PEOPLE CHAIRS GROUP ART SHOWCASE @ CASA de ESPANOL

Join us for an exclusive art exhibit in collaboration with Sojourner Truth African Heritage Museum & the Florin Road Community Beautification Project.

Friday, March 1, 2024, 6-9 pm

 Location: 1101 R Street, Sacramento, CA

 Art, music, food, market & more!

ABOUT THE EXHIBIT

Twenty-eight (26) Harlem Chairs will be installed on the west side of 2251 Florin Rd to create a cultural connection for the community. Each Harlem Chair will feature unique artwork from local artists, providing arts education and fostering creativity and community engagement.

Artwork for each chair will be on display at CASA. This is an exclusive opportunity to connect with the artists and meet those behind the project.

 Enjoy a great night of community with music from DJ My Cousin Vinny, an artisan market with many local vendors, and delicious local eats from Buenos Aires Grill.

See you there!

Artist Biographical Profiles

Larry Meeks

Meeks is a Sacramento artist, fabricator, and licensed general contractor. Larry is thrilled to be working with the Florin Road Community Beautification Project and has worked hard to fabricate each large metal sculpture to be installed in 2024. He is a syndicated columnist who has written Ethnically Speaking since 1991. Meeks was an inaugural Natomas Unified School Board Member upon the District's creation in 1992, serving over 13 years. Meeks is also the Former Director of the Office of Statewide Health Planning for the State of California. Since 2005, Meeks has served as Pastor of

Williams Memorial Church of God in Christ in Sacramento. Meeks is relatively active outside

of his art.

Larry Meeks public art collection. Meeks' website contains a photo gallery of some of his works. He primarily works in metal (steel, brass, bronze, and copper) and indigenous river stone. The site describes his artwork as flowing "from natural settings and often reaches the edge of surrealism. He believes art should make a bold statement and evoke the inner emotion of the viewer".

Meeks public artwork around Sacramento, including the willowy gates to the inner courtyard of the Shepard Garden and Arts Center in McKinley Park and the steel trellises at the World Peace Rose Garden in Capital Park. Sacramento Metropolitan Arts The commission lists six pieces by Meeks in their online Art in Public Places Collection. The rain-collecting ladybug is a must-see. He created carrot and tomato sculptures. These funky vegetables function as bike racks. Two carrots and a tomato sit along the grass outside the garden, and a pair of each are inside the garden.

The SacRT Public Art Program is a joint project of SacRT and the Sacramento Metropolitan Arts Commission's Art in Public Places program. Its purpose is to enhance the aesthetics and quality of the built environment at SacRT light rail stations. Station: IronPoint Title: Untitled Date: 2005 Steel artwork is on the fence separating the station platform from Folsom Boulevard.

Shonna McDaniels,

McDaniel's aim has been to create a legacy for future generations. She wants young black girls and boys to feel a sense of pride and value when they experience my art. That's why she strives to ensure that the essence of my work reflects the dignity, strength, and beauty of each subject she presents.

One of the most important aspects of her career is educating young people. She believes that today, more than ever, young people need art as a safe forum for self-expression, communication, exploration, imagination, and understanding of culture and history. Art is a crucial element of life that can foster a productive exchange of ideas and promote intellectual development in literature, science, and math. She believes that art.

Florin Road Community Beautification Project should be a priority in human development. By inspiring creativity and encouraging individuals to think outside the box, art has the power to beautify our environment and bring people together.

In 1996, the Sojourner Truth Art Museum was founded by McDaniels. Alongside her role as the museum's Executive Director, she is a professional artist, teacher, muralist, and community activist. Before founding the museum, McDaniels was one of the co-founders and artists of the Visual Arts Development Project. She taught art classes, conducted workshops, and organized art exhibits throughout the Oak Park and Del Paso communities. Although the museum is in South Sacramento, its legacy extends throughout the Sacramento region and is well-known to grassroots organizations, professional artists, politicians, and the business community.

Alpha  Bruton

Bruton is an artist who specializes in painting and creating environmental installations. Her work blends various art forms, including set design, sculpture, film, mural-making, and placemaking. She has a background in visual and performance art and other two-dimensional mediums.

She creates environmental art installations as cultural mirrors, reflecting broader cultural commentary through carefully chosen objects and images. She believes objects can communicate cultural narratives, hierarchies, and social mythologies in public spaces. She aims to create artwork that provokes thought and demands that the audience confront issues related to art and activism. Her artwork is representational and provocative, raising awareness about life and the earth and offering a new

perspective for the viewer.

Bruton has a strong background and interest in Curatorial Practice, which involves exploring how city environments affect artists and their creations and how they impact a city's vitality. She attended California State University, Fresno, and Sacramento, where she studied Art Education and Studio Art. She later pursued a master's in art administration from the Chicago School of the Art Institute.

Mia Davis, 

As a woman, I admire our softness, insight, and resilience, and my work celebrates life, womanhood, and divine beauty. In this exhibit, I have included paintings that deeply capture my interpretation of my experience as an African American woman. My view of masculinity, feminine transformation, and soul-searching is portrayed through the beauty and darkness that are polarizing at times but directly influence how I move through this life and country. I enjoy working in this space as I create.

Flora, fauna, and femininity inspire and drive my life. Nature is the best healer, inspiration, and teacher of moving through life with grace and vibrancy. My artwork reflects these beliefs. I create paintings that embody beauty and positivity. As a trained healer and intuitive, I see and experience the soul and presence of living things differently than others. I see beyond the physical structure and aim to recreate the emotion and spirit that I somatically experience through color, shadow, and creating

aliveness in the eyes of my subjects.

Markos Egure,

 Has worked for various small businesses (1985-1990) and corporate engineering companies while building the foundation to become a Sacramento creative entrepreneur. Creative works under the title of Wes Kos in 1993. After full-time corporate employment (1990-1997), he worked as an independent contractor for some civil engineering companies, managing projects with his painting productions. He officially opened Wes Kos Images (WKI) as a Sacramento small business in 1997. On January 1, 2007, 10 years later, the land developer business abruptly ended as the country went into a recession. At that point, he went full-time at a creative agency focused on mural productions, artistic instruction, innovative paintings, and graphic design until 2014.

When he opened the WKi2 Studio Gallery with his future ARTner, the next step in the WKI evolution began.

Henry Fisk, AKA Fisko

The part of the artistic process I engage with is always focused. My mind, which repeatedly drifts into sporadic thoughts, discovers the mental road maps that guide me towards artistic expression and visual coda when creating. The same focus I seek to find, struggle to maintain, and tend to ignore or disregard in social settings,  formal meetings, or anywhere in which creating isn't involved reveals itself the

moment I enter the artistic space. The acrylics, aerosols, and graphite I utilize to create echo this focus to assist me in each mural, portrait work, figurative piece, illustration, or sketch. Without creating, all of you and all of this are found. I become mentally lost as I try to maintain analytical cognition when creating, which only offers a focus.

Teresa Gutierrez,

I developed an interest in art at the age of 16 during my high school years. It all began with drawing portraits. My father greatly supported my art; my mother was a talented artist. However, I had to put my passion aside to raise my sons. When I went through a tough time in life due to a divorce, I decided to pick up my brushes to make a living as a single mother. I started working as a portrait artist, painting in oils.

 After two years, I met an artist named Markos Egure, who taught me how to paint murals using acrylic paints. Since then, I have painted over 15 murals in Sacramento. I managed two art galleries in Sacramento: The WKI2 Studio Gallery and ARTners Collaborative Gallery. In 2019, I established a non-profit organization called ARTners. As its President, I have organized numerous art classes, shows, and events. Currently, I am also a co-manager of the WK Mural Museum Project.

Celeste Mandolph, AKA Sunshine

Art is a beautiful form of meditation and expression. Through meditation, Sunshine has

used visual art to express herself and the visions of others. Self-taught, she learned and

experimented with several mediums and fell further in love with visual arts.

One of the reasons she creates and shares her art is her strong desire to show the community love, the power of peace, respect, and discipline learned through art. She also enjoys seeing how my art captivates African American women and little girls, as we are not often represented in everyday art. This led me to refine my style to a dedication to the African American woman and little girl.

As a muralist, she aims to inspire others to join their local communities and express

themselves through art as a positive outlet while beautifying their surroundings,

ultimately creating a change in mood and morale.

Lee McCormick

Lee has been passionate about art all his life. He began his artistic journey by drawing and sketching different subjects, such as people, places, and things. As time passed, he honed his skills in various styles and categories, including traditional and digital painting, indoor and outdoor murals, multi-media assemblage, graphic art, illustration, and design.

Lee enjoys working with various materials, including oil pastels, acrylics, modeling clay, shattered glass, gold leaf, tree bark, micro glitter, enamels, iridescent, fluorescent, and luminescent paints. He has created several public murals, art assemblages, and public installations in the Sacramento region, which

have given him the confidence to undertake larger-scale projects.

Lee wants to share his passion for creative expression and visually compelling artistry with the world. He considers his self-taught gift of art a pot of gumbo, blending various styles and techniques to achieve a deliciously satisfying outcome of creative flavor. His work covers themes related to social injustice, historical events, celebrated musicians, athletes, and movie stars. He only uses one type of medium in his work, if it's just a graphite pencil or a different drawing.

Taylor Pannell, 

I believe in channeling my creative urges to produce unique artwork in Sacramento. My inspiration for my work is usually emotionally driven. Taylor'd Mind Studios is born from my innate abilities, training, and experience. Allowing my perspective as an artist to remain traditional yet expressionistic.

Taylor was not only producing events out of his studio but also murals and artwork. He made his mark even more by being featured in various news stations, 97.5 Jay King's Traffic Jam radio show, documentaries, installing several art pieces in the Slim and Huskies women's bathroom, and creating art for Oak Park Brewery's beer can, commissioned by Downtown Sacramento.

Partnership to do murals all over the storage container in Ali Youssefi Square (across the street from the DOCO sign) and more!

He was a featured panelist for the Crocker Art Museums Equity in Museums panel discussion. He traveled to create a Mural for the first time in San Diego inside the Hamlett Coffee Shop, and Blue Diamond Growers commissioned him to design a logo for them. This isn't about me. This is about comm(Unity). Emphasis on Unity.

This is about spreading love through art. Yes, I may get noticed for what I do, but at the end of the day, what I produce is something the world can take from. Something that can impact the world. Until I can reach the world, I'm reaching my community. I am who I am. I am Taylor."

Judah Pimentel, 

Judah Pimentel is a Surrealist artist specializing in portraiture that combines unnatural circumstances, nature, animals, and underrepresented individuals. Judah proposes to create a visual scavenger hunt with paintings of residents, plants from the trail, and cultural institutions such as the Sacramento Zoo and Sacramento City College in Land Park.

Surrealism is the lens through which Judah perceives the world and is a genre in which he feels he belongs perfectly. He has a deep interest in studying different cultures and the ethnic backgrounds that make them unique, and he likes to depict this interest through the models he chooses for his paintings. Moreover, spirituality is his primary source of inspiration, as Judah believes that all his ideas

for his art comes from God, and he wouldn't have been created if it weren't for spirituality.

Malik Seneferu, 

He was born in April 1971 in San Francisco, California. Seneferu is a prolific painter, muralist, illustrator, and sculptor. Seneferu's work has traveled internationally and adorned book, magazine, and newspaper covers and the walls of museums and Galleries. He has several public art projects throughout San Francisco. After his travels to Haiti and Kenya, New York's Schaumburg Center, DC's Smithsonian to London, Durban, South Africa, and even Google SF, Seneferu implements various visual art techniques and genres. Seneferu's artwork inspires motivation through his philosophical outlook.

In addition to his international recognition, Seneferu's artwork is well-known locally. He enjoys live painting and sharing his Art Magnet invention with collectors. He is currently a resident artist and muralist for the Sojourner Truth African Heritage Museum and a contributor to the Florin Road.

   Beautification Project and Harlem Renaissance Metal Chair Collection.

Unity Lewis, 

Unity Lewis discovered his artistic talents at the young age of three. He found his

love for music, performance, drawing, painting, and sculpting very early on. At 13, he founded a rap group called the Napalm Clique in Los Angeles and began recording music seriously. In the fall of 2000, Unity moved to the Bay Area,

where he completed his bachelor's degree in fine arts at the California College of the Arts. Later, he pursued his teaching credentials for single-subject art and his master's in education at Mills College.

Since 2001, Unity has taught hip-hop, art, and life skills in public schools across the Bay Area and on the island of Guam. In 2005, he was awarded a Resolution by the Guam Legislature for his contribution to students; lives. 

Unity has created, released, and performed his art and music full-time for over 20 years, curating art exhibits and continuing to grow as an art educator. As a musician, Unity has collaborated with artists such as Dead Prez, Sly Stone, George Clinton, Oscar Brown Jr., and Umar Bin Hassan of The Last Poets, among others. As a visual artist and curator, he has exhibited his work alongside renowned artists such as Jacob Lawrence, Elizabeth Catlett, Hank Willis Thomas, Betye Saar, Samella Lewis, and

many others.

Jose Lott,

I have spent most of my life living in the Sacramento area. My artwork is figurative and combines illustration with fine art. My subject revolves around Chicano and Mexicano life and culture, covering contemporary, traditional, and historical themes. I have also painted many murals in the Sacramento area that express social and cultural aspects of the local culture. I hold college degrees in art and design and have collaborated with local artists. One of them is The Royal Chicano Air Force (RCAF), a Sacramento-based art group that influenced my approach to art.

I have conducted numerous classes and workshops on art and mural-making, including concept development, which provides an academic approach to designing artwork. Though I am not a full-time artist, I consistently create art. My new artworks are primarily digital, which I reproduce for sale and showcase through digital print. I also produce posters, both personal and commission work. The UC Davis Hospital and the California Department of Education have commissioned a series of artworks from me.

Currently, I am leading a mural partnership program teaching traditional Chicano-style

mural-making to other artists.

Andy Cohen-

Going by the pseudonym  KingCoolBeans, Andy Cohen is an Asian American artist from

the capital of California, The City of Trees, Sacramento. Throughout High School, he would have an opportunity to participate in Pioneer High School AP Art Program' kickstarting a lifelong passion. Going as far as offering a chance to secure his first commission job, the mascot redesign for the school itself.

Following high school, Andy pursued independent studies of various art techniques ranging from 20 animations to traditional painting, taking time to learn the art of tattooing and completing over JO+ tattoo pieces, both big and small. After gaining interest in Graphic Design around 20121, he completed many commissions. Specializing in Logos, Album/Single Covers, and Brand Merchandising

More recently, he participated in group exhibitions such as the most significant art show and The 50th anniversary of the HipHop art show/event at the Washington Neighborhood Center. In Early 2022, alongside his mentor, fellow Sacramento native Jose Lott, he would complete his first massive mural in the South Sacramento area.

Kevin Grey, aka K. PrxdiGy.

I'm a 21-year-old sneaker artist from Vallejo, raised in Sacramento. I've been customizing sneakers for almost four years. Painting has always been a massive passion of mine, and I'm always striving to improve my skills. My ultimate goal is to become the greatest sneaker artist and painter in Sacramento, and I also want to travel with my work and teach others how to customize sneakers. I've already had some experience working with celebrities and football teams, including NLE CHOPPA and Cobie.

Jdn and Arik Armstead from the 49ers. I even had a commission order for a bulk order for the 49ers. I also started teaching sneaker customization classes, which have been successful. All of this makes me want to keep growing as an artist, but most importantly, I like to be a better person and be in God's favor.