Now at the CAW
Vanae Rivera and Rebecca Zendejas Present:
CAW ART HOLIDAY POP
Annual community art market showcasing work from local artist, makers, creators, collectors, and more.
Saturday December 21, 11 - 5 pm
An annual tradition at the CAW, Vanae Rivera's CAW Art Holiday Pop always features a wonderful mix of vendors, great music, food, and vibes. It's a great occasion for holiday shopping from local creatives.
Contact cawholidaypop@gmail.com to enter to be a vendor, or for more info.
Use the CAW
The CAW collaborates to empower and provide affordable space for art projects of all kinds. Have an idea? Use the CAW.
The Santa Barbara Arts Collaborative works to maintain the CAW as a "blank canvas" for as wide a diversity of arts uses and users as possible, providing space and collaborating with project initiators to make their ideas a success for the benefit of the broader community, and supporting and cultivating collaborations between artists and arts organizations, community groups, the business community, non-profit organizations and the entire community.
Find out more about how you can use the CAW here:
Joe Rohde Presents:
Inner Light
A Fundraiser for the Santa Barbara Arts Collaborative
Opening Reception Sat. Jan. 18, 5-8pm
Other Gallery Hours: Fridays Jan 24, 31, and Feb 7, 10a-6pm, and by appointment.
Local artist and former Disney Imagineer Joe Rohde generously presents a series of paintings this January as a fundraiser for the Arts Collaborative.
Artist Statement:
For some years I have collected dried out old leaves, mostly sycamores, holding them up to the sun to illuminate them, and then painting from life or from photographs, the imagery revealed by the light. These twelve oil paintings on wood panels are the latest in that series, which dates back across decades.
I’m inspired by the hidden life and beauty residing in something so common and so negligible that we literally crush them beneath our feet as we walk. To me, these are sort of spiritual paintings, hinting at a life within objects that we consider to be completely dead and useless.
They’re also a kind of landscape painting, because I choose the leaves based on their unusually complex topography, which allows the light to fall not only upon them, but through them. They are, like California itself, dry, but beautiful.
And lastly, they remind us that beauty and wonder exist not in the world, but in how we look at the world. We can bring fascination and joy to anything we choose, provided we hold it up to the light and look.
Bio:
JOE ROHDE recently retired from a 40 year career with Walt Disney Imagineering. During that time he was a pivotal figure in the development of a series of projects that dealt with natural history, culture, and the environment and was named a Disney Legend in 2024. Joe’s work includes Disney’s Animal Kingdom; Aulani: A Disney Resort and Spa in Hawaii; Villages Nature, an eco-resort adjacent to Disneyland Paris, as and many other projects. He was instrumental in the creation of the Disney Conservation Fund, which has raised over $130 million for missions worldwide. Currently Joe consults for select projects through his company, Joe Rohde Creative, LLC, with clients as diverse as Jane Goodall, Virgin Galactic, and Disney. Joe regularly lectures on design, art history, and conservation and has spoken at TED, NASA, SIGGRAPH, the Getty Center, and many other venues.
Joe is a member of the Explorer’s Club and has traveled extensively in some of the most remote regions of the world, often creating art along the way. His paintings, some of which are displayed at the Club headquarters in NYC, are created under challenging field conditions, and constitute a record of settings, cultures, and events few may ever see. His Instagram @joerohde documents these journeys for his 118,000 followers as well as exploring art, nature and the creative process.