Tag archives: art

Lotusland is holding its annual fundraising duo of an art exhibition and gala. Good news art lovers, the exhibition and art works for sale are online through July 20. If you are attending the sold out Lotusland Celebrates: The Way of the Lotus gala this Saturday, you can select and purchase artwork along the garden […]

Westmont alumna Ella Jennings (’23), education and outreach coordinator at the Westmont Ridley-Tree Museum of Art, shares her paintings of luminous interiors in an exhibition, Abide with Me, at the Fireside Gallery at Trinity Lutheran Evangelical Church, 909 N. La Cumbre, open from 10 am – 2 pm on weekdays.  “The everyday buildings we frequent […]

Mitchell Thomas, professor of theater arts, won a coveted Indy Award for Directing for his role in staging Godspell. The May 20 event was the first time the Santa Barbra Independent has hosted the awards since the pandemic.  Thomas was most recently awarded an Indy for directing Pride and Prejudice in 2019. The jazz band […]

The Santa Barbara Museum of Art Women’s Board held its second fundraising “Art à la carte” soirée at the University Club.  The SBMA Mercedes Eichholz Director and CEO Amada Cruz, along with the SBMA Women’s Board President Isabel Wendt, welcomed the guests as they arrived at the reception on the outside patio and lawn area. […]

Incandescent is the intriguing title of this year’s MFA Thesis Exhibition at UCSB’s Art, Design & Architecture Museum (AD&A), on view May 17 to June 9. The seven grad students with heritage from Mexico, Nigeria, Iran, the Philippines, and elsewhere, drew on Michel Serres’ notion of incandescence to create art that emphasizes the interconnectedness of […]

The exceptional talent of local artists will be on full display at the Westmont Ridley-Tree Museum of Art for its annual Tri-County Juried Exhibition from May 16 to June 15. An opening reception for “[TBH]…To Be Honest,” featuring this year’s juror Walter Maciel, a Los Angeles gallerist, is May 16 from 4-6 pm. Maciel will […]

After focusing on galleries and food purveyors above the 1000 block of State Street in last year’s Downtown Santa Barbara LIVE Art & Wine Tour, the super popular springtime sampling soirée saunters for several blocks south of Carrillo for the May 16 event. The curated tour of museums, other art spots and sundry various venues […]

Come one, come all! Beatrice Tolan is getting ready to put on her first art showcase: HORSE$H*T. The exhibition opens May 2nd and continues until July 2nd. Join Beatrice at Elsie’s Tavern to see her new collection and join me below to hear about the creation process! Q. Thelast time I spoke to you, you […]

Sullivan Goss’ new exhibition celebrates mid-Spring with a splash of color and a bit of buoyancy, turning the downtown gallery into a Wonderland with both new works by the gallery’s regularly represented artists and pieces from four artists who have never shown there before. The latter group includes Roland Petersen, the Danish-born painter whose works […]

Can visiting a museum help you conquer feelings of loneliness, or even stave off the advent of dementia? It sure can’t hurt. In their 2023 bestseller Your Brain on Art: How the Arts Transform Us, Susan Magsamen and Ivy Ross explore the wide variety of connections that contemporary neuroscience has established between artistic practice, aesthetic […]

Students in Montecito Union School’s second-grade art class were recently taught about using neon in sculpture by local neon multimedia artist and theater mainstay Rod Lathim.  MUS K-6 Art Specialist Alyssa Gonzalez requested that the Montecito Journal report on the project. For the annual art project, the students create an art collage using their music […]

The Atkinson Gallery and Art Department at Santa Barbara City College presented the 2024 Annual Student Exhibition. SBCC first year and second year students submitted their artwork for consideration to be in the show, and to compete for an art studies scholarship.  I attended the Opening Reception on Wednesday, April 17, at the Atkinson Gallery. […]

Deepest childhood is sometimes recalled as a shadowy dreamscape daubed with startling bursts of color. From that protean sub-basement “mother” ascends the stairs into the light, smiling that smile, and so forth. It’s complicated, as they say. We think of Mom and language fails, obliging us to fall back on gauzy flowers and little heart-shaped […]

The Santa Barbara Museum of Art Women’s Board held its first of two fundraising soirées, titled, “Art à la Carte,” at the University Club on Monday, March 25.  The lovely event featured an in-depth artist talk with Iraqi American abstract artist Vian Sora, and the museum’s Contemporary Art Curator James Glisson,PhD.  The opening cocktail hour […]

A group donning Lady Leslie Ridley-Tree’s elegant hats visited the Westmont Ridley-Tree Museum of Art to honor their late friend on March 21. Hiroko Benko, Brenda Blalock, Chris Frisina, Mary Gates, Erin Graffy, Bobbie Kinnear, Nan Marr, Joyce Shaar, and Grace Yoon toured Ridley-Tree’s entire collection of Jean-Baptiste-Camille Corot that she gave to the museum. […]

Six aspiring Westmont art graduates will exhibit their capstone projects at Between Moments from April 4-May 4 in the Westmont Ridley-Tree Museum of Art. A free, public opening reception will celebrate the graduating senior art majors on Thursday, April 4, from 4-6 pm.  The students include Danielle Anderson of Palm Desert; Clare Carey of Bonsall; […]

In keeping with the celebration of March 2024 as Women’s History Month (spoiler alert!) this column is going to contain some seriously shameless bragging! At the close of this month I’d like to send the memo that, both in a professional capacity and as volunteers, every month of any year Santa Barbara women make huge […]

Self-taught eco-artist Jami Joelle Nielsen asked 11 other local artists to create new works using recycled materials and centered on an environmental issue of their choice – including climate change, threatened species, fast fashion, problems facing pollinators, wildfires, tech and landfill waste, ocean plastics pollution, deforestation, and others. The result is The Recycled Show: No […]

Just four months after moving into Casa Dorinda, artist Victoria Furst Hines has lost no time in making her mark. Victoria, who with her late husband Carter ran a popular Montecito drapery business, has displayed 36 of her colorful works in oil, acrylic and watercolor, just a tiara’s toss from the home’s capacious dining room […]