Whether you ride low, got a Dyno with black mags, test your guts on a fixie or cruise casual, if you’ve got a bike and love art, we’ve got an afternoon activity with you in mind. In celebration of May Is Bike Month, Submerge rode through Midtown mapping out a mural tour with eight points of interest. It should be noted this is not a comprehensive listing of Midtown murals, as we could send you down J Street or through seedy alleys on a dangerous mission to enjoy art. Our mural tour is a list of staff favorites that can be viewed safely as you happen to cruise past local businesses we frequent. Please ride carefully, stay hydrated and respect Omri Casspi’s handsome face.

A fairly solid launch point to cruise past the history of Sacramento and some psychedelic butterflies of Laserium, then hang a sharp right before Macy’s to pass the parking garage as it transitions into Metamorphosis by Centro de Artistas Chicanos.

T Street / between 6th & 7th streets
Built in 1934, the Amphitheatre rests on the north side of the park and won’t look like much upon pulling up, but pedal around to the stage and bask in the Chicano-centric art by members of the Royal Chicano Air Force. It’s a great place to rest in the grass or on the stage and hydrate if needed.

915 S Street / between 9th & 10th streets
Painted in 2005 by Stephanie Taylor, the mural on the eastern wall of Beer’s depicts the grandfather of California literature Jack London along with several quotes from the author. Explore Sacramento’s history even further by perusing the stacks of local publications, or just stop in to pet Raffle the bookstore’s furball mascot.

1918 16th Street / between T & S streets
Bikes on 16th require self-assured riding, so if you have the chops for it, make a stop at Constantly Growing on 16th between S and T streets. The graffiti burner is well crafted and wraps around the establishment.

16th Street / between Q & R streets
Painted by Anthony Padilla, the Kings mural might be a bit dated given a few trades, but it’s always nice to cruise by either with hope for another year, to catch a glimpse for the last time ever or just to check on Omri Casspi’s face. Be sure to check out the biker friendly schwag and appetizers at Hot Italian across from Fremont Park.

between 167h & 18th streets
The tremendous 200-foot mural painted in 2009 by John Stuart Berger and Dolan Forcier means you are halfway finished, but given its length, taking it all in will slow you down. The good news: Old Soul Coffee Shop rests in the alley to caffeinate for the remaining trek.

Corner of N & 24th streets
Be mindful of pulling up to the American Market mural by Shaun Turner and Dan Osterhoff. The gorgeous woman stoically watching over the corner of 24th and N is liable to cause accidents. Oh, there’s a peacock too.

Bon Air Deli & Market and First Edition Murals
Corner of J & 26th streets
The corner of 26th and J is an active one for artists. Within a stone’s throw of one another is the graffiti mural by Sam Flores on the side of First Edition, formerly Upper Playground, the mural on the northeast corner of Bon Air Deli by Joshua Silveira and Gabriel Romo and University Art supply store should you be inspired to create your own.

If you’ve walked or driven by street-wear boutique/art gallery Upper Playground at 2524 J Street recently, you’ve probably noticed the blacked out windows and lack of any sort of activity. No rad T-shirts in the windows, no art. And the hanging walrus sign is gone. What the fuck, right? Here’s the skinny on what’s happening: 22-year-old art collecting, street-wear and fashion obsessing Aaron Hearing (who worked at U.P. for years) is opening up his own men’s-focused shop in the space called First Edition. “It’s been the dream since day one to own a shop,” Hearing recently told Submerge. “It’s finally materializing into what I always wanted it to be.” Hearing’s resume also includes stints at Barneys New York in San Francisco, Heritage Footwear and Apparel in Roseville and Zumiez and he holds a degree from FIDM (Fashion Institute of Design & Merchandising).

Hearing assured us that he and San Francisco-based Upper Playground founder Matt Revelli, who also is the editor of Juxtapoz art magazine, are still cool. No beef, no bad blood. “He’s a great guy,” Hearing said, “He’s smart as hell.” Hearing pointed out that because Revelli isn’t in Sacramento it was tough for him to manage the shop and that because U.P. had pigeonholed itself by carrying too few brands, it was simply time to close up shop. “He wanted to test out the Sac market,” Hearing said. “It was great, but the only problem is we were selling T-shirts. How many people in Midtown will buy three T-shirts a week and then come back and buy more?” Hearing plans on carrying what U.P. did and then some: jeans by Crate Denim, “it’s all vintage denim in modern fits. All the denim is older than 1973,” men’s skin care products by Baxter of California, and even random smaller items like condoms. “We picked up a few other things like Sir Richard’s Condom Company. Totally random, but it was something I had to pick up.” For every condom sold, Sir Richard’s donates one to a developing country. “Same thing as Toms Shoes, which we are going to carry also,” Hearing said. “A lot of the brands in here we are going to be carrying have a story, a purpose.”

First Edition will open on Feb. 12, 2011 Second Saturday. After that they’ll have normal hours of 11 a.m. to 7 p.m. And just because it’s a men’s-focused shop, ladies should not be intimidated to shop for their BFs or hubbies, as Hearing’s super friendly 19-year-old sister will more than likely be behind the counter working. Even if she’s not, you’ll be greeted by either Hearing himself or one of his close friends. “This is going to be a place where, it’s weird using the word ‘safe,’ but it will be,” Hearing said. “People can come in with no pressure to buy anything and just kick it until you have to go to dinner.”

Justin Lovato to Unveil His Latest Series of Paintings, Infinite Bewilderment

“People generally are unaware of their environment or how their everyday decisions might be affecting somebody thousands of miles away,” says Sacramento painter Justin Lovato, 23, whose latest series, Infinite Bewilderment, predominantly features images of jesters pulled from tarot cards, influential hands that tug at his characters like ventriloquists and symbols borrowed from the Freemason and Illuminati cults.

The series, opening Aug. 8 at Upper Playground on J Street, is challenging the notion that depictions of feudalist peasants might seem dated or have little relevance to modern life. “I like to use a lot of old symbolism in my art,” he says. “I am fascinated with religious-based art. Medieval art is a big influence on me. The whole idea of people in feudalism at that time, I think we live in a neo-feudalist society right now. Everyone is in a constant state of confusion.”

Lovato admits his art can be somewhat blatant, but he would rather the message be obvious than lost. “I think people are psychologically damaged due to a lack of good information and a lack of speculation about why we’re here and what they should be focusing on. I think if people lived moment to moment and redefined ‘need’ they might be more content, focusing positive energy elsewhere.”

His work borrows medieval art techniques, all the way down to a disregard (although at the time it was lack of understanding) for perspective and dimension. “I like that it’s not very advanced,” he said. “It’s really flat looking, but the point is the imagery is blatant, which I am definitely guilty of. It’s aesthetically pleasing to me.” He also is enamored with the prerequisite of including religious themes. “The idea that you could be chastised for making art that didn’t revere God is intriguing to me,” he said.

Lovato appreciates the plight of the juggler, who is relegated to “grab ahold of everything all the time.” “It represents the things that are deified to grab hold of people’s energies,” he said.

As for the archetypes of secret societies, Lovato swears he is not a conspiracy junkie. “I use that stuff because it makes for a good metaphor,” he said. “I don’t believe there’s an Illuminati. I think more out in the open there’s a subsection of rich industrialists that make the large decisions that affect the bottom tier, but I don’t believe in a mystical force.”

For Lovato, the unseen hand of influence is more visible than we are often willing to admit. He has a series of paintings in which a ubiquitous hand guides fountain streams of pills to lethargic characters, filling up their stomachs, heads and backs. “It’s a funny take on where we obtain our ideals,” he said.

“Whether it’s from other people pushing you along, or respecting someone else’s opinion who happens to have a print magazine or be on TV. It’s about the general influences that guide our ideals.”

The most controversial of his techniques could be his stripped depictions of the female form. In several of Lovato’s portraits the women are chopped down to the sexual torso. But is Lovato a mysogynist? “I want people to be confused at the image,” he said. “I am portraying the disgusting, abusive, offensive way that we view woman in our society by displaying it in a way that might make a woman feel offended by looking at it.”

Many of Lovato’s characters seem to be obese figures with pattern baldness, lumbering in a glum haze. But he resists a notion that it’s his view of typical Americans. “I don’t think people seem unhappy,” he says. “I enjoy people and talking to people I meet no matter who they are or what they might think or buy into.” He is aware that while he has his convictions, he is not a man with all the answers. “I am [trying to be] more suspicious of my everyday surroundings, and archetypes, and people’s expectations of me as a member of this hive.”

Lovato, who admits to listening to everything from ’60s and ’70s jazz and old punk rock to hip-hop and even lectures (“It keeps your mind occupied, while you’re meditating over a painting,” he explains), got his first show three years ago at The Toy Room from owners John Soldano and Craig Maclaine. Lovato recalls being 16, making trips to the alleyway gallery and gaining a fascination with the lowbrow art featured there. “I started hanging out there when I was a kid,” he said. “I got my first show when I was 20. I actually sold a few pieces, which was encouraging. I started doing it consistently ever since.”

“Consistently” rounds out to six shows a year. Most recently his work traveled to the Washington D.C. area after selling three pieces from a Toy Room show to a gallery called Art Whino. “Craig and John were a huge help in first getting my shit out there,” he said. “That’s the good thing about showing at gallery spots, there’s usually someone there who wants to help you get your name out there.”

When Lovato unveils his pieces Aug. 8, expect a remodeling of the Upper Playground boutique. Lovato plans to repaint the space and include interactive art. “I’ve been fucking around with animation,” he said. “I started looking at old toys from the 1800s. I’ve made these flipbook machines for people to play with.”

The Places In-Between

Sacramento is home to John Stuart Berger, a prolific artist who has been creating and showing his paintings for over 20 years. With two decades under his belt, you might imagine a man jaded and burnt-out. He is quite the contrary, instead painting constantly and showing regularly-all while raising his 4-year-old son and teaching art to disabled adults at the Short Center North.

“I’m constantly painting. It’s the one thing that everybody always asks me, ‘Do you have a show coming up?’ and a lot of the times I don’t,” he says.
Lucky for you, this time, he does. His show, titled The Ubiquitous Mandible Crushing Sideshow, opens April 11, 2009 at the Upper Playground in Sacramento and runs through May 31. Submerge met up with John at his studio inside the Verge Gallery on 19th and V in Midtown to discuss painting, growing up in Danville and male bonding.

You have a show this month at Upper Playground. Are you doing all brand-new paintings for the show?
For the most part they’re new for Sacramento; some of the pieces I’ve shown in Los Angeles and San Francisco. With the exception of maybe three pieces, they’re all new to Sacramento and then 70 or 80 percent of them I’ve never shown before. I’ve just stashed them away over the last couple months.

Over the past three years, according to your Web site, you’ve done over 130 paintings and I’m sure there’s many more. What kind of time schedule do you create for yourself so that you can be so prolific?
It’s hard [laughs]. I kind of joke and say that I don’t eat and sleep. The fact is, I have a 4-year-old son and he keeps me really busy. I have to make blocks of time. My wife has a really variable schedule too, but usually she has some nights off. So, there are one or two nights a week that I come here to the studio or there’s the male bonding thing over at Skinner’s house [laughs]. We call it that, but occasionally we do get some women that do that whole thing.

But then it’s not as fun because there’s not as many fart jokes, right?
Right, right. We totally want the women to come to the space, but it’s so dominated by testosterone”¦ I mean, I’d be afraid if I were a woman.

I know you and Skinner Davis are pretty good friends and have worked and painted closely together. Have you noticed his style or even his work ethic rub off on you over the years?
I don’t know if we really influenced or rubbed off on each other. I think we just fed off each other’s energy more than anything. I think technically we come from two different backgrounds. He’s got a big comic book influence, which you can totally see in the line work of his paintings. I’ve got that a little bit; I looked at a few comic books when I was a kid but I actually learned to draw from field guides and old 18th century etchings and shit like that.

That’s where that animal and plant influence comes from then?
If you look at some of the stuff, it’s that three-quarter profile shot of the birds. It’s classic field guide—Audubon staging—and that’s where I learned to draw. We lived out in the country in Danville when it was very rural. The community that we lived in didn’t even have a sidewalk so it was all ditches and roads, and we had 60 or 70 acres behind us. I was very influenced by that surrounding. We had this big creek behind our house that I would always go to and admire all the crazy plants and animals. Then I got into field guides. I could draw from them because I could have them with me; draw before I went to bed and draw when I was outside. Then I would have fun mutating the animals and breaking them down and doing composite studies.

Looking at your work, it all seems like a photo album of candid snapshots of this alternate animal universe.
Yeah, it’s funny. A few years ago I was showing at more of a fine art venue, like Solomon Dubnick and Himovitz and now I’m showing at these urban”¦like”¦I don’t even know what you would call it. I’m sure there’s a label that’s more appropriate. It’s considered lowbrow now I guess. It’s defined as pop surrealism and it’s fragmented off all these different things.

I just call it Juxtapoz-y.
It’s just that these people have a very different background than me. These guys are all comic books and cartoons. A lot of the stuff that’s popular right now comes from that. I did a little bit of that. I did some skating as a kid and I read a few comic books, but my emphasis and where I drew a lot of my inspiration from is totally different. It’s kind of weird and awkward sometimes too. Everybody looks at you and tries to figure you out. Sometimes I almost feel like I don’t really fit into the fine art thing, and I don’t really fit into what’s going on now. I shift back and forth in the parameters of both.

Do you think that’s a good thing?
I think it’s good. I mean, everybody’s art is derivative in a sense, but I think that it makes me less derivative”¦ I obviously do have influences and then people can draw correlations that make me derivative, anybody can do that. They can construct a hypothesis of who you are but I like the fact that I’m just doing whatever it is that I do, and that I do have a different background. I think a lot of people have a hard time identifying, because I don’t do a lot of people. For a while I tried to lecture myself. I’d ask myself, “Should I do people?” You go through these periods where you beat yourself up. You just get really introspective. Then you’re comfortable and say, this is just what I do for whatever reason.

You said you can be real introspective, which is self-inflicted criticism. Have there been any outside criticisms that have made you question how or what you paint?
If anybody says anything that can be construed as being negative, it would be that everything looks so angry. This older stuff [motions to a painting of fish with piranha-like teeth that hangs on the wall], this is 13 or 14 years old, it’s got these really dark and shadowy backgrounds. Everybody refers to those as everything looking dead; dead and angry, with teeth! I put teeth in everything and I don’t know why I do it. I think I’m fascinated with the whole predation thing; things consuming other things. Now it’s gone to parasites. That’s just my geek background again.

You’re painting the whole field guide, from the parasites, to the birds, to the reptiles.
And I’ve got a whole arsenal of old textbooks. Those are the greatest. If you go to thrift stores, for 50 cents you can pick up an old biology textbook. Just some of the plates you can draw from are great. I got this really great paleontology book a few years ago; it’s just got the most incredible etching line work drawings that are inspiring.

As far as acquiring shows and selling artwork, do you feel that Sacramento has been good to you?
I’m in a weird place right now. I’ve been showing in Sacramento for almost 20 years, which is crazy to think about. I kind of feel like artists are a lot like bands. When you are up-and-coming, everyone wants to see you. Then you get to that point where everybody has seen you”¦ You’ve saturated the market, basically. So the next obvious thing to do is go to the bigger markets. But the bigger markets don’t know who you are, and they either pick up their own people that they’re into or they’re big enough that they’re getting really big people. So, you totally get lost in that shuffle too. So, I’m kind of in that in between area where I’m a little fish in a big pond and I’ve kind of worn out my welcome. That’s the way that I feel, like I’m in this whole in between. Nobody really knows who I am, or everybody’s seen me”¦ But as far as Sacramento being good to me, I like Sacramento. I like the size of it and the fact that everything’s tangible. Proximity too, I can easily go to San Francisco and do a show and it’s no big deal. Then basically everybody that I’ve shown with, artists and galleries combined, I’ve really enjoyed and had a good time. I’ve got a lot of positive feedback here. I’ve had very few bad experiences.

You said you have a 4-year-old son. How has that influenced the way you make art?
He’s probably become aware—what I would consider aware—of my work in the past six to eight months. We’ll go somewhere, around town, and he’ll see stuff 500 hundred feet away and say, “Oh my god, that’s one of daddy’s paintings!” As far as how I approach my artwork, the only thing that’s really changed is how I divide my time up. I really want to be a good dad and spend time with him, but I obviously have this thing where I want to get artwork done. I really have to make my time count, because I used to be a little more haphazard with my time. That’s the influence. I have to structure my life differently so I can still get work done because that’s important to me.

We’ve heard from just about everybody about how bad the economy is and how we are in a recession, etc. Have you been affected or are there always economic ups and downs as an artist?
Ironically enough I’ve already been through one. It wasn’t as bad of a recession as this. Actually it was…when George Bush Sr. was in office. So, I’ve already seen that fluctuation, but this time it’s definitely a lot worse. I just don’t sell as many paintings, but I’ve always been somebody that’s had a day job. I’ve got a couple friends that rely a little bit more heavily” on their art or a facet of their art to make their primary income, and they’re hurting.