NoCal is a place all its own, with place names that say so: Grass Valley; Paradise; Eureka; Happy Camp, and the like. Its history as a Gold Rush town called Granite gave it a legacy of wealth overlaid by a free-wheeling spirit. Best known today for the Folsom Prison, it is also home to tech giant, Intel. 

So it’s not surprising that Folsom also hosted an international significan art gallery. Operated by Adeliza McHugh between 1962 and 1992, The Candy Store became the first to feature California Funk artists, putting the whimsical, funky, and irreverent aesthetic of California’s Central Valley on the art-historical map. Among them are Clayton Bailey, Roy De Forest, David Gilhooly, Gladys Nilsson, Jim Nutt, Jack Ogden, Sandra Shannonhouse, and Maija Peeples-Bright (née Zack). 

In recognition of the McHugh’s contributions to the California art scene, the gallery was honored in 1981 by an attendance record breaking exhibition at Sacramento's Crocker Art Museum. Now, on what would have been The Candy Store’s 60^th Anniversary, The Crocker reprises the show in an expanded version. The Candy Storte: Funk Nut and Other Art with a Kick opens February 2, in conjunction with a related show at the University Library Gallery at Sacramento State.

The Crocker Art Museum 216 O Street, Sacramento, CA Info Top: Maija Peeples-Bright, Beast Map 1965-66; Left: David Gilhooly, Jelly Bean Bear in Ark, 1981

Continuing through March 27: Plant Cure/Brooklyn, at the Brooklyn Botanic Garden 

This collaboration between Central Booking, organized by Maddy Rosenber, with the Brooklyn Botanic Garden. on medicinal plants, presents work by five visual artists-in-residence at the Garden. The artists, Desirée Alvarez, Agnes Murray, Maddy Rosenberg, Amanda Thackray, James Walsh, were chosen for their distinctive and varied approaches to source materialand reseaqrch, and their work reveals their own individual perspectives on the subject of medicinal plants. 

Brooklyn Botanic Garden, Conservatory Gallery, 990 Washington Avenue, Brooklyn, NY Info Video tour of the exhibition  Below: Installation view

Continuing through February 12: Winfred Rembert | 1945-2021 at Fort Gansevoort

Winfred Rembert, who passed away in March of this year at the age of 75, learned how to tool leather during the seven years he spent in prison in Georgia. Decades after his release and subsequent relocation to Connecticut, Rembert began carving narrative scenes from his traumatic experience in the Jim Crow South onto tanned leather, producing intricate images in low relief that he painted with colorful dyes. This exhibition coincides with the posthumous release of the artist’s memoir, Chasing Me to My Grave.

Rembert writes, “With my paintings, I tried to make a bad situation look good. You can’t make a chain gang look good in any way besides putting it in art.” In these paintings, Rembert he laid down his memories of sun-scorched cotton fields, jumping juke joints, brutal chain gangs and horrific lynchings — one of them his own. His depictions of town life are alive with human activity, marking him as a folk artist. But his paintings of cotton fields can be highly patterned, almost quilt-like. And his chain gang paintings border on the abstract. One of the most prized, All Me, bunches dozens of convicts into a single organism. Above: Winfred Rembert, The Curvey, 2013; dye on carved and tooled leather, courtesy of Fort Gansevoort

Fort Gansevoort, 5 Ninth Avenue, NY, NY Info

Opening January 22: Jonas Wood, Plants and Animals at David Kordansky Gallery, LA

Ahead of the show, Cultured wrote about the power of storytelling in his paintings. ”Think of paintings of dogs, and what springs to mind? Something by Edwin Landseer or George Stubbs, perhaps? Dogs playing poker? The genre is not known for its artistic depth or profundity, but Jonas Wood has never been afraid of inauspicious subject matter.”

Early on, Wood became known for paintings of basketball players and tennis courts, which he showed alongside domestic interiors, still lives (often including potted plants), portraits and landscapes. My first view of this work was in an immersive 2013 installation at Lever House. His work has since developed with an irreverent and deeply personal choice of subject matter based on tradition and an unfiltered sense of what makes an artwork art that is based on a keen understanding of art history.

David Kordansky Gallery, 5130 W. Edgewood Pl. Los Angeles, CA Info Left: Jonas Wood,Patterned Interior with Mar Vista View, 2020

Paintings by Jonas Wood (b. 1977, Boston) are also on view through April 3, 2022 at The Broad in Los Angeles in the group exhibition Since Unveiling: Select Acquisitions of a Decade. Info

Opening February 3: Moses Sumney | Blackalacia at Nicola Vassell

Moses Sumney’s debut exhibition presents Blackalachia, a feature length performance film and photographic series created by the artist in the North Carolina stretch of the Blue Ridge Mountains during the summer of 2020. The installation highlights issues at the center of his interdisciplinary practice, including non-binary thinking, isolation, emotional introspection and historical Black cultural influence.

The film's title cites the relationship between Blackness and the Appalachian region, and the forced severance of the two, on which Sumney writes, “There is a history of Black people in Appalachia, there is a history of Black music being the foundation of bluegrass and  country. There is a history of migration into and out of Appalachia. I’m so deeply invested in a reintegration into nature.” This sincere contemplation results in “a performance piece about  performance, framed by the gradual passage of the day into blue-black night,” writes the gallery. Above: Still from Blackalacia

Nicola Vassell Gallery, 13 10^th Avenue, New York, NY Info 

Opening January 21: Paul Resika | Allegory (San Nicola di Bari), at The New York Studio School of Drawing, Painting and Sculpture

Presented in collaboration with Bookstein Projects, the exhibition a series of paintings derived from an obscure engraving made of a panel from an altarpiece predella (ca. 1437) by Fra Angelico. Ranging from somewhat-faithful reinterpretations of the image of St. Nicola of Bari, to sparse abstractions painted in brilliant colors, this series offers a range of styles that Resika has made all his own. The first one was made in 2018, shortly after Resika came across an etching of the predella, and the last one was completed in 2021. A full-color catalog with essays by Christopher Busa and John Yau is available. Above: Paul Resika, Noche-de-Los-Mamiferos

The New York Studio School of Drawing, Painting and Sculpture, 8 West 8^th Street, NY, NY Info 

Bookstein Projects is hosting a concurrent exhibition, Paul Resika: Self-Portraits, 1946-2021, including both self-portrait paintings and works on paper executed over the last eight decades, through February 25^th.  60 East 66th Street, 3rd Floor, New York, NY Info 

Notes from Subscribers

Closing Party Friday, January 28, 5-8 pm: Group Show: Alcohol Ink Paintings at MIKA 

Curated by Sonomi Kobayashi who runs Kappo Atelier where she offers painting workshops and Japanese food. The participants Ryoko Endo, Yukiko Espinosa, Hisako Inoue Shoen, Natsuko Kitagawa, Sonomi Kobayashi, Makia Matsumura, Natsuki Takauji, and Kayo Toyota, who come from various background (painter, sculptor, lawyer, pianist, etc.) had taken her alcohol ink workshops and developed this work.

MIKA, 25 Thames Street, Bushwick, Brooklyn, NY Info

Extended through January 29th: Group Show | Paintings and Works on Paper at The Hub

New York School of the Arts, 315 East 62^nd Street, NY, NY Info

Above: Peggy Roalf, Untitled (Vulcan #1), 2021Info @peggy.roalf

Continuing through February 9: Lost and (Re)Found at Carter Burden Gallery

What is Lost? And What is Found? Carter Burden Gallery presents an in-person gallery version of their 2021 online exhibition, Lost and Found. The (re)grouping of selected work led to two consecutive shows of 50 works distilled from the original 117, presenting an new opportunity for (re)reflection, (re)entering and (re)viewing up close and personal, aiming for a (re)bound through the (re)found.

Artists include: Monique Allain, Ellen Alt, Beth Barry, A. Bascove, Lois Bender, Alli Berman, Karin Bruckner, Diane Englander, Cora Jane Glasser, Eileen Hoffman, Lori Horowitz , Elaine Housman, Arleen Joseph, Jenna Lash, Wendy Moss, Cathy O'Keefe, Francine Perlman , Leah Poller, Melissa Rubin, Barbara Schaefer, Jacqueline Sferra Rada, Julie Shapiro, Darcy Spitz, Syma, and Gail Winbury. Thanks to Syma [right] for the alert.
Carter Burden Gallery, 348 West 28th Street, NY, NY Info