La Piccola Casa Supports Local Artists Restaurant has Quarterly Rotating Art Exhibition
Just Announced! La Piccola Casa in Pacific Grove is now featuring artist is Patty Oto Brennan.
- Salinas, CA (1888PressRelease) March 18, 2015 - March/April/May Featured Artist is a local Encaustic and Assemblage Artist Patty Oto Brennan. Contemporary Expression, The Ancient Medium of Pigmented Wax, OLD to NEW. La Piccola Casa in Pacific Grove has become an artist's haven. Owner Joe Rombi features local artists throughout the year. The art is for sale and the artist is often found enjoying ACME coffee and a baked treat at La Piccola Casa.
The March/April/May featured artist is Patty Oto Brennan. Patty will have her encaustic and assemblage works on display. In recent years there has been an explosion of artists showcasing the work of contemporary artists working in encaustic and further popularizing the medium. Encaustic painting is all the rage these days.
In Greco-Roman Egypt from the first century AD, encaustic was widely used to paint mummy portaits on wood panels and painting techniques are described as early as the first century AD. Encaustic is a Greek word which means "to heat or burn in". Heat is used throughout the process, melting natural beeswax with damar resin which is crystalized tree sap and adding pigmented medium or dry pigment and heating the mixture to approximately 210 degrees. After the medium is heated, it is applied with a brush then heated again to fuse the wax to each layer. Some of my paintings have as many as 1-50 layers. You can fuse your wax layers with blow torches, heat with irons, heat lamps and heat guns. You can scrape, incise, smooth with razors, add found objects (which is my unmistakable mark). As an artist I love that you can experiment and create anew encaustic experiment or mark.
Artist Statement
I have painted and created most of my life. Over the years, I have attended painting and drawing classes and experimented with different mediums, oil, acrylic, water color and pastel via classes in Sacramento.
After moving to Baltimore, I had the opportunity to familiarize myself with encaustics. After my first encaustic class I knew I loved working with wax and dove into encaustics and assemblage with vigor. I have long been attracted to encaustic because of the interesting surface textures I can achieve as well as it's compatibility with oil, oil sticks, collage, paper and assemblage creating a sense of depth. There is an immediacy to the look and an unmistakable presence of the artist in the surface. Encaustic painting also has a very transparent and mellifluous quality to it.
Background on La Piccola Casa:
La Piccola Casa is aptly named and appropriately revered in Pacific Grove. Translated to "The Little House," the quaint Victorian on 17th Street in America's Last Hometown has been full-blooded Italian for the last decade.
Local "paisan" Joe Rombi added La Piccola Casa to his restaurant realm in February of 2005. And a few years ago when he sold his self-named Joe Rombi's La Mia Cucina (right next door), he and his wife Laurie put full focus on the little house that smells of fresh-roasted coffee by day and marinara by night.
Home to breakfast fare (Laurie makes all the morning pastries and goodies, they pour locally roasted Acme Coffee and there is free wi-fi), lunch favorites (pizza, pasta, panini, salads) and dinner entrees (grilled calamari, grilled sand dabs and more), La Piccola Casa also provides food to go. Rombi's fans love to bring home a variety of sauces (basic tomato, Bolognese, puttanesca), and take-and-bake items such as meatballs and lasagna, along with soups and salads. Instant dinner!
At La Piccola Casa it starts with the pizza (there is even a breakfast pie). The 10-inch pizzas come with a variety of fresh ingredients. Classic pesto elevates the Margarita pie; the Quarto Formaggio includes mozzarella, Gorgonzola, Parmesan and asiago; a caramelized mélange of leeks, green onions, mixed wild mushrooms, spinach and pancetta make Crazy for Mushrooms wildly popular; prosciutto, red onion, mozzarella and fresh arugula highlight the Famous Mauro's; and The Godfather is all about the meat, with Italian sausage, meatballs and pepperoni weighing down this monstrous pie. Diners can also order pizza by the slice.
Italians call grilled, flattened sandwiches panini, and La Piccola Casa features five signature varieties, including Joe's famous meatballs with mozzarella and Parmesan and another with roasted chicken, arugula, red onion, Parmesan, fontina and lemon aioli.
La Piccola Casa seats up to 24 in one room, or up to 36 in the entire charming Victorian house setting. There is also a quaint, dog-friendly patio.
Longtime supporter of the arts, the Rombis display artwork that rotates every 3 months. During big sporting events, a large television entertains the crowd, but when the game's over, it closes with a special cover that hides the TV with artwork.
La Piccola Casa is open daily (Monday and Tuesday, 6:30-11:30 a.m.; Wednesday through Sunday 6:30 a.m.-9 p.m.). Find out more at www.joerombi.com.
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