These are trying times. And in such times, people often turn to the arts – making or consuming – as wholeheartedly as some stressed-out humans might sometimes turn to the bottle. Art is more than an escape; it also serves to document the times we live in and helps the soul relieve some of the heavy burden it’s carrying, often alone. In these trying times, I’m pleased to have been able to enjoy and now share the work of a friend, artist, and professor of art at Sacramento City College, Gioia Fonda. In her collection, One Thing After Another, Gioia has created wonderful and powerful pieces centered on the emotions, feelings, and straight-up fear evoked a little by aging and adulthood, but of course, mostly from these trying times.
I love Gioia’s work. I might be biased, but she’s always had a passion for and command of color that speaks to my cold, black, and unfeeling core. She’s able to wrangle many otherwise conflicting or ill-matching colors and patterns into a cohesive and complementary work (or outfit!). Pieces she made a few years back used cheery hues and pleasing shapes and designs to make hard subjects palatable – playful strings of many colors and sizes woven together to create a vibrant and happy representation of the myriad of worries occupying brain space. Or, beautiful shapes of varying tints and shades masking the distress lying beneath a calm-presenting surface.
Side note: I feel like the works I’m thinking of were created under the regime of 45 (see, the Ongoing Concerns series). I’m starting to see a disturbing pattern of inspiration here.
I’d seen sneak peeks of the exhibition, One Thing After Another, and was excited, since currently living far away, that I’d get to see her show on display at the Library Gallery of Sacramento State University. I don’t know that I’ve ever felt so much joy at the prospect of submerging myself into so much stress and anxiety.
There was one piece in particular that I longed to see, the “green one”. Instead of beelining for it, though, I moved through the gallery as the artist intended. First, I enjoyed the projector presentation: 50+ Macro Micro Projection Paintings (mixed media on acetate and slide mounts, Gioia Fonda, 2025).
Then, I admired the Puffy Book, a homemade artist’s sketch book of design, shape, and color – a precursor, or means with which to tap into and elucidate feelings being felt.
I imagine the book as a way to experiment with colors and shapes before committing concepts to a larger canvas, or as a form of journaling for the visually-artistically inclined.
The Puffy Book starts the show off on a bright and peppy note before we move into the manifestation of despair that many of us feel when the lights go out. That manifestation is four paintings expressing the dread and insomnia that come with, as Gioia coins it, today’s “weariness and concerns.”
I stand before it. The “green one” titled Insomnia of Stress and Debt, and I’m there; I’m in it - the vibrant yellows and greens of what I call Gioia’s signature piece, creating a chartreuse wave of nausea that taps into the pukey pit of daily anxiety throbbing in my core before coursing through my body like toxic anti-adrenaline.
The emotions are boldly “out there” for all to see and experience in Insomnia of Stress and Debt, as it encapsulates and maybe even helps release some of the tensions that many of us are suppressing.
But wait, there’s more!1 The “green one” reminds us how many times you or I lie in bed at night, awoken by existential panic. The many sleeps we have tossed and turned, playing out situations and unfeasible solutions until an hour before the alarm goes off. The disappointing mornings after, where we discover our best-laid middle-of-the-night doom-inspired plans will not pan out in daylight hours. And, damn the cat for being so chill.
“The blue one”, Insomnia of Abject Weariness and Concern mirrors the feelings of pure fear that course through veins and nerves as only it can at 2am. The state of trembling at the unknown and imagining the worst leaps from the canvas. Insomnia of Abject Weariness and Concern is you, is me, so many nights over the last years, but especially, the last year.
{{Insomnia of Abject Weariness and Concern (this president, this country, this world), acrylic on canvas, Gioia Fonda, 2025}}
Moving through the gallery like time moves us through the night, the “purple one”, Insomnia of Endless Cognitive Shuffling, is the hour when we think we’ve devised a plan to conquer the Concerns. That time when you or I tell ourselves everything will be better in the morning, which then allows a small rolling calm to trickle over you from head to toe. The cat rests, harnessing the calm for itself, reading itself to hunt another day.
{{Insomnia of Endless Cognitive Shuffling, acrylic on canvas, Gioia Fonda, 2025}}
And, just when we think we might FINALLY doze off, “the pink and orange one” Insomnia of Ideas/Hot Flash of Inspiration, jolts us back into the reality of just how much these trying times suck, but how we can draw from and use the suck for the better. The bright and alarming colors are the morning alarm blaring and never ceasing hot flashes flashing, because they’re “so hot right now” (Mugato, Zoolander, 2001) and won’t be ignored.
The subject is shocked into a state of confusion, and the viewer is launched spinning in the Teufelskreis – devil’s circle (vicious circle) of the insanity we are living in, around, near, and through. Gioia lets us sit in the uncomfortable and really be present in it, before we let it go, if but for a fleeting moment.
After being run through the ringer of an anxiety-filled night, the show ends on a larger-than-life brightly colored and patterned Soft Wall Action Play made up of separate and removable squares. Show attendees are encouraged to choose a pre-made square and rearrange some of the wall panels to suit their mood and vibe – bringing a moment of happiness.
The One Thing After Another show moves us through anxiety and dread that feels outside of our control. Manipulating the soft wall panels brings an important and much-needed moment of control in these uncontrollably trying times.
The layout and perceived pacing of the exhibition are like a perfectly coifed and collected person who masks their way through the day and human interactions. Later, when alone, they freak out and have a proverbial shower cry, only to later have all the troubles bubble to the surface again. But morning and human interaction come again, so the coifed and collected person must once again suppress the ugly Weariness and Concern to make pretty and perfect again.
Is my perceived bookends of cheeriness because I am female and society often says we have no worries and have to make things nicey nice? Is it because the artist is also female, subject to these same standards, making everything appear and feel ok when it’s not? Does the artist need to soften the blow of suckdom, to positively channel the Abject Weariness and Concern into something we mortals can digest?
I can’t say, but maybe she can. Gioia’s show is on display through Dec. 6, 2025, but she’s giving talks, walks, and addresses before the show succumbs to all the Weariness and Concern, or the end of the academic semester. If you are in or going to be in Sacramento on October 16 and November 1, ask Gioia her views and give her some of your own.
I am not an artist or art critic, but this body of work is important and relevant to the current state and times, and should be experienced and shared. Also, I like seeing a friend doing well.
SHOW:
By Gioia Fonda
Sept. 4 – Dec. 6, 2025
Library Gallery
Sacramento State University
OPPORTUNITIES TO MEET THE ARTIST:
Ginsu knives’ marketing, 1980.