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.

I’ve been hoping for it for a couple of months now, but I think finally we’re going to get some nice warm weather for 1st Thursday this week. We’re going to mix it up a bit this month by stopping at a few places that will be totally new to the Santa Barbara Arts Collaborative‘s Art Crawl. I hope you can join me for the night. It should be a blast. All you have to do to join the Art Crawl is show up at 900 State Street in the Walkabout Woods Installation at 5:30 this Thursday. Look for the Art Crawl sign.

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

A Rough Itinerary for the Evening

Here are a few of the things I’m most excited about.

WALKABOUT WOODS
900 State Street
Walkabout Woods is a highly collaborative, interactive art installation made by Fishbon, a local arts collaborative. The project, in its entirety, will resemble a vast abstract enchanted forest and is destined for Burning Man 2011. Come enjoy a small portion of the forest on the patio.

SOJOURNER CAFE
134 East Canon Perdido Street
(805) 965-7922
Kat Devlin won’t be the only draw for this event, the ever popular painter, Chris Potter is teaming up with our long time favorite Kevin Gleason (ask Kevin about our mural), along with a special wine tasting with David from Southern Wine & Spirits. The best place to close out your 1st Thursday evening, open until 11pm.

THE GRANADA THEATRE
1214 State Street
(805) 899-3000
Zombies and Buddhas art exhibition by Jill Littlewood in the McCune Founders Room. “My sons, and their friends, often talk about zombies and surviving zombie attacks. I’ve never heard girls bring this subject up. I began wondering what zombies mean to young men, so I played with the imagery. As I was painting – using colored paper pulp – every once in a while a buddha would appear and give me some relief from the anger and turmoil of zombie faces.” Enjoy Modern Jazz, Latin and Pop from Cut Time, presented by theSanta Barbara Youth Music Academy.

FUZION
1115 State St.
(805) 687-6401
Downstairs at Fuzion Gallery we are hosting Jamie Dufek’s art reception from 7PM-10PM with the show hanging through the month of May, Free drinks for 21+and Guest DJ Chadillac will be playing all night too!

I really should be doing my taxes right now. But it is once again time for 1st Thursday, and I am very excited to have some extra daylight and warmer temperatures for our monthly art outing.  There should be lots of people out on the street making for a particularly energetic evening.

This month we have an extra special event to end the evening. Michelle Detorie will be presenting her Poetry Booth, for which she was awarded a Direct-to-Artist grant last year by the Santa Barbara Arts Collaborative.  Detorie describes her project like this, “The Poetry Booth is a public, free, and mobile display and workspace for experiencing and creating poems with the help or guidance of practiced poets and educators. The booth will provide space (tables and chairs), supplies (paper, pencils, pens, markers, glue, scissors, typewriters), and poetic inspiration in the form of example poems and poetic objects, writing prompts, and activities. The available poetries and activities include poetry games and puzzles, tactile and visual poetry, postcard poetry, collaborative poetry, traditional and invented poetic forms, performance poetry, poetry in translation, and book arts. Participants will also have the option to submit their work for publication on the poetry booth blog. ”

All you have to do to join the Art Crawl is join me at the Channing Peake Gallery at 5:30 this Thursday. I hope to see you there.

Click above to see a larger version of the map.

For the past 6 months or so the Santa Barbara Arts Collaborative has paired up with the Santa Barbara Printmakers and The Arts Fund to offer some really cool prints for a very affordable price. The proceeds for this program not only help support the printmakers themselves, but also contribute to artist grants that are given out through the Arts Collaborative and The Arts Fund. A new print is released each month, and all previous releases are still available. More information can be found here.

This Month’s Print by Dane Goodman

Dane Goodman
Artist Biography

Working in a wide range of mediums, from installations to prints, Dane Goodman has shown his artwork in numerous solo and group exhibitions throughout the United States, including New York City, Chicago, Los Angeles, and Seattle. His work is in museum, corporate, and private collections. Locally his work in the collection of Santa Barbara Museum of Art; University Art Museum, University of California, Santa Barbara; The Berkus Collection, Santa Barbara County Arts Commission; and the Westmont Museum of Art.

Goodman is a recipient of the County of Santa Barbara Individual Artist Award for printmaking. He has been nominated for the Los Angeles based Friends of Contemporary Art’s FOCA Fellowship and the National Awards in the Visual Arts. He has been a lecturer and artist-in-residence at colleges and universities in California and the Midwest. Twice he has been asked to be a panelist for the National Endowment of the Arts in Washington, D. C. He is the director of the Atkinson Gallery, Santa Barbara City College and is married to the artist, Marie Schoeff.

The Santa Barbara Printmakers are a group of artists dedicated to promoting and produc ing art work that uses hand and press printing techniques for the purposes of artistic exploration and expression. Images by artists in this group have been made with printing processes that include: etching, monotype, woodblock, collagraph, linocut, clay, lithography and digital programming. Santa Barbara Printmakers provides exhibition opportunities several times a year, as well as information about printmaking activities in the Santa Barbara area via their website, blog and email list serve. Its membership encompasses both emerging and established artists.

www.sbprintmakers.com

I know February is a short month, but I still can’t believe it is time for 1st Thursday already.  The days are getting longer and (hopefully) warmer, so it should be a great night to get out to see some art. I will once again  be leading the Santa Barbara Arts Collaborative’s 1st Thursday Art Crawl to celebrate the evening. If you haven’t joined me on the Art Crawl yet, this is the perfect month to start. We will make our first stop in Mayor Helene Schneider’s office to congratulate the winners of “Art in the Mayor’s Office“. There were around 60 submissions for the contest, and as one of the judges I can tell you that there was lots of wonderful work to choose from, more than we could possibly fit in the office all at once.

From City Hall we’ll head up State Street, hitting a variety of arts venues to highlight the diversity of our local art scene.  Our tour will take the route outlined in the map below. I would love to have a huge crowd to bring into the Mayor’s office, so please join us at 5:30 this Thursday, March 3rd in de la Guerra Plaza, just outside City Hall.

Click on the image below to see a full-sized version of this map.  See you Thursday!