Made in Santa Cruz: Why Art Matters | Rhia Hurt

Quick Take

“Made in Santa Cruz: Why Art Matters” is a new video series, published every other Sunday, exploring the artists who shape Santa Cruz County's creative landscape. Each episode offers a peek into an artist's practice, the places and experiences that inform their work, and the ways creativity helps us see our community differently. Today’s artist is Watsonville painter and art educator Rhia Hurt.

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In Santa Cruz County, artists are as much a part of the landscape as the redwoods and the sea.

Some announce themselves in murals, galleries and stages. Others work quietly, tucked into backyard studios, garages and spare rooms, making things you’ll never see unless you know where to look.

Santa Cruz County is rumored to have more artists per capita than most cities in America — and once you start looking, it’s easy to believe. This year’s Open Studios, put on by Arts Council Santa Cruz County from Oct. 3 through Oct. 18, will have more than 350 artists.

And those are just the ones who applied – and made the cut.

Art doesn’t just decorate a place. It marks our experience and refracts it, helping us see the familiar differently. It asks us to slow down, to notice, to imagine. What does it really mean to look? And what might we discover if we did?

At a time when headlines can make the world feel dizzying, art offers another rhythm. Artists remind us that imagination is something we can practice, and that living in a community of makers matters — not because art helps us escape the world, but because it helps us meet it with more insight, more empathy.

“Made in Santa Cruz: Why Art Matters” offers a glimpse of the people shaping the creative life of Santa Cruz County.

We hope these stories introduce you to the remarkable artists who live among us, inspire you to look more closely at the world around you, and remind you that communities and people flourish when imagination has room to grow.

It’s also an invitation to find the artist that’s inside you, too.

Every place has a way of seeing. Here, we offer you Santa Cruz through the lens of our artists.

Today’s featured artist

Name: Rhia Hurt

Medium: Mixed media with handmade paint

Years in Santa Cruz County: 13 (2001-07 and 2019-present)

Studio location: Watsonville/garage converted into art studio

Hurt has been an art educator for more than 20 years between Santa Cruz and Brooklyn, New York. Locally, she teaches at UC Santa Cruz and has worked for Pajaro Valley Unified School District as a coach and art teacher for nine years; she started at Aptos High School this school year. Her work is featured in a group show through Sunday at the Tannery, in collaboration with Radius Gallery.

one of Rhia Hurt's mixed-media art pieces — Credit: Via Rhia Hurt

Rhia Hurt’s favorite activities that inspire her to make art

Working in my garden, seeing things grow.
Drawing and painting plants from observation.
Walking along the shore looking for strange objects to photograph up close.
Looking at the expanse of the bay.
Finding mushrooms, berries, or light, texture, color and beautiful compositions.
Making art with students and/or friends: making jewelry with my childhood bestie (faithandrhia.com), garden drawing at home or Sierra Azul Nursery, ceramics lessons at Santa Cruz Clay, etc.