Happy New Year!

Between the holidays and my day job, I have yet to catch up with all the latest art events that will grace Santa Barbara’s downtown for this coming First Thursday. If you know of anything that really shouldn’t be missed please add it in a comment below.  I haven’t even had time to organize the Art Crawl this month, so we’ll reconvene in February.

There is, however, one particular show that I wanted to make sure to highlight. Super Santa Barbara is a large group  show that will be opening on Thursday at the Contemporary Arts Forum. Last year’s Super Santa Barbara was one of my favorite shows of the year. This year’s theme for the exhibition is net neutrality. If your eyes just went a bit glassy and you are wondering what net neutrality might be, don’t worry, most people don’t. And it is a very complicated subject, but it is just as important to our every day lives (though you probably don’t even know it yet). For a great brief visual crash course on net neutrality click HERE.

Net neutrality may seem like a strange place to find artistic inspiration, but one of the reasons I like this show so much is that relevance is built in to the exhibit.  The first Super Santa Barbara show asked artists to provide visions of Santa Barbara 50 to 100 into the future. And the results were beautiful and often compelling.  This year’s show has at least as much potential to surprise and enlighten.  Artists, times and date for the show are listed below. I hope to see you there. Once you’ve seen the show, please come back and leave comments with your opinion of the show. Check out the website for the show HERE.

ARTISTS

JAMES VAN ARSDALE | JULIA FORD | SAUL GRAY-HILDENBRAND | STEVEN SORIA | JONNY TROYNA | JAKE MONTEFU | ANGUS FORBES | ALEJANDRO CASAZI | TRISTAN TYLER BLODGETT | JASON SOBER | STEPHNIE DOTSON | ROBERT HECKES | LAURA DEVENDORF | KIMBERLY HAHN | KAT TRAJANO

The opening reception (dates & time below), will feature a presentation and Q & A session with local tech guru (and SwitchBook founder) Joe Andrieu at 7:30pm.
SUPER SANTA BARBARA is a series of independent exhibitions organized/curated by Warren Schultheis. It is not installed or organized under CAF’s curatorial programming & schedule.

RECEPTION: Jan 6th, 2011 6:30pm-9pm
SHOW DATES: Jan 7th – Jan 23rd
DIRECTIONS: 653 Paseo Nuevo

Calling all (b)artists!

This Saturday at Muddy Waters the Santa Barbara Arts Collaborative will be holding the first of many “belly to belly” events. These events are designed to get people together to make connections and foster future resource sharing and collaborations… they are also supposed to be a blast.

I have been heavily involved with the planning of this event, so I can give my personal assurance that this will be a good time. It may also be an opportunity to get a very unique work of art by an artist whose work you’ve admired for years but couldn’t easily afford.

In the afternoon people are invited to come to Muddy Waters to work on their Bar Napkin masterpieces. Starting at 4pm the napkins will be put on display for a silent auction that will begin at 5:30 and end at 7:30. The proceeds from this auction will go to the SBAC’s direct-to-artist grant program.

There are already more than 100 people who have confirmed their attendance on the event’s Facebook page. I know that there are a wide range of artists (not all of whom are visual artists) that will be contributing napkins to the event, some of whom are very well known in town. However, we encourage everyone to take part.

I also happen to know that some extremely awesome SBAC t-shirts will make their world premiere at the event. These t-shirts will be sold for $20 (also to benefit the SBAC), so make sure to stop by an ATM before you come because Muddy Waters doesn’t take plastic.

We are also looking for any donations of supplies to help out with the event:

We are looking for white bar napkins, golf pencils, and art supplies for Saturday. We’d rather recycle or use what’s out there than buy more.

If you have access to any of these things please contact me at: nathan@sbartsblog.com

Also, if you would like to contribute to the event but can’t make it on Saturday, feel free to work on a napkin in advance and bring it (or have it delivered) to Muddy Waters on Saturday.

Here is a partial list of the artists whose napkins you can expect to see at the silent auction (I’ll update this list as more artists confirm).

Hugh Margerum                      http://www.hughmargerum.com/
Vanae Rivera                           http://www.maryandthemachine.com/
Bob DeBris                               http://www.bobdebris.com/
Jane Callister                           http://www.arts.ucsb.edu/faculty/janec/
Keith Puccinelli                       http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xcHtBffHGqA
Penelope Gottlieb                    http://www.penelopegottlieb.com/
Dane Goodman                       http://www.sbcc.edu/art/website/index.php?page=faculty&contact=25
David Starkey                          http://www.vimeo.com/5294834
Bob Mask                                 http://www.west.net/~bobsart/
Elizabeth Folk                          http://www.elizabethfolk.com/
Jim Connolly                            http://www.jimconnollymusic.com/
Sheryl Schroeder                     http://www.schroederville.com/
Anna Abbey                              http://www.myspace.com/radannabbey
Clay Bodine                              http://fishbonsb.ning.com/
Dominique Reboul                  http://fishbonsb.ning.com/
Ben Anderson                          http://www.benjaminanderson.com/
Sean Anderson                        http://www.seananderson.com/
Jimmy Bell                               http://www.jimmybellart.com/

UPDATE:

Colin Gardner (Chair, UCSB Art Department)   http://www.arts.ucsb.edu/content/colin-gardner
Ann Diener                              http://www.anndienerart.com/
Jeff Shelton                              http://www.jeffsheltonarchitect.com/

UPDATE #2

Molly Hahn                              http://mollycules.com/
Kimberly Hahn                       http://www.kimberlyhahn.com
James Van Arsdale              http://www.jamesvanarsdale.com/
Ken Bortolazzo                      http://www.sullivangoss.com/bortolazzo_ken/
Joe LaCorte                            http://www.josephlacorte.com/
Robert Redfield                    http://www.redfieldpictures.com/

If you are an artist who wants people to know that you’ll be at the event, just post your name in a comment on this post.

It’s a bit late notice but there is a really exciting show tomorrow night from 7 – 9 at the Contemporary Arts Forum. Local artists were asked to provide their artistic vision of how Santa Barbara might look in 50 – 100 years. Many of the artist that have been mentioned on this blog will be in the show. It should be wonderful. I’ll be going to the LA Artwalk at the Brewery tomorrow during the day, but I’m going to make sure to get back in time for this show. See this post’s tags below for a list of artists.

See you there.