From the ever-growing array of galleries and retail shops to public facilities like the Library and City Hall, downtown Mill Valley is laden with all manner of art.
That bounty of art grows in March as the Mill Valley Arts Commission kicks off its “Rotating Art in the Depot Plaza,” a new pilot program as part the Art in Public Places initiative with the support of The Depot Cafe and Bookstore, and the Mill Valley Chamber.
Over the course of twelve months, from March 2022 to February 2023, the work of artists Alexandra Bailliere, Kandi Cota, and Valentin Popov will be presented in a rotating exhibition installed on the exterior wall of the Depot building, visible at the corner of Miller Avenue and Throckmorton Avenue.
Oakland-based Popov, best known for his meticulous hyperreal portrait paintings, kicks things off in March with “From… To…,” an image from a 2009 series of oil paintings, “In The Water,” he created on canvas. The displayed artwork produced in 2022 is an Artist Proof print of the original painting on Dibond, an aluminum composite sheet.
An artist reception with Popov as part of the First Tuesday Artwalk is set for March 1st, 5:30-6:30pm, the same day as the City-wide First Tuesday Artwalk, which also includes Barbara Hazen’s “Time Piece” photography at the Mill Valley Chamber.
“Valentin Popov is well known for his portraits which demonstrate not only his craftsmanship but also his insight into the human psyche,” says Linda Keaton of the Sonoma Valley Museum of Art.
His work is represented in the permanent collections of The Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York; The Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco; The Iris & Gerald Cantor Center for Visual Arts at Stanford; The Duke University Museum of Art in North Carolina; and the De Saisset Museum in Santa Clara. His recent solo exhibitions include “FACE” at the National Academy of Fine Arts of Ukraine in Kiev (2018), and “Ironic Icons” at the Long Beach Museum of Art (2017). Popov became an elected Foreign Member of National Academy of Arts of Ukraine in 2016, he is the first American to receive this award.
The artwork on display in the Depot Plaza was printed by LightSource SF, a digital imaging and fine art printing studio.