Christina Waters

Chris Cravey and Ari Finkelstein—friends, artists, over-achievers—will take over the Eduardo Carrillo Gallery @ the UCSC Art Department for a week starting March 1. The duo will unleash Collections: Figurative Sculpture, Drawings and Paintings upon a world hungry for enlightened visual culture.
Come take a look. A reception for the artists happens this Sunday, March 4th @ 5pm.

The Carrillo Gallery is an intimate exhibition space adjoining the central quad at the Baskin Arts Complex, across the drive from the Performing Arts Theater, UCSC. For more about the late Art professor emeritus, Eduardo Carrillo, his life and work, go here.

[A. Finkelstein]

For those who like their music live, lively and authentic, join Michael Alpert and Julian Kytasty tonight, February 29, 7:30pm for an evening of “Night Songs from a Neighboring Village,” exploring the vivacious musical lilnks between Jews and Ukrainians via klezmer, Yiddish folk song and the music of Hasidim. Kytasty is a leading bandura (Ukrainian lute-harp) virtuoso and Alpert is a pioneer in the renaissance of East European Jewish klezmer music.It will be a feast for the ears in an intimate house concert setting - 220 Spring St., Westside, Santa Cruz. A $15 donation is suggested - and don’t be afraid to bring a dessert or drink to share.

Pina Bausch was one of my heroes. Most of my life I tracked her conceptual innovations in choreography, and the creation of her Tanztheater company in Wuppertal Germany. Moving dance beyond the lexicons of ballet and even Graham’s modern dance tropes, Bausch used the body to explore the archetypes of animality. Her “dances” are in fact small narratives, riddles, myths and gems of erotic psychoanalysis. In the process she created nothing less than a poetics of pain.

In her pieces, at once expressionist, avant garde, and laced with angular angst, Bausch transformed dance into an emotional incantation in which longing and long-limbed velocity were employed to invoke something like redemption. More…

If you adore the literary ingenuity of Charles Dickens, whose work marks the apogee of the English language, then you’ll be intrigued by the newest exploration of Dickens’ masterpiece, Bleak House, by celebrated scholar and UCSC professor John Jordan.

Better yet, come hear Jordan talk about Dickens, nineteenth-century English narrative fiction and his new book, Supposing Bleak House — Thursday, February 2, 7pm @ Bookshop Santa Cruz.

[Photo credit: Carolyn Lagattuta/UC Santa Cruz]

So many artworks, so little time. Make plans to visit the Mary Porter Sesnon Gallery this month.

In the main gallery, prolific alumna Katerina Lanfranco unveils a gallery-sized installation, Natural Selection.
In the adjoining gallery, a group show Clear Cuts features work by Beatrice Coron, Kota Azawa, Matt Farrar, Felicia Gilman, Lauren Scanlon, Jill Sylvia, and Kara Walker.

Across the portico, in the Porter Faculty Gallery, enjoy an exhibition of Laser Cut Relief Prints by Richard Wohlfeiler. All of these shows are free and open to the public.

For details visit the Sesnon website.

A sweeping show of coastal landscapes will fill the Davenport Gallery, starting this Saturday, January 14 (reception from 4-7pm).

The exhibition will offer works by top area painters including Andrew Purchin, Frank Galuszka (Cliff, o/c, r.), Ray Ginghofer and others, including a rarely-seen artist who moonlights as a wine writer. Take advantage of the spectacular weather—and the spectacular coast. Davenport Gallery is next door to the Roadhouse, on Highway One.

Davenport Gallery - 450 Highway One - open Wed - Sun, 11am - 5pm

The soaring quartets, orchestra and choral passages of Beethoven’s mighty Mass in C Major join Mozart’s Symphony No. 40, in an evening of definitive musical bravura— with maestra Nicole Paiement at the helm—for two concerts, Friday November 18 and Sunday November 20.

Concerts begin at 7:30pm at the UCSC Music Recital Hall—an acoustical gem worthy of soloists—tenor Brian Staufenbiel, soprano Patrice Maginnis, baritone Daniel Cilli and mezzo soprano Elana Cowen.

Don’t miss this chance to be enfolded in the sort of life-altering harmonies, fugues and canons that made life, before the Beatles, sweet indeed. UCSC Ticket Office - 831.459-2159; or online.

This is the deal of the week. The month!

Proving how easily a 250-year-old opera can provide musical epiphany, George Frideric Handel came to San Francisco last week with his delectable pastiche of arias, recitatives, and impossible vocalese —the opera Xerxes.

It was probably one of Benjamin Franklin’s favorite operas, this Italian tale of mistaken genders, identities and lovers, written by a German composer and widely performed in London. What San Francisco Opera audiences feasted on at last Saturday’s matinee performance was the aural luminescence of seven of the world’s finest Baroque singers vying with each other for complete dominance of the gorgeous music, the witty set design and some of the longest, most complex passages ever written for the human voice.

It was a banquet of trills, glissandoes and accelerated arpeggios. More…

Santa Cruz author Thad Nodine’s book is a complete page-turner. Read my complete review here.

And whatever you do, and wherever you go on this two weekend art crawl, don’t miss the painstakingly crafted, multi-colored etchings made by prolific artist Stephanie Martin.

Martin specializes in nature prints, beautifully drawn and expertly printed from copper plates, in the manner of Rembrandt and Goya. Here is a detail from her print of the Orange-Crowned Warbler.
Open Studio 2011 runs Oct 1-2, 8-9 and 15-16 from 11am - 5pm. Details here.