Santa Barbara Calendar of Events

Nominated for five Tony Awards including Best Score and Best Musical, The Wedding Singer brings the sweet and funny Adam Sandler-Drew Barrymore movie to heart-warming life as a wonderful new Broadway musical. When the guy who brightens up every wedding can't find true love himself, fate steps in and lends its musical hand. Three weddings, a bar mitzvah and a wild trip to a Vegas "Chapel of Love" keep things hopping in this affectionate look back at the 80s -- big hair and all. Songs: It's Your Wedding Day," "If I Told You," "Casualty of Love".

Today, too few people know of the Santa Barbara School of the Arts. Flourishing during the 1920s, the School brought together a pantheon of illustrious artists including Carl Oscar Borg, Edward Borein and Colin Campbell Cooper. Join Guest Curator Marlene Miller as she presents The Guiding Lights of this extraordinary institution.

California Calling: Works from Santa Barbara Collections, 1948 - 2008 Part I: July 18 - December 27, 2009 Part II: September 12 - December 20, 2009 Eclectic, inventive, anti-conformist… these are just a few of the widespread characterizations of artists who have lived and worked in the richest, most diverse, and most populous region in the United States since the end of World War II. California Calling is a two-part exhibition highlighting works from a selection of artists and movements in California from the past sixty years. Drawn from the Museum’s permanent collection and selected local collections, works included exemplify the distinctive vitality of art in the region and the significance of the SBMA as a venue for art on the West Coast.

Santa Barbara Museum of Art August/September 2009 Contact: Katrina Carl 805.884.6430 kcarl@sbma.net Noble Tombs at Mawangdui: Art and Life in the Changsha Kingdom (3rd Century BCE – 1st Century CE) September 19 - December 13, 2009 Originating from the Hunan Provincial Museum and organized by the China Institute in New York, this exhibition, traveling to the United Stated for the first time, highlights one of the most important archaeological excavations in China - the unearthing of Mawangdui, the tomb of the first lady and family of the Changsha Kingdom (died 168 BCE) in the Western Han dynasty (206 BCE-8 CE). The Santa Barbara Museum of Art will be the second and only west coast venue. This exhibition will include some of the finest and among the earliest extant lacquers, silks, paintings, calligraphy, and books. Through these various art works, the exhibition will also examine and reconstruct the art and culture of the Western Han dynasty, a formative period of Chinese culture and civilization, focusing on daily cuisine and drink, cosmetics and fashion, music and entertainment, healthcare and exercise, and the fascinating beliefs of the immortal world. The accompanying exhibition catalogue will be bilingual and published by the Hunan Provincial Museum.

The Santa Barbara Art Association will sponsor a benefit exhibit open to all local artists at Gallery 113, #8 in La Arcarda Court, 1114 State Street. Open daily 11-4:00, Sun 1-5:00. Opening Reception: Thursday, Nov. 5, 5-8:00. A percentage of proceeds from the ehxibit will benefit Domestic Violence Solutions, Santa Barbara’s only shelter for victims of domestic violence. Featured artists of the exhibit are urban landscape oil painter Patricia Chidlaw, and abstract printmaker Tony Askew. Raffle tickets for a basket donated by Saks Fifth Avenue may be purchased at the gallery.

Anthony Peres makes fine art photographs of landscape and architecture using traditional film and digital technologies. He also photographs for clients in the architecture, interior design, and motion picture industries. His architectural photographs have been featured publications of the Museum of Modern Art, The Frank Lloyd Wright Foundation, and Architectural Digest. He has been a principal contributor for David G. De Long’s Auldbrass: Frank Lloyd Wright’s Southern Plantation, and has co authored the monograph Robert Stacy-Judd with the late architectural historian David Gebhard.

Discover how ceramics were made, used and traded in early California with the newest exhibit at El Presidio de Santa Bárbara State Historic Park, Ceramics Rediscovered: Science Reshapes Understanding of Hispanic Life in Early California. Based on a decade-long investigation of ceramic production using archaeological evidence and scientific analysis, the exhibit offers a rare glimpse into daily life during California’s Spanish and Mexican periods (1769-1848). Featuring period artifacts and reproduction pottery, this groundbreaking exhibit traces the evolution of California’s earliest potters and the material culture they helped shape.

Mitchell Wright November 14, 2009 – January 17, 2010 The Reconstruction Wright’s drawings and paintings contemplate the romantic, evoking strong emotion as a source of aesthetic experience and placing emphasis on trepidation, horror, and awe. In his work, one can see inspirations from varied sources including art history (Caspar David Friedrich and Francisco Goya), literature (William Faulkner and Flannery O’Connor), and music (Neil Young). Mitchell Wright’s latest paintings were inspired by William Faulkner’s short story, Barn Burning. Relating this text to his own personal history, Wright creates images to understand how one’s sense of things is guided by their past and the importance of understanding when this is happening. This subject matter of buildings subsumed by flames has a particularly haunting and poignant read in the context of recent Santa Barbara fires and the tragedies that ensued.