Orland Center for the Arts opens Friday

The long-awaited opening of the new Orland Center for the Arts and Gallery is Friday.

Now at its downtown location the gallery boasts elegant rubberized flooring, a high colorful ceiling and even a baby grand piano.

This month's featured artist is David Simcox, whose works include about 43 linoleum block prints done in the Arts and Crafts style.

A artist's reception is planned from 3-7 p.m. with food and refreshments prepared by Farwood Bar and Grill at the gallery, 732 Fourth St.

The center will continue offering art classes and monthly art shows after being closed for the summer while remodeling got underway at the Orland Laurel Lodge Masonic Building.

It is much larger than the suite at the Stony Creek Square Shopping Center which housed the gallery from 2007 to June of this year.

Orland Art Commissioners George and Rae Turnbull said the new location is ideal for visitors because it is downtown and a block from Highway 32.

Simcox is a Chico artist who owns Art Etc., a framing shop and gallery, in that city with his wife, Anna.

He has exhibited at a number of places around Northern California, he said, but he is excited about being the first artist to show at the new Orland location.

The building was built in 1913, and Simcox said he thinks his art fits nicely with the structure since the Arts and Crafts movement ran from the 1850s to the 1920s.

"This town has a lot of bungalow houses and this style of art went into those houses," Simcox said, making this art a good fit for decorating them.

He added most of his pieces were rolled over wood blocks and printed in black and white. Then he used five colors of ink to fill them.

"They look like water color, but they are not," he said. "It is ink used to look like water color."

Simcox said he has done this style of art for three years after researching the movement and discovering "it resonates with me."

He and his wife purchased their shop and gallery seven years ago and he listened to what people were interested in buying and the type of houses in Chico, Simcox said. Then, he decided there was a market for this style of artwork.

There are a few pieces like a deco salmon and a print of a woman riding on the moon that do not fit with the Arts and Crafts period, Simcox said, but they were done for fun.

Everything in the show will be for sale at prices ranging from $175 to $5,000, he said. Unframed prints priced from $60 to $150 also will be sold, and he is offering 20 percent off framing at his Chico store.

If a buyer does not have a lot of cash, Simcox said he will consider trades for his artwork as well.

"I could really use a pickup or even a weedeater," he said.

George Turnbull said the gallery offers 2,500 square feet of space with recycled rubber flooring donated by Will Tasto and state-of-the-art lighting to highlight the artwork.

It also features two new handicapped accessible restrooms and plenty of storage in a building that previously housed a pharmacy, bank, paint store and a carpet company.

Besides artwork, the gallery will feature poetry readings and musical entertainment with the donated piano, Rae Turnbull said.

"It has come full circle as an arts center," she said Wednesday. "It will not just have visual arts."

The gallery will be open Tuesday through Saturday, 3 p.m. to 7 p.m., for the first two weeks of the month with hours to run from 1 to 7 p.m. starting in October.

Contact Rick Longley at 934-6800 or rlongley@tcnpress.com.