto the street to Scott’s home studio, deciding to park behind the vehicle I thought, on first sight, looked the most like it belonged to an artist. Looking at my phone for the address, I found I was right out front.

Scott and her husband, owner of the Toyroom Gallery, live and work within a small artist community called Surreal Estates. Building a vacant lot from the ground up with a group of like-minded artists, Surreal Estates is a functional artist community with 11 single-family units. The live/work space garnered interest nationally from other artists looking to own and work on a property while investing some serious sweat equity.

Scott has a show this month at Little Relics. The new body of work is recognizable as her work, and should not be missed. Decadent colors tell the story of a near future where bird watchers no longer have birds to watch.

{Imitation of Life, Oil on panel, What Do the Bird Watchers Watch When There Are No More Birds?}

So what was your sort of pathway to art or illustration?
My mother was an artist when I was growing up, so I did get a lot of encouragement from her. She would take me to art openings around town and with her to art classes at American River College. Perhaps that wouldn’t be enough in itself, but I already enjoyed drawing and fanciful stuff, sci-fi, comics. I liked dressing up and fantasy life role playing when I was a kid.

I liked to doodle, so I wouldn’t say those drawings were completed thoughts. I did a lot of drawing as a child, but many of them just weren’t finished pieces.

When I was in high school I had a teacher who was a serious artist, and he really put me through the ringer in terms of the creative process. I suppose he introduced me to the formality more, and then in community college for sure I had teachers like that. I’d really made art my whole life, I was considered the class artist in grade school, but when I got into college, I still didn’t realize that you could be an artist as a career, it was just like, something I did. When I was there I was taking like marine biology classes, and at some point there I thought, man I could be a half-assed marine biologist, or be a pretty good artist, because my interests were really in art. So that sort of cemented my direction a little bit, in finding out about becoming the person I wanted to become from that point.

{Buffoon (The Masquarade), Oil on canvas, From the Crocker Art Museum Collection}

Who kinda made you want to start doing the style or mode of art you do now?
Something I use to this day, I use myself as a gauge, so like when I see someone’s work, or eat something, or I hear music, or I see colors, or architecture. I just get some kind of feeling, and I think “Oh, I’d like give someone that kind of feeling from my work.”

When I was in college, one of my first exercises from my oil painting instructor was a self-portrait. I mean everyone does that, but I just kept doing it and doing it. After that assignment I just kept going into it and into it. They look somewhat like me, but they don’t have to look like me to tell that story.

I had one art history teacher who told me a story about a guy who goes to this cocktail party, and he stands in the corner for five minutes and nobody notices him, and then he’s there for an hour and people start saying “What’s that guy standing in the corner for?” and then a day goes by and the neighbors know about it, and then he’s there for a month, and he gets in the newspapers. The story there is … if you stick at something long enough, it creates its own momentum, and I knew I had more than just standing in the corner at my disposal, but I took that on, so I think the self portrait thing, pragmatically, the only thing I know about is where I’m coming from … anyway, so is it narcissistic? Maybe, but I feel like, with full impunity, I can talk about all the shit that goes on in my own mind, the crazy stuff, or the beautiful stuff, and maybe get that right, and not impose on anybody else. So I’ve done that a long time, standing in the corner working on that, and I’ve sort of gone all over the place.

Also, I took up bird watching a few years ago so I’m out in nature a lot, taking photographs of birds, and I was already doing paintings of birds, but I had to rely on someone else’s imagery, so they were always more made up than photographic.

The two things I focus on the most are vanity and impermanence. What is the vanity of what you are doing? What is the impermanence? So with that in mind, maybe it opens things up in the work.

What I’m expressing in my work about vanity is more about the human condition, about how it’s a crutch, and there’s a lot of suffering that comes from that. And it’s also funny too, it’s like clownish or foolish to hold on to things like that, but it’s human, a foible, or weakness, or a misunderstanding of how things are.

{Red Queen, Oil on Panel}

When did you feel the most a part of an artist community in Sacramento?
Probably the first strong community I felt a part of was the Acme Gallery group, and it was predominately started by David Stone, who now owns a gallery down in L.A. He was a Dadaist, but now he’s more into conceptual art. I used to do performance art as well as painting and sculptures. There were a lot of interesting artists in that group. After that, the Michael Himovitz gallery, which isn’t around anymore, but is now the 1616 Gallery.

During the mid- and late ‘80s there was a lot of money to be made in art; that was like Fast Times in Sacramento.

Was that a time when there was a more active creative class?
There was a very active creative class then. There were a lot of people who collected Sacramento artists during that period. Michael Himovitz helped during that period. He really brought about sort of a renaissance in Sacramento, and people still talk about what he brought to the arts community then. He was a guy that liked art, didn’t know a lot about it, but he was an innovative guy, and he wanted every artist in Sacramento to bring him their work. So he took it from everyone who would bring it, he formed for himself an opinion about what he wanted to show. He believed in it, and he found people that trusted him, and people bought it.

{New Breeds, Oil on canvas, What Do the Bird Watchers Watch When There Are No More Birds?}

What would you say is motivating your upcoming show? What has changed in your focus?
Well, I think bird watching, but not just seeing birds, but observing nature, and the delicate balance and reading the newspapers about extinction and global warming, that’s a big part of it.

This body of work is really experimental … and it relates to the last work I did. My private working title for this show, which is sort of a reminder, is What Would the Bird Watcher Watch When There are No More Birds. So when I really started seeing that, and started internalizing it all, the beauty of nature and where things are going.

{Cry Baby, Oil on canvas, What Do the Bird Watchers Watch When There Are No More Birds?}

Check out Kim Scott’s solo show at Little Relics now through Aug. 30, 2015. Little Relics is located at 908 21st Street, Sacramento. Check out Littlerelics.com for more information and gallery hours. You can also sample Scott’s work at Feedyoureye.com.

Rich and Strange

A bizarre creature slithers alongside the brick wall of the Oak Park Brewery. Somewhere between pufferfish and kraken, its alien form elicits menace and wonder in equal measure. From a porthole-like opening in its side peers a glowering skeletal countenance, locked in a permanently frozen cackle, delighted to have entered our poorly defended world.

A curious hybrid erupts from the doorway of the Colony on Stockton Boulevard, a kind of bio mechanical sparrow bedecked in sea-dragon’s garb. Peer into the cavernous eyes in the midst of its ornate head and ask yourself, “Is it living? Or is it clockwork?” From what world do such things come, manufactured but intricately organic, natural but forever altered as if under the hand of a 24th century jeweler? In a word, the answer is S.V. Williams.

A Sacramento native resettled in recent years after spending some time in the Northwest, Stephen V. Williams (styled S.V.) has gotten some high visibility of late in the downtown art scene. Several of his works have helped it to expand quite literally, bursting from the confinement of the canvas onto several prominent locations around town. These murals are a specialty of Williams’, whose early background lies in graffiti and other public artforms. Recently, we caught up with the artist at his home and studio to chat about the origin of his work, his Sacramento roots and the challenges of working with an audience.

In August, 1810 Gallery will showcase Williams’ latest works in a more intimate setting with a series called Relics—an apt description of the forms visitors will be introduced to there. Through the shadows and twilight glow of a changed Earth wander magnificent and bizarre creatures, recognizable, perhaps, but having undergone a sea change. Come for yourself, and prepare to get acquainted.

{Tree Ferry}

When did you start painting?
I want to say my first painting was in, like, 1999 … It was with spray paint, and, I don’t know if you’ve seen that movie Man Bites Dog, but I did a portrait of the main character in spray paint. At that time, I was so involved in graffiti art and drawing letters, that I was kind of against branching out into conventional painting. I would say that I really started to consider this a full-time occupation around 2007. I had a show in Portland, and I just had a random assortment of my paintings with me, and this gallery owner in Portland wanted to give me a solo show. At the time, they weren’t very cohesive as a body of work. I had that show, sold some paintings, and got some amazing responses, so after that I told myself, “I’ve got to stop working at this pizza shop and eating pizza all the time and just paint.”

I took some community college classes for art—mostly gesture drawings to get structure and balance down. But I’ve just been doing my own thing, since I started drawing and painting. I haven’t really felt the need to go to art school. I just keep going, developing my own style, doing what I want to do.

{Oak Park Brewery mural}

Is there more a feeling of pressure when you’re doing mural work in public?
When doing a mural I always want to get a basic image down immediately, because when you’re out in public like that, people will see you doing the first part of a work, and though as the artist you know what the final result will look like, they’ll be like, “What are you doing?!” [laughs]. That actually happened to us over at the Oak Park Brewery. We painted the entire wall black first, and were laying down the background when these people came by. We were like, “Hi, how are you doing?” And they replied with something along the lines of, “Well we were doing great until we saw this.” It was in a stage where there were no concrete images laid out yet. So I always try to work fast. Still, I’d say that murals are my favorite work to do.

Contained paintings are great too, because I can isolate myself, hang out with my painting, have beers with my painting. But I just love being outside, and even if there’s a weird reaction from people, I still like getting reactions from people. Even if someone calls it stupid, I’m like, “Thanks for actually noticing it,” you know? Some people will just walk by and look at it and nonchalantly look away, and it’s like, “Do you not know there’s something being created here?”

In what kind of world do your paintings exist?
I guess you could say it’s a little futurist. The way my figures look is what has happened to life on Earth: deformations. It’s kind of dark to think about, but I imagine something similar to animals in the sea that have been around so much trash and debris that their bodies grow around a certain thing because it just got stuck onto them. I kind of see them as a new breed of animal that have survived something. They’re kind of mechanical, too.

{Turtle}

There’s a large focus on animal forms in your work. Have you always been drawn to this subject?
I’ve always been fascinated with all different types of animals, especially birds and fish. The piece I’m working on now is a stag. I grew up camping a lot with my dad, so I’d see a lot of animals. I’d never hunt or anything, though. What I do to them on the canvas—I feel like I age them, put them in an alternate universe where nature is bound to the animal but there are also mechanical elements, like scales or feathers that resemble metal plating or armor.

But they’re not completely like machines—there also seems to be a warm feeling in these works.
Yeah, especially with the light that I try to add in. A lot of the time I tend to paint really dark, so the light colors really give the painting a warm, soulful feeling. And there’s usually some kind of relationship with the painting and another creature, like moths floating around them in the background. I don’t paint people often. I just find animals, and the mystery about them, to be far more interesting.

{Ridiculous}

What were your earliest visual influences?
Definitely comic books. I was very into drawing comic books. What pretty much got me to start drawing was, I would just kind of emulate different characters and create my own. And I would always kind of piece things together. How my current drawings come about is, there are tons of different pieces of things but the general structure of it is obviously a certain animal or a certain insect. I usually start off with a rough sketch, sometimes just of a particular feature—the scales, for instance. But as far as comics, I was always into the darker stuff, like Todd McFarlane’s Spawn; there have been a lot of horror and sci-fi influences.

I also hear that you did tattoo work for a while?
I apprenticed for like a few months. One thing—you’re in the shop all day, waiting for people to come to you. I know a lot of tattoo artists, a lot of my friends are tattoo artists, and they make good money doing it, but I would have had to switch around my style a little bit, change things up, make my work a little more traditional looking. I didn’t really want to take the time to relearn my art from the beginning. It’s definitely a skill I appreciate. But mostly now I’m into painting, illustrations, and I’m starting to get into some clothing stuff too. In fact, I have a screen press I’m working on right now, so I’m going to start making some shirts. Throughout the duration of the show, I’ll try to get some of those in the gallery, as it will be up for a month.

{Untitled, left | Gentle Beast and His Starling, right}

What have been your most rewarding experiences as an artist?
I do a lot of murals and group shows in L.A., and I also do a lot of music festivals. There’s this one big one, Lightning in a Bottle—that’s probably the best time I’ve had as an artist. There is like 60 live painters there, and it’s cool because there’s this big auction at the end and so the whole time you’re there you have the potential to make money. They set up artists all around the festival, and they try to keep them around each other so there’s not some artist who’s way out in the parking lot. But on the last day, they bring all the panels into one area, and so they just like surround this space full of art, and it’s like an art walk. There was also this collaborative piece I worked on with a friend in Coachella that was huge, and somebody bought that. I actually hit up TBD about that, because it would be awesome to have something like that. The music at these events is definitely a big part of my process. When I’m listening to good music, I paint so much better. I was at a Concert in the Park not too long ago—I was set to be painting out there—and I couldn’t get into the music at all, and I could not paint at all.

What’s your go-to painting music?
I listen to a lot of Mogwai, Sigur Ros, things that are a little tripped out. I really enjoy listening to instrumental music, and I can become engulfed in the piece I’m working on. Especially for like a new series of paintings, if there’s a new album, I’ll just constantly listen to that, and I find that a whole series of my paintings will be cohesive with that album.

{Reddit mural}

How would you describe the local arts scene?
The artistic community is awesome. It’s growing so much and there seems to be more people and businesses that are willing to showcase murals and other public works of art. I feel like Sacramento is a little bit behind in that sense, because when people hire you for murals, it has to be tied in with the business some way. Like, if I draw one of my creatures it has to be holding a cheeseburger in its hand, or wearing Nike shoes. If you give an artist full creative freedom, then there’s just going to be that much more unique work around town. But just having artwork out in public all the time is going to inspire people, drive artists to push themselves.

To learn more about S.V. Williams and get a glimpse of his latest work, you can visit his Instagram page at Instagram.com/svwilliamsart. You can check out the opening reception for his exhibit Relics at 1810 Gallery (located in the WAL, 1810 12th Street, Sacramento) on Aug. 7, 2015, from 6 to 10 p.m. Check out Facebook.com/1810gallery for more info and upcoming shows.