The Santa Cruz Museum of Art & History knows that art doesn’t only belong in museums and galleries. In 2022, MAH organized the first biennial CommonGround, a 10-day, multi-site festival of exhibits, installations and performances that took place in and around the museum, as well as off-site, namely the Evergreen Cemetery and Davenport Jail. This year’s CommonGround offers a similar schedule of mostly free art and art-inspired events at the museum and other spaces throughout Santa Cruz County.
“Our executive director, Robb Woulfe, was really interested in creating spaces of connection outside of the museum,” says Museum Director of Exhibitions and Programs Marla Novo. “It’s something that the MAH has always been interested in, but he kind of took it to another level, having a biennial that is in multiple places throughout Santa Cruz.”
For “The Pyramids” (Cowell Beach), for example, local land artist Jim Denevan and his son Brighton will create a sand drawing that’s also a community collaboration. Volunteers interested in taking part can sign up on MAH’s website. Denevan is famous for making his sand and ice drawings all over the world. (His art was featured on iconic streetwear brand Stussy’s 2020 collection.) M.K. Contemporary Art will simultaneously display the Denevans’ aerial photography and videos as part of its “Shelter from the Storm” exhibit.
In “Watermarks of the Last Chinatown” (740 Front St., Downtown), artists Huy Truong and Susana Ruiz and author and UC Santa Cruz professor Karen Tei Yamashita will explore in an “augmented reality experience” the history of the last Chinatown, which was destroyed by a flood in 1955. There were several Chinatown neighborhoods in Santa Cruz between 1862 and the 1950s. A virtual exhibit of the same name currently at MAH incorporates historical photographs, documents, films and interviews with community members.
“Fathoming: Among Whales and Walls” (Davenport Jail) will feature artists Alicia Escott, Angela Willetts and Victoria Perenyi discussing “the mysterious world of whales” and “ecological grief and joy.” It’s a nod to Davenport’s migrating whales, and the two-cell jail-turned-museum, which was built in 1914 and only used twice.
The museum, along with Amah Mutsun Tribal Chairman Valentin Lopez, will celebrate the opening of its new “Kincentricity Garden” (MAH), an native plants garden and community space, which took three years to build in collaboration with the Amah Mutsun Tribal Band.
While CommonGround’s goal is to highlight local art, the festival also engages with national and international artists. Bahamian N.Y.-based Tavares Strachan will be on hand for his “I Belong Here” (MAH), a neon sculpture of text that’s part of the museum’s “Young, Gifted and Black: The Lumpkin-Boccuzzi Family Collection of Contemporary Art,” a new exhibit of mostly recent works by artists of African descent. Another new exhibit at MAH, “Of Love and Revelation: Learning Photography from the Land,” will also be on view.
Australian artist Craig Walsh will present “Monuments” (Evergreen Cemetery), his long-running, outdoor video, which projects and animates people’s faces onto trees and monuments at night. Walsh will project portraits of Luna HighJohn-Bey, Jim Lorenzana and George Ow, Jr.—a real estate developer and resident of the last Chinatown—which will honor ancestors buried in the cemetery.
“The event is about connecting people with stories and spaces that have to do with our landscape and really honoring the natural beauty that is Santa Cruz,” Novo says. “But it’s also uncovering stories about Santa Cruz that you might not know. It’s a beautiful blend of site- specific work and landscape, and how we interact with them and our relationship to them.”
CommonGround runs Sept. 13–22 at MAH, 705 Front St., Santa Cruz. The museum is open Thursday-Sunday; $8-$10. Events at other locations are free. santacruzmah.org/commonground
Caption for second photo:
TIME AND TIDE Local land artist Jim Denevan and his son Brighton will create a sand drawing at Cowell Beach that will be akin to his work at San Gregorio Beach ast year. PHOTO: Peter Hinson
