Our Entry Deadline Is Almost Here:
May 17, 2026
Don’t miss out on our 21st annual National Juried Exhibition, a showcase of contemporary art selected from a diverse national pool of submissions.
Link to application in our bio.
@axisgallery Reception 5-8. May 9, 6pm, 2026 Artist talk -6pm. More like a conversation between the artists about the exhibition, their work, creativity, nature, healing and more
Deborah Pittman will perform the clarinet
@artsy.amarii@tasha_nichole_art@tashathrowsraw@amariginal_art_@sabrinaclarkart@laurelingilmoreartist@wmbois@alexwithscissors@khaaliaaaaa@pittman8530@baileyjazzers
Adding Stones to Rise
This exhibition grows out of an ongoing curatorial inquiry into how natural systems—erosion, accumulation, and renewal—mirror personal and collective experience.
The title emerged from a focus on nature, the creative process, and collaboration with the artists—their works and words. Rivers appear as metaphors for release, endurance, and becoming. In these reflections, water is not only a physical force but an ancestral one—a site of cleansing, protection, and return. Stones, weight, and resistance are reframed here: not as obstacles, but as agents of change, capable of altering direction, causing water to rise, reshaping what follows. What weighs us down can also be what makes movement possible.
Adding Stones to Rise brings together Sacramento-based artists working across multiple media, their practices rooted in earth, migration, plants, weather, and water.
Axis Gallery is proud to present its 21st annual National Juried Exhibition, a showcase of contemporary art selected from a diverse national pool of submissions.
We invite you to submit work to its 21st National Juried Exhibition, featuring juror Sharon Butler of Two Coats of Paint. Accepted artworks will be displayed at our gallery space in downtown Sacramento in August.
Entry Deadline:
May 17, 2026
Link to application is in our bio.
Axis Gallery is proud to announce: Adding Stones to Rise, a curated exhibition of Sacramento artists
May 1st - May 29th
Reception: May 9, 5-8pm
This exhibition grows out of an ongoing curatorial inquiry into how natural systems—erosion, accumulation, and renewal—mirror personal and collective experience.
Adding Stones to Rise centers the work of Black women and nonbinary artists. The exhibition
offers a collective meditation on movement, care, resistance, and transformation—an invitation
to consider how we protect our energy, construct places of refuge, and find ways to rise through
what we carry.
Axis Gallery is proud to support Sacramento’s next generation of creatives this May for the YOUTH ART EXHIBITION, curated by Delgreta Brown.
May 1–31, 2026
Second Saturday Reception: May 9, 5-8 PM
The exhibition will feature artwork from Student Champions of Chalk It Up’s Annual High School Self-Portrait Competition. The winning and “Best of Medium” Youth Artists will have an amazing opportunity to share with the public an expansion of their creative art portfolios.
Last weekend to see The Known World at Axis Gallery in downtown Sacramento!
I'll be giving an artist talk this Saturday the 25th at 1pm in the gallery.
Sunday the 26th is the last day of the show, and @dougdertinger 's Scavenger. I'll be there all afternoon.
TRILOGY 2: Stalker (Сталкер)
By Doug Dertinger
TRILOGY 2: Stalker (Сталкер) explores work from the Doug Dertinger’s 2000 to 2010 photographic archives. Named after Andrei Tarkovsky’s 1979 film, the images in Stalker navigate terrains where emptiness, silence, and light can become conditions of consciousness, where place can shift from environment to presence, wholly other, sentient and responsive.
Stalker is the second of three exhibitions derived from the artist’s archives. I Have Loved You for So Long (Il y a longtemps que je t’aime), 2025, utilized correspondence, ephemera, snapshots, and photographic works from 1991 to 2000, years when the artist was primarily in school. A future exhibition planned for 2027, Goodbye, Children (Au revoir les enfants), will explore his archives from 2010 to 2020.
April 3rd - 26th, 2026
Second Saturday Reception: April 11th, 5–8 PM
Gallery Hours: Friday–Sunday, 12–5 PM
We are proud to present “The Known World” by Nick Shepard
This exhibition contains images that vary in subject matter and technique but remain grounded in Shepard’s ongoing concern with how photographs are built, how spaces are assembled, and what is concealed in the process. The show includes work that looks at the contemporary world specifically through the lens of master painting as well as images that explore modern ideas more through abstraction and physical intervention.
April 3rd - 26th, 2026
Second Saturday Reception: April 11th, 5–8 PM
Gallery Hours: Friday–Sunday, 12–5 PM
Axis Gallery Presents “The Winters where Catfish Sings” by Sokthea Chan: An exhibition inspired by the natural world, mythological stories, and poetry.
The title of the exhibition draws its inspiration from cultural folklore that gives slight humor and sorrow to let the viewers to wonder and question its silly and bizarre name in relation to the work. Sokthea believes as living beings, tiny moments in a person’ s day are sometimes lost or forgotten where he hopes to share his works giving perspectives on the significance for individuals’ growth and journey to discovering their identities in the contemporary world. Through the playfulness of automatic drawing, choice of bold colors, ambiguity, patterns, and dense layering of materials in his large-scale works, Sokthea offers the viewer the consciousness of being present, discoveries within their surroundings, and the human experience of daily life.
March 6th - 29th, 2026
Second Saturday Reception: March 14, 5–8 PM
Axis Gallery Presents “Dreamscapes in Bloom” by Cara Gregor and Elise Mahan: A collaborative exhibition celebrating color and imagination
March 6th - 29th, 2026
Second Saturday Reception: March 14, 5–8 PM
Local artists Cara Gregor and Elise Mahan invite the public into a world of luminous color and imagined nature with their newest collaborative exhibition, Dreamscapes In Bloom. The show features a vibrant collection of original works inspired by places that exist somewhere between memory, feeling, and dream.
Known for their vibrant palettes, intuitive process, and joyful organic forms, Cara and Elise’s work transform our everyday life into something playful and emotional rather than literal. The works do not depict specific places, but instead offer a soft, glowing environment where color becomes sky, shape becomes garden, and imagination leads the way.
Visitors to the exhibition can expect to see glowing color fields, botanical-inspired shapes, and abstracted places that invite slow looking and emotional connection. The work reflects Cara and Elise’s common belief that art can be a form of joy, grounding, and creative escape.
Join us for an afternoon with artist Adam Cochran, who will discuss his latest series, Porcelain Ashtray, currently on display at the Axis Gallery in the East Room. Adam will share insights into his creative process, exploring themes of disconnection and longing, as well as technique from sketch to final brush stroke.
Saturday, February 28, 2026, 2-3pm
Axis Gallery, 625 S St., Sacramento, CA 95811
* Refreshments will be served.
Axis Gallery is proud to present “Porcelain Ashtray,” an exhibition of new works by Sacramento-based artist Adam Cochran @_adam_cochran . Family slides taken in the 1950s, ‘60s, and ‘70s have been reworked and re-imagined as oil paintings, creating intimate moments of reflection and connection.
With these paintings, Cochran has grappled with complicated familial relationships by physically recreating ostensibly happy moments from vacations, celebrations, and trips enjoyed years before the family environment he grew up knowing. He invites the viewer to experience a new kind of “slide show” — one that celebrates, critiques, and finally accepts the drama and circumstances which create the unique story of a family.
Show Dates
February 6, 2026 through March 1, 2026
Second Saturday Reception
Februrary 14th ⎸ 5–8 PM
