On Tuesday, Aug. 28, California Lawyers for the Arts will present “Contract Basics for Creative Artists” at the Center for Contemporary Art, Sacramento. Grace J. Bergen, Esq. will lead artists, musicians and members of arts organizations through this important workshop that will cover the basics of contract negotiation. Learn contract terms and the most important clauses necessary to any contract. More important, learn how to protect yourself from contract litigation. Bergen is a musician and business attorney with Berry & Block, LLP, and former general counsel for Tower Records. The workshop begins at 6:30 p.m. and ends at 8:30 p.m. Cost runs from $10 to $25. California Lawyers for the

The deadline for submissions to the 2012 Open Reel competition is Aug. 4, so it’s time to get working on your short films. The Center for Contemporary Art, Sacramento is sponsoring the second annual three-minute film competition in conjunction with the seventh annual Capital Artists’ Studio Tour (CAST). Selected films will be shown during CAST. Films are limited to three minutes, and must have been completed within 30 days. If you want to know what can be accomplished in three minutes, ask some of last year’s participants, who created films about place and time, films that were funny and sad, and films that were abstract and filled with color. Full submission details may be found at the

This Saturday, July 21, the Center for Contemporary Art, Sacramento (CCAS) will team up with SacMod to host the first annual Art a Go-Go. Twenty regional artists, including Micah Crandall-Bear, Ning Hou, Gregory Kondos, David Lobenberg, Gayle Rappaport-Weiland and Gerry Goss Simpson, have donated art to be auctioned. “Much of the artwork is inspired by the period — including several pieces created for the event,” said Mike Azevedo, CCAS director. Renee Carter, a CCAS board member, is opening her Mid-Century Modern home for this event. Carter’s home, completed in 1963 for Robert and Jeanette Powell, was featured in SacMod’s “2010 Sacramento Mid-Century Modern Home Tour.” The home has ret

The Center for Contemporary Art, Sacramento presented “Honoring Facundo Cabral: a Día de Los Muertos Poetry Reading” Friday evening. More than two dozen people attended the event, which included music, poetry, art and history. Friday’s event was one of several associated with the “Voice for the Voiceless” exhibit featuring the artwork of Malaquías Montoya, who had created a piece in memory of Cabral, an Argentinean writer, singer and peace messenger who was murdered in Guatemala City on July 9, 2011. “Facundo Cabral Presente” was the backdrop for the evening’s reading and music, which featured poets Betty Sánchez, Nancy Aidé González and Francisco X. Alarcón, and musician Manuel Lopez. B

On Friday, the Center for Contemporary Art, Sacramento will present “Honoring Facundo Cabral: a Día de Los Muertos Poetry Reading,” one of the events associated with the “Voice for the Voiceless” exhibit, featuring the artwork of Malaquías Montoya. Curator Xico González will host Friday’s reading. A poet, artist and activist, he recruited four area poets to pay homage to Argentinian Facundo Cabral, a writer and performer of protest songs who gained fame in the 1970s when dictatorships, coups and other crises plagued Latin America. Cabral’s most famous song was “No Soy de Aqui, Ni Soy de Alla” (“I’m Not from Here, I’m Not from There Either”). Cabral went into exile in Mexico from 1976 to 1

It was standing room-only for the people who came to hear Malaquías Montoya speak about art, life, protest and language Wednesday evening at the Center for Contemporary Art, Sacramento. The crowd spilled out the door onto 19th Street and included UC Davis students, CCAS members, artists and activists. An electricity filled the room as voices rose and fell. Current and former students proclaimed they are all fans of Montoya. Curator Xico Gonzáles served as the evening’s host, leading the audience in a welcome applause before speaking about Montoya, under whom he had studied. Montoya stepped up, without a microphone, and asked, “Why do we do the things that we do daily?” He answered tha

A cultural reception was held Saturday, opening with a blessing performed by Kalpulli Maquili Tonatiuh, a spiritually-based local Aztec dance circle, thanks to Xico González, curator of Malaquías Montoya’s solo exhibit, “Voice for the Voiceless” at the Center for Contemporary Art, Sacramento. “In the Chicana/o tradition, we pay homage to those that came before us, to the people that Malaquías pays homage to in his artwork,” González said. Homage was certainly paid as the dancers assembled outside of the center to first bless the building. Jessica Alvarado, donning a headdress with green feathers, carried a smoke pot in which tree sap burned. She read the blessing in the Nahuatl language.

A solo exhibit featuring the work of Malaquías Montoya, “Voice for the Voiceless,” opened September 20 at the Center for Contemporary Art, Sacramento and will continue through November 18. A cultural reception will be held this Saturday from 6 to 9 p.m., opening with “a Mexica blessing to be performed by Kalpulli Maquili Tonatiuh (a local Aztec dance circle),” said Xico González, curator of the exhibit. “In the Chicana/o tradition, we pay homage to those that came before us, to the people that Malaquías pays homage to in his artwork,” said González. Montoya, one of the founders of the social serigraphy movement, will speak about himself and his art, which includes “Undocumented,” from 1

Short film lovers will have the opportunity to view about a dozen three-minute pieces at the Crest Theatre on Thursday. The shorts are from “Open Reel,” a film competition held by the Center for Contemporary Art, Sacramento, as part of the center’s sixth annual Capitol Artists’ Studio Tour. The event starts at 8 p.m. and is free. One film at Thursday night’s screening will receive an award for best use of color as determined by judges Jenny Stark and Ed Ortiz. Stark is an associate professor of communication studies and film at Sac State, and Ortiz is a Sacramento Bee music critic, playwright and Sac State screenwriting instructor. A second award will be presented for the audience favori