Who's Who: Russell Morton, Manager of the Village Shops and Galleries

Name: Russell Morton

Age: 28

What do you do at the Village Shops and Galleries? I'm the general manager, and it's also the home base for my catering and event design company, Russell Jacade Events.

Do you live in El Cerrito yourself? No, I commute from Danville.

So what brought you to El Cerrito? I've been a friend of the Canepa family for over 10 years now, and they're the owners of the building, which formerly was El Cerrito Lighting. It was a pretty natural fit for me here at the Village.

How did come to open your own business? I attended the California Culinary Academy, and then I worked in a few restaurants. Later I became the executive chef of the Velvet Cantina in the Mission and from then a catering sales manager at the Four Seasons in San Francisco. This was perfect because my goal was to start my own catering and events company. We do all the food and floral design, and I guess you could say we're more on the creative end of event planning.

What is it like to work in El Cerrito? I feel like El Cerrito is going through a sort of a renaissance creatively with arts, and it's great that we can add to that. I think there's a large desire within the community for fine art and fine foods, and that's definitely a need there that we're able to meet. It's a tough time to start a business, but the people, the clientele, are definitely welcoming to new companies and have been showing support to us. 

Can you tell me a little bit about the events you're taking part in on Saturday? We're participating in the to reach out to the community and let everybody know we're here. Then later in the evening it's the opening reception for three of the Village's artists. There's Bryan Goldenberg, whose medium is blown glass, John Hanses, who does landscape photography, and Edward Franco, who paints in acrylics.

Do you plan on holding more of these in the future? Definitely. Our exhibitions will be 30 to 60 days long, and we'll usually feature three to five artists. Something we are able to bring to the table is that my catering company designs the menu as well. For example, one of our artist's work has a lot of gold-leaf design in it, so I'm going to incorporate a gold-leaf element in some of the canapés that we'll be serving.

This Saturday, art and hors d'oeuvres will be available at the Village Shops and Galleries in the afternoon during the .