A few months removed from showcasing her vibrant mixed media painting, perfectly named “All Roads Lead to the Depot,” as part of the Art in Public Places initiative with the support of The Depot Cafe and Bookstore, and the Mill Valley Chamber, Kandi Cota, a Larkspur-based artist best known for her modern expressionist style paintings, returns to the 94941 in January and February.
Cota is showcasing her work – oil, acrylic and enamel on canvas – on the walls of the Mill Valley Chamber’s space at 85 Throckmorton Ave., including a reception on Tuesday, Feb. 7, as part of the Mill Valley Arts Commission’s First Tuesday Artwalk (5:30-7:30pm). Aside from the First Tuesday Artwalk, the Chamber’s office is open Tuesday, Thursday, Friday and Saturday, 12-4pm.
Cota’s hot-selling California contemporary abstract expressionist works have been inspiring a uniquely fresh, modern and colorful point of view in home decor, fashion and footwear. Her abstract, mixed media and figurative work is influenced by her kaleidoscopic life’s experiences using color and movement to transform paint into energy on canvas.
Cota’s work has been carried by global retailers and galleries, featured in hotels and restaurants, on television and in films. Cota exhibits with Marin Open Studios (April-May 2022); Sausalito Art Festival and was included in “Art for Ukraine” (May 2022), an important group exhibition at the Sausalito Center for the Arts supporting relief for victims of war in Ukraine. Her art-inspired fashion collection “SURF / SKI / SWIM / SAIL” is highlighted in “Summer in Europe” the UK edition of Condé Nast Traveller (July/August 2022) and Vogue(2023). Cota’s work is also regularly featured in the Art Edit of European magazines World of Interiors, House& Garden and Wired magazines(April-Nov 2022). Her work is exhibited at west coast West Elm stores as well as museums and art galleries throughout the world.
As we’ve been chronicling for the past couple of years, Mill Valley is having a certified, extended artistic moment.
That moment spans from micro to macro. The former is dominated by seemingly ubiquitous public art in the form of art boxes, art benches, celestial sculptures, free-standing doors in the Depot Plaza to promote racial justice, beautiful, thought-provoking murals of figures like Breonna Taylor and legendary Rep. John Lewis and actor Chadwick Boseman and the 2022 edition of the Arts Commission’s “Knitting Us Together” project.
Readers of this space likely saw a gorgeous, comprehensive guide to public art in the 94941 in our 2022 EMV Guide within the August issue of Marin Magazine.
Mill Valley’s arts and culture moment in the spotlight also features plenty of larger, macro developments. That includes a collective quartet of renowned local galleries – Seager/Gray Gallery, Desta Gallery, Kim Eagles-Smith Gallery and Robert Green Fine Arts – launching the Mill Valley Art Dealers Association to raise our community’s profile as an arts destination. That move has galvanized the local art dealer community, with exciting new arrivals like Aerena Galleries and Anthony Meier Fine Art.