A group of artists moved into a studio as colleagues, and left as close friends.

Agata Popęda here with a highlight from our sizable event collection for the weekend and beyond. 

There will be an artist pop-up 11am-4pm Saturday, March 30 at Artworks @ Seaside, 1123 Fremont Blvd. Suite C in Seaside—entrance around the corner from Creperie Cafe, on Williams Avenue. On display and for sale will be works by painters Shagufta Khan, Andrew Jackson, painter and photographer Carly Ganley and digital artist Michelle Robertson, who had been working separately but together in the space for the last year. 

Unfortunately, it’s almost time to gather the toys and move somewhere else. 

Robertson seems like a natural-born group organizer, open-minded and curious. She encouraged me to step in and discover what was going on inside the other side of the Monterey County Weekly building, 668 Williams Ave., where Ganley, Khan, Robertson and Jackson still have their studios—until May. 

Each studio is different, and Ganley has the biggest with a good view of a motel. The oldest in the group, she was the one who would spend nights making art and observing rich local nightlife. Ganley spent 20 years working as a civil rights photographer and paralegal. Her heroes are Dorothea Lange, Ansel Adams and Upton Sinclair.

Khan and Robertson share another room, divided into two small studios and a large common space with a big table, inviting conversations. It’s the spot they gather at and joke. Robertson (represented by Nancy Dodds Gallery in Carmel) specializes with female figures, ocean landscapes and everything mysterious. Her studio is full of clothes, wings and lamps. 

When asked if they don’t interrupt one another at work, Robertson says that maybe it is her who talks to everyone too much. But the other members of the group deny it, clapping each other's shoulders. 

None of the four planned to be around each other, but now when the Arts Council for Monterey County is moving all studio spaces to Salinas (at least for now), they can’t bear the thought of not seeing each other often and not sharing artistic perspectives. Maybe they could find another space to stay as a group? “Maybe we should think about it?” Khan says.

Khan is an abstract artist and simply a warm, sunny person who’s hard not to like. She says she needs space to throw the paint around. 

“I came back to art as an abstract artist after many years of pause, but as a young girl I was trained as a realist artist,” she says. “I do not plan my work—it’s all about channeling my thoughts, feelings and emotions.”

Jackson has been known as a painter in the community for a long time. Tall and big, but gentle in his manners, he says that he enjoyed sharing the building with three women: “We are all artists here,” he says.

Before they go, the quartet would like to share their work here in Seaside. Join them on Saturday, if you can.

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