Lectures Series – Commemorating the 1925 Earthquake

Upcoming Lecture Series - 1925 Earthquake Centennial Commemoration

We hope you can join us for some (or all!) of our June Lecture Series, focused on the 1925 Earthquake that changed Santa Barbara forever. 

Pearl Chase: The Woman Who Helped Shape Our City, Part One, by Cheri Rae

June 5, 2025 at 6:00 pm

Info + Tickets

 

 Pearl Chase: The Woman Who Helped Shape Our City, Part Two, by Cheri Rae

June 12, 2025 at 6:00 pm

Info + Tickets

 

Why Buildings Fell: The 1925 Santa Barbara Earthquake, by Sage Shingle and Jasper Jacobs

June 19, 2025 at 6:00 pm

Info + Tickets

 

The Earthquake Survivors Speak, by Betsy Green

June 26, 2025 at 6:00 pm

Info + Tickets

Purchase all four tickets together as a series and save!

Upcoming Exhibition – GIMME SHELTER by Marcia Rickard

Upcoming Exhibition - GIMME SHELTER by Marcia Rickard

May 31 – August 9, 2025 at the Architectural Foundation Gallery

Opening Reception: Saturday, May 31st from 2 – 4p.m. 

Artist Talk: Saturday, March 29th at 2 p.m.

Gallery Closed July 5th

Fault Lines 1925, by Marcia Rickard
The Fragility of Home, by Marcia Rickard

The Architectural Foundation of Santa Barbara is pleased to announce the opening of GIMME SHELTER, an exhibition of paintings and prints by Marcia Rickard that highlight the fragility of “home” in a world fraught by war and natural disasters.

The opening reception will be held at the Architectural Foundation of Santa Barbara on Saturday, May 31st from 2 – 4 p.m. A conversation with Marcia Rickard and Architectural Historian Dennis Doordan will take place on July 12th at 2 pm.

Art is a way to confront what scares and scars us. Local artist Marcia Rickard has created a body of work that addresses the human tragedy caused by the physical destruction of home, be it Aleppo, Ukraine, Gaza, Los Angeles—or Santa Barbara. The title of this exhibition comes from the Rolling Stones song, Gimme Shelter:

Ooh, the fire is sweepin’/ Our very street today / Burns like a red coal carpet…
The floods is threatening / My very life today / Gimme, gimme shelter / Or I’m gonna fade away (Keith Richards and Mick Jagger)

GIMME SHELTER includes paintings, drypoint prints, monotypes, paintings, and fabric pieces with images of current events often added as collage elements and photo transfers. Despite the perverse allure of such images (sometimes referred to as “disaster porn”), Rickard asks us not to forget the human lives impacted by such events. Her work reflects the human dimension that loss of shelter—a place of personal safety, a refuge, a home—means, the recognition that in today’s world, this could suddenly be any of us.

“… I am drawn to the horrifying yet mesmerizing daily news photographs of destruction— war, terrorism, environmental degradation, natural disasters—that emphasize the fragility of our world.”

Marcia Rickard is a retired art historian (Professor Emerita from Saint Mary’s College, Indiana) who maintained a consistent artistic practice throughout her thirty-four years of teaching art history courses ranging from European Gothic art to Indonesian textiles. Since moving to Santa Barbara in 2019, she has studied printmaking with Siu Zimmerman.

The Architectural Foundation of Santa Barbara (AFSB) seeks to promote quality in architecture, art, and design by fostering an understanding of excellence in the urban environment. The AFSB offers diverse programs serving Santa Barbara County that provide educational opportunities for the community with participation from local architects and design professionals. Learn more at afsb.org.

Domingo Architectural Walking Tours Returning!

Domingo Architectural Walking Tours Are Back!

Every Sunday 10:00 am - 12:00 pm starting May 4th

After a hiatus, our beloved Domingo Tour is returning every Sunday morning beginning on May 4th, and we can't wait to walk with you again! 

Join us for a relaxing guided stroll through the heart of Santa Barbara's architectural charm. Step back in time and experience the architecture of downtown Santa Barbara as it was reborn after the 1925 earthquake.  Stroll through historic paseos and along State Street as we discover the Spanish Colonial Revival buildings that emerged in its wake.  Experience public art, hidden courtyards, histories of the Arlington and Granada theaters and other architectural delights.  Whether you’re a history buff or an architecture lover, this tour offers a fascinating glimpse into the city’s resilience and beauty. 

The tour begins at the Downtown Public Library Plaza on Anapamu Street, every Sunday at 10:00 a.m. and takes about two hours.
$20/person suggested donation.

Learn about the Public Library, La Arcada, the Granada and Arlington Theaters, and more!

Click here to reserve your spot, or find out more about our Walking Tours here.

3/29 Artist Talk – FARE TRADE by Patricia Houghton Clarke & Brett Leigh Dicks

Artist Talk - FARE TRADE by Patricia Houghton Clarke & Brett Leigh Dicks

Saturday, March 29th at 2 p.m.

The Architectural Foundation Gallery

La Super-Rica Taqueria, Santa Barbara (2024), 
by Patricia Houghton Clarke
Mira Lunch Bar, Wangara, Western Australia,
by Brett Leigh Dicks  

The Architectural Foundation of Santa Barbara is pleased to announce an Artist Talk on Saturday, March 29, at 2 p.m. with Maria Salguero, a Senior Staff Attorney from the Immigrant Legal Defense Center. 10% of all art sales will be donated to the Immigrant Legal Defense Fund.

Reservations are recommended but not required: please call (805) 965-6307 or email lydia@nullafsb.org

The Architectural Foundation Gallery is located at 229 East Victoria Street, Santa Barbara at the corner of Victoria and Garden Streets. Gallery hours are Saturdays from 1:00 to 4:00 p.m. and by appointment.

Click here for the Santa Barbara Independent article by Leslie Dinaberg. 

Click here for the 

The Architectural Foundation of Santa Barbara (AFSB) seeks to promote quality in architecture, art, and design by fostering an understanding of excellence in the urban environment. AFSB offers diverse programs serving Santa Barbara County that provide educational opportunities for the community with participation from local architects and design professionals. Learn more at afsb.org.

Exhibition – FARE TRADE by Patricia Houghton Clarke & Brett Leigh Dicks

Current Exhibition - FARE TRADE by Patricia Houghton Clarke & Brett Leigh Dicks

March 22 – May 17, 2025

Artist Talk – Saturday, March 29th at 2 p.m.

The Architectural Foundation Gallery

La Super-Rica Taqueria, Santa Barbara (2015), 
by Patricia Houghton Clarke
Mira Lunch Bar, Wangara, Western Australia,
by Brett Leigh Dicks  
The Architectural Foundation of Santa Barbara is pleased to announce the opening of FARE TRADE, an exhibition of photographs of taquerias in Central California by Patricia Houghton Clarke and lunch bars in Western Australia by Brett Leigh Dicks.

An opening reception will be held at the Architectural Foundation of Santa Barbara on Friday, March 21st from 5 – 7 p.m. Drinks and appetizers will be provided, with a local taco truck on site serving tacos for purchase. Brett and Patricia will give an Artist Talk on Saturday, March 29, at 2 p.m. with Maria Salguero, a Senior Staff Attorney from the Immigrant Legal Defense Center. 10% of all art sales will be donated to the Immigrant Legal Defense Fund.

Photographers Clarke and Dicks have recently turned their reportorial lenses to vernacular architecture found on two different continents—taquerias in Central California and lunch bars in Western Australia.

The vivid colors and bold signage of these fast-food establishments situated on opposite sides of the equator are emblematic of how they similarly forge and fuel their communities.

Both are typically family-owned businesses that possess a dogged determination to withstand the corporate fast-food onslaught—an ethos that Clarke, who has lived and photographed in Santa Barbara for five decades, has long embraced:

“These are cherished places where one can find far more than basic nourishment. The sense of community and service, joyful music, bold decorations, and financially accessible meals expands our broader sensibility of not only what it means to feed oneself in America, but what it means to be an American.”

Dicks, a long-time resident of Santa Barbara, experienced a sense of dislocation after moving to Western Australia in 2019. He was attracted by the visual quirkiness and working-class vibe of the Lunch Bars there:

“Lunch Bars are uniquely Western Australia, mostly owned and operated by immigrants. In sustaining the working class, they offer hearty servings of tasty, filling food and community spirit in a state that has built itself on blue-collar values.”

In FARE TRADE Clarke and Dicks present examples of architecture that we may take for granted. The stark yet poetic compositions of each photographer ask us to look again and notice how the structure and character of each eatery is unique. Together, these photographers have created a compelling, cross cultural collection of images, each one brimming with vibrant hues and local flavor.

Patricia Houghton Clarke’s award-winning photography reflects her interest in culture, history, and human nature, and has been featured in exhibitions and publications in the U.S. and Europe. Her photographs of the 2007 Obama Presidential campaign and Election Night in Grant Park are included in the Barack Obama Presidential Library collection and the Hanna Holborn Gray Special Collections Research Center at the University of Chicago.

Brett Leigh Dicks is an American/Australian photographer whose work explores society’s sociopolitical impact on the landscape. His photography has been widely exhibited in Australia, Europe, and the United States and is included within the collections of major libraries, galleries, and museums around the world. He currently resides in Fremantle, Western Australia. Brett’s participation is supported by the Western Australian Department of Local Government, Sport and Cultural Industries.
 
The Architectural Foundation of Santa Barbara (AFSB) seeks to promote quality in architecture, art, and design by fostering an understanding of excellence in the urban environment. AFSB offers diverse programs serving Santa Barbara County that provide educational opportunities for the community with participation from local architects and design professionals. Learn more at afsb.org.

Exhibition – COUPLETS by Slingshot Studio Artists

Past Exhibition - COUPLETS by Slingshot Studio Artists

January 11 – March 8, 2025

Opening Reception – Saturday, January 11th from 1 – 3 p.m.

Curator’s Walkthrough – Saturday, February 8th at 2 p.m.

The Architectural Foundation Gallery

Alligator Fish (2015), by Michelle Oliner. 

Foam print with colored pencil on paper.

Altered Woman (2015), by James Jasper.  

Print with colored pencil on paper.

Robot Box (2022), by Tom Neumeyer.  

Glazed ceramic sculpture.

The Architectural Foundation of Santa Barbara is pleased to announce the opening of COUPLETS, an exhibition featuring the work of Slingshot / Alpha Art Studio artists Michelle Oliner, James Jasper, and Tom Neumeyer. Slingshot is a progressive arts center that supports the creative practice and professional visibility of artists with intellectual and developmental disabilities (IDD) in Santa Barbara County. COUPLETS presents work from each of these artists across different media – printmaking, drawing, embroidery, and ceramics. An opening reception for the public will be held at the Architectural Foundation of Santa Barbara on Saturday January 11, from 1 – 3 pm. All are welcome.

Slingshot’s Gallery Director, Jessica Schlobohm, curated the exhibition. She will present an informal tour of the exhibition and an introduction to the studio’s progressive practices, on February 8th at 2 pm.

COUPLETS takes inspiration from several different series of prints produced by Michelle Oliner during the past decade. These prints are created by drawing on a foam plate with a dulled instrument such as a pencil, pen, or sharpened dowel. After printing the plates, typically in black, she adds a colored pencil overlay to each successive print, creating a novel version.

The prints are presented as mated pairs to highlight the rhythm and meter of their relationships. The dynamics can be jarring, like a non-sequitur, but the totality is expressive and expansive, as the asymmetry invites a closer look and prolonged reflection.

James Jasper’s works on paper introduce another aspect to this discourse. His process is methodical but economical as he completes each composition in a single sitting, rendering his abstract portraits in permanent pen or thick, indelible charcoal, without hesitation. His meditations produce multiples (or series) that are linked through their shared referent – the image, subject, or themes his drawings point to in the world.

Jasper’s embroideries remain more mysterious as their designs seem to emerge from his memory, or other non-representational musings. Created sporadically over the course of many months, if not years, these works are defined by concentric rings of linear stitches and colorful patches of dense texture reminiscent of fields or farmland, seen from above.

Sharing these contemplative tones, Tom Neumeyer’s ceramic vessels belong to a more open-ended series. His strong glyphic markings mimic and dissect their ceramic shapes with deeply inscribed lines and grids that contain hidden figures, cryptic messages, and tessellating geometry. This visual theme is continually revisited throughout his practice in different media, providing a window into a complex world that is intricate and highly organized.

In its entirety, the exhibition presents the successive and repeated gestures of these artists’ sustained attentions. Their iterative approach reminds us of the unresolved nature of artistic practice and time. Actions or moments are strung together and made continuous even when asynchronous or lacking agreement.

Michelle Oliner, James Jasper, and Tom Neumeyer have been artists at Slingshot since the studio’s inception in 2013. During the 1990s, each made their way to the programs of the Alpha Resource Center (Alpha) where their individual artistic aptitudes were noticed and encouraged. Over the past decade at Slingshot, all three artists have developed their creative interests and individual practices with more focused attention.

The Architectural Foundation of Santa Barbara office and gallery are based in the historic Acheson House at the corner of Garden and East Victoria Streets in Santa Barbara. Gallery hours are Saturdays from 1:00 to 4:00 p.m. and by appointment.

10/19 Exhibition Artist Walk-through – ABSTRACTED by Carolyn Hubbs

Artist Walk-through of ABSTRACTED by Carolyn Hubbs

Saturday, October 19th, 2024 at 2:00 pm

The Architectural Foundation Gallery

The Architectural Foundation of Santa Barbara is pleased to present an informal artist walk-through with Carolyn Hubbs on her exhibition ABSTRACTED, a series of abstract paintings based on plein air sketching in the Santa Barbara environs.

Join Carolyn Hubbs for a stroll around the gallery as she discusses the pieces in her exhibition. 

Reservations are recommended but not required: (805) 965-6307 or lydia@nullafsb.org

The Architectural Foundation Gallery is located at 229 East Victoria Street, in Santa Barbara at the corner of Victoria and Garden Streets. Gallery hours are Saturdays from 1:00 to 4:00 p.m. and by appointment.

Click here for the Santa Barbara Independent article written by Tia Trinh.

Click here for the article in The Voice, written by Isaac Hernández de Lipa. 
 
Click here for Carolyn’s radio interview with Elizabeth Stewart. 
 

Top Image Shown:

Tree Creating Itself
Acrylic on Board 
10″ x 10″

 

10/17 Presentation & Panel – Second Life: Building Community Around Preservation and Adaptive Reuse in the California Desert

Second Life: Building Community Around Preservation and Adaptive Reuse in the California Desert

Thursday, October 17th, 2024 at 5:00 pm 

The Hub at the Community Environmental Council

The panel will consist of Sidney Williams, Susan Secoy Jensen, and Leo Marmol

Refreshments will be served at 5:00 pm, followed by Presentations and a Panel Discussion at 5:30 pm. 

Tickets are $10 and available for purchase here. 1LU/HSW

This event comprises a series of presentations followed by a panel discussion analyzing the impact of preservation and adaptive reuse projects in the California desert. These projects not only extend the lifespan of architecturally significant structures but also, more significantly, foster public commitment to preserving and celebrating the region’s modern built identity—a dedication that stands out prominently in the area.

Spanning from Palm Springs to the Salton Sea, the Golden State’s desert stands as a symbol of architectural pride. Region-wide events like Modernism Week attract hundreds of thousands of architecture and design enthusiasts annually, contributing to the local fascination with the built environment. Nonprofits such as the Palm Springs Modern Committee, Palm Springs Preservation Foundation, Palm Desert Preservation Foundation, and others play a crucial role in raising awareness about the region’s architectural significance and mobilizing both public and private sectors to preserve it. As grassroots organizations driven by ecological concerns rather than profit, they actively oppose development plans that threaten social structures and environmental richness.

Towns like Palm Springs and Palm Desert, akin to Santa Barbara and Montecito, boast strong architectural identities. Architects across these urban centers grapple with similar challenges: balancing the preservation of local character with evolving functional and aesthetic needs. Preservation efforts, including adaptive reuse projects, emerge from this balance, offering insights for new construction in these historically rooted towns.

The event aims to highlight preservation stories led by grassroots organizations in the California desert. These efforts, by engaging the public, have nurtured feelings of belonging, optimism, and pride in architecture, which provide valuable insights for Santa Barbara’s architects and the broader public.

Exhibition Artist Walk-through – ABSTRACTED by Carolyn Hubbs

Artist Walk-through of ABSTRACTED by Carolyn Hubbs

Saturday, September 28, 2024 at 2:00 pm

The Architectural Foundation Gallery

The Architectural Foundation of Santa Barbara is pleased to present an informal artist walk-through with Carolyn Hubbs on her exhibition ABSTRACTED, a series of abstract paintings based on plein air sketching in the Santa Barbara environs.

Join Carolyn Hubbs for a stroll around the gallery as she discusses the pieces in her exhibition. 

Reservations are recommended but not required: (805) 965-6307 or lydia@nullafsb.org

The Architectural Foundation Gallery is located at 229 East Victoria Street, in Santa Barbara at the corner of Victoria and Garden Streets. Gallery hours are Saturdays from 1:00 to 4:00 p.m. and by appointment.

Click here for the Santa Barbara Independent article written by Tia Trinh.

Click here for the article in The Voice, written by Isaac Hernández de Lipa. 
 

Top Image Shown:

Tree Creating Itself
Acrylic on Board 
10″ x 10″

 

Exhibition – ABSTRACTED by Carolyn Hubbs

Past Exhibition - ABSTRACTED by Carolyn Hubbs

September 7 – November 2, 2024

Opening Reception – Friday September 6, 2024 5 – 7 p.m.

The Architectural Foundation Gallery

Press:

Listen to Carolyn’s radio interview with Elizabeth Stewart here.

Read Josef Woodard’s article in The Independent here

Read Isaac Hernández de Lipa’s article in The Voice here

The Architectural Foundation of Santa Barbara is pleased to announce the opening of ABSTRACTED, an exhibition of abstract paintings based on plein air sketching in the Santa Barbara environs.

An opening reception will be held at the Architectural Foundation of Santa Barbara on September 6th from 5-7 pm.

Carolyn Hubbs will give an informal walk-through of her exhibition on September 28th and on October 19th at 2 pm.

In her first solo show in Santa Barbara, Carolyn Hubbs presents vibrant abstract paintings in acrylic—jazzy compositions that evolve from her sketches of favorite locations in and around Santa Barbara. Her drawings simplify and reconstruct the natural spaces she observes outdoors. In the studio she transforms them into playful, complex rearrangements of shapes, colors and rhythms that move in and out of the picture plane. The exhibition includes several of Hubbs’ field sketches and corresponding paintings.
 
“Outdoors, I look for the strongest element (rhythm, color, line, shape) in the ‘scene’ that catches my interest and then develop everything else around it. Back in the studio I study my notes and then start to make a painting by rearranging everything and playing with the interactions of colors and rhythms. I like to use disruptions and disjunctions to give the whole picture movement. The picture is complete when, finally giving into the poetics of the unpredictable, I have built a whole new image that resonates with me. Sometimes they look totally abstract; sometimes more like landscape!”
 
Hubbs graduated from Mills College with a B. A. in art history and studies in photography and printmaking. Later, she studied at U.C.L.A. Extension School with Charles Garabedian. Her eclectic influences include jazz pianist Bill Evans, the 15th c. artist Sassetta, Stuart Davis, and Ellsworth Kelly as well as artist/teachers Colin Fraser Gray and Rick Stich. She has exhibited internationally, in Los Angeles, at the Elverhoj Museum in Solvang, and at Sullivan Goss Gallery in Santa Barbara.

The Architectural Foundation of Santa Barbara office and gallery are based in the historic Acheson House at the corner of Garden and East Victoria Streets in Santa Barbara. Gallery hours are Saturdays from 1:00 to 4:00 p.m. and by appointment.

Top Image Shown:

Tree Creating Itself
Acrylic on Board 
10″ x 10″

Bottom Image Shown:

Tide Lines
Acrylic on Board 
10″ x 10″