ON Culture | Mean Girls, Modern Life, and My Favorite Stories of the Year
This edition of ON Culture was originally emailed to subscribers on January 3, 2025. To receive Leslie Dinaberg’s arts newsletter in your inbox on Fridays, sign up at independent.com/newsletters.
ON the Walls
Modern Life: A Global Artworld, 1850 – 1950, is a long-term exhibition of the Santa Barbara Museum of Art’s renowned permanent collection. With more than 80 paintings, sculptures, photographs, and prints combining artists from Europe, South America, and North America on view, this exhibition considers how artists in SBMA’s collection confronted, avoided, celebrated, and criticized the transformations of the tumultuous century between 1850 and 1950.
Organized into sections that include “Abstraction,” “Global Surrealism,” “Art, Science, Technology,” and “Landscape,” Modern Life also contains rotating selections from the Museum’s more than 8,000 photographs and 2,800 caricatural prints. An illustrated timeline wall highlights SBMA’s 80-year history. As such, this exhibition is a window into the Museum’s past, a snapshot of its broad collection, and a history of the world we live in today with its linked global economies and instantaneous communication. See sbma.net for more information.
The Abstract Nine — an evolving and diverse group of artists whose work connects and conveys individual interpretations of non-objective art — will have their work on view at Santa Barbara Tennis Club’s 2nd Fridays Art at SBTC exhibition from January 4 to March 5, with an Artist’s Reception on January 10 from 4:30-6 p.m. Curated by Susan Tibbles, artists include Denise Carey, Lynn Dodge, Lee Anne Dollison, Karen Frishman, Patricia Heller, RT Livingston, Judy Neunuebel, Marcia Rickard, and Veronica Walmsley.
As Tibbles shared, “Abstract artists use a visual language of shape, form, color, and line to create compositions which may exist with a degree of independence from visual references in the world. The main purpose of abstraction is to go beyond representation to create an intangible and emotional art experience for the viewer. The artists’ works range from non-objective, fully abstract work, to that where some objects or texts are recognizable.” See 2ndFridaysArt.com for more information.
Slingshot / Alpha Art Studio artists Michelle Oliner, James Jasper, and Tom Neumeyer will have their work on view at the Architectural Foundation Gallery beginning on January 11. The exhibition, titled COUPLETS, takes inspiration from several series of prints by Oliner, which are created by drawing into a foam plate with a dulled instrument such as a pencil, pen, or sharpened dowel. After she prints the plates, Oliner adds colored pencil overlays to each successive print, creating novel versions. Then the prints are presented in pairs to highlight the rhythm and meter of their relationship.
Jasper’s works on paper are methodical but economical. He completes each portrait in a single sitting in a permanent pen or thick, indelible charcoal. Then his layered embroideries of concentric rings of linear stitches and patches of colorful texture are created sporadically over the course of months, if not years, adding the layer of time to the layers of different media.
Neumeyer’s ceramic pieces are inscribed with strong glyphic markings that mimic and dissect their ceramic forms and contain intriguing hidden figures, cryptic messages, and tessellating geometry.
All three artists are part of Slingshot, a progressive arts studio that supports the creative practice and professional visibility of artists with intellectual and developmental disabilities in Santa Barbara County.
COUPLETS is on view at the Architectural Foundation of Santa Barbara Gallery (229 East Victoria St.) from January 11 to March 8, with an opening reception on Saturday, January 11 from 1-3 p.m. See afsb.org for more information.
ON the Web
This is the time of the year when you see loads of “Year in Review” and “Best of the Year” lists around, which I always love to read. They’re pretty fun to write too. There’s definitely something satisfying about viewing your work, and that of your colleagues, in its totality every once in a while. It’s a lot of fun, but we do work hard around here!
I actually made two separate lists this year, for my own stories (click here) and the ones other people wrote (click here). One of the stories I didn’t include in my favorites list but certainly could have, was Zak Klobucher’s review of Bruce Springsteen (click here). But, even better than getting props from your own wife, Zak was mentioned in the New York Times’s columnist Frank Bruni’s “Best Sentences of the Year” wrap-up, and I quote: “In The Santa Barbara Independent, Zak Klobucher marveled at one of Bruce Springsteen’s live performances: ‘He carped so much diem that when he called on the audience, ‘Can you feel the spirit?’ Robin Williams showed up to ask him to take it down a notch.’” (You can read the whole very entertaining article here,)
For all of the Independent team’s 2024 “Year in Review” stories, click here.
ON the Stage
Nostalgia is in the air, starting with MANIA: the ABBA Tribute at the Lobero on Sunday, January 26. Formed in 1999, MANIA: the ABBA Tribute has sold out theaters and concert halls across the globe, bringing the music of the beloved Swedish super group to more than three million people. With hits like “Dancing Queen,” “Waterloo,” “Mamma Mia,” and “Take a Chance on Me” in store for us, I’m excited to be transported back to the 1970s for a night. Click here for info.
Also on the Lobero stage this month is a tribute to his purpleness, PRINCE AGAIN: A Tribute to Prince on Saturday, January 18 (click here for info). Tickets are also on sale now for Lost 80s Live, which comes to Vina Robles Amphitheater on August 29 and features hit songs by the Grammy Award–winner A Flock of Seagulls (“I Ran,” and “Space Age Love Song”), General Public (“Tenderness,” and “Never You Done That”), Big Country (“In a Big Country,” and “Fields of Fire [4000 Miles]”), The Vapors (“Turning Japanese,” and “Jimmie Jones”), The Icicle Works (“Birds Fly [WHISPER TO A SCREAM]”), Josie Cotton (“Johnny, Are You Queer,” and “He Could Be The One”), Belouis Some (“Some People,” and “Imagination”), China Crisis (“Working With Fire and Steel,” and Arizona Sky”), and The Polecats (“Make a Circuit With Me”). For more information, visit Lost80slive.com.
ON the Page
I got a save the date from Paul J. Willis, Westmont Emeritus Professor of English and Santa Barbara Poet Laureate Emeritus: The annual poetry reading to remember the life and work of William Stafford will take place at 2 p.m. on Saturday, January 25, at the First Crossing Day Use Area on Paradise Road in Los Padres National Forest. Indy Contributor George Yatchisin will be the first reader, and Emily Sommermann will play the violin. Stay tuned for more details on this lovely annual tradition.
ON the Calendar
If you haven’t checked out the Broadway in Santa Barbara series at the Granada lately, Mean Girls (January 8-9) is a great place to start. Here’s my preview of the Tina Fey–penned musical, which is based on her 2004 movie starring Lindsey Lohan and Rachel McAdams. Mean Girls will be on stage at The Granada Theatre January 8-9, with both performances at 7:30 p.m. See BroadwaySantaBarbara.com, GranadaSB.org, and The Granada Theatre Box Office for tickets.
For a complete calendar of events this week and beyond, visit independent.com/events/.
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