The geographic similarities between Santa Barbara county and Andalucia, Spain are uncanny. It is no surprise that Felipe de Neve and his band of missionaries and soldiers built the mother-of-all missions overlooking the ocean, in 1786. Here in Santa Barbara, the Californio culture was strong, marrying Spanish, Mexican and Indio traditions into one. But when the Mexican-American war broke in 1846, things began to change.
Perhaps in an unintended shift of cultural power, newly arrived anglo residents and artists - including Helen Hunt Jackson and her novel Ramona - portrayed a romantic bygone era of adobe missions, consigning early Hispanic culture to the past.
The Spanish remains of Santa Barbara however, and the local residents that still walk down its cobblestone streets, remind us of a not so distant past where California and the West were ruled by others.
Today, the Hamptons of Los Angeles are coming to terms with a shared common cultural history, with new experimental art venues such as the Santa Barbara Art Forum and the Santa Barbara Museum exploring ways in which artists and cultural producers are viewing the future.
Perhaps in an unintended shift of cultural power, newly arrived anglo residents and artists - including Helen Hunt Jackson and her novel Ramona - portrayed a romantic bygone era of adobe missions, consigning early Hispanic culture to the past.
The Spanish remains of Santa Barbara however, and the local residents that still walk down its cobblestone streets, remind us of a not so distant past where California and the West were ruled by others.
Today, the Hamptons of Los Angeles are coming to terms with a shared common cultural history, with new experimental art venues such as the Santa Barbara Art Forum and the Santa Barbara Museum exploring ways in which artists and cultural producers are viewing the future.
In her photographic work, Barbara Parmet addresses the degree to which witnessing remains the fundamental constitutive human act.
The Pacific Conservatory of the Arts is a professional resident theater company and a two-year vocational program.
Rachel Rossner, curator of "California Dreaming: Plein-Air Painting from San Francisco to San Diego," shares observations about the beginnings of the plein-air landscape painting movement in California.
For this edition of Around the Counties, Artbound columnist Charles Donelan answers five questions about the Santa Barbara County art scene.
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Know anyone who traded a high finance job for plein air painting? Probably not. But in Santa Barbara, one man did just that. Chris Potter is an everyday painter who paints every day.
Ryan Lovelace hand-builds surfboards, working with reverence to preserve and protect the power of surfing.
Started in 1990 as the reaction to cuts in the arts at the city's schools, a group of Santa Barbara parents started Art From Scrap. It functions as a teaching facility, a gallery, a store for reusable and new surplus art materials, and a community center, rolled into one.
A duo of artists, the Adler Brothers hustle to make ends meet in the underground, but also hang increasingly often in the upper echelons of international fine art.
By day, one can hear the sounds of pianos being fixed and practiced in Jim Connolly's piano repair shop and studio space in Santa Barbara. But at night, the space erupts with live entertainment.
Disco music was a space of reconciliation for many black homosexuals who experienced the Christian c
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In her photographic work, Barbara Parmet addresses the degree to which witnessing remains the fundam
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Noah Purifoy spent the final years of his life in Joshua Tree creating the monumental "Outdoor Deser
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After violence desolated the city center of Tijuana starting in 2007, artists and musicians began to
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Architecture/ Design
California becomes an international export by redefining the concept of city and home.
Community Arts
Through workshops, education and placed based projects, art is the connective tissue of a community.
Cultural Politics
Funding bubbles, cultural deserts and the politics of access to the arts in the 21st century.
Film & Media Arts
At the shadow of the entertainment industry, video artists and underground filmmakers take a stand.
Literature
Noir, sunshine and dystopia create a multi-ethnic narrative that is read, watched and admired around the globe.
Multi-Disciplinary
Multi-hyphenate works that combine disciplines, remix dogmas, and reinvent the wheel.
Music
A dialogue between cultures, the music of our state serves up the California dream like no other artform.
Visual Arts
Breaking away from the European and New York vanguard, California reinvents the art world.
