Tag archives: art

Social gridlock reigned when dynamic duo Ralph and Diane Waterhouse opened their first art gallery on Coast Village Road, formerly the site of the Scoops ice cream store. The Waterhouse Gallery is an extension of their nearly four decades old La Arcada emporium in Santa Barbara, next door to the popular French eatery Petit Valentien. […]

After having contemporary, abstract, and fine art galleries color the town of Montecito, there’s another one on the horizon ready to captivate your senses. The Waterhouse Gallery, located at the Coast Village Plaza (1187 Coast Village Road, Suite 3, formerly the Scoops store), is where traditional contemporary works engage your art spirit, delight your eyes, […]

Santa Barbara’s young art scene emphasizes identity, voice, and change. All three can be found in the work of 21-year-old Isa Saldivar. Working their way out of the foster care system, Isa came to Santa Barbara as a queer, Chican@ outsider – a perspective that continues to inform their art. In our conversation, Isa reflects […]

On Feb. 21, the Santa Barbara Museum of Art (SBMA) Women’s Board held its annual New Members luncheon at the Santa Barbara Club downtown. The event was chaired by board Vice President Karen Tenzer and the event committee was President Paula Farrington, Jean McCourt, and Linda Wortham. The private gala was artfully done with fresh […]

G. James Daichendt, art critic, curator, art historian, and dean of the colleges at Point Loma University, examines how street art is changing the art world and how we engage art in a free public lecture, “Street Art Now,” on Thursday, Feb. 23, from 4:30 to 5:30 pm at the Westmont Ridley-Tree Museum of Art. […]

Black History Month (BHM) is an annual national celebration during February that commenced with Negro History Week (February 1926) initiated by Carter G. Woodson, founder of Association for the Study of Negro Life and History (ASNLH). Later in the 1940s, Blacks in West Virginia began to celebrate February as Negro History Month, and by 1960 […]

The Scholarship Foundation of Santa Barbara has honored 23 student artists during a presentation and reception at the Santa Barbara Museum of Art. Chosen as winners of the foundation’s Art Scholarship competition, each received a scholarship and their selected art submissions will be exhibited in the museum’s Family Resource Center through Feb. 12. “This was […]

We are most honored to have spent time doing an in-depth interview with Eik Kahng PhD, Deputy Director, and Chief Curator of the Santa Barbara Museum of Art (SBMA). Preferring to concentrate on work minus the accolades, she graciously accepted to do it between curation, establishing new high-caliber art education programming for our town at […]

The Westmont Ridley-Tree Museum of Art features two artists whose work responds to climate change and our planet on the brink of perilous danger. The exhibition, Entangled: Responding to Environmental Crisis, runs from January 12 to March 25, 2023, and highlights the artwork of Madeleine Tonzi, a New Mexico painter, muralist and printmaker, and GATS […]

“Clarence Mattei painted a portrait of our nation from the Pacific Coast to the Atlantic Shoreline… His portraits formed an album of an era which was melding the personalities of the fearless, rugged stagecoach drivers of the Wild West to the quiet confidence and well-bred sophistication of East Coast Philanthropy,” Erin Graffy, local historian, wrote […]

A pertinent historical and classical portrait exhibition is on view at the Santa Barbara Historical Museum titled, “Clarence Mattei (1883-1945), Portrait of a Community,” curated by the museum staff in conjunction with Santa Barbara historian Erin Graffy. Mattei’s portraits feature local to international luminaries, politicians, film stars, and the elite. His father Felix founded Mattei’s […]

The Thomas Reynolds Gallery is generously hosting a wall for the art of two local oil painters on a mission to raise awareness of endangered animals and factory farmed animals. The exhibit is titled “EYE AM ART” and is on view now through December 31. The oil painters are longtime painter, illustrator, and teacher Nancy […]

Oriental art expert Keith Moore celebrated the tenth anniversary of his half-century with a boffo bash in The Pickle Room, formerly Jimmy’s Oriental Garden belonging to the Chung family, where Keith’s father used to play saxophone. Keith, a sixth-generation Santa Barbarian, as well as a life member of the Society of California Pioneers, even brought […]

The Westmont Ridley-Tree Museum of Art shares the deep trove of art collected by the late Barry Berkus, an architect, urban planner, watercolor artist, and author, in A Bold and Unconventional Collector: Highlights from the Barry Berkus Family Collection, which will be on display from November 17 to December 12. The public is invited to […]

Jeanette Fantone, a Japanese Filipino animator from Carpinteria, has won a 2022 Princess Grace Award. Her work largely stems from cultural nostalgia and gravitas towards the manipulation of textures and tactility as a way of invoking impressions of memory. Fantone received her BFA in Experimental Animation from CalArts this year and competed three films in […]

Globetrotting accountant Frank McGinity opened the gates of his charming Riven Rock estate, just a tiara’s toss from the Duke and Duchess of Sussex, for An Artful Affair for 120 guests organized by the Art Foundation of Santa Barbara. Five local plein air artists – Ralph Waterhouse, Derek Harrison, Annie Hoffman, Ray Hunter, and Ann […]

“Art for Good” is indeed the modus operandi for Helena Mason Art Gallery owner Natalie Olivas Sanchez, with her husband, realtor Jamie Sanchez. Moving from strictly doing art exhibitions and selling art, she decided to turn the hip interior with an outdoor patio into an event space, one that brings the community together and benefits […]

Patricia Houghton Clarke’s newest exhibit Primal Wild is on view at Silo 118 Gallery, now through October 29. There are 18 framed and matted photographs in the show, five color and seven black and white, square sized at 24×24” and rectangles at 33×49”. The selection was curated and installed by Bonnie Rubenstein. In a curio […]

I attended the opening of Ishi Glinsky’s solo exhibit titled Upon a Jagged Maze at the Art, Design & Architecture (ADA) Museum at UC Santa Barbara, sponsored by the ADA Museum’s Council. The exhibit is on view through January 22, 2023.  The 25 works from 2009 to 2022 were selected by museum Director Gabriel Ritter, […]

If a picture is worth a thousand words, then it was a photo that inspired a thousand (or so) paintings when the Oak Group gathered under an expansive eponymous tree along the San Marcos Foothill Preserve 35 years ago for a photo. Founded on the idea of painting the places of nature in an effort […]