We Say!
A Word from Women
janeGallery is happy to present We Say! A Word from Women, a group show featuring the works of local, Sacramento-based artists. See below to read statements from each artist and to learn more about their work.
Carlaina Brown
I grew up in Sacramento, California, and have a bachelor’s degree in Studio Art from UC Davis and a master’s degree in Studio Art from CSU Sacramento. After college, I moved to Bari, Italy where I lived for 22 years. I’ve participated in solo and collective shows both nationally and internationally. Since moving back to Sacramento, I have established my studio practice at E Street Studios in downtown Sacramento.
My work is abstract using varied mediums to combine the energy of gestural strokes with the controlled rhythms of drafting and the printlike qualities of stencil work. Made in series over time, the work moves through countless iterations as I build up gestures that create dynamic tensions between flowing forms and bounded space. The resulting pieces brim with juxtapositions of form and color that create a complex composition of woven elements.
Instagram: @carlainab
Kathy Dana
I’m a contemporary painter who respects and loves the positive energy in the world around us. My work strives to bring it forward with intention: to soothe, transport, refresh, even empower.
My process relies on amplifying the interplay of negative space between objects; the vibration of colors; and creating compositions that move the eye and the spirit.
The forward-facing colors in my work are strongly influenced by color I’ve placed underneath. To me, our uniquely individual lives are layered in much the same way.
Instagram: @kldanafineart
Anne Del Core
Working with both sheets and shards of glass, embracing both the strength and fragility of glass, I am a mosaic artist on a journey to create glass art that makes one wonder, reflects beauty, and builds conversation and community.
Putting broken glass back together is an incredibly powerful process. I embrace beauty in brokenness and imperfection, and see potential for wholeness in fragmentation. I want my viewers to share these metaphoric ideas. I also encourage viewers to touch the glass, since using another sense adds an important dimension to interpreting my art.
My love of mosaics began in 2023 when I made a simple flower. Since then I have created 90+ works which embrace glass’s reflective qualities, luminosities and textures. I value this organic medium, appreciate mosaic’s ancient beginnings and strive to put forth works with a modern take.
Every morning I can't wait to get to my studio. And I love every conversation about the power, organic nature, and intrigue of glass art! I hope the viewers of my work can appreciate the completeness which came from all the tiny pieces.
Instagram: @storyglassmosaics
Roma Devanbu
I believe art making is a fundamental human activity. We have been manipulating neutral materials to hold meaning, reflect our obsessions and values and sometimes to create beauty for the pure pleasure of it, for millennia.
As a compulsive maker, traveler and collector of images and ideas, I often create works about the human compulsion to create, which is see manifested in super abundance in the world around me.
I am a versatile artist, working in a variety of mediums and materials, but my fascination with pattern and symmetry, often in evidence in women's domestic crafts, is a thread through much of my work.
My current series "Lisbon Tiles" is evolving in response to the patterned tile work that covers the homes of Lisbon, Portugal.
Instagram: @romadevanbu
Jill Estroff
Jill Estroff’s paintings are marked by her use of bold brushwork and vivid colors in a loose, expressive style. Dynamic color and light illuminate her contemporary pieces, whose subjects range from figural, to landscapes, and still lifes. Her work captures the essence of treasured local scenes in ever-changing processes as her practice continues to evolve.
Already an avid museum and gallery visitor, Estroff was inspired to begin painting during her time as Marketing Director at the Crocker Art Museum. Spending every workday immersed in art spurred an initial exploration into the world of painting. Later, a serious illness prompted an “If not now, when?” moment that pushed Estroff to prioritize her practice, and she has been painting and exhibiting ever since. Today, Estroff’s artwork is shown in Northern California galleries, is held in various private collections, and has been featured on many INSIDE Publication covers.
Since March 2021, Estroff has served as the art curator at PBS KVIE, overseeing The KVIE Gallery and curating the annual PBS KVIE Art Auction. In her curatorial work, Estroff loves bringing attention to both lesser-known and more established regional artists.
Instagram: @estroffjill
Ianna Frisby
My recent work explores the intersection of geological, cultural, and spiritual underworlds—places where ritual, history, and raw earth converge. In Belize, I encountered vast cave formations alongside the delicate remains of Mayan ancestors. In Thailand, Spirit Houses honor deities at cave entrances. Even in California’s foothills, a church with a pipe organ was once built beneath the vaulted chamber of California Cavern. These spaces radiate mystery, and clay—earthy, archeological, and transformative—feels like the most fitting medium to respond.
Through experimentation with materials, firing, and form, I explore how natural substances evolve under pressure and heat. Each sculpture becomes a kind of artifact—reflecting humanity’s urge to shape the earth into meaning, from tools to treasures. As I layer and edit, the objects often become “hide-and-seek” sculptures, inviting close inspection and rewarding the viewer’s curiosity.
Instagram: @iannanova
Mercy Hawkins
In my work I seek to answer an internal call, to encounter what the body already knows. It’s an excavation of the epicenter of our inner rhythms, heartbeat, breath, a dancing of wild arms, to re-establish our longtime connection to the musical lattice of the natural world. I hope to ground the human sensorium in the multitude of intelligences that flourish and grow from and with the earth, communicating a rhythmic, intuitive experience of generous looking and sensory observation. Breathing with tides, swimming through grass, a circling of the sun, to share an understanding that nature is the expansion of thought itself and we are an integral part in that creation.
Mercy Hawkins is an interdisciplinary artist and educator based in Northern California. She works within a craft-based manipulation of varied material combined with painting, collage and sculptural practices. Hawkins received her BA from CSU Sacramento, 2018 and MFA from UC Davis, 2021. She was Graduate Fellow in Residence at the Headlands Center for the Arts, 2021/22, and is featured in New American Paintings #153, MFA Annual. She currently teaches at CSUS and UC Davis. She has exhibited her work in California and across the United States.
Instagram: @mercy.hawkins
Diana Jahns
Coming from a traditional approach to art making I truly longed for what appeared to be the greater freedom of abstract painting - not tied to a view or memory of a real-world location, but instead springing from imagination and feeling. After all, it felt like to me, there was already so much freedom enjoyed in the act of art making, why not go the next step and draw from my own imagination? Easier said than done, but once started, it was several years before I made something I wanted to share with others. Along the way I learned that some abstract painters would replace or “fix” areas of the work by adding a cutout piece. Collage! I immediately loved this idea. This technique allowed for experimentation while already in the process of creating an abstract piece. It slowed down the process, which helped me a great deal in the early stages. It helped me understand better that art making is a process - first thoughts, first splats of color, then experimentation, then subtract then add, again and again until an unique energy or character appeared (unique to the piece at hand) and composition emerged to further guide the process. Questions: “Does this already work with what’s there?” “Is what is already there too dominant and not playing well with the other parts?” “Does this work better?” “Does this help things along?”
Instagram: @dianajart
Judy Knott
My latest pieces combine materials that appear disparate but that ultimately come together to create harmonious works of art. By integrating canvas, thread, paint and cardboard I’ve created The Greens that has a cohesiveness, or a unity you might not have thought possible. I typically use strong colors but here you’ll see a quiet piece with larger silent spaces that permit more contemplation. I describe it as an assembled style of abstract art with texture taking the fore thus allowing you to “feel” the art with your eyes. Color has its place but less can be more and here I wanted the small handmade green paper to have a voice.
Instagram: @judy_knottartist
Debra Kreck-Harnish
Trash is simply a failure of imagination. I believe this with all my heart. I love the challenge of finding a new use for a cast-off object. Something about its patina or shape will call out, asking to come home with me. I have been building assemblage sculptures for years and have always joked that they "talk" to me when we're in the studio. I would make up stories about them in my head, and that would be the end of it. Recently, I decided to write down the stories and include them with each piece that I make, marking the beginning of my “Story People” series. I have a lot of fun building my “people” as well as creating the stories that go with them. Working in my studio, using my hands, I feel closest to my true self. I get antsy if I can’t use my hands. My studio is my happy place, allowing me to relax and dream up my next creations.
Instagram: @kreckharnishart
Polly LaPorte
I grew up surrounded by practicing artists. My mom, my sister and especially my grandmother, Ethel Pearce Nerger, were always painting, sculpting, drawing. When we visited our grandmotherʼs house in San Francisco she always kept a drawer of art supplies just for us.
While at UC Davis I was privileged to learn from Wayne Thiebaud. I enjoyed all my art classes at UC Davis and kept up my fine art practice after graduation.
My painting style is impressionistic. I like to use bright colors and I love the expressive qualities of line.
Instagram: @pollylaportestudio
Whitney Lofrano
Whitney has been painting all her life. Working as an Art Director in advertising for 15 years, she left the commercial art world after her son was born and picked up a paint brush between changing diapers. In 2017 she had her first solo show in Sacramento and has never looked back. Her vibrant color choices, movement, circles with stories have found their way into homes all over the world. Whitney writes and sketches deep joy, sadness or life change and then while painting from this initial inspiration finds the deeper lesson when the painting is complete. Every painting comes with a written message attached about the final thought.
Instagram: @cyberwhit
Jennifer Lugris
My paintings honor my refugee grandparents and parents who risked everything to offer future generations better opportunities. I have a complex family history of tragedy and triumph, which has instilled in me a sense of the fragile nature of life. I paint my ordinary daily life as vibrant, colorful, and patterned scenes to show gratitude for my existence. Most of my paintings are multipaneled triptychs, alluding to the fact that my human experience certainly cannot fit neatly onto one canvas. I am a culturally mixed Uruguayan Korean Spanish American who grew up Catholic and is now raising Jewish children. As a child, I received many quizzical looks as individuals attempted to understand and piece together my varied, ethnic background. I recreate that same experience in my paintings by provoking the audience to find connections that pull the piece together.
Instagram: @jenniferlugris
Brenda Louie
Asemic Writing Series is derived from my memories of Chinese character configurations and my fascination with the binary rhythms of technology; it exists between the gestures of human body and the motionlessness of burnt trees after a forest fire. Art inspires while writing heals.
Instagram: @brenda.louie.art
Jo Anne Marquardt
The piece in this show, Ouvertures, is from a series called Destruction. I’m inspired by what is around me and how I can interpret it using my own language of paint.
I have a show at Archival Gallery Sept. 4-27. I’m in a group show at 5 Tips Café near SCC Sept. 1-30.
Instagram: @chatfemme7
Jane Mikacich
Painting is my meditation. Dancing colors feel like both freedom and connection.
I believe that painted strokes and marks can become one’s personal language. Mine is honed from 50 years of these brush strokes, collaged layers of travel relics, music, script, and photographs that meld with the acrylics, pencil, crayon, charcoal, and beeswax. I hope the images land in a harmony that feels worn and new all at once.
Instagram: @janeartpaintings
Mollie Morrison
I create 3D watercolor reliefs by collaging hand-painted pieces into intricate, sculptural forms. Each work begins as a large watercolor painting, which I cut into tiny strips. These fragments are then bent into circles, pinched into playful shapes, and tossed into my ever-growing box of scraps.
From this collection of remnants, I build each piece, like solving a puzzle. Some compositions come together quickly; others take weeks or even months to fully emerge. I don’t rush the process. Instead, I wait for each piece to find its place, trusting the work to reveal itself over time.
My inspiration lies in the idea of reconstruction—taking patterns apart and experiencing them anew. I’m drawn to how repetition, variation, and form can tell a story.
In addition to my studio practice, I teach sculpture full-time at the high school level. My students inspire me daily with their energy and creativity. Making time for my own work is what keeps me grounded and energized—for them, and for myself.
Instagram: @molliemorrisonartgallery
Linda M. Parris
Whimsy, with a touch of surrealism, would be a good description of my work. I am inspired by the unpredictable incongruities or mystical strangeness that occurs in life. The subject matter is whatever catches by attention at that moment. I follow this inspirational randomness and use it as a source to create the work.
Most of my artwork circles around the anthropomorphizing of things. It is a speculative “what if?” This gives the work a surrealistic edge.
The Antics of Birds Series is meant to have a playful quality. In each Bird Circle I have tried to capture the essence of the bird inhabiting that particular circle. This is based on my observations and anthropomorphizing the nature of the bird represented. I have found the antics of birds to be humorous and, on occasion, bizarre.
Instagram: @I.m.paris
Sandy Parris
I work intuitively, allowing my artwork to help guide me. Nature and my own life experiences have always played a meaningful part in my art. The process of painting is also significant in the work… from the building up of surfaces to the rubbing off of areas. This construction and deconstruction process helps reveal the history of the piece.
Instagram: @sandyparrisart
Patris
In 2012, Patris opened her own studio and art gallery in Oak Park - the Patris Studio and Art Gallery - where she teaches weekly drawing and painting classes, coordinates artist workshops, art exhibits, and other events. Life drawing and painting sessions are scheduled several times a week at her studio, providing artists with the opportunity to develop and hone their skills. Patris is also a popular teacher at the Crocker Art Museum in the art studio program. She was selected as a featured artist on KVIE Channel 6 Public Television’s “Rob on the Road” program with local celebrity Rob Stewart.
In her own spacious studio gallery, Patris features her artwork along with works by several other prominent artists in the region.
Instagram: @patrisstudio
Stephanie Pierson
Stephanie Pierson is an internationally exhibited collage artist whose work transforms the glossy, modern imagery of today’s magazines into compelling, narrative-driven art. Her creative journey began in childhood, where hours spent crafting paper dolls laid the foundation for her meticulous and imaginative approach. Today, Pierson employs sharper tools and a refined critical eye to reassemble disparate images into cohesive, evocative stories. Each collage begins with a single image that sparks an intuitive search for its visual companions. This process, a deep dive into her subconscious, results in works that are both visually striking and richly layered with meaning, showcasing her unique ability to blend sensuality and storytelling.
Instagram: @stephaniepiersonart
Sara Post
I’ve always wanted to be outdoors—a physical desire. Awareness of nature came directly through senses, originally for me alone. Over time, finding a way to talk about the natural world became visual ideas made real by tactile application—the drawn line, the printed shape, glued layers and painted surfaces.
The pieces in this show—Twig and Branch are made of my own prints and drawings. Most of my work is abstract—almost minimal. These papers surprised me by coming together as parts of trees—two small elements that suggest something far bigger—not unlike our human place in the vast natural world.
Instagram: @sarapostart
Edith Sauer Polonik
When I start my creative process there is no path and no goal. The process is guided by sensing, connecting to emotional states, inner thoughts, and reflections about life and the world.
Gradually this transforms into a dialogue of myself with all kinds of different materials.
The search is a spiritual one.
June Steckler
I perceive my being in the world as a form of call and response. To sense the invitation of nature is the call—my response is how I live, and the art I create. This creating is an honest reflection of the time and place I inhabit and I tend to think of each piece as a thank you I compose in private, and then share, as an invitation to my fellow humans to marvel along with me at all that inspires us in this life and world.
Instagram: @junesteckler
Stacey Vetter
The seemingly endless variety of shape, texture and color found in plant forms is something I return to again and again as a source for my work. Led by simple forms and a minimal palette, a drawing starts with direct observation of a plant, looking and drawing until a shape emerges that feels just right. The way pigment and water flow on paper is another vital element of my process; I am searching for the balance between control and accident. Instead of a literal representation of nature, my work aims to convey the essence or mood of a botanical specimen. Pushing this notion a step further, my more recent work is an investigation of shadow. Present and absent at the same time, a shadow is visible to the eye, but is not a physical object. With humble scale and the most basic of means, I am interested in the challenge of resisting all but what is essential to creating an evocative presence.
Studying art on both the east and west coasts, I earned my BFA from the Boston Museum School/Tufts and my MFA from the University of California, Davis. I have exhibited at the Prince Street Gallery (NYC), Crocker Museum, Richmond Art Center, Santa Rosa Museum of Art, Kirkland Art Center (Kirkland WA), Richard L. Nelson Gallery (UC Davis), Memorial Union Gallery (UC Davis) and University of Nevada (Reno) and Jay Jay Gallery (Sacramento, CA).
Instagram: @staceyvetter
Mirabel Wigon
My work challenges ideas of progress by referencing ecological degradation as a stage for mythopoesis; centering non-human actants to displace an anthropocentric position. I’m very interested in plants; learning, observing and interacting with them. Plants, specifically the flowering plants in my work, represent absolute otherness and inspire speculative activity. I draw from a range of mediated source materials, such as photogrammetry scans of particular plants ranging from weeds to invasive botanicals. My work (de)constructs plant forms to reflect on ecological instability. Shifting, nonhierarchical forms mirror terrestrial cycles and cosmic revolutions in a space of visual disarray. This fractured space is compost for emergent forms to rise from disorder. I reflect on mediation and processes of translation are acts of “becoming with”—collaborative world-building in which blooming flowers demand active collaborators in a speculative future that encourages transformation, adaptation, and perseverance.
Instagram: @mirabelwigon