Hillary Johnson

1 month ago | sactownmag.com | Hillary Johnson

Life for E.A. Hanks, who grew up in the Fabulous Forties as the daughter of Tom Hanks, may have looked like it was coming up roses. Too often, though, the reality was anything but, as the self-described “Sacramento girl” details in her poignant new book, The 10: A Memoir of Family and the Open Road, which follows a childhood shaped by her mother’s mental illness and a writer’s search for the truth, thorns and all.

2 months ago | sactownmag.com | Hillary Johnson

A new museum retrospective spotlights the late Sacramento painter and professor Wayne Thiebaud as a master student of art history. From da Vinci to Picasso, great artists have always studied and copied their predecessors on the way to creating their own singular masterpieces. As this exhibit shows, Thiebaud is still teaching. The lesson: Imitation truly is the sincerest form of flattery.

2 months ago | sactownmag.com | Hillary Johnson

This spring, a troupe of newcomers to the City of Trees is set to put on what you might call a “dress rehearsal” for a colorful annual outdoor pageant. For one to two weeks over the next month or two like the weather, these sensitive performers’ exact schedule is impossible to foretell the hundred-odd freshly planted cherry blossom trees that comprise Robert T. Matsui Waterfront Park’s new Hanami Line are getting ready to stage their very first preview performance.

Jan 31, 2025 | sactownmag.com | Hillary Johnson

FFirst comes the suave, polished Sacramento State marching band. Next, the Sacramento Soul Line Dancers shake and shimmy down Capitol Mall, drenched in spangles and bangles. Then comes the Pet Parade brigade, a charmingly rag-tag phalanx of DIY-costumed pugs and pitties. As daylight wanes, Sacramento’s lowrider community represents, their Buicks and Monte Carlos bouncin’, thumpin’ and bumpin’ with their underlit carriages.

Jan 23, 2025 | sactownmag.com | Hillary Johnson

IIn the summer of 2020, when Elyse Benson and her husband Andrew Lebov stumbled upon a scruffy 1957 ranch house in Auburn with bedrooms the size of postage stamps and beige shagadelic carpet, they knew they’d found “the one.” Or rather Benson, a visual designer with a degree in architecture, knew. Lebov, a motion graphics designer, could see the good bones—and the incredible mountain bike trails he’d soon be bombing down, straight out of his garage.