Category: News & Events

The Architectural Foundation of Santa Barbara is pleased to present the exhibition, Veins: Mining Family History Through Copper, a solo exhibition of photography, video, text, and installation art by Mayela Rodriguez.

The exhibition expands upon Rodriguez’s prior explorations of her lineage and her father’s family, whose members are from Cananea, Mexico where the Buenvavista del Cobre mine is located. For this exhibition, she uses the theme of copper as a lens into her own evolving identity.

In 2017, when Rodriguez was an MFA student at the University of Michigan, she wrote to the Buenavista del Cobre mine requesting information about her distant uncle, Aurelio Rodriguez. She had grown up hearing intriguing stories about this uncle who, allegedly, pitched rocks into the mine as a child and later in life became a professional baseball player for the Detroit Tigers. After many months, Rodriguez received a package from the Buenavista del Cobre mine that contained a 13″ x 18″ sheet of copper wrapped in plastic.

Carrying the copper with her, Rodriguez then embarked on an ambitious pilgrimage to sites that she and her family have called home. She explains “I was interested in discovering what it meant to simply exist with my copper. How could our pilgrimage both transform it and me? By developing a relationship with my copper in this way, I realized that the copper was not just a slab of metal excavated from the depths of Mexican earth but a vessel to hold all my concentrated questions, thoughts, and insecurities about my identity as a Mexican American.”

Veins: Mining Family History Through Copper expands on recent work by contemporary artists who use globally traded commodities as visual metaphors for ways that personal identity inhabits and is shaped by sociopolitical contexts: Minerva Cuevas, Kara Walker, and Minga Opazo whose AFSB exhibition, Siempre Más/Always More (2020), featured weavings and textiles made of found and recycled clothing.

Mayela Rodriguez is an artist and educator who positions art as a collective, inclusive, and healing process. By facilitating the production of community-made collections, she seeks to remind participants and students of the inherent power of their creative voices in making change. Most recently, Rodriguez has worked on collaborative projects with Latinx communities in Ypsilanti and Ann Arbor in Michigan and New Cuyama and Santa Barbara in California. Rodriguez received her BA from UC Berkeley (2015) and MFA from University of Michigan (2019). Rodriguez was born and raised in Santa Barbara, California. (mayelarodriguez.com)

An Artist Talk will be held at the Architectural Foundation of Santa Barbara on Saturday afternoon, February 11th from 2-3 p.m. 

Gallery hours are Saturdays from 1:00 to 4:00 p.m. and by appointment.

Opening Reception September 9, 2022 from 5-7 p.m.

The Architectural Foundation of Santa Barbara is pleased to announce the upcoming exhibition Prayer Flags & A Tale of Longing, an exhibition by Mary Heebner. This exhibition is three-fold and consists of two-sided Prayer Flags, a spiral-bound artist’s book, A Tale of Longing and a booklet, Elemental Offerings, all originating with Heebner’s travels to Rumtek Monastery in Sikkim, India to see how prayer flags were made.

An opening reception with the artist will be held at the Architectural Foundation Gallery on Friday, September 9, from 5:00 – 7:00 p.m.

Mary Heebner has distinguished herself in Santa Barbara and beyond as a multi-media artist, published writer and book artist. Her artworks are held in numerous public and private collections, including Santa Barbara and San Francisco Museums of Art, The US Library of Congress, The National Gallery of Art, The New York Public Library, and UCSB’s Art, Design & Architecture Museum, and its Special Collections Library. Mary Heebner earned her B.A. and M.F.A at UCSB and has long been a noted member of Santa Barbara’s art community.

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.

Opening Reception July 15, 2022, 5-7 p.m.

The Architectural Foundation of Santa Barbara is pleased to announce the upcoming exhibition of Malka’s Place: A Journey into a Surreal World, a solo-exhibition of photographic montages by Joyce Wilson. The photographs were inspired by a visit to Malka’s Place where Joyce stepped into a world of unearthly delights. An opening reception with the artist and Malka Belzberg, the inspiration for this exhibition, will be held at the Architectural Foundation Gallery on Friday, July 15, from 5:00 – 7:00 p.m.

Joyce Wilson’s career spans over half a century. She served on the faculty of Brooks Institute and has lectured and taught workshops throughout the world. Joyce is active in the Santa Barbara Art community as a board member of the Abstract Art Collective.

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.

Opening Reception May 13, 2022, 5-7 p.m.

The Architectural Foundation of Santa Barbara is pleased to announce the upcoming exhibition of A·BOD·E, a solo-exhibition of recent paintings and papier-mâché sculptures by Ojai-based artist Cara Lasell Bonewitz. An opening reception with the artist will be held at the Architectural Foundation Gallery on Friday, May 13, from 5:00 – 7:00 p.m.

Cara Lasell Bonewitz received her MFA from the Glasgow School of Art and her BA in Studio Art and History from Yale University.

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.

The Architectural Foundation of Santa Barbara is pleased to present Local Treasures, an exhibition of artworks by thirty artists who have exhibited at the Architectural Foundation Gallery during the past seven years. The exhibition runs from Saturday, September 18^th through November 12th, 2021. The public is invited to drop by on the opening day, September 18^th from 1-4 (masks and social distancing required).

In the Foundation’s garden, the group Glendessary Jam will be providing music for the event.  

The Architectural Foundation of Santa Barbara is pleased to present Local Treasures, an exhibition of artworks by thirty artists who have exhibited at the Architectural Foundation Gallery during the past seven years. The exhibition runs from Saturday, September 18^th through November 12th, 2021. The public is invited to drop by on the opening day, September 18^th from 1-4 (masks and social distancing required); and for the gala Closing Reception with the Artists, Friday, November 12, from 5:00 to 7:00 p.m.

Local Treasures honors the extraordinary quality, diversity, and vitality of the artists whose work has recently graced the walls of the Architectural Foundation Gallery. Initiated during the 1990s, the Gallery exhibited watercolor paintings by local architects of Santa Barbara buildings. Later, the Gallery committee expanded its mission to present exhibitions of contemporary art, architecture, and design.  Throughout the pandemic, following all COVID-19 protocols, the Gallery has maintained its schedule of exhibitions with the support of dedicated volunteers.  

The Architectural Foundation of Santa Barbara has been dedicated to expanding our community’s appreciation of the built environment since 1983. The AFSB Gallery is located in the historic Acheson House at the corner of Garden and East Victoria Streets in Santa Barbara. Regular gallery hours are Saturdays from 1:00 to 4:00 pm and weekdays by appointment.

The exhibition will be installed in a celebratory salon style (works of different sizes and media will hang next to and above each another), creating dynamic groupings on the Gallery’s walls.  Two-dimensional work including an abstract print by Tony Askew, a collage by Dug Uyesaka, and plein air paintings by Libby Smith and Nina Ward will be complemented by several reliefs—a surreal box construction by Michael Long and a geometric structure in styrene by Marilyn Helsenrott-Hochhauser.  A weaving by Minga Opazo and a screen print by Claudia Borfiga will join photographs by Sara Yerkes, Jeffrey Sippress, Pat McGinnis and Matt Straka, as well as a sewn paper composition by architect Cass Ensberg and a hard-edge, environmental painting by Cynthia Martin.  Two husband/wife duos—printmakers Siu and Don Zimmerman and painters Judy and Warner Nienow will also be featured.