Entering Santa Barbara Art Studios is leaving the industrial section of town and walking into a perfumed and quiet cocoon-a shrine to imagination. The exhibitions aim to give expression to the commonplace in an exceptional manifestation: photos of the undersides of leaves, faces caught out of focus, boats listing haphazardly in the waves.
A meeting about Venoco’s slant drilling proposal drew nearly 130 people to Carpinteria City Hall on 7/30. Most speakers said
VIVA LA M’SICA: Summertime in Santa Barbara is delineated by several tidy, perennial punctuators, tied to the calendar and to events. We get a seasonal harbinger with Memorial Day, otherwise known as the weekend that I Madonnari descends on the Old Mission parking lot in its artful chalky glory. Summer Solstice wends and slithers its way up State Street, marking the official arrival of summer, and July 4th rears its less flamboyant head soon after.
My first experience hearing flamenco guitar was at Malibu Beach in 1960. While sitting on the sand watching the surf and strumming the few chords I knew on a Tijuana guitar, a dark, suave fellow majestically appeared. “Hola, I am Arnoldo from Sevilla, Espa±a,” he said. “Por favor, may I play for you a little flamenco?” “Fantastic,” I told him, though I didn’t know a flamenco from a flamingo.
Born and raised here on the Central Coast, this year’s Honorary Vaquero Bob Williams traces his roots back to his ranching family’s migration to Nipomo in the 1870s. A childhood spent raising sheep and cattle on the Wybrant Ranch in Nipomo for the area’s Future Farmers of America club led Williams to a profession in cattle feeding.
In related Zaca news, officials completed their investigation last week of the incident that sparked the fire on 7/4. An
Set on Highway 57 between Frogs Level and Smyrna, North Carolina, Pump Boys and Dinettes celebrates the sassy self-possession of rural service station employees and diner waitresses everywhere. The show was written by a working band and is performed concert-style, with all the pump boys playing instruments and both dinettes singing.
One of the brightest aspects of 21st-century pop culture is the ongoing dissolution of genre boundaries. Crossovers are so common, and the demand for strong material is so insistent, that the old questions about where to file something-as in “Is this pop, soul, or R&B?”-just don’t get asked very often anymore. Bobby Caldwell, who will play the Lobero next Thursday, August 9, ought to be the subject of a dissertation on category blending.
As a child prodigy violinist, Endre Balogh remembers playing solos onstage at the Lobero with the Santa Barbara Symphony when he was eight years old. He then became an acclaimed chamber musician and accomplished soloist, but now he’s a fine-art photographer. Now’s your chance to see his work, which hangs all summer at the Karpeles Manuscript Library on Anapamu Street. The museum is free, so check it out today.
Listing of Fiesta Events
