Massive downtown mural project is underway
If you think downtown San Jose couldn’t fit a few more murals, you need to check out the 100 Block Mural Project, which is underway on a wall of the Valley Title building across from the California Theatre.
Erin Salazar — the founder of the Exhibition District, an art-based startup — said the project is a dream she’s been trying to make come true for more than two years. One hundred artists — with about 90 percent coming from either the South Bay or Bay Area — are each painting as assigned 3-foot-square space on the wall. And the artists are getting paid, too, with a total of $30,000 going toward them.
The individual blocks aren’t meant to be part of a larger picture, Salazar said, but they’ve been loosely grouped by color, so viewers in San Jose’s arty SoFA District will be able to discern a certain continuity. Several artists at a time have
been working on filling in their part of the grid since last week and the work is expected to finish up by the end of the month, weather permitting, with a tentative unveiling March 1.
BLUESY BENEFIT >> Lara Price‘s Girls Got the Blues band will play its sixth annual benefit this weekend for Next Door Solutions to Domestic Violence at the Poor House Bistro Studio in San Jose. And for the first time there will be two concerts featuring two Bay Area blues vocalists to support the nonprofit’s programs to help victims of domestic violence.
The first concert at 2 p.m. Feb. 24 will feature Tia Carroll, and the second at 5:30 p.m. will put Terrie Odabi in the spotlight. Price, who is pausing her current tour in Texas to take part in the annual event, said she’s honored to do her part to help Next Door’s mission. “It is so gratifying and appropriate to support the efforts of Next Door Solutions with an afternoon of music performed by an all-star, all-female band of renowned performers also featuring two outstanding artists like Tia and Terrie,” Price said.
Tickets are available for $25 in advance at brownpapertickets.com or $30 at the door.
MOVEMENT AT THE MUSEUM >> Have you ever paid attention to how you move through a space like the San Jose Museum of Art? Choreographer and artist Brendan Fernandes will be exploring that concept at the museum with “Inaction,” a performance piece with studio dancers from the New Ballet. He’s choreographed the dancers’ movements to explore the boundaries and thresholds within the museum’s gallery spaces.
The museum commissioned the 6 p.m. piece as part of the “Other Walks, Other Lines” exhibition, and it will be followed by a Creative Minds conversation with Fernandes at 7 p.m. Admission is free for members and $5 for others after 6 p.m. And if you miss it Thursday night, the performance will be repeated Feb. 23 at 1 and 4 p.m. Go to www.sjmusart. org for more details.