It’s no secret that President Trump’s election in 2016 impacted the worlds of art and music. But for many creative individuals, responding to Trump’s arrival in the White House isn’t something they necessarily want arriving in their art.
Or, how visual artist Gioia Fonda put it: “Political art is awful and I don’t want to make it, but it just creeps in.”
Fonda, a painter, visual artist and full-time, tenured professor at Sacramento City College, says she grappled with “that year” — 2016 — as she prepared new work for her latest exhibit, “Ongoing Concerns,” which debuts this weekend.
“It's just it's really depressing, and I've been looking at how other artists have dealt with dark times, and I'm an optimistic person. But it's just a darker kind of optimism now,” Fonda said during an interview this week with CapRadio.
A prominent Sacramento artist perhaps best known for her recent “Give a Fork” project, Fonda led the collection of more than 4,000 forks to create a public-art sculpture. She’s also the founder of the annual “Pink Week” exhibit and collaborative art show, the goal of which is partly to rethink how we engage the color.
Her conversation with CapRadio (click “play” above to listen) covered a variety of issues, from her creative process (“I work mostly in an abstract manner and but for me to do the work I have to tell myself a little bit of a story”) to how the Sacramento art and business worlds are evolving (“I don't know if bigger is always better but bigger splash here and it serves more people. And so there's this balance of like how to deliver something that's authentic and good and critical and interesting and yet also get sponsorship.”)
The artist reception for “Ongoing Concerns” is this Saturday, February 9, at artspace1616, 1616 Del Paso Boulevard, from 6 to 9 p.m.
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