Marisa Tomei Hosts Gallery for the People Popup Exhibition
Author:Lindsey ShookThe divide between Hollywood and Silicon Valley was slight at last week’s Gallery For the People popup exhibition at the stately Stonebrook Court Estate in the Los Altos Hills. The star quotient was high as Oscar winner Marisa Tomei served as co-host, and fans of Project Runway were happy to spot Season Four alum Sweet P there supporting her husband, artist Sage Vaughn.

Stonebrook Estate
Founders of Galleryforthepeople.com Eva Maria Daniels and Ally Canosa hold the popup events to give potential buyers a chance to view exclusive works before they go on sale at the gallery’s website. For Daniels, a film producer who divides her time between L.A. and Palo Alto, the popup gallery concept seems a natural fit for her new community of art collectors. “I’ve always been passionate about art and beauty in any form,” says Daniels. When I started spending more time in Silicon Valley, I became inspired by the people who live and work here. It motivated me to do a start-up that could make exclusive art more accessible,” she says.

Curtis Kulig and Sage Vaughn
The three artists represented at Thursday night’s reception—Sage Vaughn, Deedee Cheriel, and Curtis Kulig—take cues from the cities in which they live and work, but their inspiration also plays on a much deeper level.
For Cheriel—who mixes influences of everything from her Indian heritage to memories of camping in the Pacific Northwest as a child—saying something about the environment is paramount. “I think over the process of time when you have to like sit in front of a canvas hour after hour and figure out why you’re panting and what you’re painting, it’s sort of that aloneness, and you have to define yourself through your art, so when you ask yourself why am I making art and what am I making art about, every element reflects on that,” she says.
Tomei, a friend and supporter of Cheriel said, “I knew her first through her work and another friend of ours, a musician, Michael Fitzpatrick. I’ve come to a number of her shows over time and have gotten pieces that mean so much to me. The last one I got, is so magical and so deeply feminine and of the elements, and obviously she works with the elements so much. This piece is very shamanistic to me and I look at it every day and I love it.”
Kulig, a New York-based artist whose street style is more at home in the metropolis, the opportunity to present his collection from the series Love Me to a new class of online buyers was too good to pass up.
The art featured at the exhibition is now for sale at Galleryforthepeople.com