He’s only a 19-year-old college sophomore, but Isaac Yorke has big plans to revitalize the Temecula youth art scene.
Isaac Yorke shared a T-shirt he designed and his art techniques with fourth-grade students at Vintage Hills Elementary School. (Amy Bentley/SWRNN)
Yorke, a Great Oak High School graduate who is now a biology/pre-med major at Cal Poly San Luis Obispo, plans to open an art supply store and gallery in Old Town next month where high school students, young people, and basically anyone interested in art can display their work.
“It will give kids an opportunity to show off their art,” Isaac said Friday afternoon as he paid his dad, teacher David Yorke, a visit at Vintage Hills Elementary School in Temecula.
Isaac offered up some of his time Friday to give his dad’s students an art lesson in freestyle drawing “Isaac” style, which is a mix of street art with bold lines, cartooning and modern art.
“Art’s been a hobby for me for a long, long time. When I lived here I didn’t do anything with my art. When I moved to San Luis Obispo, it became more of an interest,” Isaac said.
He’s had no formal art training but for taking an Advanced Placement art course in high school – a class in which Isaac was accepted despite the fact he’d never taken an art class before.
“He’s always had this great art mind,” David said of his talented son.
To support his new store, Isaac purchased the inventory from an art supply store in San Luis Obispo that is going out of business. Isaac also saved up money from selling various items such as shirts and skateboards that feature his designs and artwork, and he has sold his artworks in galleries in San Luis Obispo and on his website, www.gardenclothing.yolasite.com.
Isaac plans to stock his store with art supplies, books, paints, paper and artist-grade spray paint. He’ll have his friends staff the store on weekdays and his dad said he’d help out by working there Friday afternoons and on weekends.
“I just want to see where it goes,” Isaac said of his planned art store and gallery.
“It’s supposed to be a place to network. I want to build up the art community. It’s been neglected here for a long time,” he said.
To help raise funds to get the store opened and to raise awareness of the up-and-coming young artists’ gallery, Isaac is holding an art show and silent auction from 6 to 9 p.m. May 4 at Metalography, 28677 Old Town Front Street, Suite 1, in Old Town Temecula.
He said 30 artists have already brought in art for the auction, including some high school students and professionals. The deadline for people to donate art for the auction is April 27.
As for the art people can bring in, “Anything goes,” Isaac said.
The theme for the art show and silent auction parallels the bright future that lays ahead for this young artist and easy-going business entrepreneur: “Things Can Only Go Up From Here.”
Amy Bentley is a local writer and a regular contributor to SWRNN.
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