art of the here & now
All in Santa Barbara
You might have passed it before. Succulent tendrils weaving in and out of semi-closed shutters, an unnerving doll head peering down from its perch on an ancient wooden ladder – is it an apartment? A bar? A voodoo church?
Dalia Garcia: I’m an Indigenous Mixteca from San Juan Mixtepec, Oaxaca. I have lived in Santa Maria for almost 20 years; and I’m the program director of the Museum of Contemporary Art Santa Barbara.
Narsiso Martinez: I’m from Oaxaca, from the Zapotec region, and I'm also an immigrant, and I make art.
The found photo—anonymous, frequently distressed, sometimes historical but often not, diverse in subject—is prime fodder for an artist’s imagination. One can project onto it much creative speculation as it is devoid of attribution or provenance. Regardless of subject matter or condition, re-contextualized, the object itself takes on new meaning.
Scattered around in the morning sunlight of Ken Bortolazzo’s Santa Barbara studio yard are a half dozen very tall, plant-like objects constructed out of lightweight stainless steel. Each stem is topped by two or three shapes, some almost transparent stainless mesh, that slowly move in the wind interacting with each other.
While in graduate school in Texas, California-born artist Evelyn Contreras studied the human-made landscape of her home state via the lens of the Internet. Then, when the COVID-19 pandemic limited her ability to travel back to Texas for a residency at the Rockport Center for the Arts, she reversed the direction of her digital gaze to Rockport’s post-Hurricane Harvey streetscapes from her desk in Santa Barbara. This virtual sojourn culminated in works featured at the Atkinson Gallery, Santa Barbara City College in 2022.
Something as rigid and heavy as copper does not often appear as the cornerstone of a conversation about movement, immigration and assimilation. But the connections that Mayela Rodriguez draws between the metal and her family show pieces of history lying just beneath the surface, ready to be excavated.
A cracked iPhone screen spells disaster for most people. For Kevin Clancy, it’s a moment of transformation.
All revolutions have the (un)fortunate side effect of altering much more than what they’ve initially set out to change. Whether we’re talking about a political act or a scientific breakthrough, a revolution begins with a magical act. What was previously seen as impossible, in a moment, is overcome. Spontaneous outbursts of mass movements (often accompanied by violence) cause major political upheavals, innovations in science and medicine cause humans to live longer or reach other planets, while artistic revolutions cause us to perceive and see in radically different ways. Revolutionary moments happen quickly. But their aftereffects can be felt for many years.
Alex Lukas, installation view, STNDRD, Granite City, Illinois, cut tarp, photographed by Sage Dawson/STNDRD
Mona Kuhn, 835 Kings Road, Installation view, Art, Design & Architecture Museum, University of California, Santa Barbara, photo by Tony Mastres
