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Charles Donelan

Charles Donelan has lived in Santa Barbara since 2001. He writes about visual art, music, theater, and books for the Santa Barbara Independent, where he is the arts editor. Prior to his arrival in Santa Barbara, Donelan lived in New York City, where he earned his Ph. D. in English at Columbia University while pursuing his lively interest in New York's wide variety of cultural offerings, from the Metropolitan Opera and the Museum of Modern Art to the Mudd Club. Donelan has at various times been employed as an elevator operator at the nightclub Danceteria, a visiting professor of Literature at Tufts University, the Director of New Media at the National Thoroughbred Racing Association, and an exercise rider for polo ponies in Millbrook, New York. He enjoys Santa Barbara's extravagant ratio of cultural opportunities to minutes in the day, and looks forward to helping artbound become a leading source for great stories about the arts in Southern California.

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Poetry in Action: Julie B. Montgomery's Zen Paintings
Carpinteria-based artist Julie Montgomery's landscape paintings retain the compositional integrity one ordinarily associates with pure abstraction.
The Knife of the Artist: Painter Chris Baker and the Art of Imitation
Chris Baker transcribes large versions of classic paintings, employing a palette knife on a painting's wet surface to "activate" the image.
The Odyssey Project: Transforming Lives of Incarcerated Youth Through Theater
The Odyssey Project pairs UCSB College students with young men from a minimum security detention facility to recreate Homer's "The Odyssey."
Santa Barbara's Chromatic Gate Restored
Santa Barbara celebrates the restoration of the large rainbow-colored sculpture dedicated to the artists of the town.
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California Dreams: Edwin Deakin's Mission Paintings
Edwin Deakin created beautifully harmonious and understated studies of the missions of California in the final years of the 19th century.
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Barbara Parmet's Fine Art Photojournalism
In her photographic work, Barbara Parmet addresses the degree to which witnessing remains the fundamental constitutive human act.
California Dreaming and the Car Painters of the SoCal Landscape
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.
Parry Gripp: From Nerf Herder to Meme Master
Santa Barbara musician Parry Gripp is the man behind some of the web's biggest memes.
The New Noise of Santa Barbara
Santa Barbara's annual New Noise Music Festival and Conference aims to grab a chunk of the music festival circuit from bigger acts like Coachella and South By Southwest.
Santa Barbara's Funk Zone Plays Itself
"Focus on the Funk Zone," the one day public event that occurred on October 6, offered the city's artists multiple spaces in a burgeoning neighborhood to make and display their work.
Mario Ybarra Jr., Recollected Robot Toy Collection, 2012,
Mario Ybarra, Jr. The Tío Collection
Mario Ybarra, Jr. exhibits his work The Tío Collection riffing on childhood memories rather than high-culture aesthetics, and filling the gallery space with artifacts that Ybarra discovered in the homes of his uncles.
Art from Office Supplies? The Émigré Experience of Peter Meller
Artist Peter Meller represents a fascinating and nearly lost chapter in the epic story of the European intelligentsia who moved to Southern California to escape Nazism and World War II.
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