Upper Lake >> Artist Anna Sabalone is curious about everything. This month’s featured artist at Lake County Wine Studio graduated from UC Santa Barbara in 2005 with 320 units, despite only needing 180 to graduate. She studied English, History and Archeology and she was two classes short of a triple major. She said that the university made her sign a contract promising to leave, otherwise she would have graduated with three degrees.
“I love to learn,” Sabalone said. “I had a hard time deciding a major.”
Surprisingly she never pursued a degree in art. “I felt that I’d studied art forever and at the university it would be better to work on researching and try and boost those skills,” she explained. “I guess it sounds kind of pompous to say that I didn’t need an art degree, but I didn’t. I don’t need a formal education because I’ve been being educated forever in art.”
Though her informal artistic teachings didn’t get her off the hook with her instructor. “My art teacher was very annoyed about me not declaring an Art major,” she recalled.
Sabalone got her start like any other child, using her hands to create a finger painted masterpiece. She said that her mother still has a drawing of a duck she made when she was two. But it wasn’t before long that her artistic talents began to show. “I know I started drawing in perspective when I was in kindergarten. I guess I drew our librarian reading a story to us,” she said. “And everybody was surprised.”
Around the time Sabalone turned eight, she started hanging her artwork at the Lake County Fair and at 17 she painted a mural on the side of a 160 foot by 8 foot horse barn at the fairgrounds. The mural still exists today, in spite of some weathering. Her senior year of high school she and a couple of friends had a show at the Main Street Gallery in Lakeport. Even after graduating from Upper Lake High School and heading to college, Sabalone came home every summer to hang art in the gallery. “I always wanted to do art and hang art and show art,” she said.
Sabalone’s adventurous inclinations are evident in her work; she doesn’t specialize in a specific medium but experiments with almost everything, from pastels to watercolors to scratchboard. She even spent time studying drafting and architecture in high school. And those mediums only hint at the breadth of her artwork. “To actually choose a medium that I like the most, I don’t think I can do that,” she said. “I love them all.”
Part of the reason Sabalone can’t stick to one medium is because of her insatiable curiosity. “I like doing the same view, the same scene, the same composition in a variety of mediums,” she said. “I like doing it in everything and seeing which ones I like best. They’re all so different.”
At Upper Lake High School, Sabalone coaches Academic Decathlon and teaches Art, Art History, English and History, which allows her to explore many of her given interests. “What’s nice about teaching is I can try and find time for art, I can try and find time for traveling, I can try and find time to write,” she said. “Right after I graduated college I had a crisis that I had not added art into my degree. I solved that problem by becoming an art teacher. I get to address all of my interests in the same day.”
Sabalone hadn’t really considered teaching before her college graduation, but she fell into it after coming down with an illness that prohibited her from attending an archeological trip. “When I first graduated from Santa Barbara in 2005 I was supposed to be on a dig in Peru and I got bronchitis and I couldn’t travel,” she said. Instead, she worked as a teacher for a time. “That was the beginning of the end and I realized I loved teaching and I went back and got my Masters.”
Even though it wasn’t her original plan, Sabalone can’t imagine her life without teaching. “I know how cliché it sounds but it’s great knowing I’m making a difference every day,” she said. “It helps motivate me. It helps imbue my art with some joy. I think I was always afraid to be a full time artist, try to actually make a living off of art. But now I get to share what I love and create what I love.”
Every other year around Thanksgiving, Sabalone takes her students abroad to help them see parts of the world they may otherwise not be exposed to. “It was a lot of fun to be able to take them to the Louvre and walk down the halls and interrogate them,” she laughed. “I wanted to teach and I wanted to come back to Upper Lake and teach and expand their horizons. Some of our students rarely get to leave Lake County or Northern California. I’m so glad I’m able to give them that experience before they graduate.”
Sabalone is constantly working on her art and she said that she’s a better teacher because of it. “When they’re doing their pastel unit they’ll watch me doing my demonstrations,” she said. “When I have some time they’ll watch me draw. I think it’s really important for them to see you practicing, that you still make mistakes … just learning how to modify their work and roll with the punches.”
Sabalone recalled a time when she was drawing in the classroom and she spilled an ink bottle across her work. Her students thought she was going to panic, but she remained calmed. “There are no mistakes in art,” she said. “[They] see how I fix those mistakes and turn them into art. Being a working artist in the classroom is important for them to see.”
Some of those very demonstrations have ended up hanging on the walls of the Lake County Wine Studio, where she is the featured artist for the month of March.
Whether she’s inside the classroom or not, Sabalone strives to live by her teachings. “I am a very big proponent of don’t limit yourself and if it doesn’t work, oh well, try it again,” she said. “To succeed you first must fail and failing is also a success. It’s just a matter of what you do with that failure. That’s just how I try to live my life and that’s with my art or in my classroom.”
The inspiration behind Sabalone’s work can be summed up in one unsurprising word: everything. “A lot of the pieces that are up in the show are sunrises or early morning views from driving to work. So I’ll get to work I’ll sketch it out really quickly. I’ll set it aside,” she said. “I’ve been very fortunate to have lived in picturesque areas. I’ve been very fortunate to always be surrounded by beauty. I’ve been really lucky to always be exposed to such a variety. I like doing abstract art as well, mixing things up.”
The show at the Lake County Wine Studio is heavy on pastels and watercolors, but it encompasses the last five years of Sabalone’s vast artistic endeavors. “My parents are my storage and I was trying to get things off the floor for them,” she said. “My storage areas in my classroom were starting to overflow.”
Sabalone is also opening herself up for commissions and is in the process of establishing a website. “I try to focus more on landscapes but I also wanted to demonstrate my range and my availability,” she said. “The show is also supposed to be demonstrating my breadth. I think I have close to 40 pieces up. I filled the space … There’s a variety of things that are available. I wanted to people to be aware of what my range is.”
The show has been in the works for the past two years, since Sabalone rarely finds herself with free time. “I just don’t have the time to be able to put things together. We set it out this far in advance so I knew I would have time to frame things,” she laughed.
Sabalone is looking forward to chatting with people about her artwork over the month of March. “Art is a passion for me and I hope they they enjoy it as much as I do. I love it and that’s why I do it,” she said. “I hope that it inspires some people to also pick up art because it’s never too late or never too difficult. It’s all about your interpretation of the world.”
Sabalone’s artist’s reception is tonight from 4 p.m.-7 p.m. at the Lake County Wine Studio in Upper Lake. Wildhurt Vineyards wines will be featured.
Jennifer Gruenke can be reached at 900-2019.
