The ‘Santa Barbara Independent’ Rings In 40 Years of Covers with Faulkner Gallery Exhibition

Thursday night marked the opening of Covering 40 Years, an exhibition featuring 150 Independent covers spanning the four decades of newspapers that hit Santa Barbara’s newsstands every week. 

“We are so thankful to be able to share stories, your stories,” said Independent publisher Brandi Rivera addressing the crowd just shy of 100 people at the Santa Barbara Public Library’s Faulkner Gallery.

The room was a buzz of S.B. Independent writers, photographers, art directors, and editors, both past and present, as well as friends of the Indy and members of the public who enjoyed a walk down memory lane, both of the paper and of Santa Barbara history. 

“This day is about the art directors, photographers, and illustrators,” said Marianne Partridge, the paper’s cofounder and Editor in Chief. There will be more events to come throughout the year to celebrate the rest of the staff members that play a crucial role in getting the news out daily. 

Countless hours of work went into curating this show. Marketing and Promotions Administrator Richelle Boyd spent many of those hours with Partridge and Rivera poring over the more than 2,000 editions of the paper that have been published since 1986. Using a textbook scanner at Santa Barbara City College, Boyd and Business Operations and Accounting Manager Erin Lynch painstakingly digitized the 150 covers that were selected for display. Every cover from 2006 or later has a QR code guests can scan to read the cover story from that issue.

“Everything that’s important to Santa Barbara and Santa Barbarans, we wanted to make sure we had covered in the show,” said Boyd.

Santa Barbara local Rodney Guevara has been a reader since the beginning. “Almost every issue, I get,” he said. 

Pointing to covers on the wall, Guevara said he keeps copies of the paper in envelopes, protected from sunlight and damage. “The people that I know in the cover, I try to have them sign my copy,” Guevara said, noting he has barber Willie Rodriguez and reporter John Palminteri’s signature in his collection.

Tanya Spears Guiliacci, office manager and a fixture of the Independent since 1988, reminded the crowd that despite fire and floods, “the Independent has never not put out an issue.”

“It was so overwhelming to see the work that’s been done by so many people,” said Partridge. “I am so grateful to you all.”

The Faulkner Gallery will be displaying the exhibition until May 31 and is open to the public daily. Gallery hours are Monday through Thursday, 10 a.m. to 7 p.m.; Friday and Saturday, 10 a.m. to 5 p.m.; and Sunday from noon to 5 p.m.