Hi friends,
Checked off a bucket-list item last week when I saw a live taping of “Jeopardy!” down in L.A. A ton of fun, but the audience guy kept begging us to fight our natural inclination to yell out the answer, which can be difficult sometimes.
Now, on with the show.
This Just In!
The Jerry Harrison/Adrian Belew show revisiting the Talking Heads album “Remain in Light” at the Quarry Amphitheater has been moved to Aug. 16. The queenly Judy Collins is set to visit the Rio Theatre on Sept. 10. Also at the Rio, former Traffic guitarist Dave Mason performs Oct. 9 in a show he’s calling “Traffic Jam.” The popular Los Angeles-based DJ known as Tokimonsta pays a visit to The Catalyst on Nov. 27. And the landmark reggae band Black Uhuru comes to Moe’s Alley on Sept. 7.
Be sure to check out Lookout’s carefully curated and constantly updated planning guide, Down the Line, for the staggering riches and amazing choices awaiting Santa Cruz audiences. It’s our look ahead at the best shows, concerts and events through the rest of the year at clubs, stages and venues all over the county.
Here they are, nine necessary know-abouts for the week ahead. It’s the summer-warmup B9:
Last call for Corita
If you’re a student of midcentury American graphic design, or social justice, or feminism, or the post-Vatican II Catholic Church, or California in the 1960s, then there’s one name you should know, if you don’t already. It’s Corita Kent, the famous “pop art nun,” who died in 1986, leaving behind a stunning legacy of graphic art that was influential and powerful in both theme and technique.
Representing her order of teachers, the Sisters of the Immaculate Heart, yet often defying a conservative church hierarchy, Kent emerged in the 1950s as a singular talent in the arts with her screen-printed posters that helped usher in the color-splashed pop art era of the ’60s. Her medium was bright colors and pop-culture iconography, but her message brought both a political and a moral weight to too-often-cheapened words such as “peace,” “joy” and “love.”
For locals, there is a golden (but fleeting) opportunity to learn more about an amazing life force. It’s an art show called “A Sign of Hope: The Art and Teaching of Corita Kent,” now entering its final week at the Eloise Pickard Smith Gallery on the campus of UC Santa Cruz at Cowell College.
The show has gathered more than 40 examples of Kent’s work, borrowed from a wide variety of sources by co-curators Ziggy Rendler Bregman and Sheilah Lynch, both lifelong devotees of Kent’s art and teaching.
Kent’s influence was felt most keenly in Los Angeles, where she worked for years as a teacher at Immaculate Heart College. But, in 1965, in the first year of UCSC, Eloise Pickard Smith — artist, administrator, wife of Cowell College founding provost Page Smith and namesake of Cowell’s art gallery — brought Kent’s art to Cowell, making it perhaps the first art to ever hang at the university.
The show is a fascinating and inspiring peek into an astounding life story, but you have to move fast. To see the show over the weekend, call 831-423-0516 or 831-427-1644 and arrange to visit. If you’re up on campus next week (post graduation ceremonies, so it’s likely to be easier to navigate), the gallery will be open from 1 to 5 p.m. Monday through Friday, before it closes on Saturday, June 22.
I’ll bet you’ll leave the show much as I did, eager to know more about this amazing artist.
Go see the Castro
There’s a house in Santa Cruz County that many locals have never heard of, much less visited. But now might be the time to check out the Castro Adobe, one of only four surviving adobe buildings in the county from the pre-statehood period.
The Castro Adobe just outside of Watsonville, named for the prosperous Castro family of the Mexican-rule era, was constructed in 1849 and ’50, in the midst of the Gold Rush and at the brink of California statehood. Severely damaged in the 1989 Loma Prieta earthquake, the two-story hacienda has been under intensive renovation and reconstruction for the past decade. And now, it’s ready for visitors.
On Saturday, the Friends of Santa Cruz State Parks will be hosting its monthly open house at the Castro Adobe from 10:30 a.m. to 3:30 p.m. (The monthly tour skips July, so the next one won’t be until Aug. 11.) It marks a high point in the yearslong effort to restore the old home, which features a beautiful second-floor dance hall with attached balcony, a separate cocina kitchen and a downstairs “great room.” The house is not only meticulously restored with period furniture, and enlivened with new signage and museum-quality display materials, it’s been seismically retrofitted and partially rebuilt with new adobe bricks made in the traditional style. It even has an elevator.
The adobe brickwork dates back to 2007, and the restoration from 2014, with more than 500 donors donating millions of dollars to bring the Castro house up to its present condition. The Friends of Santa Cruz State Parks is working with California State Parks to make the adobe an official state historic park.
There’s something a bit magical standing in the second-story dance-hall room, the site of fandango dances back in the mid-1800s. Come see for yourself. The Castro Adobe is in the Larkin Valley area between Aptos and Watsonville. Bring your curiosity and imagination.
Christian Fest returns
For the fourth straight summer, the True Love Christian Music & Art Festival will come to Aptos Village Park, this year on July 20. The festival will present more than a dozen Christian-music bands on two stages, plus food and art and activities for all ages. Among the games planned are “Feed Daddy,” in which fathers will sit in highchairs to be fed by their children, and a diaper-change race.
Take note that the religious theme here will be more than incidental. A climbing wall will be refashioned into a mini Mount Sinai in which climbers will attempt to reach the Ten Commandments, and a game called the “Sling Fling” promises to prepare you for the Rapture. Everyone is welcome, and it’s all free.
Earworm of the Week
He’s known for his Sunday-school suits, his truck-stop cowboy hat and a baritone singing voice as low and muddy as the Louisiana bayou. But beyond all that, Junior Brown is a guitar-playing demigod. Behind the high-camp honky-tonk persona, the 72-year-old alt-country star can absolutely thrash as a guitarist, though the instrument he plays isn’t recognizable as a traditional guitar. On his double-necked mutant “guit-steel,” his own invention, Brown has proved over a long career as a performer to be a gifted guitar mimic, showing off a gift for blues, country and even surf styles. This guy is a blast to see live (which is good news for Santa Cruz fans in that he’s playing Moe’s in August). While playing in Santa Cruz, there’s just no way that Brown is not going to launch into his “Surf Medley,” smashing together “Pipeline,” “Walk, Don’t Run” and “Secret Agent Man” into one mind-bending sonic boom of guitar goodness. These melodies are so deeply ingrained in West Coast ears as to be nearly imperceptible, but on Junior Brown’s guit-steel, they’ll blaze new pathways into your music-loving heart. Hear it and believe it.
That’s all I got, friends. Come at me with comments, ideas, complaints, or thundering insights. Thanks to all Lookout members for your faith and support, and please, spread the word on what we’re doing.