SOTA - Issue 3, September-October 2007

Endless Summer begins free outdoor Starlight Cinema series on Sept 15

The public is invited to bring family, neighbors and friends - along with warm clothing, blankets and picnics - to the new "Starlight Cinema" series on three Saturday nights during September and October. The free film series will be projected onto a giant 20'x 30' inflatable screen outdoors in three different parks throughout the City. Classic cartoons and fun activities will precede each feature beginning at dusk.

"Outdoor movie screenings have become popular in many cities around the country," said City of Ventura Cultural Affairs Manager Kerry Adams Hapner. "Programming films with special appeal to families and young people is a great way for the arts to build a sense of community, neighborhood by neighborhood, and encourage the public use of our city's beautiful park system."

Endless Summer

Sat., Sept. 15 at Plaza Park (Chestnut St. and Thompson Blvd.)

Celebrate the Aloha Festival with the granddaddy of all surfing documentaries! Local filmmaker Bruce Brown's classic epic follows two young surfers around the globe in search of the perfect wave. Woody car owners, we're reserved park-side parking for you to show off your ride! Sponsored by the Downtown Ventura Organization.

Grease Sing-a-long

Sat., October 6 at Barranca Vista Park (7050 E. Ralston St.)

Join Danny, Sandy and the dancing teens of Rydell High in "You're the One That I Want" and all the other great rock 'n' roll tunes of this movie musical that inspired High School Musical! Come early for pre-film '50s themed contests and activities.

Creature from the Black Lagoon

Sat., Oct. 27 at Ventura Community Park (901 S. Kimball Rd.)

The most infamous black-and-white monster movie of all time with its hair-raising soundtrack is a great way to celebrate the spooky season! Costume contest and classic cartoons precede the film!

All films start at dusk. Alcohol, pets, umbrellas or grilling are not allowed. There are no rain dates - bad weather cancels the event. Wave Broadband, Time Warner and Cumulus Broadcasting (B95, KVEN, the Boomer, KHAY and the Vibe) are Starlight Cinema's media sponsors.

For more information, see the pdf flyer or call (805) 658-4768.

Letter from Cultural Affairs Manager Kerry Adams Hapner

What is the public value of the arts?

The arts make us complete human beings," Dana Gioia, National Endowment for the Arts (NEA) Chairman, said to a group of arts leaders at a California Arts Council conference earlier this year. A simply stated truth. Arts experiences transport and transform – we can all recall such a pivotal experience. Pleasure, experimentation, confidence, better learning skills, and enhanced communication skills are just a few of the "intrinsic" values of the arts, or benefits to the individual that spill over into the public realm.

Often referenced as "instrumental," the public value of the arts reverberates socially, economically, aesthetically, and academically. Our collective experiences, whether at the Ventura ArtWalk or the Ventura Music Festival, create social capital, a sense of community, and social bonds. Arts participation also builds civic engagement. According to a 2006 NEA Study on arts participation and civic engagement, Americans involved in the arts are more likely to partake in a wealth of civic and social activities. Another social benefit is the public dialogue that the arts catalyze: how do we want to define ourselves as a community, our history, and our future?

Ventura's policy of investing in the arts has paid off. The growth of the cultural community has resulted in a direct local economic impact. Ventura's art industry creates $18.6 million in economic activity annually. Since 1994, the cumulative operating budgets of organizations that present programs in the Downtown Cultural District alone have grown from $500,000 to $4.9 million. Cultural tourism is the fasting growing segment of the tourism sector. In Ventura, cultural tourists on average spend $80.55 per person per day, significantly higher than the average visitor who spends $62.13 per day. Cultural tourists stay a day longer than the average visitors.

The newly released Creative Industries study from the national arts advocacy group Americans for the Arts reports that the City of Ventura has 370 arts-related businesses which employ a total of 1,068 people. The creative industries are composed of arts-centric businesses that range from nonprofit museums, symphonies, and theaters to for-profit film, architecture, and advertising companies. These businesses drive the information economy - the fastest growing segment of the nation's economy. They employ people, spend money locally, generate government revenue, and are a cornerstone of tourism and economic development. "Creativity has emerged as the single most important resource of economic growth, so the best route to continued prosperity is by investing in our stock of creativity in all its forms, across the board," wrote Dr. Richard Florida in Rise of the Creative Class. Public funding of the arts has a catalytic impact to the rest of the community, yielding a high return on public investment.

The arts enhance the aesthetics of the built environment. Murals, sculpture, and other forms of public art make creativity a part of our everyday life, creating a unique sense of place. Ventura's recently completed streetscape mural project exemplifies this perfectly. Just imagine how empty the 20 bus shelters and utility boxes would look without the vibrant work of local artists. Public art has also been a tool used to decrease crime. Public art helps deter graffiti on public amenities such as transit stops and walls. In Philadelphia, a mural program was initiated to decrease graffiti, which had a direct correlation on the crime rate. That city's mural program is now the largest in the U.S. and is a source of community pride and identity.

Arts education results in increased academic achievement and decreased juvenile delinquency. According to a U.S. Department of Justice report, arts education has a measurable impact on youth at risk in deterring delinquent behavior and social problems while also increasing overall academic performance. In Ventura, with funds granted to Kids' Art through the Cultural Funding Program, "Straight Up Improv" was developed as a teen arts project to prevent underage binge drinking.

The arts are sound indicators of a healthy society. Be an ambassador for the arts at home, with your friends, at school, at work, and in your civic and social groups. Together, we can raise public awareness about the public value of the arts, which will result in increased audiences, higher volunteerism, more art consumption, a proliferation of partnerships, and sustained support. When the arts benefit, we all benefit.

Art. Ask For More.

Arts education, whether integrated into the core curriculum, through after-school programs or through adult education opportunities, is a key contributor toward a skilled and informed citizenry and work force. As such, a primary policy of the 2005 Ventura Cultural Plan: Creating California's New Art City is to enhance opportunities for lifelong learning in the arts. A strategy to achieve this goal is to promote the awareness of the benefits of and advocate for increased arts education for youth.

Towards this goal, the Cultural Affairs Division has renewed its Art. Ask For More campaign partnership with Americans for the Arts. The national Public Service Awareness campaign seeks to empower parents and caretakers to champion art education for children both in and out of schools. As an official campaign partner, the division will promote the campaign and conduct local media outreach. The TV formatted PSA's will be aired on Ventura TV.

Artist Opportunity
P.L.A.C.E. Temporary Public Art Project

The Ventura Public Art Program invites proposals for Public and Local Artists Creating Environments (P.L.A.C.E.), a temporary public art project to enhance our historic Downtown Cultural District during Spring 2008 ArtWalk. Commissioned artwork will be on display for approximately one month. A broad range of artistic styles, forms, materials and conceptions will be considered for this commission including sculpture, mixed media, projection and other unique media forms. Interested artists are encouraged to attend an application workshop on October 24, 2007. The budget for this commission is $7,000. Deadline for submissions: November 16, 2007

Additional information and applications are available by contacting Public Art Project Manager Lisa Zaid at (805) 658-4736 or lzaid@cityofventura.net.

Poetry event to honor "Year of the Environment"

Acclaimed Latina poets and activists Maria Melendez and Jen Hofer will be reading their work, followed by a panel on the arts and environmental activism with panelists:

Living Historian and City of Ventura Literary Arts Fellow Suzanne Lawrence,
Kids Arts Coordinator Lynne Okun, MFT,
poet and translator Sophia Kidd,
CSUCI professor and environmental writer Brad Monsma,
sculptor Paul Lindhard
poet gauvin
VC instructor and poet Gwendolyn Alley

The event will take place on Monday Sept. 17 at 5:30pm at Ventura College (4667 Telegraph Rd, Ventura). This event is part of Ventura College's "Year of the Environment," The American Democracy Project, The Writing Life Speaker Series, and is sponsored in part with a grant from Poets & Writers, Inc. For more information, contact gwendolynalley@yahoo.com

Biographies for Jen Hofer and Maria Melendez

In 2002, Jen Hofer moved from the Centro Histrico in Mexico City to Cypress Park in Los Angeles, where she teaches poetics in the MFA Writing Program at CalArts and works as a Spanish-language interpreter with the Los Angeles County Superior Courts. Her recent publications include lip wolf, a translation of Laura Solórzano's lobo de labio (Action Books, 2007), Sin puertas visibles: An Anthology of Contemporary Poetry by Mexican Women (University of Pittsburgh Press and Ediciones Sin Nombre, 2003), slide rule (subpress, 2002), and the chapbooks laws (Dusie Kollectiv, 2006) and lawless (Seeing Eye Books, 2003). Her forthcoming books are The Route, an epistolary and poetic collaboration with Patrick Durgin (Atelos), Laws (Dusie Books), and a book-length series of anti-war-manifesto poems titled one (Palm Press). She has published poems and translations in numerous small-press publications, including 1913, Aufgabe, Black Clock, Bomb, DISASTER, The Brooklyn Rail, eough, Jacket, Mar con Soroche, Primary Writing and War and Peace. Jen is a member of the Little Fakers collective which creates and produces Sunset Chronicles, a neighborhood-based serial episodic drama populated entirely by hand-made marionettes inhabiting lost, abandoned and ghost spaces in Los Angeles, and is happily a founding member of the City of Angels Ladies' Bicycle Association, also known as The Whirly Girls.

Maria Melendez has published two collections of poetry: Base Pairs (Swan Scythe Press, 2001) and How Long She'll Last in This World (University of Arizona Press, 2006). Her essays and features appear in Altar, Orion Afield, and Isotope, and several of her essays on arts and activism have been broadcast as part of NPR's American Democracy Project. She currently serves as Associate Editor for Momotombo Press, an independent publisher producing works by emerging Latino writers, and she co-coordinates Poetas y Pintores: Artists Conversing with Verse, a traveling exhibition of contemporary Latino art and poetry. Her poetry and fiction have appeared in such magazines as Barrow Street, International Quarterly, and Ecological Restoration, and she is currently at work on a third collection of poetry. She received her M.A. in English/Creative Writing from UC Davis in 2000. From 2000-2003 she was awarded grants from the California Arts Council in support of her work as writer-in-residence at the U.C. Davis Arboretum, where she taught environmental writing workshops for the public. In 2003, Saint Mary's College in Notre Dame, Indiana, appointed her Research Fellow at the Center for Women's InterCultural Leadership. She currently lives in Logan, Utah, where she teaches creative writing and multicultural literature at Utah State University.

Coming soon: Tortilla Flats mural

On Friday, August 17th, completed artworks for the Tortilla Flats Mural Project were displayed at the Bell Arts Factory. Artists MB Hanrahan and Moses Mora were commissioned by the City's Public Art Program to reinterpret their temporary mural installation formerly located along Figueroa Street adjacent to Seaside Park as a permanent Public Art work sited at the Figueroa Street underpass.

The Tortilla Flats mural explores and documents the stories and lives of the people who were displaced from their Westside Ventura neighborhood, known as Tortilla Flats, when the 101 Freeway was built in the late 1940's through the 1950's. The stories depicted in the mural are universal and reflect common experiences of many working class people. The artists have captured the neighborhood's resonate stories and experiences before they pass away completely from memory. The Tortilla Flats mural is scheduled for completion in fall 2007.

In October 2002, the Public Art Commission selected Hanrahan and Mora through a direct commission. Their selection was based on their extremely successful temporary community art project, The Tortilla Flats Mural and Reunion Committee, sited on Figueroa Street. Through oral histories and interviews, Hanrahan and Moses captured the stories, memories, and lives of the families who lived in Tortilla Flats in a large mural consisting of 6' high wood panels over 510' feet in length. This temporary project was so successful that in 1999, when the painted wood panels began to deteriorate, a Tortilla Flats Mural Restoration and Reunion Committee was formed to raise awareness of the project and funds for the mural's restoration. The committee, however, was unable to raise sufficient funds to restore the mural. The mural was disassembled under the oversight of the artists, and the panels were disseminated to families and residents. When initiating the Figueroa Street Improvements Project, the Public Art Commission considered the expressed desire of the community to save the Tortilla Flats Mural and chose to directly commission the artist team of Mora and Hanrahan to commemorate the Tortilla Flats neighborhood through a permanent public art project.

Dedicated to creating a dialogue about social issues, Ventura artist MB Hanrahan has been a strong advocate and creator of community public art projects. Hanrahan, who earned her masters degree in fine art from the California State University at Humboldt, has received numerous awards, grants and honors for her work. She has created numerous public murals throughout southern California, and recently completed a multi-media collaborative project with students at the Westpark Recreation Center in Ventura's Westside community. When talking about the Figueroa Street project, she says, "Taking on this project is giving us an opportunity to memorialize a neighborhood in Ventura that fell by the wayside in the name of progress. I'm grateful to have this opportunity and gratified that City has chosen to recognize the historic importance of this neighborhood."

Born in the Tortilla Flats neighborhood and raised on Ventura Avenue in Ventura's Westside area, community artist Moses Mora holds this project near and dear to his heart: "For me it is all about preserving the legacy of the first neighborhood of Ventura and to continue the educational process that we started eight years ago - to inform today's community. Because we get so many visitors to Ventura, it's also about informing people from around the world about our local history. We wanted to do this in the lifetime of the original residents because so many of them are elderly and, actually, quite a number of them have passed on since the original project. Beyond that, I hope to bring a sense of pride and history to the community."

Art Advice and Clean Cars at the new Gallery Car Wash

Prominent art consultant Sylvia White has made the move to Ventura to become part of Ventura's growing art community. White, who has run galleries in both New York and Santa Monica, also provides career development services for visual artists. Her website, www.artadvice.com, offers practical art world counsel for artists.

For about a year, Sylvia White and her husband John White, an accomplished artist who has received awards from the National Endowment for the Arts, have been looking to relocate the Sylvia White Gallery from Santa Monica to Ventura. They have recently purchased the site at 140 N. Ventura Avenue, currently the home of the Avenue Car Wash, located just north of Main Street. They planning to build a new gallery space and two artist live/work loft spaces with well-known architect Michelle Kaufmann, whose work is regularly featured in Dwell magazine (see www.mkd-arc.com). With Kaufmann, White plans a totally green commercial site. They are designing a modular prefab, to be built completely off site.

While the design, permitting and construction phases can take up to a couple of years, the Whites plan to keep the self-service car wash operational and aptly rename it Gallery Car Wash. "I am anticipating at least 18 months before any building can be started. In the meantime, I would like to make the car wash my 'temporary gallery' by offering Ventura artists the opportunity to explore public art ideas. There are several areas that offer unique challenges to artists, and I am open to exploring all of them, from murals, to tile work, to metal sculpture, you name it! I look forward to transforming this site," Sylvia said enthusiastically. Demonstrating their commitment to the community, her husband John added, "The car wash prices will remain the same."

Sylvia is seeking ideas from artists who are interested in integrating their work in to her temporary "outdoor gallery." She said, "I am looking for all kinds of proposals, including wacky ideas. Proposals should include a suggestion for a specific area at the site, drawings or other images to give me an idea of what they want to do, and a budget. I am willing to cover all costs for fabrication and/or transportation." She is accepting proposals via email at sylvia@artadvice.com or via mail at 5737 Kanan Rd #592, Agoura, CA 91301. "I love Ventura and what is happening here culturally. It feels like Venice did 20 years ago. I am looking forward working with the artists here and being part of Ventura's artistic evolution," says Sylvia White.

Artist Profile - Terence Ulrich

At a recent gallery opening, a woman stopped in front of one of Terence Ulrich's painting. After a brief pause, she commented "not very uplifting, huh?" Overhearing this, Ulrich took the opportunity to share one of his favorite quotes from filmmaker John Walters: "Good art can make people insane". A part of LA's "low brow" art scene, his work has a weathered, edgy feel influenced by urban folk art, graffiti and vintage circus art. It's not uncommon for figures in his paintings to have a deformity or two. "I usually have people doing things, telling a narrative, but often with something off kilter, slightly perverse, and always a little humorous."

His technique involves multiple layers of color and different kinds of paper (from newspaper to Chinese wrapping paper), often painted separately, then glued downed before laying down an image on top. "I want it to look like they're aged under newspapers for sixty years," he says "I'm trying to make something old kind of new again." Recently his work has evolved, "it's a bit more subtle and surreal now."

Originally from Indiana, Terence grew up drawing, "It's just something I've always done, I was the kid who drew comic book covers for everyone in class." He went on to attend the Art Institute of Chicago, around the time of the Dred Scott flag controversy, "the environment there was very confrontational and in your face". Upon returning to California, he met his wife while doing a mural project and started showing in local galleries like La Luz de Jesus.

Surfing was his introduction to Ventura and he moved here four years ago. "The LA art scene is really competitive, every man for himself - there's a real sense of community here in Ventura and a willingness to help each other out." Besides selling in Portland, Seattle and San Francisco, he has shown at Nathan Larramendy's Ojai gallery and was selected to participate in the Cultural Affairs Division's Streetscape Mural Project. He noted that long-time local artists like Michelle Chapin have very enthusiastic and helpful to him, "Ventura audiences have been very receptive to my work and I really appreciate that."

Calendar of upcoming Cultural Affairs Division events

SEPTEMBER

• Sept. 15 - Tortilla flats Mural Tour
• Sept. 15 - Endless Summer at Plaza Park
• Sept. 22 - Victorian Ventura Tour
• Sept. 29 - Mural & Public Art Bus Tour Part 1

OCTOBER

• Oct. 4 - Municipal Art Collection reception for newly acquired works. 6-8 PM City Hall
• Oct. 6 - Ghost Camp for Teens
• Oct. 6 - Grease Sing-a-long at Barranca Vista Park
• Oct.13 - Ventura at War Tour
• Oct.13 - Cemetery Park Tour
• Oct. 20 - Mural & Public Art Bus Tour Part 2
• Oct. 26 - Bilingual Ghost Hunt: Olivas Adobe
• Oct. 27 - Ghost and Ghouls Tour
• Oct. 27 - Creature from the Black Lagoon at Community Park
• Oct. 28 - Ghost and Ghouls Tour
• Oct. 29 - Haunted Ventura Tour
• Oct. 30 - Ghost Hunt: Olivas Adobe
• Oct. 31 - Ghost Hunt: Olivas Adobe

For more information, visit www.cityofventura.net/arts_culture

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