Art Attacks: Sonnenberg on Site

Artist Anthony Sonnenberg’s current Santa Barbara Museum of Art exhibition WARES! Extraordinary Ceramics and the Ordinary Home explores expressions of power through decoration within various cultures. In the lecture, The Power to Be, Sonnenberg discusses how personal, social, and political power dynamics are expressed through decorative decadence and excess, including an over-embellished palace, an ornate candelabra, or a glamorous dress. Settle into SBMA’s Mary Craig Auditorium for the 5 pm talk on September 14. Sonnenberg will also offer a hands-on demo two days later at SBMA’s Pop-Up Clay Play, where attendees will have an opportunity to create with clay and cardboard to build cross-cultural crowns and explore the power of ornamentation with the help of the museum teaching artists. The 10 am workshop at SBMA’s Family Resource Center comes a day before the WARES! exhibit closes on September 17. 

In The Future That Never Came, eight Santa Barbara assemblage and collage artists explore the theme of retrofuturism – a movement in the creative arts showing the influence of depictions of the future produced in an earlier era. Artist organizer Sue Van Horsen was inspired by sci-fi shows such as Star Trek, Lost in Space, Gigantor,and Jonny Quest to bring artists Adrienne De Guevara, Dan Levin, Michael Long, Jami Nielsen, Norm Reed, Dug Uyesaka, and Frank Whipple together for a brief show at the Community Arts Workshop Gallery exhibiting September 15-24.