If there’s any time to appreciate football-focused art, it’s right now, as Super Bowl 50 approaches. So a South Bay art gallery is capitalizing on the excitement over the “big game” to feature artists whose work hangs at Levi’s Stadium, where this year’s Super Bowl will be hosted.
JCO’s Place in Los Gatos opened the new exhibition called Art of the NFL, on Jan. 12. The idea for it came about last year when the’s gallery owner, Julie Jenkins, visited Levi’s Stadium and was “totally floored” by the art collection on the upper decks, according to Bridget McMahon, the gallery’s director. The work had been collected and installed in the stadium by a curatorial agency called Sports & the Arts, who commissioned more than 100 pieces of art for the stadium that celebrated the 49ers specifically, and also a general love of the game.
“So we partnered with Sports & the Arts,” McMahon says, “and had some of their artists make some pieces in that same vein for us.”
The JCO’s Place exhibit features six artists whose work is up at the stadium. About half the pieces are replicas of what’s in Levi’s, including a California flag collage made with 49ers memorabilia by artist Derek Gores.
![Nick Brown • Dreamcatcher • 24 X 42 • Oil on Panel](http://ww2.kqed.org/arts/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2016/01/RS18190_TheCatch-qut-800x454.jpg)
Local artists are featured prominently, including Gordon Smedt, Milton Bowens, Russ Wagner and Nick Brown. Brown was born and raised in central California, and he has more than 14 oil paintings in the Levi’s Stadium collection. His oil painting “Dreamcatcher” depicts Dwight Clark’s legendary 1982 NFC Championship game catch, relocated to a dreamscape of yellow grass and rolling green hills.