Kirby Scudder

Watsonville, California is known all over the world as a center for agriculture, especially berries. Watsonville is in the heart of the Californian vegetable and fruit growing area within the fertile Salinas Valley and Pajaro Valley.

Palo Alto, California has to be considered among one of this country’s great cities. It is a city that strives for and lives by a standard of excellence.

The city has always been a hub of river transportation and is a major deep-water port connected to the Pacific Ocean. Sacramento's economy is highly diversified and, along with state government and military installations, its industries include aerospace, high technology, furniture, chemicals, pharmaceuticals, meat packing, and food processing of crops from the Central Valley.

The 'Cruz Poster' is a visual exploration of the culture and perspectives of a unique Northern California coastal community whose creative influence is global.

The original settlement now known as Capitola grew out of what was then called Soquel Landing. Soquel Landing got its name from a wharf located at the mouth of Soquel Creek.

A Northern California Coastal Community that became one of the Nation’s important creative meccas. A look at the people who made that happen and why. In my recent book 'The Cruz' profiles the artists and creative thought leaders that have shaped the artistic direction of this community for years to come.

Cow sculpture, commissioned by Rebecca's Cafe in 'Interior Design Magazine' Summer edition. In the summer of 2012 Interior Design Magazine hired renowned Architectural photographer Art Gray to spend 3 days documenting the newly renovated Tannery Arts Center for the summer edition. Here is my interview with Art Gray. Art shot a picture of my recently installed cow head sculpture at the Tannery cafe.

Artist, collaborator, salesman, curator, idea man, hustler, fixer, midwife to the very scene that inspires all those Keep Santa Cruz Weird’ bumper stickers: You can call Kirby Scudder all those things and more. A refugee of the 1990s dot-com bust, Kirby has lived a dozen lifetimes since moving to Santa Cruz in 2003. He was the artist who created the enormous papier-mache cows in the early days of the Salz Tannery art project, at the same time, opening art galleries in several downtown spaces in an effort to create a welcoming environment for edgy visual arts. He set up spotlights along West Cliff Drive as a commemoration to the ideal of world peace. He established the First Friday Art Tour, a prominent event on the local arts calendar, and curated shows at the Attic, the Mill Gallery and the Dead Cow Gallery. As the resident visionary at the Dead Cow and the director of the Santa Cruz Institute of Contemporary Art, Kirby has also become the symbol of the emerging Tannery Arts Center and worked closely with the city to create a vibrant Santa Cruz scene, one crazy project at a time. Wallace Baine, Santa Cruz Sentinel