Creative Canvas
Meet your Creative Canvas Artists!
Come explore the District and find our music themed Creative Canvas by our hometown artists.
1. Northwest Corner of Broadway and 9th St
Anthony Montanino has roots which run deep through both Sacramento art and music communities. He has been a member of several regional bands, and staff visual artist for Tower Records. Having studied under Sacramento greats such as Jack Ogden, Oliver Jackson, Larry Weldon and Gregory Kondos, Montanino carries the torch for Sacramento’s excellent art legacy. His work can be found in the collections of several regional hospitals, civic buildings, hotels, and the homes of celebrities. Montanino has received awards from many institutions including the Sacramento Fine Arts Center, the Yolo Arts Commission, and the California State Fair. Using deep saturated, and complimentary colors, Montanino creates a pensive unity where color and subject express a passion for and devotion to the art of jazz.
2. Northwest Corner of Broadway and 11th St
Steve Hayhurst is a self-trained artist and designer based in his hometown of Sacramento. While his work is rooted in the use of digital media, it is informed by several mediums such as drawing, collage, and photography. His work can be found in hospitals, medical centers, architectural and environmental companies in the region. Hayhurst describes his art as being divided into two categories, studio and giving. All profits he receives from merchandise are used for funding community art programs, and to provide assistance for families who fall below the poverty line. Hayhurst’s box demonstrates his ability to blend complex collages where colorful patterned floral forms create a rhythm that is music to the eye!
3. Southeast Corner of X St and 15th St
Russ Solomon was the iconic founder of Tower Records. He began selling records out of his father’s drug store, right next to the Tower Theatre on Broadway. The company grew quickly into an international phenomenon. It is a brand that remains influential to this day. More than a store, the chain became a hangout for music aficionados to discuss and listen to music. Solomon was an avid art collector who said that his record stores were like galleries where visitors developed a relationship with the role that music played in their lives.
Russ’ legacy continues to live on through his children and his wife Patti, who sadly passed in the winter of 2022, and Solomons Delicatessen on K Street. Above the restaurant, there is “The Russ Room”; a live music venue, art gallery, and social space to celebrate the Sacramento Art and music community. More than just a tribute, it is the embodiment of Russ that continues to live on!
4. Northeast Corner of Broadway and 15th St
Carol Mott-Binkley is a proud Sacramento native. She is an avid iPhone street photographer and has been published many times in the Sacramento Bee. Her images have been exhibited in several regional galleries, in Sacramento, Davis and Roseville and recognized with numerous ribbons awarded in the California State Fair Photography competition. Carol enjoyed a 19-year career at Tower Records Corporate in Advertising/Marketing, as well as the Office of the President, Michael Solomon. This box is a testament to her history with Tower Records combined with her love for the immediacy of the iPhone and what she can do with the images it produces. This repeated montage reminds us of the original Tower Records founded by Russ Solomon in his father’s drug store right next door to the Tower Theater!
5. Northeast Corner of Broadway and 16th St
Russ Solomon was the iconic founder of Tower Records. He began selling records out of his father’s drug store, right next to the Tower Theatre on Broadway. The company grew quickly into an international phenomenon. It is a brand that remains influential to this day. More than a store, the chain became a hangout for music aficionados to discuss and listen to music. Solomon was an avid art collector who said that his record stores were like galleries where visitors developed a relationship with the role that music played in their lives.
Russ’ legacy continues to live on through his children and his wife Patti, who sadly passed in the winter of 2022, and Solomons Delicatessen on K Street. Above the restaurant, there is “The Russ Room”; a live music venue, art gallery, and social space to celebrate the Sacramento Art and music community. More than just a tribute, it is the embodiment of Russ that continues to live on!
6. Northwest Corner of Broadway and 19th St
Michael Solomon is a photographer, jazz aficionado, and the former Vice President of Tower Records. As the son of Russ Solomon, music and art was a household presence in the Solomon’s Sacramento home. Photography became a passion that Michael would share with his father as Michael recalls spending countless hours with Russ in his dark room, learning the basics of developing black and white photography. Michael has spent decades traveling the world merging his love of photography with one of his other great passions; “seeing Jazz”. Michael notes that “seeing jazz’’ is an immersive experience that is more exciting and stimulating than simply listening. His photographs emphasize the importance of live music, and he describes them as a “slice of time”. His box is located right across the street from the former site of the legendary Sacramento Jazz club, On Broadway!
7. Northeast Corner of Broadway and 19th St
CAKE is a band that originally formed in Sacramento as a somewhat antagonistic answer to grunge. The bands democratic processes, defiant self-reliance, and lucid yet ever-inventive music has made them a nation-state unto themselves, with no obvious peers, and belonging to no school. In addition to writing, arranging, producing, and performing their own music, they have taught themselves to engineer their recording projects in their solar-powered studio. CAKE’s album, Showroom of Compassion, debuted at #1 on the billboard top 200 album chart and was touted as, “deadpan brilliance” by the New Yorker. The band is currently at work on their ninth album due for release in 2023!
8. Southeast Corner of Broadway and 19th St
Brian Wheat is best known as the bass guitarist for the multi-platinum rock band Tesla which originated right here in Sacramento! Aside from being a gifted musician and songwriter, he is also a talented photographer and artist. Having toured the world for the 32 years, visual art became a new outlet for him to channel his creative energy. Wheat describes his most recent choice of media as “enhanced photography”, a hybrid process of photography and painting. Tesla is one of Sacramento’s most celebrated bands and for their box, Wheat pays homage to one of his great influences, Freddie Mercury. His original photo was taken of the Freddie Mercury statue in Montreux, Switzerland. Wheat illuminates Mercury’s jacket in both red and yellow, infusing the jacket with the passion and energy which Wheat displays in all his artistic pursuits!
9. Northwest Corner of 21st St and Yale St
Steve Barbaria is a painter, illustrator, and the principal of a graphic design firm based in Sacramento. For over 30 years he has worked at the intersection of traditional and electronic media. Celebrating the differences between cutting edge technology, and analog media, Barbaria uses these differences to inform and produce new results in his work. His four panels for this project are of Carlos Santana, Aretha Franklin, Dixie Chicks, and Garth Brooks. These works are comprised of organic gradient shapes of saturated color layered on top of one another. The shapes are somewhat disjunctive, but it is in their separations that Barbaria’s musical icons achieve his goal of creating a connectivity formed by his musically feel good narratives. This iconic box gives the viewer a sense of community. Let’s all sing together R-E-S-P-E-C-T!!
10. Northeast Corner of Broadway and 21st St
Niki Waters is a Filipino-American artist from Hanoi, Vietnam, and Laguna, Philippines. She currently lives and works in Oakland CA. In 2011 she completed her degree in Illustration from the Academy of Art University where she won an award for “Best in Show” in the University’s spring exhibit. Currently Niki is busy showing all over California and illustrating for several clients such as, Vox, College Humor, and Blackout Comix. Niki keeps her work fresh and inventive by working in several mediums including silk screen printing, acrylic painting on layered plexiglass, pen and ink, digital, collage and linoleum block printing. Using language, gestural mark, and movement, Niki’s box connects with the viewer making us all want to get up and move to our favorite songs. It’s that mind, body, energy, connection!
11. Northwest Corner of Broadway and 24th St
Steve Vanoni is a Sacramento cultural icon who is currently based in Tallinn, Estonia. Artist, actor, educator, and musician, Vanoni is a multi-disciplinary artist. A champion of outsider art, Vanoni has taught art at several colleges, prisons, hospitals, and at Sacramento’s revered Short Center, a school for developmentally disabled adults. Currently he teaches at the Estonian Academy of Art. He was one the founders of two of Sacramento’s most legendary artist colonies and collectives, The Stucco Factory and Horsecow. A natural raconteur, Vanoni’s art practices range from music, performance, painting, sculpture, and the spontaneous facilitation of “happenings”. Through texture, pattern, and his inventive applications of paint and collage, Vanoni’s utility box stimulates the senses. If thought provoking experimental music were paintings, these would be it!
12. Northeast Corner of Broadway and Franklin Blvd
Tavarus Blackmon is an artist, musician, writer, and educator who lives and works in the Oak Park neighborhood of Sacramento. He has exhibited his work locally, nationally, and internationally. Blackmon completed his MFA at UC Davis in 2018, where he was named the Deans Provost Fellow. From there he was awarded two coveted residencies at the Headlands Center for the Arts, as well as the KALA Institute in Berkeley, CA. The themes in his work are undeniable as he unpacks topics ranging from Black Identity, gun violence, domesticity, and fatherhood. Touching on a range of emotions, Blackmon’s compositions are all at once playful and serious. His contribution to this project features two keyboards. One covered in animal pattern; playful, untamed, and never lacking in character. The other instrument is static and anchored by the row of keys that run horizontally. Tender, ferocious, sensitive, and bold!