Right brain

Bryan Valenzuela’s right brain dominates. He’s probably better known in Sacramento as the frontman of chamber-pop band Exquisite Corps, but he’s a creator of visual art, too. Though he’s working with different mediums, his output has some striking similarities.

Valenzuela incorporates classical instruments as staples in his ensemble—violins—but he is creating pop songs. They’re moody, dark and ethereal, but pop songs nonetheless.

With his artwork, he uses a classic shading technique—crosshatching—that achieves an Old World look, but instead of simple, straight lines, he writes minuscule words. As Valenzuela puts it, he makes “big pictures out of tiny words.” And he combines other media, such as string stitched onto his canvas. The result is both poetic and lovely. Not unlike his music.

Of course, his band’s name is a play on the surrealist technique of creating one work of art by multiple people who make their contribution to the canvas without seeing anyone else’s drawing. It’s definitely a right-brain name.