Archives: Exhibitions

Artist Talk: December 2nd, time 1:30-3pm

Family Day: December 9th, 1:30-3:30pm

This exhibition will feature creations by Santa Cruz County artists Wendy Aikin, Judy Stabile, Jean Sheckler Beebe. Curious Narratives is an expansion of Wendy Aikin’s installation The Curator’s Office which was part of The Museum of Curious Perceptions exhibition at Pajaro Valley Arts in 2018. She created a life-size cabinet of curiosities of an imaginary museum curator. Within the cabinet were assembled boxes that contain imagined collections gathered by fictional characters. Collaborating for the first time, Aikin, Beebe and Stabile are expanding on selected themed boxes with their interpretations of the characters depicted in Aikin’s  assemblages. Through their media choices of sculpture, collage, assemblage, painting, found objects and fiber arts the artists are expanding upon these fictional characters and creating environments for their imagined lives. While their modalities of execution are widely varied, their creative electricity lights them up.

 

Wendy Aikin is fascinated by the Cabinets of Curiosity or Wunderkammer, that were the precursors to museums. She channels her curiosity for the unusual through her art, creating assemblages and installations that become visual narratives of imaginary characters.  Inspired by antique photos of forgotten people and items they might have possessed; discarded painter’s boxes serve as the perfect receptacles for her visual storytelling.  “I become pretty attached to the characters I create.  It’s been exciting to see how Judy and Jean have taken the stories and developed magical installations and paintings to expand and interpret the stories in their own way.”

Jean Beebe’s paintings are complex, having layers of paint, paper, drawing and sometimes found objects, but they are not nearly as complex as human beings are. While her painting may be figurative, narrative, or non-objective, they are expressionistic and abstract. She strives to create a symbolic language to represent the emotional themes of her work. As in most of her work, her interest here is how to portray the seen and unseen aspects of the imagined figures.

Judy Stabile works in a variety of media, materials, and processes. While employing a variety of techniques, her work describes the everyday of home, family, and friends both real and imagined. Curious Narratives affords her the opportunity to explore the personalities of imagined figures through sculpture, fiber, and painting. Regardless of where her explorations take her, she always return to the familiar, the emotional pull of the human story.

Preview the works of over 300 artists from Santa Cruz County, in the Open Studios Preview Exhibition. A majority of the artists participating in Open Studios will be showing one of their artworks. This is the perfect place to plan your studio viewing route!

Open Studios extended hours:

Wednesday – Friday: 12pm-5pm

Saturday & Sunday: 11am-5pm

Opening Reception:

Sunday, October 1st from 3-6pm

We offer automatic discounts on tickets when you purchase on our website!

• Get 10% off the total ticket price when you buy 2–4 tickets at a time
• Get 20% off the total ticket price when you buy 5 or more tickets at a time
• *Volume discount is automatically applied during checkout*
• *Membership discount does not apply to ticket prices*

NEW! Bring a friend(s) who is new to Luck of the Draw or has not attended the event in 5 or more years and you will be entered into a raffle to receive a prize the day of the event. And the new/returning participants will be entered in a raffle to win a ticket.

Participation in the live auction after Luck of the Draw is reserved to ticket buyers.

Art donations are accepted through October 25th at dates and times below:
Wednesday-Saturday from 1–4pm

First Friday: November 3rd, 2023 from 6-8pm

Artist Talk:
August 19, 1:30-3:00pm

Hike & Sketch with Sami Chang:
July 22, 9:30am-12:30pm

Exhibition Details

The first Santa Cruz Art League Statewide Exhibition was held in 1928.  For nine decades, the Santa Cruz Art League’s Statewide Landscape Exhibition has showcased the work of artists who depict California’s foothills, mountains, seashores, and deserts of the interior and coastal regions. In 2019 the Santa Cruz Art League celebrated its centennial year. Open to statewide residents. 2D artwork only will be accepted. 

Eligibility

Open to California residents, plein air and studio artwork paintings of California locations within the last three years of date of entry. This is a 2D painting exhibition of oils, watercolors, pastels, acrylics, encaustic, and mixed media. The Santa Cruz Art League reserves the right to decline or remove any work that does not conform to the prospectus or agreement.

Juror: Ed Penniman

Juror Information: When Ed was seven his grandmother who was a recognized painter started mentoring him as an artist. She has had her watercolors and oils shown at the Palace of the Legion of Honor and has a piece in the permanent collection of the deYoung Museum. She, a student of Armin Hansen, a student of L.P Latimer and helped form the Santa Cruz Art League in fall of 1919. She would encourage him to see beyond symbolism and gently critique my work. Ed was twelve when his grandmother took him out with her to paint along the cliffs in Santa Cruz. He learned that for her painting in nature was her meditation and a process which included the whole experience. Now he’s a person who paints in the same way, as a meditation. An interesting way to describe this type of painting is to think of the art as a by-product of a ritual. It took him many years of outdoor painting to own this sensibility by virtue of the process of loosing himself in nature and his art. Nature is beautiful, and beauty is healing.

In the past he was an Art Director at Carson Roberts Advertising in Los Angeles. Some of the accounts were Max Factor, Revlon, Jantzen Sportswear, Baskin Robbins, Mattel Toys, and others. He changed his career in LA and became a graphic designer, moved back to Northern
California and then in the last fifteen years as a fine artist. He is pleased to have resurrected the California Statewide Landscape Exhibition and engaged a number of luminaries in the art field as judges like David Leffel, Kevin MacPherson, Scott Shields, Jean Stern, Rene deGuzman, David Gallup, Nancy Boas, Richard Mayhew, Carolyn Lord and others.

Unapologetically Black consists of an exhibition, performances, community dialogue & film presentation and discussion, to express and represent the rich cultural heritage of Monterey and San Francisco Bay Areas Black visual and performing artists. ​ Project partners include the Tannery World Dance & Cultural Center, Black Health Matters Initiative, as well as the Watsonville Film Festival, Black Kings of Santa Cruz, Black Girl Magic Santa Cruz, and Speak for Change Podcast. This show is open to 2-d and 3-d media and multimedia by artists in the Black Diaspora.

Mark your calendars for our First Friday reception on March 3rd, DJ Monk Earl from Afro Beats Santa Cruz will be playing live!

Artists in the exhibition:

• Abi Mustapha
• Asual Aswad
• Bhavananda Lodkey
• Chris “Moze” Mosley
• Cyrus Howard
• Deshaun Myles
• Devi Pride
• Dylyn Turner-Keener
• Elijah Pfotenjauer
• Gregory Speed
• Jimi Evins
• Joseph Jason Santiago LaCour
• Madonna Camel
• Naomi Wells-Sokumbi
• Nikia Chaney
• Rica De La Luz
• Rick Bell
• Yolanda Cotton Turner

If you’re interested in more Black History Month events visit the Santa Cruz Black events calendar here: https://sccbhm.my.canva.site/sb

Celebrate the creativity of our community of members. We start 2023 highlighting these wonderful, local artists that are part of the rich fabric of our County’s artistic community. Stop by the gallery to support these artists during our open hours, Wednesday-Saturday from 1-4pm.

During the pandemic lockdown many photographers reconnected with time-honored subjects such as portraits and landscapes in a different way than before. It was a time when many photographers found refuge in nature and created images of places that they had forgotten or never seen before. Stuck at home, others reconnected with loved ones and themselves, bringing new life into portraits and self-portraits by going beyond documentation and inviting reflection. For many artists, the pandemic affected how they saw their subject matter. Artists are invited to submit portrait, self-portrait, and landscape photographs that were taken from March 2020 on, especially those taken during the lockdown.

Learn more and register for this juried exhibition.

Juror Information: Originally from the Salinas Valley, San Francisco photographer Joe Ramos has been photographing for over 40 years. He studied photography at the San Francisco Art Institute with Richard Conrat, Dorothea Lange’s last assistant. He considers himself a documentary photographer and has large bodies of imagery from the Salinas Valley and San Francisco’s Mission District. Photography for him has become away for him to document both the simple and the profound.