"What's going on Sacramento" Chit-Chat

[Korey]

Tower is up for sale...

http://www.sacbee.com/2010/07/03/286...-landmark.html

Originally Posted by SacBee

The asking price is $5 million for the complex that includes the theater, the bustling Tower Cafe, a cigar store and a comic shop along with two vacant spaces, one of which formerly housed Joe Marty's bar and grill

Man I wish I had the money, I think good things could happen to that place (and Broadway as a whole, but that's another topic). Or some rich Land Park people could get together and pool money to buy it under a nonprofit or something. Either way, hope the Tower doesn't lose any of its charm.

[CAGeoNerd]

The Tower Theatre is in such bad shape it is in dire need of remodeling inside and out. The company that currently owns it hasn't been willing to make even the most basic repairs, much less modernizing and upgrading it as needed. They haven't even been willing to replace the carpeting in the lobby which has been the same for years and years and is completely disgusting. So sad to see with a little bit of investment it could really be fixed up nice. But the whole building is so old now and cheaply put together, it's being held together by duct tape and a shoe string budget. Hopefully it gets sold to some new owners who are willing to make the up front investment and completely retrofit the building.

[Ghost of Econgrad]

Originally Posted by CAGeoNerd

The Tower Theatre is in such bad shape it is in dire need of remodeling inside and out. The company that currently owns it hasn't been willing to make even the most basic repairs, much less modernizing and upgrading it as needed. They haven't even been willing to replace the carpeting in the lobby which has been the same for years and years and is completely disgusting. So sad to see with a little bit of investment it could really be fixed up nice. But the whole building is so old now and cheaply put together, it's being held together by duct tape and a shoe string budget. Hopefully it gets sold to some new owners who are willing to make the up front investment and completely retrofit the building.

Tear it all down, build something newer and nicer...

[CAGeoNerd]

Originally Posted by Ghost of Econgrad

Tear it all down, build something newer and nicer...

No way, it can be upgraded and polished up. Maybe add on to the building, expand it into the parking lot even. It's a historic building (built in the 30's) so outright demolishing it would be iffy, and there are too many Sacramento people who would fight to prevent it from going the way of the Alhambra

[Ghost of Econgrad]

Originally Posted by CAGeoNerd

and there are too many Sacramento people who would fight to prevent it from going the way of the Alhambra

I believe you may be right on that.

[wburg]

An interesting look at downtown lots--both ones with proposals and those currently without:

http://sacramento.bizjournals.com/sacramento/stories/2010/08/02/focus4.html?b=1280721600^3726761

Lots of potential
[b]Sacramento officials and developers have some grand plans for downtown’s empty spaces, but most are on hold
Sacramento Business Journal - by Michael Shaw Staff writer

Dennis McCoy | Sacramento Business Journal
Developer John Saca came close to seeing his dream for 301 Capitol Mall come true, but the recession had other plans.

Downtown Sacramento is the busiest place in the region, but there are still blocks within the core where nothing is happening — literally. Empty lots are scattered throughout the downtown area, representing challenges and opportunities for Sacramento as it seeks to enliven the central city and make it more than just the business and government center of the region.

From the infamous lots where grandiose projects died untimely deaths to the neglected backwaters of downtown, reminders of what could have been litter the landscape.

Others are placeholders for what’s to come.

There are plans for several of the lots, but the economic downturn has ensured many will remain barren for several more years.

Here are some of the more prominent empty lots in the downtown core:

301 Capitol Mall: This full city block, formerly home to the Sacramento Union, has been the site of multiple high-rise plans for offices, hotels or condos in the years since the newspaper closed and its building was razed. Sitting at the entrance to Sacramento over Tower Bridge, the vacant parcel is one of the city’s most prominent empty lots. It has been a victim of two recessions, the first in the early 1990s when developer Danny Benvenuti Jr. had proposed twin office towers of 30 stories. Benvenuti returned to the plan a decade later, as did other potential developers, but Benvenuti eventually sold the property. The site is now best known for an ambitious plan by developer John Saca to build the twin 52-story condo Towers on Capitol Mall. Saca, known for building retail, almost sold enough condos to move forward, but as the economy collapsed, he and capital partner California Public Employees’ Retirement System squabbled. CalPERS eventually took over ownership and asked CIM Group of Los Angeles to supply ideas. None have surfaced so far.

Lot X: This city-owned property on Capitol Mall, formerly the venue for a Tower Bridge offramp, was considered prime property during the real estate boom, with the city hoping to sell it for upwards of $20 million. The offramp was removed and it went up for sale in 2006. But with the real estate market already starting a long downturn, offers never met expectations and it was pulled off the market a year later. The problem was that proceeds from the sale were pledged to help the expansion of the Crocker Art Museum, so funding that liability put further financial stress on Sacramento’s budget. A city official said there are no development plans for now.

601 Capitol Mall: This site, owned by developer David Taylor and currently a parking lot, bears mention if only for the spectacular failure of the high-rise project proposed there, the Aura condos. Houston developer Craig Nassi came to town with a captivating design by architect Daniel Libeskind. Despite Nassi’s bluster, he was never able to pull it off as the economy started faltering while he was trying to pre-sell units. The site shares the block with the new office tower built by Taylor at 621 Capitol Mall, which has met with success despite a tough leasing market. Like Saca’s Towers on Capitol Mall project, Nassi wasn’t ultimately able to sell enough units for a lender to release construction loans.

800 block of K Street: After a contentious selection process this summer, a development proposal is in the works for perhaps the most notorious empty lot in town that’s part of the city’s top priority for redevelopment. A portion of the 800 block is empty after vagrants gained access to closed businesses and started a fire that damaged them to the point they had to be demolished. Taylor and a team of partners won the right to negotiate with the city to build there. He has proposed 66 units of housing, a rehab of the Bel-Vue low-income housing building and retail shops. The city has said it would like additional housing and parking as well.

F and 8th: The northwest corner of this intersection, located near Sacramento County Courthouse and other county buildings, was the site for a proposed condo by one of several infill developers looking to cash in the trend toward urban living that preceded the recession. Developer Shepard Johnson put up one project within a few blocks of this lot, but his plans for the lot, alongside many infill developments, fizzled. A sign touting the project, tagged by graffiti, still stands amidst the trees. The land is owned by 8th & F Streets Land Development LLC.

Old Crystal Cream site: This mostly vacant city block, bounded by D and E streets and 10th and 11th streets in the Alkali Flats neighborhood, is the site of a proposed development that has been on hold for at least two years. Just to the north is the former location of the Crystal Cream & Butter Co. Developer MetroNova Development LLC of San Diego has proposed a mixed-use development of 217 homes and 90,000 square feet of office — under the project name The Creamery — for both parcels. The old dairy facility has been demolished. While the proposed development is on hold, neighbors have seen construction equipment there as rocks and old building materials from the site have been sold and used in other projects.

12th and E: Empty portions of two blocks on the east side of 12th Street have been owned by the Sacramento Housing and Redevelopment Agency for many years, but it doesn’t appear that they will be empty for much longer. They are now the site for La Valentina, a $27 million, 81-unit affordable apartment project. Domus Development of San Francisco is the developer. Affordable housing has been hamstrung for several years due to a lack of financing options, but the project was recently awarded tax credits, meaning it likely has secured enough funding for construction to begin this year. The project is near the Globe Mills project, which converted an abandoned grain silo and buildings into a mixed-income and senior housing development.

CADA lots on 16th Street: The one-way street is one of Sacramento’s busiest, yet it’s also home to many of downtown’s vacant lots. The Capitol Area Development Authority has been seeking development projects for years for several lots clustered at N and O streets.

The farthest along is “The Warren,” a proposal of 117 market-rate apartments at 16th and N. EM Johnson Interest Inc. and Nehemiah Community Reinvestment Fund Holdings Inc. have negotiated a disposition and development agreement for the site. Construction is scheduled to begin in September 2011.

Developers Ravel Rasmussen Properties and Separovich/Domich Real Estate also have an agreement for two other parcels on the west side of the 16th-and-O intersection where they plan to build 84 units in a mixed-use project. The developers have until May of next year to close on the site and start construction.

Bridge Housing of San Francisco is negotiating with CADA to build affordable housing on another site. No projects have been identified for a fifth CADA-owned location at 16th and O streets.

California Unity Center: This site at the northeast corner of 16th and N streets is dedicated for the California Unity Center, a $30 million project designed to honor California’s diversity following a series of hate crimes that occurred in the region during the 1990s. A nonprofit, Capital Unity Council was created and nearly $11 million has been raised, but the recession has hurt donations.

16th and R: A vacant lot owned by JB Development LP, a firm of longtime Sacramento developer Joe Benvenuti, sits north of the Crystal Ice project proposed by developer Mark Friedman. Friedman has put the Crystal Ice project on hold and there don’t appear to be plans for this prime location. There is a mural of the Sacramento Kings (Benvenuti is a minority owner) on the fence facing the street.

17th and S: The site claims several proposals for mixed-use and infill development, but after some preliminary meetings with community members, signage for the most recent proposal has been taken down. The property is owned by CMH S Street Midrise Development LLC.

The Docks: The city put out the call for ambitious projects for the Sacramento riverfront. But this project -- bounded by the Sacramento River to the west, Highway 50 to the south, Front Street to the east and Capitol Mall to the north -- which is hampered by the presence of a water treatment plant, also appears to be the victim of the recession. The exclusive right to negotiate between the partnership of San Francisco development firms and the city has expired. The city will go out for a request for proposals for a new team next year, officials said.

mshaw@bizjournals.com | 916-558-7861

Read more: Lots of potential - Sacramento Business Journal

[TWAK]

yeah my apartment building is right next to all these empty lots on 16th and N, O. Atleast the 2 empty lots have grass and they water them. They just put in a parking lot at 15th and q.
Where is “The Warren,” going? The parking lot on the 1500 block of N? Right across the street in the 1600 block they are putting that unity center.

[Korey]

Read in the Bee this morning that some SF dude bought the building on 14th and E, opening up a coffee shop/gallery thing.

http://www.sacbee.com/2010/07/31/292...hop-music.html

I think that building is one of the lynch-pins in "gentrifying" the Alkali/Mansion Flats area. 12th street built out, and E St as a artery going over to 16th, as development creeps up north along it. Once the economy picks up and some of these projects (Creamery etc) go in that whole area will take on a new look. I'd like a park but at least there's something going in at the 12th/E station...

R St to the river will be cool too once it's more built out. The area around 15th/16th is already an awesome spot, can't imagine a nice long stretch of developed R. Especially if the docks area goes up nice instead of bland. Deck over 5 from there to the Crocker at least as well. Eh a Sacramentan can dream, right?

[wburg]

Went walking around Midtown around 10:00 last night--I felt an urge for a piece of pizza. Pretty much every block was busy, people were out in big numbers, on foot and on bikes, traffic was busy, and every restaurant or club with a patio looked crowded. I was over by the Maydestone and saw someone walking their dog, and thought "Cool, it isn't just nightclub crowd, but folks walking their dog too!" The guy with the dog said my name--turns out it was our own Steve in East Sac!

We chatted for a while about the fate of the Maydestone, and about the article above, then I continued on my way, bought some comics at the comic shop (hey, they were open!) and my slice of pizza. Saw lots more people out and about and ran into another friend on my way home. I felt as safe walking around as I do at noon, with all the people and activity.

It's pretty inspiring. I spent a lot of time walking around Midtown at night in the early 1990s, and there were hotspots of activity, but the spaces in between were generally quiet and often a little scary--if you saw someone on the street, they were often trying to get your money in return for drugs, sex, or not stabbing you.

Downtown still has its issues--and the aforementioned holes--but there are still places opening up, and more being fixed up, so I wouldn't be surprised to see this trend continue into downtown in the next couple of years. I'll have to extend my walks farther, especially if I can get pizza-by-the-slice downtown at 11 PM!

On the larger scale, the more Sacramento grows its reputation as a lively place, the more the money will follow--instead of having the city beg for developers with gifts of cash, they will start coming to us. In the meantime, while money is tight, there is the opportunity to utilize the resources we have.

[wburg]

Saw this in the Business Journal--hmm, one of the people interviewed sounds familiar:

http://sacramento.bizjournals.com/sa...721600^3724291

Living, working downtown is a joy for the few who do
Residents awash in places to wine and dine — and they can walk home
Sacramento Business Journal - by Mark Anderson Staff writer

Downtown Sacramento is home to more than 9,000 households, but that’s not enough to make it feel like a bustling city center on a Sunday afternoon. Much of its animation comes from the almost 100,000 who go to work there during the work week.

For all the focused energy in Sacramento over the past decade to build more places to live downtown, only about 550 residential units were built in that time span.

Those units are in such places as the 800J apartments, the Globe Mills Lofts, Signature Properties townhomes at Washington Square, two projects in Old Sacramento and several others scattered through the central city.

Most people who live downtown do so in older homes, and it is the urban experience that attracts them. For many, it comes down to this: Downtown is an easy place to get around without a car.
‘There before it was cool’

Michael Zwahlen, 36, a photographer and owner of Zwahlen Images and blogger of the Living in Urban Sac website, lived downtown for six years before buying a house in Curtis Park about five years ago.

Ironically, the things that attracted him to downtown in the first place priced him right out again. He moved to Curtis Park — just across the Capital City Freeway from the central city — because he couldn’t afford to buy the same kind of home downtown.

“I was down there before it was cool. People weren’t talking about living downtown,” he said, adding that it was the late 1990s was before all the new restaurants opened.

“The revitalization started in the early 2000s,” he said. “That’s when more restaurants started opening up down there and it became the focus of planning for a lot of projects.”

The restaurants, in turn, drew other restaurants, but the housing took too long to get approvals, he said.

“I’ve seen a lot of project proposals that missed the window of development and they fell apart,” Zwahlen said. “The approvals took so long they were two steps behind the market crashes.”

The city worked hard to streamline its approvals system in the past four years, but it didn’t happen soon enough for many projects.

“That has been a sore point,” he said. “We had such an enormously long approval process to get things done that some of the projects don’t survive, and that has hurt development downtown. We won’t see how efficient the city’s new approval system is until things start growing again, and that seems a few years away.”
A reverse commute to Folsom

Corey McKenna, 27, a writer, chose to live downtown a couple of years ago to avoid the expense of having a car. He had been living in rural Loomis, where not having a car means you are stuck at home.

He got a job in Folsom, and weighed the merits of living in Folsom and living downtown. With a car payment, insurance and gas, just having a car costs more than $600 a month. If he lived in Folsom, he would need a car just to be able to function.

By living downtown, he could walk to just about anything, including the light-rail station a few blocks from his apartment where he can catch a train to work. The unlimited rail pass costs about $100 a month.

The Elk Grove native remembered coming up to Sacramento as a kid and noticing that downtown Sacramento had a lot more energy than the suburbs.

His place is one of the new lofts downtown. It has wood floors and 10-foot ceilings, and it’s pretty close to anything he needs.

For the first year, he often would go out to eat nearby at Crepeville and The Buckhorn Grill.

More recently, he’s getting boxes of produce delivered from a Community Supported Agriculture organic farm.

And because his commute can eat up to three hours of his day, he’s not able to spend as much time downtown as he would like.

“Parts of it are starting to get really old,” he said. His place is near Cesar Chavez Park, and there are sections of the city around there that are empty.

Even the park itself, which on a Friday evening can be bustling with 3,000 people at a free concert, is like a ghost town on Sunday.

“It comes and goes. There are not a constant number of people on the streets. The thing I’m seeing more of now is that it really is an empty downtown. There are some real dead zones. It is a sticky problem. Do you entice people to come downtown as a destination, or do you try to get more people to live here? If you had more neighborhoods down here, more people would live here.”

That’s a sticking point for political consultant and public affairs campaign strategist Steven Maviglio, owner of Forza Communications.

He has worked downtown for the past decade, but he said he wouldn’t consider living there the way it is now, though his office is downtown and he spends about 12 hours a day within blocks of his office, just a short stroll from the Capitol.

“There is more foot traffic and there are more restaurants, but there are some major problems of not a lot of security and vast expanses of vacant lots, empty buildings and people-less streets,” he said. “That leaves you with a feeling of having it be less safe than you would want to live in a downtown.”
‘I don’t need to leave the grid’

Lisa Martinez, 30, director of outreach for the Downtown Sacramento Partnership, prefers living in an urban environment. The suburbs, and the need to always get in a car, just bothered her too much.

“When I moved here from Chicago, I wanted to live in an urban environment,” she said.

She had grown up in a suburban neighborhood in northwest Indiana, but she learned to love the feeling of being part of a downtown as she attended DePaul University in Chicago. Her apartment in Chicago faced an elevated train platform.

“I could tell if I was going to be late for class if the train was passing by,” she said.

When she moved to Sacramento with her husband, a Sacramento native, they first moved to the suburban southern neighborhoods of the city.

“I knew immediately this wasn’t going to work,” Martinez said. “It was so weird to me. There was nobody on the streets other than people walking their dogs or getting exercise. You have to have a car. It is awkward to even cross the streets by walking because the cars drive like they have the right-of-way,” she said.

Five years ago, when they looked all over the area for a place to live, it was downtown that was calling.

“It was just really hard for me to live in the suburbs,” she said. By living downtown, the couple was able to sell one of their cars, and often they both walk to work.

After work on a recent evening, the couple strolled from her office near City Hall to an event in midtown, then stopped by a restaurant and a pub on the way home, she said. “We both love it.

“Taking the car out of the equation makes everything much easier. You don’t have to worry about finding parking or getting tickets because you are just going to walk. There isn’t anything that is that far,” she said. “I don’t need to leave the grid. Some of my friends joke I need a pass code to get out of the grid.”
‘I can walk everywhere’

David Watts Barton, 50, editor in chief of the online Sacramento Press, lives in a restored Victorian house in Alkali Flat, one of the city’s oldest neighborhoods. He’s just a few blocks from City Hall.

“I can walk everywhere,” he said, running down a list that includes cafés, restaurants, the post office, live theaters, movie theaters, clubs, nightclubs, concert venues and the library. Because he does some writing for some national wire services, he also can walk just a few blocks to get files or cover cases at the county and federal courthouses.

“If it wasn’t for my love of the outdoors and nature and going to places like San Francisco, I would never have to leave my neighborhood,” he said.

Raised in Arden Arcade, he’s lived in neighborhoods all through Sacramento. He first lived downtown in 1981. Now, he’s chosen to live downtown for the lifestyle.

“It is really green. In the core you do not have to use a lot of resources. You don’t need to use fuel to get around. Sacramento is moving toward being more of a green area, and the core is going to lead that.”

The thing that surprises most people is how quiet the neighborhood is, he said. “There is a lot of foot traffic.”

Some of the problems he sees with downtown include too many abandoned buildings that have stayed boarded up for years, and the unsightly entrance to the city from the north.

“People say downtown has some problems, but what they forget is that it used to be a lot worse,” he said.

manderson@bizjournals.com | 916-558-7874

Read more: Living, working downtown is a joy for the few who do - Sacramento Business Journal

[ThatDarnSacramentan]

^^ Hey, I was there! Haha, it was like meeting your childhood hero, walking around a few blocks of downtown with Dennis McCoy and Mike. Come to think of it, I have a picture or two of the whole thing on my memory card somewhere. I was off getting an allergic reaction from those wild grasses they planted on 5th Street when Mr. McCoy took that shot.

[What is a Rivercat?]

9,000 households in downtown? What a joke. How can there be so few places to live in a major American city's downtown? How can city leadership be so utterly and completely inept?

[Majin]

Originally Posted by What is a Rivercat?

How can city leadership be so utterly and completely inept?

[Web]

Ha Ha like Thomas the crook and Johnson the I dont wanna learn civics have done anything?

[wburg]

It goes back a lot farther than that...downtown Sacramento used to be the most densely populated part of the city, until the 1950s and urban renewal. The city basically emptied the population of the central city into Southside, Alkali Flat and Oak Park, and provided only a handful of new housing to replace it (Capitol Towers and the other apartment/condo/senior residences near it.) There were still about 5000 SRO hotel rooms and downtown apartments left, but city policy has promoted the closure, demolition or conversion to offices of 90% of that housing stock.

Movement out of the central city was facilitated by highways, and Sacramento's endless suburbs--there was little reason to build residential units downtown when building new houses in the suburbs was cheaper, and our new highways had enough capacity to allow people to commute with relative ease. Only as we start to reach the limits of practical sprawl have things started to bog down, encouraging another look at downtown development. Other cities reached that conclusion decades ago, and took steps to change what they were doing, but cities like Sacramento are playing catch-up.

That 9000 households represents about a third of the central city--Midtown and other central city neighborhoods roughly triple that figure. Now that we're moving away from the idea that nobody should ever live in the central city, we can move back towards the kind of residential density we had in 1950!

[innov8]

The Next American Dream

Is Sacramento Ready?


We used to get dressed up to go “downtown.”

It was an occasion.

It was the place to be.

It was the energy of every growing city.

But times changed.


Suburbia was born.

And we deserted downtown.


It’s time to rebuild our urban cores.

Does Sacramento have the will to rebuild?



Please join us at the Crest Theatre

for a screening of

The Next American Dream,

a documentary film about a downtown coming back to life.



Thursday, Aug. 26, 2010

Social Hour – 5 to 6 p.m.

Screening – 6 to 7 p.m.

After-Party – Social Nightclub (10th and K)

This screening was not brought to you by an association, a chamber, a media outlet, a developer, a politician or the filmmaker. This film was brought to you by people who call Sacramento home. Most importantly, this film was brought to you by a group of people who ready to change the landscape of our region.

For more information about The Next American Dream, visit nextamericandream.com.

Some local Sacramentans are putting this screening on: a new vision for downtown Sacramento.

Check out the trailer at http://nextamericandream.com/ .

I think you’ll find it well worth your time

[ThatDarnSacramentan]

Sounds awesome. I wouldn't be able to make the after-party, but I might be able to see the screening. I don't know yet, since that's the day I'm returning from Santa Cruz. Why, if enough forumers decide to go, it could turn into an inadvertent forum meet.

[Ghost of Econgrad]

It’s time to rebuild our urban cores.

Does Sacramento have the will to rebuild?

The Will? Or the the Willingness to pay more taxes to subsidize Downtown developments? I really hope this isn't New Urbanist Propaganda attempting to make people feel good about paying taxes for Urban subsidies... I just have a feeling. If it talks about a true economy and demand for urban living, great. We'll see... I will be there.

[innov8]

Oh, I forgot to mention that The Next American Dream screening is FREE!

Tomorrow 5:00 PM - 7:00 PM
The Crest Theatre
1013 K Street

Is Sacramento Ready?

In 2005, filmmakers in Kansas City, Missouri, secured unprecedented access
to the planning and reconstruction efforts to revitalize the city’s downtown
urban core. The film blends the story of this city’s comeback with interviews
with urban planning experts from around the country, archival footage and
commentary from the people who are returning to live in our downtowns.

http://thenextamericandream.eventbrite.com/

[tronblue]

[IMG]<a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/54520006@N03/5050469432/" title="“I too saw the reflection of the summer sky in the water” by jeff felker, on Flickr"><img src="http://farm5.static.flickr.com/4089/5050469432_2d5a5c2bf7.jpg" width="307" height="370" alt="“I too saw the reflection of the summer sky in the water”" /></a>[/IMG]
“I too saw the reflection of the summer sky in the water”

20x24 oil on canvas jeff felker 2010


CSUS UNION GALLERY FEARTURES PAINTINGS BY SACRAMENTO ARTIST JEFF FELKER


Jeff Felker
The Poetics of Music at Sea
Solo Exhibition

Opening Reception: Thursday, October 14, 6pm-8pm

Show runs through October 4th -November 4th, 2010

Sacramento, CA –The Poetics of Music at Sea, a solo exhibition of new paintings by Jeff Felker, opens at the CSUS Union Gallery, 6000 J Street, Sacramento, on Monday, October 4, 2010. The public is invited to a reception on Thursday, October 14, 2010 from 6pm-8pm.

For his first solo show at the Union Gallery, Jeff has created a series of new, original, paintings in oil on canvas and board. Reflecting Jeff's strong passions for literature, painting and music these works tie the three art forms together to create a string of individual narratives. When taken together, these paintings attempt to confront an often repressive environment.

Inspired by the romanticized interpretations of music and water that emerge as major themes and influences in Walt Whitman’s poetry in Leaves of Grass, Jeff uses quotes from Whitman’s poetry as a central catalyst for his narratives. Each piece is titled with a quotation that speaks to/gestures toward a desire for a sense of harmony, balance or quest within a dystopian landscape. The music and instruments within the paintings communicate each figure's relationship for that desire and become their apparatus for survival in an otherwise emotionally complex and overwhelming world. In a reversal of the typical oppressive dry wasteland, the paintings position water as negating life and as challenging the figures in a frenzy for self control and self identity. These conflicts are purposely left unresolved as part of a continuous and ever present struggle for life.

About the artist
Born in 1980 and raised in a world of latchkeys, comic books, and urban exploration, Sacramento-based artist Jeff Felker weaves those early inspirations into the visual narratives he creates today. Exploring themes reformulated from life and his formal background in literature, he creates narrative paintings that blend reality and dreamscape--the human figures within are located in conflicted worlds of emotional isolation. Using oil to juxtapose bright and muted color schemes, Jeff executes his paintings on canvas and board.

Jeff has been interested in writing and literature from a young age, which shows in the narrative qualities of his paintings, as well as his scholarly pursuits. He received an MA in English Literature from California State University, Sacramento in 2009, and currently teaches English at American River College. The themes he encounters in literature continue to permeate throughout his simultaneous pursuit and love of painting.

For further information about Jeff Felker and to see more examples of his artwork go to:
www.studiologica.com


Public relations contact:
Alison Kranz
alison.kranz@gmail.com

Gallery info
CSUS Union Gallery
2nd floor University Union Building
6000 J Street, Sacramento, CA 95819
Hours: M-F 10:30am–3:30pm / Wed & Thur 5–8pm
http://www.union.csus.edu/gallery/

Open parking will be available on the top floor of Parking Structure III (near hwy 50 entrance) on the night of reception.