“The Cruz” Mural in the Santa Cruz Weekly
New students trickling into town for the first time are getting a crash course on Santa Cruzan identity, thanks to a 30-foot-long caricature map of Santa Cruz now plastered on the corner of… Continue reading
New students trickling into town for the first time are getting a crash course on Santa Cruzan identity, thanks to a 30-foot-long caricature map of Santa Cruz now plastered on the corner of… Continue reading →
A university town with a hippie vibe, Santa Cruz, California, has long been artist-friendly. But it has also faced a need for affordable live-work accommodations for creatives who have been displaced by luxury… Continue reading →
Twenty years after its designation as the nation’s largest marine sanctuary, a new state-of-the art visitors center opens in July 2012 highlighting the spectacular Monterey Bay National Marine Sanctuary.… Continue reading →
I never really realized how amazing wine is. When I say that, I don’t mean that I haven’t tasted all sorts of amazing wines and enjoyed their after-effects. What I mean, really, is… Continue reading →
When the majority of your space is one open room, decorating can be a challenge, but Alexandra has it mastered. Contemporary practical pieces — like the large outdoor table converted… Continue reading →
PLAY With his skipper”s license his only formal degree, Toren has been the executive director of the Henry Miller Library on Highway 1 in Big Sur since 1993. And Miller himself probably could… Continue reading →
I created a fake artist name ‘Haze Novica’ and created a 27′ sculpture of a young girl with a great sense of curiosity who only wanted to peer in the second story windows… Continue reading →
How do people in Santa Cruz see themselves? And how do they see the rest of the world? These are two questions Kirby Scudder had fun exploring while working on his latest poster The… Continue reading →





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.





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