Happy New Year, one and all. I hope you all had a great holiday season and are ready to get the new year started. We are going to start 2012 off with a less frantic version of the monthly 1st Thursday Art Crawl. This should allow us to take a bit more time at each location and soak in the art more thoroughly. We will end the night at the studio of one of Santa Barbara’s most talented young painters, Derek Harrison. After missing his studio last month because of a miss-communication, we are back on track for this month. It should be a great night, and I hoping to see another big crowd join us for the evening.

You can find a map of the proposed itinerary below. The Art Crawl starts PROMPTLY at 5:45, so if you can’t make it at the beginning, use the map to track us down. I also usually update our location live on twitter.

See you on Thursday!

Click on the image below for a larger, printable version of the map.

After a hiatus from the Downtown Organizations’s 1st Thursday last month, I’m back for the last Art Crawl of the year and this is going to be an extra special event. First of all, I am going to focus on many of the venues that have previously been neglected for one reason or another. We will start on the southern-most part of the festivities and will work our way up to a last stop at one of my favorite local artist’s studio near the Arlington theater. This means that we’ll be doing a bit more walking than usual, so make sure to eat before you come and wear comfortable shoes. It also mean that we will stop at fewer places than usual so we have time to take in these new places.

Joining us for at least part of the evening will be a group of revelers from Repeal Day Santa Barbara. Monday December 5th is the anniversary of the day that prohibition was repealed. They have some big festivities planned for the entire weekend and they start the whole shebang off with the Art Crawl.

I’ve posted a map of the tentative itinerary below. Click on the map to see an enlarged version. If you want to join us, make sure to be at Wall Space Gallery before 6pm. We will leave there promptly to make sure we have time to get everywhere.

Finally, the Art Crawl has a new site on Meetup.com. Check it out. I wasn’t familiar with it until recently, but it ends up being a pretty great online site for organizing in person events.

I hope to see you on Thursday!

Start being jealous of me. In two days I am going on wild adventure that will send me to the far side of the country and leave me with a cross-country road trip back home. I’ve done portions of this epic journey a couple of times, but never have I done it all in one go, and I’ll be doing it solo. Hopefully you understand my excitement, though I’m sure there are those of you who think I’m crazy.

Regardless, this will mean that the blog is going to go radio silent for the better part of two weeks, which will mean that my usual monthly 1st Thursday preview will not happen. Nor will I have time to publicize the next round of Art in the Mayor’s Office, which will be happening from 5 – 6 on that evening (the office will close at 6 sharp, so get there on time).  And what about the 1st Thursday Art Crawl? I should be screaming back into town just in time to lead the troops on the repetitious flash mob that we enact upon local galleries that night.  If you want to join the Art Crawl, meet me on the back steps of City Hall promptly at 5:30. You should also check out the Art Crawl group that started at Meetup.com. This is a really cool website that uses virtual connections to organize face-to-face gatherings, and the Art Crawl already has a loyal following of over 30 strong (Thanks, Chris).

Finally I won’t have time to highlight this really important seminar at the Contemporary Arts Forum. For any of you who have aspirations of being a career artist, this is a requirement. There will be a quiz afterwards.

I’m sure there are many other events that I am going to miss over the next two weeks, so please do us all a favor by posting  comments on this post to let people know what is up while I am gone.

Also, I’ll be posting pictures of any of the iconic road trip things that I see upon the way on twitter at http://twitter.com/#!/sbartsblog

The Road Trip: A Defining Part of the American Grand Narrative

After taking a hiatus from doing the Art Crawl every month, I’m happy to announce that this month it is back by popular demand. It is the end of Summer and the weather couldn’t be better so it is the perfect time to get back into the festivities.

The original idea behind the Art Crawl was to get a critical mass of art-loving people together under the banner of the Santa Barbara Arts Collaborative, to show gallery owners and 1st Thursday attendees in general that we could rally the troops when it came to getting people excited about the local art scene. We were able to get a wonderfully diverse crowd including local artists and art collectors, to tourists who just happened to be visiting town.

This month we will once again be trying to hit the full spectrum of what 1st Thursday has to offer, from plein-air paintings, to cutting-edge emerging artists. Throw a few live bands into the mix and possibly a glass of wine or two and a good time is all but guaranteed.

All you have to do to be part of the Art Crawl is show up. I’ll be the Pied-Piper for the evening, and will be happy to answer any questions you may have about what we see during the evening, the local art scene, or how to get into art collecting generally.

The map below outlines our tentative itinerary. If you can’t join us right at 5:30, I’ll be updating our location on Twitter throughout the night, so come and catch up to us whenever.

UPDATE: We’ll also be making a stop at a sculpture show at VIVA design studio at 123 E. Carrillo. More info on the event here:

http://us1.campaign-archive1.com/?u=34e727a4ae82e086c1ea29091&id=b25bf2ef54&e=[UNIQID]

Maybe you have heard about this thing called Burning Man and been quietly curious. Maybe you are one of those poor souls who put off buying a ticket this year and fell victim to the first sell out in Burning Man history. Either way, for tonight’s 1st Thursday you can come and get a taste of the event at 515 Garden St.

I checked the place out last night, and it really is a remarkable environment…especially considering it can be found in downtown Santa Barbara. The legendary PyroBar will be there and that alone is reason enough to check this out tonight. But there are so many other reasons.

So, once you have visited the galleries tonight, walk on over to the Walkabout Woods. You will be so glad you did.

Burning Man is right around the corner, and Walkabout Woods is getting ready to showcase the largest art installation Santa Barbara and Fishbon has ever brought to the playa. We’ve been busy for the better half of this past year preparing for this, and we are rounding into the home stretch. Come celebrate with us in our warehouse space. We will have Wild Cultures Kombucha on tap, live art, the opportunity to paint if you desire, music, gifts, and all around delicious energy.

Directly following First Thursday activities, on Garden Street between Hailey and Cota.