Articles by Jason Cassidy

Photo by Douglas Keister Jess Mercer A wish for love Arts DEVO has watched the documentaries. If you’re a Camp Fire survivor, don’t. I was not directly involved in the fire, nor did I live […]

Photo by Douglas Keister Melissa Schuster, owner of Chapelle de L’Artiste arts/events complex, one of the portraits in People Places and Pieces of Paradise. Photo by Ron Schwager Colorful shards in post-fire wreckage of a […]

Art by Steve Ferchaud An evacuation scene from Finding Hope in Paradise If you’re one of the thousands who endured a fiery escape down the pitch-black Skyway on Nov. 8, 2018, it would be understandable […]

Image from frontline courtesy of REUTERS/Stephen Lam Burning sign outside Paradise Skilled Nursing during 2018 Camp Fire. Films of the fire For many Butte County residents, the coming weeks leading up to the one-year anniversary […]

Jellybean is home. On his own in Magalia since the Camp Fire, the elusive long-haired tabby was finally trapped by Friends United in Rescue volunteers on June 9 and returned to owner Julie Walker the […]

Photo by shane grammer “Holding on to Hope” mural. It wasn’t art classes that made Shane Grammer want to be an artist—it was a computer class at Butte College in the early 1990s. The classic […]

Sounds like Chico out there This Memorial Day weekend, Arts DEVO celebrates the brave local musicians who sacrificed so many tight grooves and fiery licks so that the college students might freely shake the junk […]

Photo by Ken Pordes Maurice “Big Mo” Huffman sings his heart out with his Full Moon Band at a Camp Fire benefit concert at the Sierra Nevada Big Room. The dinosaur survived the fire. How’s […]

Photo by Melody Stephens Alan Rigg and Maggie. In the summer of 2005, Alan Rigg was visiting Chico when Hurricane Katrina slammed into the Gulf Coast and he learned that his New Orleans home had […]

Refugee song This is a tough watch. Longtime local musician John-Michael Sun sits in a chair in the ashes of his destroyed Paradise home and plays guitar and sings in response to the tragedy. “Well […]

Photo by Jason Cassidy Two of Zak Elstein’s unnamed shadow boxes (here and below). If Zak Elstein is right, the future on this planet doesn’t look bright for most humans. Thanks to our overconsumption and […]

Photo by Jason Cassidy Theatre on the Ridge’s Judy Clemens (executive director) and Jerry Miller (artistic director) and a smattering of the cast and crew from Radioland’s Return to Paradise. Neal Road is eerily dark […]

This is not going to be a normal year-in-review essay. Whatever thoughts on the local art scene of the past year that had been running through my head are lost in the smoke that began […]

Art is key Art can be part of the healing process in many ways after a trauma like the Camp Fire. For local artist and Paradise resident Jessie Mercer, her “Key Project Tribute” provides an […]

Photo by Jason Cassidy Sierra Nevada employee Jeff Poliquin—a Paradise native whose parents and grandmother lost their homes in the Camp Fire—with a can of Resilience IPA fresh off the line. As the full cans […]