WESTSIDE (AND OTHER) STORIES

Looks like gorgeous weather in store for this month's First Friday Art Tour. Downtown art venues will be hopping, as usual, from the Elijah Pfotenhauer show at Motiv to the Charles Prentiss exhibit at Artisans (those are Charles' luscious aloes, on the left); from paintings by Russel Brutsché at India Joze, to the Barbara Lawrence exhibit at Michaelangelo Gallery, to the multi-artist, mixed media LGBT Community Art & Pride show at Louden Nelson Center.

For something a little off the well-trodden art path, check out the art installation at Saffron & Genevieve by book artist Jody Alexander. Titled "The Odd Volumes of Ruby B.," the installation at the back of the store purports to be "the living and working space of fictional character Ruby B.," and features a variety of reconstituted books, wall hangings and various objets d'art crafted from textile, thread, and photo collages.

This month, there's even an opportunity to make your own 3-minute First Friday movie, the top three of which will be screened next week at the Santa Cruz Film Festival (details here).

And if you haven't already seen it (or even if you have; I'm planning to go again) don't miss the Big Creek Pottery show, going into its second month at the Museum of Art & History. Not only is this exhibit bursting with functional ceramics—vivid, playful, witty, and unique—from students and masters alike (that's a saucy little 1977 pitcher from Maestro John Glick, above), the show is also a time capsule of Santa Cruz cultural life in the 1970s, featuring 140 vintage photos from the heyday of Bruce and Marcia McDougal's fabled Big Creek Pottery School up Swanton Road. Drop in around 5:30 pm, and meet the MAH's brand spanking new Executive Director, Nina Simon.

But there's also some extra cool First Friday stuff going on on the west side. The R. Blitzer Gallery in the old Wrigley Building is hosting a massive show called EDGE: Art on the Westside. Curated by bronze sculptor Lila Klapman, the show features 16 local artists, all of whom live and work on the westside of town, including Barbara Downs, Andrea Rich, Jamie Abbott, Hildy Bernstein, Gloria Alford, Roy Holmberg, Andrew Purchin, and Susana Arias, among many others. Work includes painting, ceramics, steel sculpture, woodcuts, and various mixed-media, so there'll be plenty to see!

Then hike around to the other side of the Wrigley Building and trot upstairs to the Digital Media Factory, for the World Premiere of the pilot episode of Junk Art Scramble. Five weeks in the making, and countless hours of video footage later, Santa Cruz's own home-grown reality show, art competition, and experiment in creative green ecology is ready to be unveiled. (Read all about it here.) Will Team Cabrillo or Team Tannery walk away with the prize? Find out when highlights from the pilot episode air at 6 p.m., and at 8 p.m., Friday evening at the DMF. As an extra bonus, the art structures created by these two enormously talented teams will be on display as well, so prepare to be amazed. (And while you're there, check out the cool DMF facility itself, the best-kept secret in Santa Cruz.)

Need more of an art fix than even First Friday can provide? Come to beautiful midtown Live Oak this Mother's Day weekend, for the fourth annual Art & Chocolate Art Studio Tour. 12 neighborhood artists in nine venues will open their studios to the public 11 am to 5 pm, Saturday and Sunday, for this free event. What's the best part? Free chocolate will be available at every single venue on the tour!

Participating artists include abstract painter Beth Shields, figurative painter Richard Bennett, ceramic sculptors Geoffrey Nicastro and Carole DePalma, landscape painters Maggie Renner Hellman, Lou Renner, Amy Stark, and Paul Rodrigues, stone sculptor Mike McClellan, painter/collagist Myra Eastman, Janet Ferraro, painter of horses, and James Aschbacher, aka Art Boy. (Um, we haven't figured out what his painting style is called, but "fun" and "whimsical" most often spring to mind, as you can see by his "Cat Juggling," above.)

All nine studios are within a mile of each other here in Live Oak, for your viewing and sampling pleasure. So treat your mom, your kids, your sweetie, your BFF, or anyone else (including yourself) to an afternoon of dynamic art and tasty chocolate to satisfy your deepest inner cravings. (Click here for maps and info.)

TRASH INTO TREASURE

What's a reality show, an art competition, and a lesson in green ecology all rolled into one? The answer is "Junk Art Scramble," a new locally-grown, direct-to-web video series in which two teams of local artists are given ten days to create a piece of artwork entirely out of found scrap materials. It's all the brainchild of Ed Martinez, artist, entrepreneur, and environmental activist, who has two self-appointed missions in life: funding art in public schools, and making people aware of just "how much crap this society generates."

The project was launched last Friday evening with the taping of the first half of the initial episode at the vast and amazing Digital Media Factory, upstairs in the old Wrigley Building. This unbelievably enormous, open warehouse space, directly behind the R. Blitzer Gallery, is so huge, sections all around the periphery have been rented out for storage. But in the center of all the Costco-like shelves crammed with boxes, crates, equipment of dubious purpose, and god-knows-what-all else, you'll find the thriving DMF, a highly professional sound, video, film, and recording studio operated by veteran director/cinematographer Marty Collins and musician/ performer/producer Ginny Mitchell.

It was hurry up and wait on Friday as a half dozen technicians scurried on and off the soundstage, adjusting the three-camera set-up, mikes, teleprompters, and props. Then Martinez introduced the show to a small but enthusiastic audience, along with guest co-host, Kathleen Crocetti, multi-media art teacher extraordinaire, seamstress, and public art facilitator, who wore one of her signature gowns festooned with hundreds of shiny, cut-up and recycled CD discs, layered on like fish scales. (Similar to the one opposite; photo by Kyer Whilshire.) They explained the concept of the show, proclaimed their mantra ("Art is core curriculum!"), and put in a good word for the "reuse, recycle, re-purpose" (or "upcycle") movement as a means of saving our throw-away culture from its own junk.

Then it was time to bring out the contestants for this opening show. Team Cabrillo includes art instructors Jamie Abbott, Diane Patracuola, Geoff Caras, Oscar Netsil (aka Ron Baldwin), and student Brandon Burgess. Team Tannery consists of resident artists Kirby Scudder , Stephen Lynch, Art Pitts, Gayle Pitts and the single-named Maha. According to Martinez, their mission is modern-day "alchemy," not turning lead into gold, but turning scrap material into art, "trash into treasure." But, as in most reality TV shows, the competitors aren't allowed to just go do whatever they want. There's a theme challenge involved, and this week it was to visualize in junk art a poem by the late Morton Marcus, selected and read aloud by Mort's wife, Donna. The teams have 10 days to scavenge materials, design and create their art works. Next Sunday, the second half of the show will be taped, when the teams bring in their art pieces to be judged by Wallace Baine, Greg Archer and Chip.

With "Junk Art Scramble," Martinez hopes to put both the DMF and the Santa Cruz arts scene on the virtual map. Stay tuned for info on when the first episode will air online, and how you, too, can be a contestant on a future show.

(Ahead of his time, as usual, Art Boy made this wall piece in the Junk Art spirit a couple of years ago, from a well-used, discarded house-painter's brush we found on one of our walks. He added Sculpey, acrylic paint, five metal cork caps from champagne bottles, one champagne cork, and voila! Behold "Pops." He calls it a self-portrait.)