Quick Take
The Museum of Art & History presents its biennial CommonGround festival, featured famed sand artists Jim and Brighton Denevan, as well as several others working in place-oriented art pieces. The festival takes place while the MAH is in a leadership transition in the wake of executive director Robb Woulfe's resignation. Longtime curator Marla Novo is running the museum on an interim basis.
The beach, as a canvas for art?
For those familiar with the unique art of Jim Denevan, it’s not such an alien concept. The Santa Cruz artist and renegade restaurateur is famous for his often breathtaking sand sculptures. But with his latest work of art, he wants help.
Denevan and his son (and fellow sand artist) Brighton Denevan will be creating a large-scale sand sculpture at Cowell Beach as part of the CommonGround festival presented by the Museum of Art & History (MAH) in Santa Cruz. The piece is to be called “Pyramids,” and the Denevans are looking for volunteers to help them create it from Friday to Sunday. (All ages welcome and tools will be provided.) Once it’s constructed, “Pyramids” will be open and free (how could it not be? It’s on the beach) until natural or human forces take it away.
The Denevan beach project is the prime example of what CommonGround is aiming for thematically. CommonGround is a biennial festival devoted to outdoor, place-oriented works. It rotates on the MAH’s calendar every other year with Frequency, the museum’s light and digital festival.
Among the other place-inspired exhibits at CommonGround, which runs Sept. 13-22, will be “Monuments,” a series of nighttime video projections onto the trees at Evergreen Cemetery in Santa Cruz, from 8 p.m. to 10 p.m.; “Watermarks of the Last Chinatown,” an interactive, augmented-reality tour of Santa Cruz’s old Chinatown at the site of what is now The Galleria; and “Fathoming: Among Whales and Walls,” an installation devoted to whales at the Davenport Jail.
On Sept. 21, the MAH will host a ceremony in its “secret garden” area behind the museum called “Welcoming Our Relatives: The Kincentricity Garden,” created in collaboration with the Amah Mutsun Tribal Band. Most of the events are free.
The CommonGround festival comes at a time of transition at the MAH. The biennial cycle of CommonGround and Frequency was brought to the MAH by executive director Robb Woulfe, who resigned his position in May. The MAH is currently in the process of hiring Woulfe’s permanent replacement and is seeking community input. In the meantime, the museum’s leadership is in the capable hands of longtime staffer Marla Novo, the director of exhibitions and programs at the MAH.
Novo would not say explicitly whether she was a candidate for the permanent job, only that she’s “doing double duty right now, and I’m honored to do it, because I love this organization and I love this community.” Unlike many of the past executive directors at the museum, Novo is deeply rooted in the community, having grown up in Santa Cruz and worked at the MAH for 28 years. She is not only the MAH’s institutional memory, but serves that role in much of the creative and historical community as well.
The MAH hopes to have a permanent director in place by late winter/early spring 2025.
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