Arts & Entertainment A weekly guide to music, theater, art, culture, books and more, edited by Nick Veronin
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leg Lobykin considers himself “a product of globalization,” just like so many others in Silicon Valley. Like many in the region, he immigrated to the United States chasing opportunity (his wife had been accepted to Stanford); like many who move here, the pair fell in love with the area and settled down, purchasing a home in East Palo Alto, and starting a family; and, like many who live here, the Russian emigre wrestles every day with big ideas, which he addresses through his life’s work. And this is where Lobykin diverges from many of his neighbors. “There’s a bunch of people like me in Silicon Valley,” he says. “The major difference is most of them are related to the digital world, and I am from the Stone Age.” Lobykin is a sculptor, who has forged a living out of rock and concrete — selling his original pieces and lending his expertise to restoration projects and other commissioned works. In recent years, he has worked with Stanford, using pictures and other historical documents to recreate two historical sculptures of Benjamin Franklin and Johannes Gutenberg, which had been destroyed in the Great Earthquake of 1906; he also created a giant silver shark fin, titled “No Swimming,” which was first seen on the playa at Burning Man and later was temporarily displayed on Sculptor Oleg Lobykin stands next to his work, ‘Opus,’ outside of his home studio in East Palo Alto. Lobykin’s work will the Google campus in Mountain View. be featured in this weekend’s Silicon Valley Open Studios tour. The sculptor is one of the more than 380 artists scheduled to display work during the long-running annual celebration of local art, Silicon Valley Open Studios. Now in it’s 28th year, the Open Studios event begins its 2014 this weekend, May 3-4, with artists from as far north as Burlingame and Hillsborough and as far south as Los Altos and Palo Alto opening their studios to the public, or displaying their work at galleries. The following weekend, May 10-11, focuses on more mid-Peninsula artists, from Palo Alto through Los Altos and Mountain View and on to Santa Clara. The final weekend, May 17-18, is focused mostly on South Bay artists and studios in Cupertino, San Jose, Los Gatos and Gilroy. The event provides an opportunity for the public to take in local art from local artists. All Open Studios events are free. by Nick Veronin According to the event’s director, Mel Thomsen, visitors will get the chance to see a wider range of an artist’s body of work than in a typical gallery show, and in many cases, those who attend will be able to meet the artists, learn about their process and perhaps even see them work. Visitors to Lobykin’s East Palo Alto home studio will see some of his large pieces, such as “Opus,” a massive, amorphous, zig-zagging chain, which resembles some‘Big Baby’ by Oleg Lobykin. thing you might discover while peering through a microscope at the inside of a cell — or three-dimensional snapshot of bubbles working their way through water. “I’m looking for the roots of the form,” Lobykin says of “Opus.” “Where does it start?” Sentences are made of words, and words, in turn, are composed of letters, ‘Her Eyes’ by Oleg Lobykin. he muses. In this way letters are the roots of words and
Art community opens up
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Hundreds of local artists show work at Silicon Valley Open Studios event
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