Cheesecake Man
As CEO of To The Bay and Back Gourmet Cheesecakes, Lambert Davis sleeps and breathes cheesecake. He eats his product too, but only “in moderation.”
“Lemon is my favorite,” Davis says. “You have to taste it to believe it.”
For more than 20 years, Davis has headed up one of Sacramento’s tastiest enterprises, a family-owned company with more than 70 cheesecake flavors. The name comes from Bodega Bay, the family’s favorite vacation site.
Come As You Are
Stacey Johnson has lived with bipolar disorder for close to 30 years. She self-medicated until she received a diagnosis. After recovery and years of working in substance-abuse treatment, she hopes to help others with her life coaching business, Come As You Are, which focuses on substance abuse and mental health recovery.
“I believe that addiction and mental illness are gifts when they’re transformed,” Johnson says. “We experience life in a very different way than the average person. I truly believe it’s a calling. We’re resilient people who’ve overcome a lot. To me, there’s a real strength in that.”
Circles Of Life
A moody blue dreamscape punctuated by floating golden crescents and shadowy orbs hangs on the wall. Next to it, a small placard with text.
“Golden Moons,” it reads. “There seems to be a price for living with full intention, awake and alive to the possibilities of the world. You two watch me take the risks. Holding light in a dark corner no one wants to look at. And it scares me to see you pivot away from me and on to your own path with the same luminosity. And that action, my golden moons, excites me and scares me. With audacity and flair, telling the world what you need to shine. Where did you learn this? Did I teach you or did you teach me?”
Branching Out
Starting over is never easy. Artist Lin Fei Fei has done it four times.
First as a student in her native China earning her stripes as an artist. Then six years ago when she immigrated to the U.S. Then last September when she co-founded “a space in between,” a multifunctional gallery and street art exhibit space housed in a 12,000-square-foot warehouse in Mansion Flats.
And finally this summer when she closed the physical gallery and moved fully online to be more flexible.
“Before I moved to America, I had become a little bit established,” says Lin, a native of Dalian, China, who earned her master’s degree in oil painting at Lu Xun Academy of Fine Arts and who was named one of 10 Contemporary Chinese Artists of the Future by the Wang Shi and Kuo Art Foundation in Beijing in 2016.
