Santa Barbara Studio Artists’ Open Studios Tour!

Visit the studios of these featured artists—and 20 more—during the Santa Barbara Studio Artists’ 21st Annual Open Studios Tour,

Labor Day Weekend, Sept. 3-5, 2022

This year’s Santa Barbara Studio Artists’ Open Studios Tour takes place Labor Day weekend, beginning with a reception from 5:00 – 8:00 p.m. on Friday, Sept. 2, at the Community Arts Workshop, 631 Garden Street (which is where tour maps are also available). Participating studios will be open from 11 a.m. – 5:00 p.m. on Saturday and Sunday; and 11 a.m. – 2:00 p.m. on Monday. Tickets are $25 (children under 12 free) and available at the Community Arts Workshop (during the tour weekend only), or online (www.santabarbarastudioartists.com). All ticket sales benefit the Alpha Resource Center of Santa Barbara and Slingshot Art Gallery, a non-profit organization whose mission is to empower individuals with intellectual and developmental disabilities (IDD) by supporting families, creating opportunities, and fostering belonging.

The two-day self-guided driving tour steers visitors to artists’ studios through the stunning back roads, charming neighborhoods and estates of one of the most beautiful coastal cities in the world. Tour guests discover an award-winning wonderland of landscape, contemporary, and figurative painting, as well as sculpture and assemblage.

This year’s featured artists are:

Danuta Bennett (https://www.danutabennett.com/) is a Polish-born artist specializing in expressive, evocative realism. Danuta’s work continually moves between abstract representations, surrealistic images, and realistic lines in her search for personal artistic vocabulary. Working predominantly in acrylics, oils, and pencils, she uses a minimalistic, nearly monochromatic palette that gives her painting a sense of unity. Her fascination with geometric aesthetics comes from her scientific background and early graphic design work. Danuta has a Ph.D. from Adam Mickiewicz University, Poznan, Poland, and was co-founder of the Aeolian Center for Psychotherapy and Creativity. Her professional work as a freelance graphic designer was featured in various scientific magazines. Currently, she is illustrating a psychology textbook about symbols.

Dorothy Churchill-Johnson (https://www.churchill-johnson.com/) has been a working artist in Santa Barbara since 1976. She is known for mural-size contemporary realist oil paintings, and her work has been collected by museums, major corporations, five-star hotels, and private collectors nationally and internationally.

Cheryl Doty (https://www.doty-art.com/), who studied at the American Academy of Art in Chicago and later founded her own signage and graphic design company, Doty and Associates. She grew the firm to include offices in Chicago, Seattle and Portland, Oregon, serving many industry design leaders such as Nike, Skidmore Owings and Merrill, advertising agency Leo Burnett, and the Seattle Art Museum. After 40 years, she sold the company to her employees and now travels the world for inspiration that is incorporated into her paintings, which include abstracts, portraits, still life, and figurative work.

Angela Ferraro (https://www.angelaferraro.com/) was classically trained in tennebrismo (light and shadow) oil technique in Italy. She has also studied watercolor, collage and printmaking and creates portraits, landscapes, still life, and assemblages. Her work has been exhibited in juried shows throughout southern California and is in many private collections.

Betsy Gallery (https://www.elizabethgallery.com/) is a mosaic artist who combines classical handmade Italian glass smalti and 24-karat gold tesserae with recycled porcelain, ceramics and found objects. Her formal art training began at the Art Institute of Chicago and continued in Madrid, Spain, as well as Ravenna and Venice, Italy. Her mosaics can be found in many public murals, as well as private collections in Santa Barbara, San Francisco, Marin County, and Madrid, Spain. She also has had work featured in the Society of American Mosaic Artists’ Traveling Mosaic “Quilt” 2004-2006, the SAMA exhibit at the Museum of Man in San Diego, 2009, and many local art shows and venues.

Rob Robinson (https://www.robrobinsonart.com/) is the grandson of the late Mildred Bryant Brooks, a prominent etcher of the early 1900s, and son of the late Frank Robinson, a respected Santa Barbara architect. He has painted in France, Spain, Italy, Mexico, Hawaii, and the American Southwest and is a long-time member of Santa Barbara Studio Artists, Santa Barbara Art Association, an associate member of Oil Painters of America and the Oak Group. His works have exhibited in the Corriden Gallery, Palm Loft Gallery, Devine Inspiration Gallery, Faulkner Gallery, Santa Barbara Fine Art Gallery, the Architectural Foundation of Santa Barbara, SBCC’s Atkinson Gallery, Channing Peak Gallery, and he was recently accepted as a landscape artist in the Gallery of Los Olivos.

Eric Saint Georges (www.ericsaintgeorges.com) was born in France, where he studied drawing and sculpture at the Ecole Nationale Supérieure des Beaux Arts in Paris, and then trained with famed French sculptor Petrus, from whom he learned the foundation of his clay technique. After a 35-year career in electrical engineering he returned to art full-time, focusing on charcoal, ink and watercolor drawings, and water-based clay for his sculptures, which he casts himself in bronze. He is represented by the Seager-Gray Gallery in Mill Valley, California, has participated in multiple exhibits in the San Francisco’s Arc Gallery, and his work is shown in the LCCCA Illumination Gallery and 10 West Gallery in Santa Barbara.

The complete list of participating artists also includes:

Wendy Brewer

Jane Hurd

Onno “Ron” Kok

Pamela Larsson-Toscher

Laurie MacMillan

Kimberly Pratt

Joan Rosenberg-Dent

Francis Scorzelli

Ann Shelton Beth

Susan Tibbles

Dorene White

Pamela Benham

Kevin Gleason

Francine Kirsch

Marilyn McRae

Cathy Quiel

Ann Sanders

Kerrie Smith

Marlene Struss

Gerry Winant