My brother Benjamin Tolan – and you can ask anyone who went to MUS, Crane or Laguna Blanca High School – is best known for his uncanny excellence in whatever he pursues. He can pick up any tune on the flute, saxophone, or piano in just a few listens and dominate in any video game […]

“They’re still recovering bodies. It’s the third deadliest hurricane behind Katrina and Camille,” said Yvette Vega, a Carpinteria-native and healthcare professional living in Charlotte, North Carolina. “It’s a small community here, so if you don’t know someone directly, you know someone who does.” Vega was fortunate enough to miss Hurricane Helene’s full force. “We didn’t […]

After being paralyzed from the waist down at just 18 years old, British TV presenter, writer, and artist Sophie Morgan has become a beacon for disability advocacy. A jack of all trades, she has reported for the Paralympics for three years, released her debut book Driving Forwards, and most recently co-founded W.E. Rides, a movement […]

Get up and out of your bunk at 4 am. Make coffee and a bagel… it’s burnt. Equip your waders, boots, headlamp, backpack, and lots of surveying equipment. Wade in the river and hike the woods for 12 hours, being cautious not to run into the man who lives in the shack made of bones. […]

Ariel Leira is a multidisciplinary visual artist and writer who grew up amongst the trees of Montecito, documenting her TRAVELS through glowing, abstract photography and heartfelt poetry. She was a lifer at Crane Country Day School – where we met in fifth grade – and graduated from Santa Barbara High School.  Leira’s artistic proclivities began […]

Nicole Belton’s art studio, located at 1019 West in Inglewood, feels like walking into a museum of trees frozen in time. Dream-like hills and extending branches captured in a submerged composition (Skyview Drive); a tree in a moment of transition, poised before fading into a muted, decaying terrain (Ash). For the past six years, Belton […]

After years of winning accolades as a director in Santa Barbara, New York and Los Angeles, Kylan Tyng takes to the sky for his new venture behind the camera: aerial photography.  Photographer and director Kylan Tyng, born and raised in Santa Ynez and Santa Barbara, has spent the last two years exploring western North America […]

I met Kiara Lin in the place many Santa Barbara natives eventually meet–Los Angeles.  She grew up in Santa Barbara, attending Montessori Center School and Santa Barbara Junior High. Even in her youth, Kiara’s dedication to film was unmistakable. After three years enrolled at Santa Barbara High School, she moved to Michigan to complete her […]

Look at your shelves. It’s not the framed photos or unread books that make those shelves uniquely yours. It’s those knick-knacks, collectibles, and tchotchkes you’ve kept, moved, and refused to throw away over the years.  What do these trinkets mean about us? Sam Fitz and Bella Vasquez, the co-founders of Santa Barbara’s newest art collective […]

My name may be familiar to you, reader. Maybe you recognize it from the fading memory of your child’s school theater production playbill, or perhaps from reading Stella Haffner’s interviews with me in this very column. Thanks to Stella and the Montecito Journal, you’ll be seeing my name on a much more regular basis as […]