Head trip

It’s been five years since the Exploding Head Gallery opened its doors at 924 12th Street, and owners Jodi deVries and Linda Welch are up for a party, with art hung salon style, from floor to ceiling, until September 30. The gallery’s anniversary Group Invitational features work by more than 50 of the artists who have exhibited at the Head. “It’s a lot of fun to be able to show work you like yourself and show off the local talent here,” deVries observed.

The work runs the gamut of styles in two and three dimensions. Mick Sheldon’s oil painting “Large Plate of Macaroni and Cheese with Polska Kielbasa, Smokes and a Coke” offers a funky charm. Jennifer Rarick’s “Searching” mixed-media abstract piece of dripped wax and hand-stitched black thread on diaphanous fabric makes for a curious interplay of texture and light. Inya Laskowski’s “Crystal,” a bigger-than-a-basketball silver globe studded with clear push pins, may be simplistic, but it certainly captures the eye with a futuristic Lost in Space-like kitsch.

This is also the gallery that since last April has offered the voyeuristic Holes in the Head, the brainchild of Patrick Marasso. Equally spaced 10-inch holes in the floor, which once allowed hoses to connect to underground faucets, get their lids pulled and replaced with Plexiglass covers—windows into three separate installations downstairs. A retrospective of last year’s Holes performances on DVD is promised to run upstairs all month. For this celebration, Marasso has tapped his brother Greg and Robert Doctor for a live performance, a video installation and a kinetic sculpture piece. But you have to bend down, or you’ll miss it. For more information, call (916) 442-8424.