This Week on the Central Coast…
Monterey County continues to show off its local art while Santa Cruz blends art and science together for a unique approach to climate change.
Monterey
Monterey History and Art Association is bringing back local art
The nonprofit Monterey History and Art Association (MHAA) calls the Stanton Center on Custom House Plaza its home. When the building was constructed in 1992, there was an agreement to make it a museum which featured local history and art in exchange for $1 rent. Instead, the group transitioned to showing a collection of Salvador Dali art as well as featuring magic shows in order to attract more visitors.
Unfortunately, the County Assessor’s Office ruled that because they charged an entrance fee, the MHAA would have to pay full property taxes. On top of that, the plan didn’t actually pull in a significant amount of visitors.
Now, after polling members, the MHAA is preparing to transition back to its roots and feature local history and art again. “The organization is now rebranding the site as ‘Monterey History and Art at Stanton Center.’”
The Dali art is being replaced with “ artwork of mostly local scenes by Armin Hansen and Paul Whitman”. The theater will show plays by New Canon Theatre Co. as well as feature history lessons.
A Carmel local is shaking up photography at the Monterey Museum of Art
The Monterey Museum of Art has begun a new exhibition called “Constructing the Photograph: Susan Hyde Greene and Diane Pierce”. Greene is a Carmel local who takes the unique approach of cutting and stitching photos to create a photography quilt. She owes this technique to her family, which has a tradition of meeting to sew together. All the pieces she is showing at the museum are of flowers, which she says is a tribute to her late husband. “I never considered photographing flowers before. They represent life and beauty that ends.”
Pierce lives in the Bay Area and also approaches photography differently. Her work uses “leftovers from the artist’s process”, such as safety pins and packaging paper. She starts every piece on a small tabletop, then photographs the fragile structures several times to immortalize them.
The exhibition will be on display until April 16.
Santa Cruz
UCSC is helping to develop a new interactive ocean project
The Center for the Study of the Force Majeure at UCSC is helping to develop a new project called Sensorium. Sensorium will debut in 2024 at UC Irvine. The project is described as a work of art and science. “Visitors are encouraged to interact with it, ask it questions, listen to its voiced response, hear its challenges, and discover fresh new insights for ocean recovery solutions.” Sensorium will be presented in the Allosphere at UC Santa Barbara, an immersive room that allows visitors to be almost fully engaged with the content around them (follow the link for a YouTube video showing what it can do).
UCSC’s Center for the Study of the Force Majeure focuses on planning for challenges that may occur in the next 50 to 100 years. For example, at the Arboretum, teams are propagating plants inside of a dome set to the predicted temperature in 50 years, which is an increase of 3 to 4 degrees Celsius.
Sensorium was originally conceived by Newton Harrison, a former professor at UCSC and UCSD and founder of the Center for the Study of the Force Majeure. Newton Harrison died recently in 2022, though the project was the “capstone of (his) career and life.”