| Sanchez Art Center announces the most wonderful time of year… the Annual 50|50 Show, running Sept 8–Oct 1, 2023. Celebrating 15 years, the 50|50 Show has become a destination for art lovers throughout the SF Bay Area and beyond. Since the first show, 45,950 small (6" x 6") affordable artworks have been created by +900 artists! Participating California artists create 50 small artworks within a time span of 50 days, an artistic journey requiring a bold vision, artistic power, and perseverance to undertake. The result of the 55 artists' accomplishment is a dazzling array of original art that along with the affordability of the small (6" x 6") artworks makes the 50|50 Show, the most highly anticipated exhibition of the year.
The 50|50 Show opens with a fundraiser held over two days, Fri, Sept 8 – Sat, Sept 9. This staggered opening provides art lovers the optimal experience to select the day and timed interval of their choice, and are the only days to view the 55 installations comprising 2,750 works, in their entirety. The opening fundraiser also offers live music, time to chat with artists about their work, and the opportunity to purchase your favorite pieces. (Note: all works stay on the wall during the opening, and can either be picked up or shipped to buyers for a small fee as of the week of Sept 11.) Tickets are limited and none will be available at the door, so get yours early on Eventbrite.com.
Marianna Stark, the principal of M Stark Gallery, Half Moon Bay, and an active member of the Bay Area visual art community for 30 years, took great pleasure in reviewing the over 180 entrants, and took on the challenge of selecting only 55 artists based on their submitted images of past works and proposed theme. With her expert eye evoking a west coast aesthetic and understanding of the contemporary art scene, the resulting show contains an exciting variety of subject matters and styles featuring works in clay, acrylic and oil paint, fiber, metal, watercolor, pastel, encaustic, glass and more.
For the artists, developing an overall theme that will absorb their artistic practice over 50 days is how the process begins. Current culture, creatures – real and imagined – domesticated and wild, nature and our relationship with it is highlighted in pieces about water – gardens – flowers – trees, pattern, and color are a few of the themes that infuse the work, along with feelings about home, motherhood and the female form embraced in works by several of the artists. Rose Hagen, Los Altos, has visually documented in glass the tragedy of "50 Days in America: the toll of mass shootings". Sebastian Roldan, working in mild steel, shares "Musings of an Insomniac Metal Artist Who Can't Draw". Dwight Long, San Francisco, has documented in acrylic, vehicles found on Bay Area streets and a few that might be there in the future, in "Vroom!". Shana Bryant, San Mateo, has re-imagined pop culture as one that accepts Blackness and her sister, Shari Bryant, San Carlos, continues her exploration of Black women in fantasy. Jenifer Renzel, San Jose, also created fantasy worlds, working in mixed media to create "Experiments in World Building and Monster Making." Margaret Niven, Scotts Valley, utilized hand-cut linoleum blocks to print "…Forest for the Trees", Monica Bryant, Santa Rosa, explores ties that bind us entwined with nature's stories in "The Beauty of Our Interconnectedness," and Judy Rosenfield, Oakland, celebrates her backyard creating stained glass mosaic "…Snapshots from the Garden" abundant with vegetables, flowers and birds. Lisa Levine, Oakland, shows the exterior of homes can display the interests and personalities of those inside, while at the same time bringing reality into question with the homes surrounding landscape in, "Virtually No Place Like Home". "Beauty of the Feminine", ink, watercolor, and pen by Karla Moffett, draws on societal pressure and obsession with physical form, and Sydney Brown, shares the challenge of being present and honest while parenting, in "Labor, Love and Insanity", granting empathy to each from mother to child.
Can't make the opening? Don't worry! After the opening fundraiser, Sanchez Art Center will welcome visitors at no charge on Sunday, Sept 10, 1–5 pm, and thereafter galleries are open Friday, Saturday, and Sunday, 1–5 pm, through Oct 1. Beginning on Sunday, Sept 10, art buyers get to immediately take purchases home with them. Art enthusiasts often visit multiple times to take it all in, and return again and again. Facemasks are not required, while we welcome visitors to do what is best for their personal circumstance.
Proceeds from the 50|50 Show support Sanchez Art Center's programs that, for 25 years, have created community through art. Special thanks to exhibition sponsors: Art Guild of Pacifica, M Stark Gallery, Bleyle Elevator, and Shelldance Orchid Gardens.
Don't miss this inspiring celebration of art and artists! Order your ticket to the Opening Fundraiser at Eventbrite.com. Sanchez Art Center is located at 1220 Linda Mar Blvd in Pacifica, about a mile east of Highway 1. For more information: info@SanchezArtCenter.org, SanchezArtCenter.org.
|
