A Quick Guide to the Visual Arts in Santa Cruz
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A Path to the Pixels
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Sights and Sites in Santa Cruz

Quick Guide to the Visual Arts in Santa Cruz

Art Museum	The Museum of Art and History, 705 Front Street, Santa Cruz.  Museums specializing in other fields also have art exhibits.	www.santacruzmah.org
Sponsoring Organizations	Cultural Council of Santa Cruz County.  Events include Primavera auction and Open Studios.	www.ccscc.org
	Santa Cruz City Arts Commission.	Search on name.
	Other arts commissions or councils: Aptos, Capitola, Scotts Valley & Pajaro Valley Arts Council in Watsonville.	www.aptoschamber.com www.svchamber.org Search on Capitola Art and Culture Commission
Arts Center	Tannery Arts Center. The City of Santa Cruz has purchased an 8-acre site from Salz Leathers near the intersection of Highways 1 and 9.  Though monies still must be raised, plans call for performance, studio, and gallery spaces, offices for non-profits, below-cost artist housing, as well as retail stores.  Demolition of some tannery buildings began early in 2006; the complex may be completed by 2010.	www.tanneryartscenter.org
Announcements	Good Times	www.gtweekly.com
	Metro Santa Cruz subscribes to a searchable Bay Area site for arts and entertainment.	www.metroactive.com
	Friday Guide Section in Santa Cruz Sentinel	www.thesentinelguide.com
Artists' Organizations	Santa Cruz Art League: site has links to members' sites.	www.scal.org
	Santa Cruz Mountains Art Center: site has links to members' sites	www.mountainartcenter.org
Classes	In addition to the art schools listed in the yellow pages:  Cabrillo College, UCSC, Santa Cruz Adult Education, S.C. City Parks and Recreation offer classes.  Artists affiliated with the artists' organizations offer a great variety of classes.  The Attic and MichaelAngelo Gallery/Studios also provide models.
Artists' Studios	Open Studios, the first three weeks in October, is the biggest event.  The yearly map shows the distribution of studios.  There are clusters on River Street (MichaelAngelo Studios), 17th Avenue, and on Mission Street near Swift and in the ArtWork studios on Swift.	www.ccscc.org/openstudios.htm www.michaelangelogallery.com
	Splat! Art Tour, Maps and Artist Guide for studios of 28 painters in Santa Cruz and Aptos, 4-5 June 2005	www.splatarttour.com
Photographers	Many photographers do not belong to the artists' organizations.  You can locate some of the landscape and nature photographers through Prism Photographics.  Their site does not provide links, but the calendar (Santa Cruz on the Monterey Bay Wall Calendar) lists them and their websites.  A few well-known photographers, for instance, Franz Lanting, a noted National Geographic contributor, can best be located through their websites.	www.prismphotographics.com www.lanting.com
Galleries:TOURS	The Santa Cruz Institute for Contemporary Art (SCICA) and The Attic sponsor a First Friday Gallery Walk from 5-8 PM.  Meet at the Attic at 5.	www.theatticsantacruz.com www.scica.org
Galleries:	Santa Cruz Art League and Santa Cruz Mountains Art Center (Ben Lomond) host many exhibitions every year.  In Watsonville, see the Pajaro Valley Arts Council and Gallery.	www.scal.org www.mountainartcenter.org
	Aptos, Ben Lomond, Boulder Creek, Capitola, Moss Landing, Santa Cruz and Watsonville have commercial galleries.  See the Attic's site for links to galleries that open for their Art Walk.  The Artisans' Gallery, Made in Santa Cruz (Santa Cruz) and Many Hands Gallery (Capitola and Santa Cruz) handle a number of local artisans and artists.	www.theatticsantacruz.com
College Galleries	Cabrillo College Gallery Eloise Pickard Smith Gallery at Cowell College, UCSC The Sesnon Art Gallery at Porter College, UCSC.  They operate on academic schedules.
EXHIBITION VENUES	Many private and public institutions give artists opportunities to exhibit in their spaces.  Some calls for artists are circulated by artists' organizations or announced in newspapers, but artists usually must seek out the sponsors. Though Metroactive and others list sites, few of the organizations can be contacted directly online.  The Santa Cruz County Bank (Santa Cruz, Scotts Valley & Watsonville) does have a site.	www.metroactive.com www.sccountybank.com/art.cfm
Festivals	Many festivals combine art with wine, food, and/or music.  Boulder Creek Art, Wine, and Music Festival on Memorial Day weekend includes a juried exhibit.	www.bcba.net
	Bargetto Winery in Soquel sponsors art/wine events on Memorial Day weekend, a Fine Arts Festival in July, and Art in the Cellars in December.	www.bargetto.com
	Art in the Park, in early June at the S.C. Memorial Park benefits the Hospice Caring Project and includes a "Photos in the Park" contest.
	Vintners' Festival, Silver Mountain Winery, first two weekends in June at various locations.	www.SCMWA.com
	Strawberry Festival & Art Fair, early June at Calvary Episcopal Church, S.C.	www.calvarysantacruz.org
	Mountain Art Guild's (Los Gatos)Annual Art and Wine Festival tales place in June in various locations.	www.mountainartguild.org
	Art on the Wharf, July 17, 2005.  Sponsored by S.C. Parks and Recreation Dept. & S.C. Wharf Association.	www.santacruzwharf.com
	Cabrillo Art, Food and Wine Festival takes place the first weekend in August at 307 Church Street, SC	426-6966
	Scotts Valley Art and Wine Festival takes place August 12-13, 2006.  For information, consult the Chamber of Commerce	www.scottsvalleychamber.com
	Capitola Art and Wine Festival, 10-11 September 2005, Capitola Village	www.capitolachamber.com/artwine.html

A Path to Pixels: a digital journey

Digital is not inferior to film photography. Because it is a sufficiently distinct medium, we must learn to think and see differently, two things that always go together. We could begin by saying what it is and what it isn't. From the point of view of a black-and-white darkroom photographer, digital lacks three salient features: 1. wide range of values from velvety blacks to glistening whites, with seemingly hundreds of grays in between; 2. tactile feeling of the thick layers of silver crystals on heavy paper; 3. filtration of a single film stock, which like a certain viewpoint, lends character and unity to a picture. One's eyes enjoy moving over and around the sculptural surfaces of such photos.     Digital photos look flat, mechanical, and overly--and irrelevantly--detailed from that perspective. But they have at least four advantages: 1. thousands of pixels of complex information spread over the entire surface of an image, not seemingly center-weighted as in traditional compositions; 2. an astounding amount of detail; 3. possibilities of subtle color variations beyond the wildest dreams of an Impressionist painter; 4. oppotunities to shoot ridiculously difficult subjects that would overwhelm even Ansel Adams's zone system. Because digital cameras are so literal, they see each and every part of a field with more consistency than a film camera.     I think there are several ways to explore these possibilities: 1. to compose with classic, depth-of-field compositions, creating compositional depth to balance the flatness; 2. to provide a clear and perhaps dramatic structure to counterbalance the sheer amount of detail; 3. to look for compex areas of subtle color and color shifts so that the result is more like a painting, in which the eye can wander across the surface, feasting on details as well as color nuances. 4. (continuing to think about the possible painterly qualities, instead of paint texture) to create patterns, preferably ones consisting of light and transparency, as subjects of a picture, 5. to experiment with complex compositions to put all those 16-bit pixels to work.    Perhaps I like digital because I have always liked color, architectural or abstract geometry, as well as reflective, watery, or complicated surfaces. But I think as I have followed my inclinations, I have produced more interesting images and thus begun to understand the possibilities of digital.    As a color photographer there are obviously collateral advantages: for decades I watched my beloved color slides, prints and negatives lose their cyan layers and fade into comic nothingness. I trust digital will lead to more reliable ways to preserve and accurately reprint color. Many of us who were devoted to color turned in desperation to black-and-white, but now it is not self-defeating to invest time and energy in color. We don't have to settle for the limited primaries of Kodachrome film that I associate with Doris Day movies. And digital files print more easily than transparencies or at least they are easier to interpret in print. Needless to say, we can find novel ways to show our photos, as on this website. For me, digital is the first real revolution in color photography and I think the place to be is on the barricades.

Contact me:  [email protected].  Let me know what I should add to the quick art guide or if you would like to have a link on this site.

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