The artist reception for “Unreal & Imagined,” the first Cordova Community Council juried art exhibit of 2016, was graced by the special guest appearance of well-known artist Gregory Kondos. The reason for his attendance was the unveiling of a special piece of newly acquired art, which will be on permanent display at Rancho Cordova City Hall.

According to Kondos’s wife Moni, Mayor David Sander wished to have a reprint of Gregory Kondos’s work “River Bend Park” after seeing a poster for Eppie’s Great Race which featured the image. Marcy Friedman owns the original painting, and Gregory Kondos keeps rights to all his work. Both Kondos and Mrs. Friedman agreed to the sharing of the image.

So the work was reproduced as a giclée, which is a process that uses fade-resistant, archival inks and archival substrates to print on large format printers. It is said to have a much longer life than other methods used for printing original works of art. The unveiling of the giclée took place after Kondos’s address to the group, and after the introduction of the artists whose works were chosen for this show. At least 37 of the 44 artists in the show were present at the reception. Sander, with the help of City Council Member Linda Budge and City Manager Cyrus Abhar, carried out the unveiling ceremony of the giclée.

Kondos is considered one of the most respected landscape painters in the United States. He came to the Sacramento area from Massachusetts at three-years-old and has lived in the Greater Sacramento Area since. “My father, he was an immigrant from Greece,” Kondos said. “He had nothing. He was a barber, two bits a haircut, two bits a shave, that kind of stuff. They never saw my work, and it was sad.”

Kondos knew from his youth that he would have to take personal responsibility in order to achieve something with his life. “I knew I had to scramble to make things happen and so I burnt the midnight oil and did all I could,” Kondos said. “I knew I had some talent, but in what direction I didn’t quite know. I realized I was a good colorist, so I really pursued the impressionists, they made sense.”

Kondos studied at Sacramento City College and later earned a bachelor’s and master’s degree in art at California State University, Sacramento. He taught art at Sacramento City College for 27 years and was the founder and director of the campus gallery. Kondos was recently elected to the National Academy of Design and was featured in the fall of 1998 in a PBS documentary, “A Passion for the Land.”

Now 92, Kondos said he is proud of his two children, a daughter who is head gymnastics coach at UCLA, and a son who is a space engineer. “But it’s a challenge to think that at my age, retired, I can still keep working, and I do my work at home,” Kondos said. “Most of my day is painting, which is great.” Kondos is now working on an oil painting of Sutter’s Fort, commissioned by Ron Leineke to share with the Sutter Club.

Charles Sander, 10, son of the Rancho Cordova mayor, is an artist himself, and had one of his artworks in the last art show at City Hall. He is glad that the city will have the giclée of Kondos’s work: “I think it’s a really good place for it, because everybody who works in the City, everybody who comes here for parties and for art receptions like this will get to see his beautiful art.”

Charles admires Kondos’s art. “He’s a really good artist,” Charles said. “He works with those oil pastels. Whenever I try them, I completely mess up. I don’t know how he does it. They’re really thick and they clog together. It’s just really cool how he makes it work.”

The Unreal & Imagined art exhibit can be seen at City Hall through April 1st.