15th Annual 50|50 Show at Sanchez Art Center

Participating California artists created 50 small artworks within a time span of 50 days, an artistic journey requiring a bold vision, artistic power, and perseverance to undertake. The result of the 55 artists' accomplishment is a dazzling array of original art that, along with the affordability of the small (6" x 6") artworks, makes the 50|50 Show the most highly anticipated exhibition of the year.

Marianna Stark, the principal of M Stark Gallery, Half Moon Bay, and an active member of the Bay Area visual art community for 30 years, took great pleasure in reviewing the over 180 entrants, and took on the challenge of selecting 55 artists based on their submitted images of past works and proposed theme. With her expert eye evoking a west coast aesthetic and understanding of the contemporary art scene, the resulting show contains an exciting variety of subject matters and styles featuring works in clay, acrylic and oil paint, fiber, metal, watercolor, pastel, encaustic, glass and more.

For the artists, developing an overall theme that will absorb their artistic practice over 50 days is how the process begins. Current culture, creatures – real and imagined – domesticated and wild, nature and our relationship with it is highlighted in pieces about water – gardens – flowers – trees, pattern, and color are a few of the themes that infuse the work, along with feelings about home, motherhood and the female form embraced in works by several of the artists.

Rose Hagen, Los Altos, has visually documented in glass the tragedy of "50 Days in America: the toll of mass shootings". Sebastian Roldan, working in mild steel, shares "Musings of an Insomniac Metal Artist Who Can't Draw". Dwight Long, San Francisco, has documented in acrylic, vehicles found on Bay Area streets and a few that might be there in the future, in "Vroom!". Shana Bryant, San Mateo, has re-imagined pop culture as one that accepts Blackness and her sister, Shari Bryant, San Carlos, continues her exploration of Black women in fantasy. Jenifer Renzel, San Jose, also created fantasy worlds, working in mixed media to create "Experiments in World Building and Monster Making." Margaret Niven, Scotts Valley, utilized hand-cut linoleum blocks to print "…Forest for the Trees", Monica Bryant, Santa Rosa, explores ties that bind us entwined with nature's stories in "The Beauty of Our Interconnectedness," and Judy Rosenfield, Oakland, celebrates her backyard creating stained glass mosaic "…Snapshots from the Garden" abundant with vegetables, flowers and birds. Lisa Levine, Oakland, shows the exterior of homes can display the interests and personalities of those inside, while at the same time bringing reality into question with the homes surrounding landscape in, "Virtually No Place Like Home". "Beauty of the Feminine", ink, watercolor, and pen by Karla Moffett, draws on societal pressure and obsession with physical form, and Sydney Brown, shares the challenge of being present and honest while parenting, in "Labor, Love and Insanity", granting empathy to each from mother to child.

Proceeds from the 50|50 Show support Sanchez Art Center’s programs that, for 25 years, have created community through art. Visit the website for more information.