Artists Carbine and Sanford make waves at Elverhøj!
Summer arrives at Elverhøj Museum of History and Art on Saturday July 10. Artists Carol Carbine and Blakeney Sanford bring the essence of the beach to the Museum Gallery in a new exhibit, Tidal Transformations.
A large art installation will engulf the 12-foot-tall gallery doors and spill out onto the front lawn in a wave of blue hued squares held up with industrial metal. Inside the gallery, visitors will find works created with oil on canvas, epoxy resin and fiberglass, and grains of sand collected from Central Coast beaches.
Artist Carol Carbine resides in the Santa Ynez Valley and has been working as a professional painter for over 20 years. The exhibit showcases her low tide series of colorful oil/sand paintings on canvas. Carbine's feel for color and texture infuses her paintings with remarkable energy and fresh interpretations of the beauty of our coast. “The patterns of razorback rocks, the low tide water trails of rocks and sand, bubbles, reflections and quiet waves all dictated a new approach to my paintings,” says Carbine.
A native of the Santa Ynez Valley, artist Blakeney Sanford began creating large-scale sculpture and installation art during her college years on the East Coast. Ten years later, she finds herself back in the area creating work that employs industrial metal, fiberglass and epoxy resin tinted in various colors. Inspired by time spent on the ocean, her latest body of work includes barreling waves and kelp pneumatocysts. A large art installation gives viewers a sense of total immersion within a wave. Created with complex materials, the artwork displays Sanford's considerable artistic skill as she experiments with shape and structure as well as color and transparency.
“Tidal Transformations” remains on display through September 5.
SOLVANG ROOM EXHIBIT
History, someone has said, is the stories we tell ourselves. In Elverhøj’s Solvang Room, the so-called Scrapbook on the Wall — a series of large panels of photos and text — tells the stories of Solvang from 1910 to the present. A team of talented people have worked together for many months to assemble this special exhibit.
Just as with a personal scrapbook, material for these history panels has come from a variety of sources. We have rummaged through Elverhøj’s records to find historical treasures: oral history tapes, family genealogies, old letters, personal reminiscences, the museum’s extensive photo collection, local newspaper clippings, school board records, event programs, souvenirs and memorabilia, published and unpublished histories of Solvang, student theses on Solvang, and more.
People have shared their personal photo albums, scrapbooks, and stories with us. Organizations have donated information about themselves. Other museums have generously assisted. A UCSB intern and a Cal State researcher contributed some expertise. Even the Danish embassy got involved and furnished photos of Denmark’s royal family.
What you can now see is a series of important vignettes or stories about key milestones in Solvang’s history rather than a complete and definitive history. The history panels start with Danish immigration to America, progress through the founding and growth of Solvang, and in a generally chronological way, guide the viewer through stories about local culture, influential people, and events. You can also read about Solvang cowboys, how the automobile came to the Valley, how Solvang reinvented itself, the three visits from Danish Royalty, and learn about ring riding and hitting the cat out of barrel, among other things.
Although this exhibit is still a work in progress, it has been generously supported by The Valley Foundation, The Wood-Claeyssens Foundation, MIS Associates, and Premier Imaging Products.
PROPOSALS FOR ART GALLERY EXHIBITIONS
The Elverhøj Museum of History and Art encourages art exhibition proposal submissions from individual artists and artist groups. The guidelines are intended to help expedite the review of these submissions by insuring that each proposal is as complete as possible. Proposals for exhibitions at the Elverhøj must include both written and visual components.
A copy of the artist proposal guidelines is available for download.
Artist Exhibition Proposal Procedures PDF