Accessories, a new exhibit, opens this weekend at SebARTS

Purses, shoes, jewelry, hats, and other accessories like you’ve never seen them before

Co-curators Patricia Mariner and Ellen Storz setting up items for the exhibition. They are members of the SebARTS Visual Arts Team. (Photo by Laura Hagar Rush)

Volunteers at Sebastopol Center for the Arts were busy this week, putting up the center’s new exhibition, “Accessories.”

Accessories is just what it sounds like—a show of art about items like “bags, shoes, jewelry, hats, belts, eyewear, scarves. purses, man-purses, backpacks,” as the call for entries read.

Co-curator Ellen Storz said they tried to be gender neutral, but, let’s be real, the topic skews female and so does the show, which opens this weekend with a reception on Saturday, April 1, from 2 to 4 pm.

Why accessories?

“We wanted to do something fun and different,” Storz said, noting that the entries range from “the whimsical to the serious.”

Storz co-curated the show with fellow volunteer Patricia Marina. Both are members of the center’s Visual Arts Team, which helps choose, curate, coordinate and even hang works of art for the center’s exhibitions.

The jurors for this show were Sebastopol’s own expert milliner Amy Smith and Andrea Caron, owner of the clothing and shoe store, Silk Moon, in downtown Sebastopol and a SebARTS board member.  

Talking about their criteria for choosing pieces for the exhibition, Smith mentioned the usual – “Does it fit the topic? Is it well-executed?” – but ultimately, she said the bottom-line question was “Does it tickle my fancy—because that’s what accessories are meant to do,” she said.

At the Accesories exhibition (Photograph by Laura Hagar Rush)

Caron agreed. “Accessories are there to elevate an outfit and make it more personal. They not only elevate your outfit; they also elevate your mood,” she said.

Caron, whose store just won the Bohemian’s ‘Best Shoe Store in Sonoma County,’ noted that she and Smith ended up choosing a lot of shoe-related art.

“I think the reason we gravitated toward shoes was the artists’ take on them was so great,” she said. “A lot of imagination goes into accessories.”

That imagination is on full display at the exhibition, which was still being hung when I stopped by on Wednesday for a sneak peek. Here’s a taste of what I saw.

Just two of the creative takes on shoes at Accessories. The boots on the left were created by Sebastopol bootmaker and former city councilmember Michael Carnacchi. (Photography by Laura Hagar Rush)

At the Accessories exhibition. (Photography by Laura Hagar Rush)

Circle of Life, by Linda Ortiz

Detail from Window Shopping, by Lorna Strotz

Come see Accessories for yourself this weekend at the opening reception for the exhibit on Saturday, April 1, 2 to 4 pm at Sebastopol Center for the Arts, 282 High St., Sebastopol. It’s fun and free.