Annual Open Studios, inaugural holiday market feature Benicia’s best

By Keri Luiz
Assistant Editor

Creative happenings are afoot this weekend at the Arsenal — and Benicia residents and other visitors can get an unmatched close-up view.

Artists with studios on Jackson and Tyler streets will participate in the annual Open Studios, giving art lovers the opportunity to visit working artists in their studios as they create.

Also this weekend — and next — Arts Benicia will hold its first Holiday Pop Up Market featuring the work of 14 member artists — a chance to “shop local and support the art scene,” Arts Benicia Director Larnie Fox said.

Open Studios, now a staple among the Arsenal’s painters, sculptors, printmakers and others, had humble beginnings. Artist Mike Kendall remembers an early iteration, when he worked out of the old Yuba Manufacturing building in the early 1990s.

“When I moved in there, Kathy Erteman, who was one of the people who started Arts Benicia, had her studio down there, and she’d do holiday sales,” Kendall said. “Whenever there was a sale down there, we’d ride on the tail of that.”

The artists started organizing their own event in the mid-’90s, Kendall said, and in 1998 he and Samuel FB Morse began the current version, then known as “The Unauthorized, Unorganized, No Fee to the Artist! Arsenal December Open Studios.”

“It was Arsenal-based,” he said. “The artists that have studios down here, they give a portion of their life away just so they can have a studio down here.

“It’s fun to get together as studio artists and put something together like this.”

Kendall said he and other Arsenal artists especially enjoy sharing the unique energy of their chosen home.

“There’s something about Jackson Street, the energy here,” he said. “We get excited and make things happen. It’s not always real intense, but once we get going we kind of feed off the energy and get others excited.”

That energy really took off last year.

“Last year was really good,” said Alex Connor, who specializes in printmaking and bookbinding. “We’re in a great space right here, right at the center. Everybody comes right through here.”

Artist Sharon Payne Bolton agrees. “People love it,” she said. “People who take the time to come here are people who are really interested in the arts, they’re collectors, or they’re artists, or they are hibernating artists. There is such a give and take.”

Connor and Bolton share studio space next door to Kendall. While most of the participating studios in Open Studios are concentrated in the two long strips of studio buildings that make up Jackson and Tyler streets, Bonnie Weidel, Steven Schumm and some of the photographers who work out of the top floor of 940 Tyler St. are opening their studios, too.

A short walk away, at 991 Tyler St., Arts Benicia will have its inaugural Pop Up Holiday Art Market this weekend, as well as on Dec. 8-9.

“This is the first time we’ve done it. We put out the call and we have 14 artists signed up for it,” Larnie Fox said.

Participating artists range from those who make jewelry and textiles to glass artists, painters, and those who create mosaics, ceramics and mixed media.

“It’s going to be sweet, a chance to shop local, support the arts scene, support the artists,” Fox said.

All the artists are local, he said, hailing from Benicia and surrounding communities.

“It’s going to be informal, in keeping with the Open Studios,” he said.

Fox said the kids won’t b forgotten, with activities like card making included in the festivities.

“We’re going to be sending kids out on treasure hunts to the other Open Studios,” he said. “They have to get signatures from the other artists and bring them back for some kind of prize or something.”

If You Go
Open Studios is from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. Saturday and Sunday at Jackson and Tyler streets in the Historic Arsenal. See a list of participating artists at http://mikekendall.com/os12.html. The Holiday Pop-Up Art Market will be from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. this weekend and Dec. 8-9 at 991 Tyler St. For information visit artsbenicia.org.