Lyndsay Burch has her hands full and she wouldn’t have it any other way.
At just 30 years old, the North Carolina native became only the second—and first female—artistic director of beloved professional theater company B Street Theatre, taking the helm from Buck Busfield, who had been involved in the company since its creation by his brother Timothy in 1986.
Directing has been Burch’s passion since childhood. She directed her first production at age 13 at the behest of a middle-school drama teacher who recognized her eye for “all the aspects of production, not just performance.”
As you listen to the lush musical splendor of Italian tenor Andrea Bocelli on May 12 at Golden 1 Center, pay attention to the orchestration and choral voices that surround his vocals.
Sixty-nine musicians and 60 singers from the Sacramento Philharmonic & Opera will share the stage with Bocelli for his fourth visit since 2015. This is one of just seven U.S. appearances in Bocelli’s 2023 international tour, a testament to the professionalism of local musicians and the artistic quality Bocelli and his team expect.
“I think they really enjoy coming to Sacramento,” says Giuliano Kornberg, executive director of the orchestra and choir. “We have a good rapport with his team and the energy in Golden 1 is really compelling. We easily get 11–12,000 people in there, which creates a great buzz.”
In 100 years, people can still admire the work of Stephen Michael Bouska.
The master stone carver works in materials that last centuries with proper care. That’s what he hopes—that his work will survive to “help us express ourselves for multiple generations.”
When he first started in stone work, it was out of necessity. As a teenage father, Bouska needed a way to provide for his young family and “feed my soul at the same time.”
Davy Fiveash is never not creating. When I catch up with him by phone, I hear telltale scratchings of a paintbrush on canvas while we chat.
“I picked up crayons like every kid does and then I didn’t put them down,” Fiveash says of his lifelong love of art and craft. “I always knew I wanted to be an artist.”
On this day, Fiveash is in his East Sacramento studio working on his newest piece, a large-scale, mixed-media painting based on his childhood titled “The Evangelicals.”
When you visit mixed media artist Linda Paris’ website or East Sacramento home studio, you’ll find a treasure trove of work, from collages and paintings to dioramas of found objects. What you won’t find is the artist’s biography.
“My philosophy is I like people to interact with the work. I don’t want a provenance or bio to interfere with that,” Paris says. “It’s the piece that we’re selling, not me.”
Interacting with Paris’ work is like jumping down the rabbit hole into another world.
One lesson Christie Martinez’s mom instilled at an early age was “there’s always a way.”
That idea stuck with Martinez as she embarked on a new career path as a digital artist who specializes in pet portraits to raise money for animal rescue organizations.
“It all starts with the thought process of giving,” says Martinez, a Sacramento native who lives in Fair Oaks with her husband and 12-year-old son. “You see all these animals in the shelters. I feel so bad for them, I wish I could take them all home. I thought, if I’m doing pet portraits, how cool would it be to partner with these organizations and donate? It’s a win-win everywhere.”
