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 Monday December 5th is the anniversary of the day that prohibition was repealed.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

Ok, people. It’s time to buckle down and get your submissions in for the next installment of  Art in the Mayor’s Office. The deadline is this Friday, and we have only had a few applicants. This may be because we limited ourselves with a theme of Food and Dining, to coincide with October’s EpicureSB. However, I encourage you to interpret the theme creatively because this is your chance to have your art shown in the Mayor’s office for the next three months. Just imagine all the important government officials that will see your art…

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Art In the Mayor’s Office

At the beginning of the year Mayor Helene Schneider invited the Santa Barbara Arts Collaborative to help select the art that would decorate the walls of her office. At the time, we decided we’d rotate the art every three months and that time is upon us.

For this third round, we have chosen to help celebrate the month long Epicure SB festival, and will focus on the theme of Food and Dining. Space is limited so most selections will need to be hanging work no larger than 30 inches tall by 40 inches wide INCLUDING THE FRAME. If you would like to be considered for this opportunity, please fill out the simple application and submit up to three digital examples of your work through the Santa Barbara Arts Collaborative website. The application is available by clicking HERE .

The deadline to apply is noon on Friday, September 16th, 2011. The selections will be reviewed by a small panel and announced by Friday, September 23rd. The opening will coincide with 1st Thursday, October 6th 2011. If you have any difficulties with the registration or application process, our webmaster is available for questions at webmaster@sbartscollaborative.org 
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On behalf of the Santa Barbara Arts Collaborative and all artists and arts lovers in Santa Barbara, we thank the Mayor once again for this opportunity!
SBAC

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]

Happy Memorial Day, fellow art lovers. I hope you are all out and about, spending time with friends and loved ones.

It is time once again, to get your walking shoes ready for our monthly Art Crawl down State Street. This month’s Crawl will be marked by our first visits to the Santa Barbara Museum of Art to see their new photography exhibition by Ori Gersht. Everyone who has seen this exhibition has been raving about it, so I can’t wait to see it for myself. We will also be making our first visit to the Artamo gallery. Somehow I have managed to neglect this great little gallery on Anapamu Street, so this month we’ll rectify that.

Finally, we will also be celebrating the opening of the second round of Art in the Mayor’s Office.  For this round there were 10 photographers who won the chance to show their photos, and we’ll be there to congratulate them… and hopefully convince them to join us for the rest of the evening. The winners in this round were: Patti Gutshall, Nell Campbell, Rodger Dawson, Jimmy Callian, Patricia Franco, Tim Hauf, Edgard Rincon, Kate Connell, Gerry Aspen, and Jack Azar.

[UPDATE]: I forgot about a great show of work by Tom Shultz and Micheal Long at Elsie’s. We’ll be making that our last stop for the evening.

All you have to do to join the Art Crawl is show up on the back steps of City Hall (735 Anacapa Street) at 5:30 SHARP!!! City Hall will close promptly at 6pm, so if you want to get in to see these photographs you have to be on time.

I hope to see you this Thursday… Now get back to your barbecue.

Click on the image below to see a larger version of this month’s map.