My earliest memory of Maureen Gilli is from fourth grade at Sacramento County Day School.

She wheeled her art cart into the classroom and showed us an example of that day’s project: bird masks made from paper.
I marveled at her work. The detail of feathers. The expressive owl face. All from simple pieces of cut paper. I stared in awe. I thought, maybe someday my work will be that beautiful.

Thirty years later, the awe has not diminished. Today I’m in Gilli’s Citrus Heights home. Her work graces the walls, staircase, ceiling and tabletops in every medium you can imagine.

Water ripples around gray rocks. Pine trees and blue sky reflect in the water. The river bottom is visible beneath.

This landscape can steal your breath, but when you realize the Sierra scene is not a photo or paint, but fabric, you may gasp for air.

“I love doing landscapes,” says Merle Axelrad, the artist and wizard behind this textile trickery. “I think of them not as what they are—a rock, a tree—but as layering items in space to create depth and the play of light.”

Jessica Wimbley is “busy in the best of ways—the way you dream you could be as an artist.”

As an interdisciplinary artist and curator, Wimbley works on multiple projects, from billboards and video installations to collages and portraits.

“I don’t see an artist as solely fixed to working in a specific medium and producing fine art objects,” says Wimbley, who lives in Midtown and holds degrees in painting, visual arts and arts management.

“Being a contemporary artist, I’m constantly learning and finding ways art can bridge different discussions, communities, people and ways of thinking,” she says.

At first glance, the 5½ foot tall painting of a frog poking its head out of the water looks like a photograph. You can almost hear the gentle “bloop” of the delicate ripples, shimmering reflections and tiny bubbles created by the frog’s movement.

But look closer and realize it’s not a photo. It’s something more. It’s an oil painting done with such fine layers, richness of color and skilled brushwork you can’t help but say, “Wow.”

That reaction is courtesy of Thomas Nardinelli, prolific painter and retired arts educator who specializes in capturing the natural world—flora, fauna and faces—in vibrant color.

The Sacramento native started “doodling” in grammar school, an interest he passed on to his son Daniel, a graphic designer and Inside Sacramento’s chief operating officer. The elder Nardinelli’s parents were both artistic. Dad owned a hardware store in Fair Oaks and did metal crafts. Mom won an art contest as a kid.