ARTS + LETTERS

It can't possibly be March already, but the next First Friday Art Tour is right around the corner.

All the usual suspects and venues will be participating in this Friday's event. You can start at the Felix Kulpa Gallery, at the south end of downtown, with a group exhibit of ceramic sculpture featuring the masterful work of Coeleen Kiebert and a selection of her students and disciples, among them Sharon Bosley, Kathleen Pouls, Bill Scoble, and Peggy Snider.


Pop into Hula's Island Grill for the witty graphic art of recent Gail Rich Award winner Steve Hosmer. (Here's one of his many cool Boardwalk images.)

 Visit Chris Miroyan's fanciful, colorful neo-folk paintings with a sophisticated twist in her "Put A Bird On It" show at Artisans Gallery. (That's her piece, "Tweet," above.) Then work your way to the north end of town to Art DuJour for an exhibit of book-inspired work by artist Mary Atkinson and famed book artist Felicia Rice, proprietor of the amazing  Moving Parts Press.

And speaking of books, plan to stop in at the Museum of Art and History between 5 and 6 pm for a "live launch" of a new literary venture. "phren-Z" is a quarterly online e-zine created as a venue for the work of local writers. The first issue is up online as we speak, featuring essays, poetry and fiction by the likes of Gary Young, Carolyn Burke, Paul Skenazy, and Wallace Baine, among others.

The e-mag is the opening salvo from the newly-minted Santa Cruz Writes. Founded by local writers Julia Chiapella, Karen Ackland, and Jory Post, the group hopes to foster a sense of community among the many and varied literary types who call Santa Cruz home.

Another way to get the word out about SCW is what they call the Floodlight Feature, a combined real and virtual "illumination" of a local writer, event or topic of interest to the writing community. At the MAH this Friday, the Floodlight will shine on the late poet Morton Marcus, his work and legacy.

As part of the phren-Z launch, local poets and readers will be reading from Marcus' poems. And get this: as an extra bonus, every single person who shows up at the event will receive a FREE copy of Mort's engrossing memoir, Striking Through the Masks, through the generosity of the Capitola Book Company and Ow Family Properties. A specially created broadside of Mort's poem, "That's What You Write About," from C&C Press, will also be given away as a door prize.

Arts, letters, and free books—what's not to love?

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.)

FRIDAY FRESH

Lion or lamb, March has snuck in while we weren't looking, and that means it's already time for another First Friday Art Tour. As always, there are venues as far afield as Harvey West (the Michaelangelo Gallery, featuring printmaker Robynn Smith), UCSC ( a closing night reception for the retrospective of the work of painter/printmaker Geoff Morten at the Porter Faculty Gallery, and Chip Lord's "Public Spaces" exhibit at the Sesnon), and the Davenport Gallery (the collective, mixed-media show, "Our Oceans").

But now that the days are getting perceptively longer (she says hopefully), FFAT is a great opportunity for local artists, art lovers, and schmoozers to reconnect with our downtown and see what's new. Local favorites showing downtown this month include James Aschbacher (aka Art Boy), showing his folk art-inspired mixed media on wood paintings at Artisans Gallery (above), Jane Gregorius, with a series of mixed-media monoprints from her "Church Series" at Lulu Carpenter, and Coeleen Kiebert's expressive clay sculpture at Felix Kulpa. This is also the last week to catch the excellent Clay and Glass show at the MAH.

What's extra fresh for this month? How about local childrens' art on view at two downtown locations. Over at L'Atelier Salon, on the corner of Pearl Alley, check out mixed media artwork from the students at Westlake Elementary K-12. The piece above is uncredited, but boy, do I love it! There's nothing like a kid with a paintbrush (or some torn colored paper) to capture the pure joy of self expression.

Then take a short stroll down to Louden Nelson Center to see work from the students at Mission Hill Middle School. Teacher, artist, activist, and one-woman dynamo Kathleen Crocetti presides over the art department at Mission Hill, and she's always dreaming up exciting new things for her students to do. This show is called Machines of Memory Boxes, featuring student artwork inspired by the work of Joseph Zirker, which was shown at the MAH last fall.

Finally, the new downtown offices of Cruzio (in the building formerly known as the Sentinel) is open for business and participating in FFAT for the first time. Five artists affiliated with the UCSC Digital Arts and New Media MFA program are staging a tech-based installation (sound, light, video and sculpture) in the Cruzio workshop for a First Night "interactive artistic experience." Okay, fine, but if you're like me, you just want to know what's been going on in that space for the last two years. Will some vestigial spirit of the old Sentinel printing press come thrumming through the fiberoptics into the new media? Drop in 5-9 pm Friday night and pick up the vibe.

WHAT'S THE STORY?

Okay, it took us a couple of months to catch up with the clay and glass show at the MAH, but, boy, is it worth seeing. Presented upstairs in the Solari Gallery, this selection of work from members of the Association of Clay and Glass Artists of California (ACGA) offers a compelling and inspirational assortment of pieces from both statewide and local artists. Work on view ranges from vessels and vases to totems and installations, with every conceivable kind of abstract, figurative, functional, and sculptural artwork in between.

Me, I'm drawn to the figurative, as you probably know by now if you read my posts on Zimbabwe sculpture and other recent art shows. Maybe it's the storyteller in me, but in 3D art as well as painting, I like threading my way through the implied narrative when figures take center stage. So pardon my bias, but the most exciting discovery for me at the ACGA show is Bay Area ceramicist Fred Yokel. His sly, whimsical sculptural vignette, "The Build," is the highlight of the show for both Art Boy and me. It was love at first sight; one look, and our eyes were bugging out of our heads like a Tex Avery cartoon.

In this piece, a monumental human form is being constructed out of stone blocks by four or five small worker drones; they're still bustling about the litter of blocks at its feet, trying to fill in the last couple of open spaces in the form. Are they constructing a man-shaped temple to their god? A ceremonial effigy? A Trojan Man? It's all in the perspective. I like to think of these little guys as a person's various inner selves, caught in the act of assembling the complete individual, the sum of all their parts. Or not. That's the cool thing about art, it's open to endless interpretations. Feel free to make up your own.

Evidently, Yokel is well known for a series he calls "Jestures," playful figures of monumental-seeming proportions, yet small format (the central character in "The Build" is only about two feet tall) in expressive poses. Yokel's other piece in the MAH show, the delightful "Woody: Ancient Artifact," captures this spirit, a breezy little character brilliantly textured and painted to resemble carved wood.

I've rhapsodized about local clay artists Coeleen Kiebert and Peggy Snider before; both of them have dynamic pieces in the show. So does Tom Wolver, whose "Contemplation" features a brooding "Thinker"-like character with a typically Wolverian, jackal-headed demon laughing over his shoulder.

Among other intriguing out-of-town artists I "discovered" at this show is Natasha Dikareva. I love her "Shell Dweller" (above) with its poignant little human face emerging from the organic cocoon of the shell. I was also drawn to Vicki Gunter's "The Reading Chair," an evocative ceramic representation of a stuffed, saggy old armchair covered in flowered chintz. The object itself is one thing, but the story that goes with it (written out in the artist's attached note), about memories of the old family chair she crawled into as a child to hear stories, completes the narrative in the most fitting way—with the written word. Another piece I found weirdly haunting was "Legerdemain," by Charlene Doiron Reinhart, which celebrates the idea of sleight-of-hand with four tiers of digits unfolding from each other like the petals of a rose. (Don't forget to peek around at the back of this piece for the punch line.)

This is just a teeny, tiny sampling of the work on view at the MAH show. (And by the way, I think it's great that the MAH now regularly features local artists in its exhibits, after so many years as mainly a venue for traveling art shows from elsewhere. Big kudos to Susan Hillhouse and her staff for finding ways to bring both local artwork and traveling shows to the party.) No matter what your personal bias, there's much to inspire you here. The ACGA show runs through March 13, so there's still plenty of time to go get the story.

FIRST FIRST FRIDAY

Looks like clear skies for the first First Friday Art Tour of the new year. In honor of the (slowly) returning sun (hey, technically the days ARE getting longer, although you'd never know it at about 5:30 on a pitch-black January evening), why not take a stroll around town for a sunny afternoon of art in unexpected places. Or head out this evening and hit the receptions, where many venues are sure to offer wine, live music, and/or little nibbly things.

Joining traditional venues like the Santa Cruz Art League (its current show is "This Is Santa Cruz: local artists interpret what Santa Cruz means to them," where I got this uncredited image), the Felix Kulpa Gallery (15 neon artists), and the MAH (exhibits include work from the Association of Clay and Glass Artists of California, photographer Lawrie Brown, and miniature trains), you'll find art shows in banks, cafes, shops and boutiques all over the place, from the Eastside to the Westside to Davenport. From "The Masculine Series" of photographs by Midori at Pure Pleasure, to Neno V. Villamor's "Cycles of the Feminine Self," relief sculptures in handmade paper at Camouflage. Get all the info here.

And don't forget to drop by the R. Blitzer Gallery in the old Wrigley building for the closing night reception for the Art For Art exhibit. Remember, 20% of art sales from this show go to benefit the Santa Cruz Artists' Assistance and Relief Fund (SCAARF) to aid local artists experiencing a career-threatening emergency. Get there early to really appreciate the size and scope of this epic new gallery space. Maybe I'll see you there!