Visual Arts Calendar
Viva Santana
The new exhibit at the Santa Cruz County Bank remembers Manuel Santana, community organizer, restaurateur and artist. The exhibit includes wood and ceramic sculpture and a wide selection of acrylics on paper and other material. The highly expressionist acrylics draw on cubism with nearly abstract forms and dazzling palettes of bright colors. The show is currently open at branches of the bank throughout Santa Cruz County. Find more at the bank’s art show Web page.
We Are Santa Cruz
The We Are Santa Cruz video project highlights a peaceful Santa Cruz in the wake of the shootings of Detective Sgt. Butch Baker and Detective Elizabeth Butler. IMPACT productions issued an open invitation for people to have their image included in the video. They were asked to be themselves and walk into the frame, pause, then walk out of the frame. More than 1,000 people participated in the project. The resulting video is 2.5 hours long and is projected in one of the ground floor shop windows of the Rittenhouse Building at the corner of Pacific Avenue and Church Street in downtown Santa Cruz. The video below is a sample of the project.
Stretched perspectives at Pacific Grove Art Center
Three featured artists at the Pacific Grove Art Center manipulate focus, lines of perspective and otherwise obscure parts of the frame augmenting other parts. Claire O Harkins’ sill still lifes, as she says aren’t still. Warped lines and vibrant amped color bring out motion and communicate sentiment in these portraits of everyday things. Also showing: photography by Richard Murai and Antje Woolum. The show continues through May 23.
Julia Koker’s untitled acrylic on canvas is one of the pieces on display in the annual Youth Arts Collective show at MMA. Image: montereyart.org
Annual Exhibition of Monterey County’s Youth at Work
The Monterey Museum of Art opens its annual show of work by participants of the Youth Art Collective opens April 24th. This unique program provides inspired youth with an opportunity to take their art to a professional degree of refinement. YAC teachers coach students in a wide range of media and the annual show at Monterey Museum of Art’s Pacific Street Gallery is worth an hour or two of your art-gazing schedule. The show is up through June 30.
By Kyali a 1st grader at Boulder Creek Elementary School. Courtesy of Cultural Council of Santa Cruz County.
Children’s Art in the Halls of Government
If you’re paying property taxes, attending to a traffic citation, getting married or doing anything else that requires a visit to the government center in Santa Cruz, allow some extra time to tour the current exhibit.
The Cultural Council of Santa Cruz County curates art exhibits in displays and on the walls throughout the building. The annual student art exhibit includes work from elementary age students throughout Santa Cruz County. Learn more about the Cultural Council’s SPECTRA art in schools program at the Cultural Council Web site.
Exploring Identity at the MAH
Through July 17, the Museum of Art and History in Santa Cruz explores identity though photography with the show Photo ID. On the first floor, contribute you own family portrait in the museum’s photo booth, and explore the historical evolution of family portraits. Then climb the stairs and find Santa Cruz County workplaces as seen by the people who work there and self portraits by children collaged with historical postcards. Jana Marcus traces the conversion of a young woman into a man from her ‘Transfigurations” series. On the second floor, in the Solari gallery, images from numerous renowned artists dig wide and deep into questions of identity.
Steinbeck Center Presents Three Photographers’ Visions of San Juan Bautista
The exhibit San Juan Bautista Mission: Revisions offers up three photographers’ perspectives of the mission in 30 images. Martin Vargas-Garcia, Larry Angier and Carolyn Fox bring the techniques of modern photography to bear in order to show the ancient building in new ways.
Monterey Museum of Art
The Monterey Museum of Art presents a show of works from its collection of Monterey Bay area artists. The exhibit, “Facing Forward, New Acquisitions, 2000 to the Present” includes divers twentieth century paintings, works on paper, and photography added to the collection in the past 13 years. These include local artists: David Ligare, Kevin Miller, Susan Manchester among others. The show continues through June 9.