It’s been a while since I reported back after attending any of the exhibits that I’ve tried to publicize on this blog. Today, I’d like to fix that.

To begin with, I couple of weeks ago I headed down to Carpinteria to check out the Anderson Collective Art show. The exhibit was housed in one unit of a beautifully remodeled old Henry Fish Seed Company. Apparently, there was a new kind of Lima bean developed there and up until recently these beans were the chief agricultural product of the area. Who knew? Anyway, I was happy to see that the exhibit was very well attended. The space was beautifully utilized and gave ample space to each artist’s varied output of work.  While the brothers, Benjamin and Sean, worked the crowd, Ron was hard at work gluing together the odds and ends that attendees were asked to bring in. The first of four of these collaborative pieces was on display that night and was a wonderfully, chaotically beautiful thing. Each of the four collaborative pieces is being auctioned off and the proceeds will be used to help victims of the Jesusita Fire.

The generous nature of this family makes them hard not to like, but if you needed more convincing their art only adds to the appeal. This family is obviously brimming with talent.  In particular, Ben’s epic “7 girls”, which I first saw at the Rumble Art Fair, reaffirmed it’s position as one of my favorite paintings in recent history. The young Sean and Ben have also obviously benefited from the wisdom and experience of their elders. Their motivation, organization,  and ambition  make it easy to believe that successful art careers (however they choose to define that success) is just a matter of time.

The show runs through June 14th, as does the silent auction for the four collaborative pieces. The gallery, located at 410 Palm Ave, in Carpinteria,  is open three days a week, Friday/Saturday/Sunday from 1pm to 6pm or by appointment.

The second show I wanted to mention was the juried show at Westmont College’s Reynolds Gallery, but that will have to wait for another post. So stay tuned…

Lastly, I discovered earlier this week that the Santa Barbara Museum of Art has a new blog. It currently only has one post, so it remains to be seen how often it will be updated. But for those of you who keep up with what goes on at the museum, it is worth keeping an eye on. You can find the blog by clicking here.