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SANTA BARBARA, Calif. — On Friday, November 20, La Cumbre Plaza will offer visitors something a little different from the usual gallery experience. Paintings will share space with elaborate floral creations, sculptures will find unexpected companions in flowers and foliage, and the galleries will come alive with music, dance, and artistic activity.
The occasion is the seventh anniversary of La Cumbre Center for Creative Arts (LCCCA), a community of Santa Barbara artists whose three galleries—Elevate, Fine Line, and Illuminations—have become spaces for exhibitions, creative exchange, and conversations about art.
For this anniversary, the Center is bringing together several artistic disciplines, with a special collaboration that may change the way visitors look at both art and flowers.
When Floral Designers Become Gallery Artists
One of the evening’s main attractions is Art to Blooms, a collaboration between LCCCA artists and members of Las Floralias, Santa Barbara’s established floral design organization.
Rather than arranging flowers simply to decorate the galleries, participating designers have been invited to choose works of art and create their own floral responses.
The process has brought painters, photographers, sculptors, and floral designers into conversations about color, form, scale, and composition. An abstract painting might suggest a surprising combination of flowers, while the shape of a sculpture could inspire a dramatic arrangement of branches and foliage.
The results will be displayed side by side, allowing visitors to discover the connections for themselves.
The concept takes inspiration from Bouquets to Art, the popular annual event at the Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco, but here it becomes a collaboration rooted in Santa Barbara’s own artistic community.
The participating visual artists include painters Danuta Bennett, Daniel Bollag, Rebecca Marie Redford Cruz, Toni Scott, and Brian Woolford; photographers Mark JungJohann, Joe Kirkland, and Rod Role; and sculptor Daniel Landman.
Floral designers from Las Floralias include Valerie Banks, Marie Dassler, Victoria Cooper, Carolyn Grenier, Maxine Jagiello, Gobind Khalsa, Margaret Lloyd, Cecily McGregor, Sandi Marotto, Suzy Pelovsky, Hetty Shurtleff, Deb Tedder, Chris Weigle, Brad Welles, and Cynthia Woo.
For visitors, the experience offers something unusual: a chance to see how one creative idea can take on an entirely different character when interpreted by another artist.
More Than an Art Walk
The anniversary celebration reaches beyond the floral collaboration.
At Fine Line Gallery, visitors can experience Towers of Light by Misa Art, an interactive installation incorporating light, sound, and vibration.
Other highlights include the BessDiscardia exhibition of several hundred assemblage sculptures at Voice Gallery, an exhibition by Legacy Arts Santa Barbara, and participation by Grace Fisher’s Inclusive Arts Clubhouse.
The evening’s program also includes live music by Goodland Jazz Group, dance performances by Selah Dance Company, and an Eco-Wonder Workshop.
Throughout the galleries, visitors can meet artists, explore different media, and discover work that ranges from painting and photography to sculpture and interactive installations.
The combination of exhibitions and performances makes the anniversary less a formal celebration and more an invitation to wander, explore, and encounter something unexpected.
A Place for Art to Happen
Seven years is a meaningful milestone for a creative center, particularly one built around the participation of local artists.
The anniversary highlights something that can easily be overlooked in a city with such a rich cultural life: art does not happen only in museums or established institutions. It also grows through smaller galleries, artist-led initiatives, and collaborations that bring people with different skills and perspectives together.
That community spirit is especially visible in this year’s celebration. Floral designers are working alongside painters, photographers, and sculptors. Performers and visual artists are sharing the same evening. Visitors are invited not just to observe but to take part in the conversations.
And for one evening, La Cumbre Plaza Gallery Row becomes a place where a painting might lead to a bouquet, a sculpture might inspire a new composition, and a casual gallery visit might turn into an unexpected discovery.
The LCCCA seventh anniversary celebration is free and open to the public. The floral design on this play through whole weekend November 21-22nd, noon to 5 pm
Featured collaborators:
Las Floralias — https://www.lasfloralias.com
LCCCA – https://lcccasb.com/
Event Information:
Art to Blooms — LCCCA 7th Anniversary
Date: Friday, November 20, 2026
Time: 5–8 p.m.
Floral design on display also on Saturday November 21 and Sunday, November 22, noon to 5PM
Location: La Cumbre Plaza
121 S. Hope Avenue
Santa Barbara, CA 93105
