“Realizing that Santa Barbara is an epicenter of extreme mixing of cultures, I wanted to create a mobile machine that produces images, texts, and sound as though it were on a mission. That mission is to introduce and connect communities. This [project] is not about discovery, it is about the opportunity to communicate basic human expressions through art.”  –Cruz Ortiz

Based in San Antonio, TX, Cruz Ortiz uses print, performance and film to address issues related the bicultural landscape of South Texas. His particular visual language fuses classical art with contemporary pop culture references such as taco trucks, country music, and romantic poetry.

El Johnny the Satellite is a musical, printmaking bicycle that will serve as Ortiz’s project for takepart | makeart: arte para todos. Born out of an observation that Santa Barbara is comprised of a number of unique cultural communities, El Johnny the Satellite creates connection points for these seemingly disparate linguistic, sociocultural, and geographic elements of the city’s history and present. El Johnny the Satellite will pop up all over the Waterfront district in March and Isla Vista neighborhood in May.

“As a woman, whose family history is strongly connected to farm labor, my projects in Santa Barbara come from a deeply personal place of caring for our safety and culture through collaborations with the Santa Barbara Rape Crisis Center, Mixteco Indegena Community Organizing Project (MICOP) and Andrew Williamson farm.”  –Tanya Aguiñiga

Raised in Tijuana, Mexico and San Diego, CA, Tanya Aguiñiga is an award-winning artist, designer, and craftsperson based in Los Angeles, CA. Her work merges craft and performance to generate dialogues about identity, culture, and gender with the aim of fostering community and connections.

In April 2017, for Sexual Assault Awareness Month, Aguiñiga partnered with the Santa Barbara Rape Crisis Center to bring awareness to sexual assault via art making workshops and talks in the Isla Vista neighborhoods as her first project for takepart | makeart: arte para todos. For her second project in June 2017, Aguiñiga collaborated with Porfirio Gutierrez, a Master Weaver in the Zapotec tradition, to host a series of dyeing classes, weaving lessons, and public performances on the Westside. While Aguiñiga's work takes many forms, her aim is to bridge cultural divides and inspire greater understanding of the people and places in which we live, work and play.

"Santa Barbara is an ideal place to join the conversation regarding the impending ecological reality of expanding drylands. Although Santa Barbara may not seem like a desert, California’s drought and recent wildfires are an example of how we need to consider how to exist in a warmer future with less water."  –April Bojorquez

A collaboration between artists April Bojorquez and Matt Garcia, desertArtLAB is an award-winning initiative dedicated to experimental art exploring connections between ecology, sociology, technology, and community. Combining performance, visual art, and social practice, their work explores the histories and traditions associated with environmental restoration, dryland food practices, and other desert conditions.

desertArtLAB engages audiences in collaborative processes of honoring, learning from, and passing on indigenous knowledges in order to move forward together into a hotter, drier future. In light of Santa Barbara’s drought and recent wildfires, desertArtLAB’s takepart | makeart: arte para todos project highlighted the critical importance of California’s native plants through participatory planting performances, cacti exchanges, plant-based cooking workshops, and intergenerational community dinners hosted in July 2017 in Santa Barbara's Westside neighborhood.

To create a central platform for takepart | makeart: arte para todos, MCASB hosted an architectural competition to commission the design and construction of a contemporary public art pavilion. The winning submission was a vibrantly-colored, modular pavilion titled Runaway, which served as a central meeting point and information hub for takepart | makeart: arte para todos.

Chosen for its bright, playful character, functional modularity, and thoughtful consideration of Santa Barbara’s local atmosphere, Runaway was designed by Molly Hunker and Greg Corso of SPORTS, an award-winning design and architecture collaboration whose work is inspired by the border between everyday experiences and the unexpected, with a lively dose of curiosity and playfulness.

“Runaway aims to create a fun and visually dynamic environment by architecturalizing the aesthetic qualities of air in Santa Barbara. As the projects travels around the city, the three structures will be oriented differently at each of the site locations so as to have a renewed existence and to provoke new and compelling experiences at each location.”  –Greg Corso

By contributing bold, contemporary design to Santa Barbara - a tourist destination and location steeped in California Mission Style architecture and culture - Runaway serves as an aesthetic catalyst and invites communities to view and interact in unexpected ways with their surroundings and, in doing so, encourages residents to consider how contemporary design can activate and energize public spaces as well as how it can connect visitors to the natural landscape – and each other. Building on these ideas, SPORTS’ Runaway became a beacon around which programming by artists Cruz Ortiz, Tanya Aguiniga and desertArtLAB could take place.

In 2014, MCASB commissioned and featured new work from six innovative and contemporary Los Angeles-based practitioners trained in architecture as part of our Almost Anything Goes: Architecture and Inclusivity exhibition. Runaway, builds upon this earlier engagement with contemporary architecture and design, and expands opportunities for MCASB to explore this interest in greater depth.