photo art hangs at green room

Special to the Mountain Democrat

Kenneth E. Mahar’s beautiful photography will be shown at The Green Room Social Club through May 16. A reception will be held 4-6 p.m. Saturday, April 15, to coordinate with Placerville’s Third Saturday Art Walk so people can talk with Mahar about his work and enjoy music performed by Tamra Godey.

Mahar grew up in the Bay Area of San Francisco and has been displaying photography for over a decade. His love of travel has led him to many foreign countries and throughout the USA, capturing the beauty and culture of these lands and their people.

All aspects of photography intrigue Mahar, but capturing wildlife with his camera is probably what he enjoys doing most. Being outdoors, observing animals and their behaviors in their natural habitat stirs his soul. He loves Africa where he has been on safari twice in Kenya and once in Tanzania and his latest adventure to Antarctica.

Enjoy Mahar’s diverse photography including macros, landscapes, architectural abstracts and wildlife photography at many shows throughout the Sierra foothills and on his website.

Mahar is active member and past-president of the El Dorado Hills Art Association. He is a member of the Placerville and Folsom arts associations and his work can be found at various art shows and

Your beliefs are unusually powerful, regardless of where they lie within the realm of probability. So, you may as well believe fun things, for instance, that you are at the beginning of a cycle of prosperity.

TAURUS (April 20-May 20). There are a lot of things you need before you embark, for instance, shoes and your house key. A fool-proof plan isn’t on the list. You don’t have to know what you’re doing to venture, create and explore.

GEMINI (May 21-June 21). Is it fair to rank your days against a single metric, such as staying on a diet, making a certain amount of money or sticking to a routine?

There are many beautiful aspects to your experience to celebrate outside the world of your goals.

CANCER (June 22-July 22). Your body doesn’t always cooperate with you the way you would prefer. It could just be a communication issue, as the body and mind have their own distinct languages. Call on intuition to be your translator.

LEO (July 23-Aug. 22). Your dreams will not follow the rules of your waking existence; rather, they will cross fanciful boundaries into a poetic realm where time is different, the dead and living intermingle, and invisible forces find expression in the whispering wind.

VIRGO (Aug. 23-Sept. 22). Don’t let uncontrollable bits of life make you doubt yourself. If you fail these little tests, it won’t bring your grade down. No one said you have to be all-powerful. It’s enough to be capable and willing to learn.

LIBRA (Sept. 23-Oct. 23). You’ll guide others without making them feel managed. You’ll point the way instead of pushing. They’ll feel the trust you instill in them, and they’ll work to earn it. You’ll act because you’re driven to do what you think is right and necessary.

SCORPIO (Oct. 24-Nov. 21). Socially, it’s better to break the ice than wonder if you should. And if you fell out of touch with someone, you can easily fall back in now. A short interaction is all it takes to get the ball rolling again.

SAGITTARIUS (Nov. 22-Dec. 21). One of the many things you have going for you now is that you defy definition, play against assumptions and challenge categorizations. Your uniqueness will keep someone coming back.

CAPRICORN (Dec. 22-Jan. 19). It’s not what you do, but how you time it that matters. The same gesture can be seen as weak or strong, graceful or clumsy, controversial or appropriate considering the speed in which it occurs. Master pacing and you’ll rule the scene.

AQUARIUS (Jan. 20-Feb. 18). “Self-taught” is a misnomer. No one really learns alone. First, you’ll learn through other people’s experiences, then you’ll learn through your own, and finally you’ll learn by comparing, contrasting and ultimately blending the two.

PISCES (Feb. 19-March 20). Someone new has you doing what you normally wouldn’t. It’s the power of outsiders. An outsider’s influence is automatically boosted by virtue of all that is unknown about them. The unknown, being a human’s biggest fear, has great energetic potential.

Gallery Continued from B1 photography,” she said. “I like the symmetry of the images and the stories they invoke.”

Her photos also capture stories. “I think of my photographic journeys as adventures and that I’m exploring,” Gray said. “I love being outside and discovering beautiful scenes and being able to observe wild animals in their natural settings.”

She tells the story behind her image, “Dancing Elephant,” taken near a river in Tarangire National Park, in Tanzania, Africa. “We saw so many elephants there that we wanted to stay all afternoon. The elephant in my photo seems to dance as he spreads dirt over his back for a dust bath, and the reddish dirt may be from the termite mound visible in the background. Maybe he danced from exuberance? Soon after this moment, he ran across the road and joined a herd in the river.”

The Worship Directory runs each Friday in the Mountain Democrat.

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Gray’s award-winning photographs appear in many galleries and private collections, as well as in print and online. What she finds most rewarding about her photography is capturing images that convey her personal delight in what she sees, especially when people tell her, “Thank you for being my eyes! I will never go where you went, but now I can experience the beauty of it through your photography.”

Beautiful boxes

Tikhomirov has been painting since she was toddler growing up in Russia. As a young woman, she earned a master of fine arts degree and became a professional artist. She is a phenomenal watercolorist as well as an art restorer and her years of experience in creating lacquer miniatures provided the expertise needed for the ornamented boxes she creates.

It takes a long time to create each box and she relies on artisans in Russia to construct the basic boxes. Traditionally, Russian lacquer boxes may take three to six months to prepare, including the application of several coats of lacquer, both inside and out. At this point, the box is ready for Tikhomirov’s ingenuity and skill to turn each one into an objet d’art.

She creates the patterns on the boxes with her own, stenciled designs. She then applies a layer of molding paste and after it dries, she sands specific areas to achieve a variety of raised textures. A layer of acrylic color is applied as a base coat and she paints the small details with other eye-catching colors to achieve an astonishing 3D effect.

Buttered And Salty

‘The Super Mario Bros. Movie’

HHH PG, 1 hour, 32 minutes – Animation, Comedy, Adventure Now playing in theaters

One thing dawned on me as the lights went down and the faces of my 6and (almost) 4-year-old boys lit up at the opening Nintendo logo that followed the Universal and Illumination title cards; this movie, the first motion picture with heavy influence of Nintendo and Mario creator Shigeru Miyamato (not counting 1993’s awful, but bizarrely entertaining live action “Super Mario Bros.”), is going to be massive with its generation-spanning reach. How could it not be?

Donkey Kong landed 42 years ago with its namesake arcade machine eating up quarters and with it came Mario as the protagonist (simply called “Jumpman” then). Once Nintendo decided to enter the home video game console market Mario got his own platform game bundled with all Nintendo Entertainments Systems. You could make the argument Nintendo, Mario and

Green Room

Democrat correspondent their hundreds of other video game characters and stories are some of the most known IPs in the world. The success and desire for this film shouldn’t really surprise anyone. The film itself perfectly captures the world and tone of the Mario games in a fun, energetic, hour and a half. Some have been critical of the screenplay, which I think completely misses the point. This film’s story is as effective as the modern video games that bear its name. We pretty much all know the story by now; after a freak incident Mario and his brother Luigi are transported to the Mushroom Kingdom where they need to battle the evil forces of Bowser and his Koopa Troop forces. That’s pretty much it. Do we really need more? The animation by Illumination looks fantastic. Both the games as well as the movie may have been produced on a computer, but even my kid commented on how realistic Mario and company looks. The voice cast is good as well, with the unlikely casting of Chris Pratt (“Guardians of the Galaxy”) as Mario bearing much better than expected results. Jack Black (“Tenacious D in the Pick of Destiny”) plays the big anthropomorphic turtle Bowser and he is, well, Jack Black. He may be underneath some heavy reverb but it’s hard to not recognize Black’s inflection or the singing voice when he belts out an eventual tune.

Judging from the opening weekend box office, Universal Studios and Nintendo know they have hit the jackpot. The video game behemoth has five decades of IPs at its fingertips to pull from. The question is not what the next project will be, but when. Is Zelda far behind?

Move aside Marvel, the Nintendo Universe is upon us.

Joshua B. Porter is a writer/director/producer. His most recent project, the feature film “No Evidence OF Man,” won Best Original Screenplay of a Feature

Film at the 2022 Madrid International Film Festival. He finally received his award from the Royal Mail. He can be reached at @joshuabporter or joshuabporter@ mtdemocrat.net.

Read Porter’s review of “Star Trek: Picard” (Season 3) online at mtdemocrat.com.

Freelance Reporters Wanted

The Mountain Democrat, California’s oldest newspaper, and Village Life newspapers are looking for community-minded reporters to take freelance assignments. Assignments will range from news coverage to features. Freelance reporters must have interviewing skills and photography experience and be able to meet deadlines. Journalism experience preferred. Interested candidates should email a résumé, writing and photography samples and a brief cover letter to Krysten Kellum at kkellum@mtdemocrat.net.