Vic Sakellar
Untrained in art, homeless veteran paints with an outsider's point of view
By Jeff Kearns
Behind the Fretwell Building on University Avenue on a cold morning, Vic Sakellar pulls out a few of his paintings that he keeps locked up in a small alcove in the basement. His two dogs, lying on a mat tucked in a corner of the building, watch as he pulls out piece after piece. The paintings are mostly oils or pastels or chalk, sometimes painted on cardboard or wood.
And they're simple, usually one person looking straight back at the viewer, a person with huge eyes painted with unreal colors.
Sakellar doesn't like to name them, though. Instead, he says he's just trying to show someone's demeanor with a depth of emotion. "I don't like to label them, I just like to do what I feel inside," he says.
There's a Civil War widow, a man walking through the Western Addition in San Francisco, a tribal woman in the jungle, a painting of a farmhouse.
He talks about another painting he did of a Kosovar woman. "She's just a refugee woman with her head all wrapped up to keep from freezing. I didn't realize there was going to be a war," he says, gesturing to headlines on the front page of the Mercury News. This just hours after the first air strikes began.
Photograph by George Sakkestad
Vic Sakellar enjoys a surprise visit by his sister-in-law, Cynthia Sakellar, and niece, Alexandra, as well as his brothers, Ken and Bobby.
Traveling Man
War and cold are two subjects that Sakellar , a homeless Vietnam veteran, doesn't like to talk about.
Born Victor Sakellar Jr. in Lynn, Mass., (near Worcester) in 1949, his family moved to Sherman Oaks when he was 10, and two years later moved to Sunnyvale, where he graduated from Fremont High School. He still sees his two brothers and his sister, who live in Sacramento, and his mother, who lives in Cupertino.
After high school, he enlisted in the U.S. Navy and spent the next four years in Vietnam. He was aboard the aircraft carrier Hornet when it picked up the Apollo 11 astronauts in June, 1969.
Vietnam is not something he wants to discuss. "I don't like war; let's just leave it at that," he says flatly.
The paintings, however, say it all. The Civil War widow, he says, "is grieving for her dead husband. This could be the victim of any war; it's the effect of war."
Other paintings, like the mermaid, show a very different side, one Sakellar says is much more important. "She's just carefree in the ocean all surrounded by bubbles. It's a very happy one."
When he came out of the Navy in 1972, he signed up with the merchant marine, and returned to sea.
"I liked having my freedom," he says. "I went from tramp steamer to tramp steamer and saw the world. I saw Hawaii on sugar ships, saw Alaska on oil tankers, went to Europe, South America, India, Korea, Singapore, the Philippines, everywhere."
He lived in a beach house in the Philippines while working for the Defense Department, fueling the cargo ships rescuing the Vietnamese refugees escaping the country as South Vietnam fell. His help with the refugees even earned him an award from the Nixon Administration.
But being back in that region was a bad experience, and he left his beach house and the merchant marine in 1975.
"The U.S. had lost the war and I just wanted to get out of Southeast Asia. When I came back, all my friends were either gone or dead. They'd changed like a deck of cards. So I had to start over."
He stayed closer to home, working as a deck hand on tugs and barges in San Francisco Bay, but the experiences had already shaped him. "I learned that the whole world is so interrelated compared to many years ago, that we have to learn to get along with each other," he says. "I saw a lot of poverty, too. Things we take for granted in this country people don't even have in other countries."
Sakellar was married twice, but both marriages ended. In 1980, Sakellar stopped working on the Bay because he was afraid the chemicals he was being exposed to would damage his lungs. "I just had to quit doing it. There were too many fumes and I was getting sick from it. So I just kicked around, painting houses and doing odd jobs.
"Mostly I was thinking about what I was going to eat and hunting for shelter. That's what you worry about, food and staying warm and dry."
He began living where he could around Berkeley and San Francisco--where he first started to dabble in art about 20 years ago.
Sakellar is often seen in downtown Los Gatos with his two dogs; many local residents know him simply as "Vic." He gets by doing odd jobs here and there for local businesses, like sweeping and dumping flower clippings for Bunches flower shop, sweeping and doing maintenance for Patterson's Antiques, some stocking for Alex's Sports Stop, more sweeping for the Antiquarium, and he still collects a small pension from the merchant marine union fund.
He found Los Gatos for the first time in 1972 the same way a lot of people found the town--passing through on his way to Santa Cruz. After living in Berkeley and San Francisco, he decided to come down to Los Gatos for good. He hasn't left since.
"Do I like being homeless? No," he says. "But I don't even like to dwell on it. I just roll out my sleeping bag and sleep."
He gets by on the money from his various jobs around town, and stops in at St. Luke's Episcopal Church during the week for hot lunches.
He also sells paintings. The biggest price tag was $60. "So far, I've only been selling to friends, so I don't want to gouge their eyes out," he says.
He won't, however, be caught pitying himself. "If it was too much I wouldn't be here," he says. "My art helps me by keeping busy. I'm creating something and doing something I love.
"Sometimes it rains, and sometimes it gets cold, but I don't like to focus on that. I always dwell on something positive, not something negative.
"It's hard on the body, but when it rains, and when it's cold, you either become a survivalist or you die. Anyone who stays out there long enough is a survivor."
It's also something that gives him a unique perspective as an artist.
"Being outside I get to look at people and their faces and observe their expressions. It's really helped me in my art, to see their joy, sorrow, and surprise."
Photograph by George Sakkestad
Vic Sakellar gives Pam Manes, a waitress at Gilley's, a hug after she gives him a cup of coffee. Sakellar is well-known to Los Gatos merchants, some of whom hire him for odd jobs.
Friends and Fans
"Vic's almost communing with nature. By living outdoors, he's able to feel the pace of the town," says Chuck Bergtold, owner of Patterson's Antiques in the Fretwell Building--and one of Sakellar 's biggest fans. "He draws from his experiences as a merchant marine who's traveled around the world, who's experienced lifestyles that most of us haven't."
Bergtold, who's known Sakellar about six years, calls Sakellar's paintings "outsider art." He says, "It's almost akin to folk art, which is generally executed by someone with no artistic training but someone who has an intuitive sense of nature. It's not professional.
"It's almost the purest sense of art, in that it comes from your inner talents," says Bergtold, who has bought 10 paintings from Sakellar, and lets him keep some of his paintings and art supplies locked up in that alcove behind the store.
"He's not a copyist," Bergtold adds. "He just creates from what he feels. It's a fresh approach to everyday life. It's coming right from nature, and the most primitive feelings or emotions. Someone trying to create in that manner would be hindered with a formal art education."
In addition to Bergtold, Sakellar is also friends with two other antique store owners in the Fretwell Building--Shirley Henderson, who owns the Antiquarium, and Mary Mills, owner of Old Town Antiques. Alex Graves, who owns Alex's Sports Stop on N. Santa Cruz Avenue, is another friend, who lets Sakellar paint in the back of the store when it's raining, or bring the dogs inside when it's cold.
His closest friends, however, are his two dogs: Sheppy-Marie and Pluto.
Sheppy got the first part of her name because she's a German shepherd, and Pluto? "Yeah, I named him after the Disney character. He's kind of comical at times, so he just kind of got stuck with that," Sakellar says.
Another friend, Laure Chicoine, who owns the Nirvana salon on N. Santa Cruz Avenue, has also known Sakellar for about six years, and lets him keep some of his paintings in the salon, where she brings in a new art exhibit quarterly.
"As the pieces started rolling in, they started looking more and more interesting, and as they piled up in the salon, clients started asking about it. So I was joking with the staff, saying we should have him as our next artist, but then I started really thinking about it, and decided to do it. "
For the reception, set for April 25, Chicoine sent out 500 invitations to art dealers. The Los Gatos Framing Company donated all the framing and matting for the paintings, and Los Gatos Brewing Company agreed to send over some pizzas.
About 50 paintings will be up on the walls and available in a silent auction, with opening bids starting at $50, $250, and $500. The paintings will be up for three months, but the auction will probably last only two to four weeks, depending on the amount of bids, Chicoine says.
What's a guy like Sakellar do with all the money?
Well, he keeps half of it. "If I make a lot of money, I'd like to travel around the world again," he says.
The rest, he says, will be going to church programs that help other homeless people in and around Los Gatos, and to a church in Boston that's raising money for relief efforts in Kosovo.
"What's happening there is like the Holocaust," he says, "and when I started looking at the pictures of the Kosovo kids starving in the camps, I just flashed back to Vietnam, and I knew I had to do something."
More than 50 of Vic Sakellar's oil and pastel paintings will be on display and for sale in a silent auction, starting with a reception Sunday, April 25 from 4 to 8 p.m. at the Nirvana salon, 224b N. Santa Cruz Ave., located behind The Good Earth. Bids start at $50, $250 and $500. For more information, call 354-7979.
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Los Gatos, California Since 1881
