The wall of a Midtown restaurant soon will soon become a fresh canvas for a Sacramento muralist. Hot Italian and the Arts & Business Council of Sacramento have put out a call for artists to submit mural proposals with modern Italian themes. The winning artist will be paid $1,000, plus $500 in restaurant certificates, to design and install an 8-foot by 3-foot mural for the eatery's main dining room. The space was intended to hold a bicycle. But the restaurant's owners, Andrea Lepore and Fabrizio Cercatore, want to open it up to local artists instead and decided to hold a contest to choose the design, Lepore said. "It's really open to anyone," she said. "It could be any medium: photograph

New life is coming out of old trees in Sacramento. A foothills woodcarver is finishing a prototype for a collectible wood baseball bat made from a tulip poplar loved by generations as it stood on state Capitol grounds for 129 years. Two Mendocino brothers created a seven-foot-tall abstract tree sculpture from another part of the tree. And a Sacramento sculptor is working on a free-form chair from a California black walnut that marked the site of an old wagon trail for at least 140 years. The wood remains of these old trees are being turned into art, furniture and other new projects to benefit the Legacy Trees Project. Sponsored by nonprofit Sacramento Education Events for Art, the proj

Adam Bradley sat on a K Street sidewalk carving a wise old man out of a red cedar log early this week. A crowd grew while the 29-year-old wood sculptor detailed the face with a Dremel cutting tool and explained that art like his is being made possible through the Legacy Trees Project. That was just one of the carving demos he did in Midtown all week to highlight a Second Saturday Art Walk fundraiser for the fledgling project. Art by Bradley and four others -- James Cooper, Judith Monroe, Jaime Acosta and Phil Myers -- will be raffled and sold in a silent auction from 6 to 9:30 p.m. June 13 in an upstairs courtyard at 1801 L St. The Legacy Trees Project is an artist-organized, collective