Tag archives: artists

Famed Ceramist Juries “Mixed Up”
By Scott Craig   |   May 23, 2023

The Westmont Ridley-Tree Museum of Art highlights the exceptional talent of local artists in its annual Tri-County Juried Exhibition, “Mixed Up,” from Thursday, May 18, to June 17. The public is invited to a free, opening reception on May 18 from 4-6 pm. Award winners will be announced at 5:15 pm.  Rae Dunn, popular Bay […]

Empowering and Supporting Individuals with Mental Illness
By Ann Pieramici   |   May 23, 2023

May has long been recognized as National Mental Health Awareness Month, yet never before has the issue of mental health commanded the national conversation as urgently as it does today. Surgeon General Vivek Murthy has made mental health his top priority, declaring it “the defining public health crisis of our time,” much like when Dr. […]

Art Museum Offers ‘a space of her own’
By Scott Craig   |   April 18, 2023

A large crowd packed into the Westmont Ridley-Tree Museum of Art to see the stunning capstone projects of six senior art majors on April 6. A Space of Her Own – which features art projects ranging from paintings to prints, and from photography to sculptural installation – will be on display through May 6 at […]

What Gets Buried
By Stella Haffner   |   March 7, 2023

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 […]

Scenes From a Museum
By Richard Mineards   |   February 21, 2023

It’s two exhibitions for the price of one at the Santa Barbara Museum of Art! Scenes from a Marriage: Ed & Nancy Kienholz centers on a recently acquired 1982 masterpiece Bout Round Eleven by Nancy Reddin Kienholz and Edward Kienholz and their collaborative way of working and living. Thanks to generous loans to supplement works […]

‘Entangled’ Exhibit Explores Environment 
By Scott Craig   |   January 17, 2023

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 […]

Local Animator Graced With Award
By Richard Mineards   |   November 22, 2022

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 […]

An Artful Evening
By Richard Mineards   |   November 1, 2022

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 […]

Helena Mason Gallery Art for Good Event
By Joanne A Calitri   |   October 25, 2022

“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 […]

Photographs by Patricia Houghton Clarke at Silo Gallery
By Joanne A Calitri   |   October 25, 2022

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 […]

39th Ojai Studio Artists Tour
By Joanne A Calitri   |   October 18, 2022

The Ojai Studio Artists (OSA) had their annual tour with free ticketing – in the spirit of communities and art – again this year. The tour had over 70 artists participating, and an estimated 750-1,000 visitors. Highlight included new OSA member Christopher Noxon, a former L.A. journalist and Los Feliz transplant during the pandemic, who […]

Rooted in Art: ‘Dos Arbolitos’ Exhibit Paints a Picture of Friendship and Nature
By Zach Rosen   |   September 20, 2022

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 […]

A Porcelain Picture of Time
By Steven Libowitz   |   September 6, 2022

Montecito artist Joan Rosenberg-Dent was an early participant on the Santa Barbara Studio Artist Tour, but quit after a couple of years due to being the solitary sculpturist on the self-guided driving tour of local studios.  It wasn’t that standing out from her peers was a problem, as the porcelain artist has blazed a few […]

Art Book Talk Mid-week in Mid-town 
By Steven Libowitz   |   September 6, 2022

Painter Richard Schloss, who has worked and exhibited in Santa Barbara since 1972, brings his half-century of experience to his brand-new book, Painting the Light. A member of Santa Barbara’s The Oak Group since its inception in 1986, Schloss nowadays has largely eschewed painting en plein air in favor of working in his studio on […]

Talking Kinetic and Optical Art with Alexander Alberro
By Joanne A Calitri   |   September 6, 2022

Art historian Alexander Alberro, PhD presented his research on Kinetic, Op and Participatory Art at Mid-Century at the Santa Barbara Museum of Art on August 31. He has written about this topic in his 2017 book titled, Abstraction in Reverse: The Reconfigured Spectator in Mid-Twentieth-Century Latin American Art. He is a Virginia Bloedel Wright Professor […]

Tamara Thompson: Art as a Side Hustle
By Joanne A Calitri   |   August 30, 2022

Sunday, August 21 marked the reception for the second public art exhibit for Tamara Thompson, with over 40 natural seaweed designs on watercolor paper, framed and matted, for wall and tabletop.  Thompson, self-named “The Seaweed Artist,” is in a group show with her father, Michael Harvan, a local landscape painter, at the Apiary in Carpinteria […]

The Tenacity of New Art: Toni Scott at Silo 118 Gallery
By Joanne A Calitri   |   August 2, 2022

Placing her bright white 36”x36” square canvases on the floor, she meditates and pours a line of indigo paint in a circle. Yes, a circle in a square. She watches as the paint free forms to create what she terms a ‘Spiritual Plateau,’ a place of quiet and peace for her, thus titled, Meditation Circle […]

Exhibitions Laud Influential SoCal Artists
By Scott Craig   |   June 28, 2022

Work by four enormously influential Southern California artists and art professors, Ken Jewesson, Ciel Bergman, Irma Cavat, and Florence “FiFi” Russell, will appear in three exhibitions July 7 to August 6 in the Westmont Ridley-Tree Museum of Art with a free, public opening reception at the museum on Thursday, July 7, from 4 to 6 […]

A Global Opening
By Richard Mineards   |   June 28, 2022

After its hugely successful Van Gogh exhibition, Santa Barbara Museum of Art launched Going Global: Abstract Art at Mid-Century. The show, which runs through September 25, features 35 works from the museum’s permanent collection running the gamut of mediums, from painting and sculpture to photography and lithography, and artist-invented mediums, including forms of kinetic art […]

House To Home’s New Fine Arts Exhibit 
By Montecito Journal   |   June 14, 2022

La Cumbre Plaza’s interior design showroom is welcoming award-winning artist Francis Scorzelli to its fine arts gallery. House To Home is an all-encompassing design center that provides all the trades needed to personally create your home. Their design services range from furniture to lighting to specialty finishes. Scorzelli is a New York native and Santa […]