Benicia’s Art Walk brings out a crowd
BENICIA >> Perhaps one positive outcome of the COVID-19 pandemic is that it has encouraged people to reconnect with old hobbies and maybe pick up few new ones. This has been a great thing for the art world, with more people devoting time to painting, sculpting, or ceramics.
However, things haven’t been as easy for art galleries that rely on walk-in traffic. Benicia is Solano County’s prime artists’ hub though, and you can’t keep a good scene down.
Saturday ’s Art Walk along First Street carried on in full- swing, with at least six spots participating. The event is a stroll down the street and into art galleries. Gone are the requisite wine and snacks (double- dippers being especially unwelcome these days) but shop owners and members of art collectives still enjoy interacting with the community and maybe even selling some artwork despite the pandemic.
Owners of Arata Art Gallery Geri Arata and her husband John Pruett have had to come up with innovative ways to keep people engaged in the time of COVID. They are doing something they call Artist in the Window, where they invite local artists to create paintings on-site. On Saturday, artist Anna Wagner was creating a seascape culled from a pleasant memory she had of a visit to Monterey.
“My work is from observations I make in real life,” she said, dabbing her brush into a cerulean blue. She said she locks things in her memory, “tweaks” them a bit, and then transforms her images into a painting.
Geri and her husband moved to Benicia four years ago after running a gallery in the North Beach area of San Francisco. She said she cherishes being in an artist community and that the city of Benicia has been “the most helpful to small business than any other place I’ve been.”
Further down the street is the collective Plein Air Gallery, named for the French term for painting in the open air — something that seems to fit nicely with social distancing protocols. The gallery limits how many people can enter at a time and was getting quite a bit of foot traffic.
One woman came in and gave artist Carol Tarzier a bag of gifts including cookies, fresh basil from her garden (the scent of which filled the room), and two perfect persimmons, which she hoped Tarzier might paint.
“I’ve been enjoying your painting on Facebook,” the fan said. “It’s so beautiful.”
Tarzier’s work is indeed gorgeous — including her fruit and vegetables in still life, painted with an artist’s eye for color and just the right amount of abstraction. Her series on the wall featured beets, mushrooms, and yes, persimmons, all part of what she was was from something called a Strada Daily Challenge, which is a bit like National Novel Writing Month, only it involves one painting in one day.
Every gallery had hand sanitizer outside and signs requesting people wear masks, rules that everyone appeared to be adhering to. But there are other ways that gallery owners are getting around the COVID problem.
Once Upon A Canvas has been offering painting and other art classes via Zoom, according to marketing director and artist Fiona Hughes.
“People are certainly more prolific at home during lockdown,” she said, noting that Amazon is frequently out of the art supplies that people need. In addition to watercolor classes, photographer Beth Grimm offers an “iPhone Artistry” course remotely, which teaches people how to beautif y, embellish, and otherwise maximize their photos taken on their phones.
Though there wasn’t as much hustle and bustle up and down First Street as their normally would be on a pleasant Saturday, there certainly were plenty of folks out with their kids, dogs, and appetites.