The Practically Non-Existent Art Scene in Santa Cruz.

a filler piece by Hiram Coffee

I have lived in Santa Cruz for a very long time. I grew up here. It was not fun, I didn’t grow up in Santa Cruz proper, but rather the god forsaken San Lorenzo Valley. There was not much of anything going on at all. We would have to take the bus to town do anything worthwhile and while I was there I was more interested in raising hell than going to art openings. Needless to say my background on the subject matter is probably severely lacking.

I’ve learned that art comes to you in a different form here. There aren’t any galleries worth going to anymore and anything you might find hanging in a cafe setting is probably crap. Most of the time anyway. I’ve found that all things a person like me would consider artful are lying around on my friends’ living room floors, up on their walls, or stenciled on the sidewalk. It’s found on fliers and at shows.

When I was about 19 the house I was living in threw a huge artist showcase. It was amazing, we had a couple of bands play and there were paintings and other various pieces all over the house. The most memorable was the cameras and monitors set up all around our small home. A friend of ours had spent all afternoon strategically placing small cameras everywhere. From the kitchen you could pretty much watch the whole party doing whatever it was they where doing. I think it was then I realized that all of our friends are incredibly gifted artistic people. The problem has always been motivation. The show was a perfect example of how a bunch of kids can actually do something awesome if they just properly apply themselves.

As of late the artistic spark Santa Cruz once had is on its way out, being replaced by, well, nothing. Yeah there are plenty of artists and the like, but no one’s doing anything with it. Everyone has adopted the idea that if you want something you have to pry it from their cold, drunk hands. Which is much more difficult to do than one might think. This is the trap that is Santa Cruz. It’s comfortable, it’s relaxed, it’s fucking lazy. So please, DO SOMETHING!

Now don’t take this as saying that there is no scene in Santa Cruz because there is still a thread hanging on. You just have to dig pretty deep to get to it. It exists under a heavy layer of egotistical UCSC art majors and new age faux spiritual bullshit. There are some kids out there doing some incredible stuff. Whether it be music, films, paintings, or slightly illegal it’s there. And with any luck it will hopefully start picking up a little bit. Okay, I’m done. Check out the VitaminC4 art section for further updates.

Hiram Coffee

Tags: faux spiritual bullshit, Hiram Coffee, SLV

This entry was posted on Thursday, December 25th, 2008 at 12:53 pm by Ethan and is filed under Art. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.