Frowny-face graffiti sprouted all over Eureka and Arcata last month. The message was a buzzkill, but anyone could admire the economy of the streamlined bummer emoticon: two vertical slashes of spray paint over a judgmental upside-down banana curve. The effect was striking — suddenly the city thronged with this silent chorus of bad attitude, so […]
Gabrielle Gopinath
Gabrielle Gopinath is a critic who writes about art, place and culture in Northern California. She lives in Arcata. Follow her on Instagram @gabriellegopinath.
Posted inArts + Scene
Source Materials
More than three decades in, veteran glass artist and Arcata resident George Bucquet isn’t done with his medium yet. Arcata Artisans Gallery hosts works by Bucquet and Jim Lowry this month, where the former is unveiling a new edition of works in hot cast glass — a technique in which forms are made by pouring […]
Posted inArts + Scene
In Stitches
Nicole Havekost’s new exhibition at the Morris Graves Museum of Art, Massed, explores bodily experience through stitched three-dimensional forms and embroidered wall reliefs. Minnesota-based Havekost writes of one series of artworks on view, the “Sewing and Cooking Dolls,” that she “began this body of work when her son was small and she was finding her […]
Posted inArts + Scene
‘The Spirits There’
Lyn Risling’s clear, inviting images celebrate the Native Northern California in her exhibition Reconnecting: A Cultural Journey. Contour lines and panels of vivid color illustrate a world drawn from indigenous stories, in which human beings and animals coexist and interact as equals, without anyone making a big deal out of it. A gentle humor animates […]
Posted inArts + Scene
Trade Routes
Piante Gallery shows work by painter Harry Blumenthal, sculptor Marilyn Andrews and jewelry designer Scott Mitchell this month. Blumenthal’s expressionist paintings are up front as you enter the gallery. Painted improvisationally with loose gestural brushwork, they’re largely populated with animals and their creaturely subjects prance or slink through brightly colored, vaguely Fauvist landscapes that all […]
Posted inArts + Scene
Stem Rises
Lack of dedicated exhibition space poses a challenge for area artists, particularly students and recent grads. In the case of Humboldt State University photography students Elijah Howe and Jake Langston, deficit became a spur to creativity. In search of a space where their work could be seen, Howe and Langston founded a new photography journal […]
Posted inNews
The Hidden Palace
Franz Bernau was 37 years old when he first set foot in the United States, arriving Sept. 1, 1888, on the steamer Amsterdam, which sailed from Rotterdam in the Netherlands and docked at the Castle Garden immigration center on Manhattan’s Battery Park waterfront. Three years later the painter traveled to faraway Humboldt County. His head […]
Posted inArts + Scene
Salt: Emily Silver and Holly Sepulveda
Since it opened on F Street last year, the nonprofit gallery Canvas + Clay has been staging exhibitions that approach arts programming in novel ways. Canvas + Clay is affiliated with the Eureka Studio, a fine arts center for people with developmental disabilities and the gallery’s two-person exhibitions pair studio-affiliated artists with established locals. Salt, […]
Posted inShopping
Marvelous Miscellany
When you enter Many Hands Gallery wind chimes move tunefully overhead, recalling the bay lapping at the bottom of the street, just steps away. A nautical theme fills much of the Old Town space. Maritime merchandise ranges from spyglasses, compasses and sundials to baskets piled high with abalone, starfish and sand dollars. The luminous glass […]
Posted inArts + Scene
Art for the Commute
This time of year, as many of us migrate to or from our points of origin, it’s time to consider Arcata’s biggest, newest and most noteworthy piece of public art about the experience of transit: the 256-foot-long, 27-foot-tall painting by Lucas Thornton, “Marvelous Mural of Marbled Murrelets,” sweeping across two sides of the Arcata Bay […]
Posted inShopping
Clothes to the Heart
“Independent. Eclectic. Layered. And funny.” These words describe Humboldt style, according to Nancy Tobin, owner of Arcata clothing boutique Vintage Avenger (1101 H St., Arcata). “I’m looking for natural fibers, anything embroidered,” as well as “the 1980s stuff, which has the laugh factor.” Also key: “Not trying too hard. The attitude here is not anti-fashion […]
Posted inArts + Scene
Our Town
The plein-air paintings in the All Things Arcata exhibition hold up a mirror to the city of Arcata, and the city looks good in this light. There can’t have been many occasions on which the streetscapes of a town of 18,000 have been so lovingly, meticulously documented. In plein-air (“open-air”) painting, popularized by the Impressionists’ […]