By Keyshawn Davis | Thursday, February 5, 2026 | Sacramento, CA
Read the whole article at CapRadio
By: Sena Christian, Keyshawn Davis, Cristian Gonzalez, Lindsay Oxford, Marie-Elena Schembri, Macy Yang, Katerina Graziosi, Solving Sacramento
Ask anyone what constitutes art or why does art matter, and their answers will run the gamut. Historically, art documented existence, myth and folklore, and spiritual beliefs. The arts move us emotionally and intellectually. They help us connect to our communities. Through art we make sense of the world, our shifting societies and our place within it. People have been making art since the dawn of time.
That doesn’t mean making art is easy. Many of the arts-focused businesses, nonprofits and venues in Sacramento are struggling. They have not recovered since the pandemic, whether due to shifting consumer habits, increasing costs of doing business, hardships related to finding reliable employees or lack of community investment. This struggle, we have found, applies across the board and includes live music venues, theater groups, performance arts, galleries, and does not discriminate between small and new or legacy organizations.
But sometimes we don’t miss something until it’s gone. Here, Solving Sacramento and its news partners spoke to representatives of six local arts organizations to see how they are surviving the times — and what would be lost to our city if one day they went away.
~ Sena Christian
Axis Gallery
Axis Gallery is home to art that gallery Vice President Heather Hogan calls “challenging.”
“We show modern art that is challenging and different and, frankly, weird,” Hogan says.
Founded 35 years ago, the artist-cooperative-run gallery, at 625 S St. in Sacramento (located here since 2014), sublets its space from the larger Verge Center for the Arts. Each of its 20 artists pays a monthly rent on the gallery space, ensuring them a month-long show in the gallery once every two years. Those shows have no parameters, giving artists complete freedom over how they use the space.
“There’s no gatekeeping. … There’s no curator to tell you ‘no.’ There’s no financial burden to make money off the art you’re showing,” Hogan says.
While the cooperative model is designed to keep Axis self-sustaining, it’s far from immune to declining funding for the arts, and from general government budget cuts as well. Hogan says a $10,000 city grant in 2024 helped sustain the gallery when its rent doubled. But with budget cuts, those assists from the city are becoming increasingly limited.
No artist at Axis financially sustains themselves on their art alone. Many are educators or have other arts-adjacent jobs. “A lot of our members are teachers, a lot of professors at Sac State,” Hogan says. “I’m also a professor at Sac City College. We have professors at other colleges around the region. We have people who work at other museums, the Crocker or the Shrem.”
So it’s not just arts funding that keeps Axis running; it’s education budgets as well. “If support for the arts was suddenly gone, support for arts education would be gone,” Hogan says, noting that arts positions in higher education are among the first cut when education funding decreases. And as those cuts impact individuals, things like gallery membership can be among the first to go.
If that combination of economic factors continues, it has the potential to disarm what Hogan says is an important community asset. “It’s complete freedom to explore your creativity.”
~ Lindsay Oxford, Sacramento Business Journal
Leave a Reply