Free Sacramento art show celebrates community creatives after year lost to COVID-19

Contemporary artist Brian Diaz was considered an essential worker throughout the coronavirus pandemic. He worked at a Woodland hardware store to provide for his two children and unemployed spouse, who lost her job due to COVID-19.

Stressed from the pressures that the virus placed on Diaz, he used art to cope after his eight-hour shifts. But about a month into the pandemic, he grew bored of his pixel art style and transitioned to contemporary folk art, where he fell in love with painting again.

“Due to the stress of keeping up with demand and just the fear of the pandemic itself, it was really difficult. ... It makes sense that I needed to do something at home to really almost get my mind off of that and that came almost the change of style,” Diaz said.

Diaz, who goes by DZ Days in the art community, is one of several artists featured at the Breath of Fresh Art exhibition at the Brazilian Center for Cultural Change of Sacramento on July 24. According to Anik Fonseca and Reyna Garcia, the curators of the event, the mission is to help the art community after an exceptionally difficult year and bring awareness to the center.

“We don’t want to take any money from the (artists) because we know how it is anytime you sell your art or to be an upcoming artist,” Garcia said. “So it’s something awesome when you actually sell a piece and your just like ‘Man I can actually do this.’”

Artists, musicians, Sacramento-based Medusa House of Thrift and dancers and drummers from the Brazilian Center will be featured at the free outdoor event. Brazilian food and drinks will be sold by the Brazilian Center and any money made will go straight to the pockets of the organizations that earned it.

“It was very complicated for us to sell art, to be out there, we couldn’t do events or anything like that,” Fonseca said. “The idea is to bring that back and make it happen again, give a space for new artists ... without them having to pay for the showcase.”

Brazilian Center fosters community

The Brazilian Center is a nonprofit organization with a mission to serve and enrich Sacramento by fostering a thriving and inclusive multicultural community. But when COVID-19 ravished California, CEO Saara Burga changed the plan and began feeding the homeless.

Now that California has lifted its social distancing restrictions and live entertainment is back, Burga continues to serve over 400 plates a week to Sacramento’s homeless population while holding classes and running the Amazon Grill, a restaurant in the center.

“We are struggling like any other organization but the artists of Sacramento are also starving,” Burga said. “It’s very important for the Brazilian Center to be a platform for artists so they can succeed as well.”

Before Diaz was asked by Garcia to showcase his work at the July 24 exhibition, he was unaware of the Brazilian Center. But after more research, he said he was quickly fascinated by the center’s mission and how well they supported Latino artists like himself.

“Me being a Latino myself and having a center that helps represent Latin arts whether it’s visual arts, dance, anything like that I think is really awesome,” Diaz said. “I feel like having that be strong in the community is definitely substantial and I’m really really excited to be part of it.”

The Breath of Fresh Art exhibition is part of an ongoing series started by Fonseca and Garcia last year. But when the coronavirus hit the U.S, Garcia said she and Fonseca couldn’t safely continue the bimonthly event at the Brazilian Center. When it was safe to do so, the duo handpicked the artists and named the expo in honor of being able to gather people once again.

One of those artists is Sacramento native John Zarate-Khus, or JohnZdesigns, whose work caught Fonseca’s eye online a couple of years ago. He was invited to showcase his art at their last event in February 2020 at the Brazilian Center, just before COVID-19 sent California into its first lockdown.

With a background in marketing and graphic design, Zarate-Khus was preparing to start a new job that would make him enough money to move his family out of a one-bedroom apartment in Sacramento. Then COVID-19 hit, the job fell through and he was forced to work about 60 hours a week at Amazon.

Like Diaz, Zarate-Khus’ art transformed throughout the pandemic.

To cope, Zarate-Khus used his 15-minute breaks to draw on paper plates from Amazon’s breakroom with a standard ballpoint pen. That would soon bring in extra cash to pay the bills, along with online purchases of his work.

“Occasionally we would sell a sweatshirt or something and that would kick back about $12 to us so that was kind of a huge help,” Zarate-Khus said. “It’s pretty bad when you’re looking at $12 being a big help.”

Now, Zarate-Khus is preparing to showcase his work at the July 24 Breath of Fresh Art exhibition. People will be able to purchase over 50 of his unfinished pieces, about six finished pieces and over 30 framed items ranging from $25 to $250.

If you go

Breath of Fresh Art exhibition

When: July 24 from noon to 8 p.m.

Where: Brazilian Center, 2420 N St., No. 180, Sacramento

This story was originally published July 19, 2021 at 10:18 AM.