If you take your pet to Sacramento Animal Hospital on H Street, you’re probably familiar with the adorable brightly colored animal portraits that decorate the treatment rooms.
They are the works of multi-talented East Sacramento artist Nikki Solone, who has been making art for as long as she can remember, but got turned onto her biggest creative niche—pet portraits—almost by accident.
The first thing you notice when you walk into Norma Lovell’s Curtis Park home is that every available wall surface is covered with stunning oil paintings. Portraits, tasteful nudes, animals—each image beautifully detailed with a liveliness that transfixes.
When you find out that Lovell painted every single one—many over the last 10 years since she fully dedicated herself to oil painting—the interior landscape becomes that much more impressive.
To publish one book is an accomplishment. To publish three—all at the same time—is nothing short of a miracle. But that’s exactly what David Flanagan, adman extraordinaire and Land Park-based author, did this summer.
“Ideas just started pouring out of me,” says Flanagan, whose name probably sounds familiar. He co-founded ad agency Crocker Flanagan and has since started others, including his current brand and marketing agency Misfit, which boasts clients like Old Sacramento, Visit Sacramento and Sacramento International Airport.
For a jazzman of the world like saxophonist, composer and educator Jacam Manricks, it seems almost inevitable that his music would offer a fusion of influences.
Manricks grew up in Australia, and his parents played classical music at the symphony in his hometown of Brisbane. However, Manricks’ grandfather led a swing band in Sri Lanka, and Manricks fell in love with jazz through his father’s vinyl collection. Jazz and classical music come together in Manricks’ music, but he also points out influences of hip-hop and heavy metal.
It might seem strange that an instrument as old as the harpsichord is something musician Faythe Vollrath thinks of as “new in many ways,” but the accomplished harpsichordist, based in Placerville, maintains that there’s a method to the madness.
“It’s still very much ‘create your own adventure’ with the harpsichord,” says Vollrath, who performs as a soloist and chamber musician throughout the U.S. and abroad (she recently performed a concert of new music in Serbia as part of the Belgrade Harpsichord Festival).
A poster of Wonder Woman hangs on the wall next to a colorful lamp. But look closer—these aren’t ordinary objects. They’re composed of thousands of tiny LEGO bricks and they’re the masterwork of Sacramento native David Truman Tracy.
“I couldn’t tell you how many times I built LEGO sets as a kid,” says Tracy, whose work is on display at Archival Gallery this month in “Sacramento Superheroes,” alongside work by the late Mel Ramos, Carrie Cottini, Robert Bowen, Corey Okada and GB Hettrick.