I saw the place the Karuk call the center of the world in a painting before going there for real. It was marked with a sleek isosceles triangle, blue magic marker on tinfoil — an emphatic shape that lingered in the mind. Standing before his painting, Brian D. Tripp turned to me in the oaken […]
Painting
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Katy Warner and Madelyn Covey Geek Out at the Sanctuary
“This is about otaku-dom: intense, obsessive fandom,” Katy Warner said, using the Japanese word that fans worldwide have adopted to describe obsession. She was referring to the screenprints and collages she is showing at the Sanctuary in Arcata through Sept. 6, dense with snippets of text, “based on the plot of the Japanese role-playing game […]
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Micki Dyson Flatmo’s Resistance Couture
Micki Dyson-Flatmo was never a political artist. But now her backyard studio in Eureka is crowded with dressmaker’s dummies swathed in tulle, metal and plastic — wearable expressions of life in the Trump era. Her show Dating Chaos: What to Wear opens at the Morris Graves Museum of Art this weekend, combining costuming and abstract […]
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Fresh Air in Freshwater
Missing the sun already? On Sunday, the grand opening of the Freshwater Farms Reserve nature trail, hosted by the Northcoast Regional Land Trust, drew crowds looking to bask in the sunshine along the newly minted paths. Along the 3/4-mile jaunt, with its interpretive signs and kayak and canoe launch, local artists posted up for plein […]
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Curtis Otto Retrospective and Sale
If you’re in Grant’s Pass, Oregon before March 25, you can stop into the Grants Pass Museum of Art for a jam-packed retrospective of the late Curtis Otto‘s paintings. Otto, a fixture in Humboldt County’s art scene, died in his Eureka home on Nov. 7 at the age of 92, leaving behind a community of […]
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Curtis Otto, 1923-2015
Painter and local icon Curtis Otto passed away in his Eureka home yesterday at the age of 92. Since September, his condition had weakened and he was receiving in-home care, according to his wishes. Otto’s paintings spread out in front of his house on E Street were a landmark and curiosity to passersby. He painted […]
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I’m Vic James!
On a wall in a gallery, there’s no safety net. It’s not like the front of a refrigerator — mom’s soothing words making you feel good about your finger painting. No, no. Once that painting is hung on a white wall, the artist is exposed and vulnerable. Maybe that’s why Jim McVicker, one of Humboldt’s […]
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Local Color
Arts! Arcata is … Well, it just always is. Arcata has talented artists, supportive businesses and even a fine symbiosis of both in the Arcata Artisans cooperative. HSU’s art major is historically popular, and live music offers cheer in several stores. Despite all this, the event remains Jan Brady to Eureka’s Marsha. Which is all […]
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Contemporary Traditions
In the angled October light of his Orleans home, Brian Tripp slips a simple hitch knot over the leg of his latest woodpecker sculpture and raises it to just above eye level. Like many of Tripp’s sculptures, the bird is a deceptively simple assembly of branches, shaved redwood fragments, matte-black acrylic paint and carefully selected […]
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Sonny Wong Paints Live in New Chuck Johnson Video
Local videographer extraordinaire Chuck Johnson produced the above video of artist Sonny Wong performing live art and discussing his craft.
Posted inArts + Scene
Along the Way
“Sometimes I feel pissed,” confesses artist Lida Penkova, “because I do almost nothing else but paint, and I feel that somehow life is escaping me!” It’s not so much that Penkova’s life is escaping her, but that she’s pouring it into her whimsical, worldly and wondrous paintings and prints. “Once you are in this fascination […]