Hello friends, today we launch the Little Giant Collective Bandana Fundraiser: an effort to raise money for our studio, put money in our artists pockets, and put a new bandana in your collection. These bandanas were designed by our Collective members and will be screenprinted in house by the artist. The profits will be split 50/50 between the artist and the shop.
This fundraiser is pre-order only, meaning the bandanas will be on sale through November 1, and then printed and ready to ship or local pickup by mid-November. Make sure to place your order before the sale ends!
Prints for Sale at Tabby Cat
Go show our friends at the Tabby Cat Cafe some love, and while you are picking up a cappuccino shop prints from Little Giant Members. Tabby Cat Cafe is currently hosting a Little Giant Pop-Up while we keep our doors shut for the pandemic. This way you get the best of both coffee and art!
Tabby Cat Cafe is located:
1101 Cedar St, Santa Cruz, CA 95060
7am - 3pm Monday through Friday
TRIBUTARIES // CYANOTYPE PRINTS AND HANDWOVEN TEXTILES
Join us at Little Giant Collective this Friday, September 6th for the opening reception of "Tributaries," a collaborative exhibit of cyanotype prints and handwoven textiles by Melody Overstreet and Vincent Waring.
TRIBUTARIES celebrates the dynamic movement of water, and the way in which elements are in constant conversation with one another.
Water carves a valley
Streams widen
Peaks ascend
Moon rise
Tide flow
Water Song
MELODY OVERSTREET
Melody J. Overstreet is a poet, artist, printer, and educator. She holds a degree in Studio Art and Psychology from the University of California, Santa Cruz, where she focused on Printmaking, Public Art, and Peace Studies. Her work has been exhibited locally as well as internationally, and has also been featured in publications inclusive of Seed Broadcast, Inverness Almanac, and Chinquapin Quarterly.
She was instrumental in initiating Santa Monica College’s Organic Learning Garden, a space for cross-curricular engagement, the hands-on growing of food, seed saving, and community building. Overstreet is currently based in Santa Cruz, California where she is a teacher and mentor to students in Book Arts, as well as an educator as part of Santa Cruz Kids in Nature (KIN). She offers occasional workshops through Cabrillo College Extension, UCSC, The Santa Cruz Museum of Natural History, and The UCSC Arboretum & Botanic Garden. She is a certified California Naturalist through CNP and UCSC's Arboretum and has worked with her students and colleagues to develop gardens featuring edible, medicinal, and dye plants for deepening consciousness of the ways in which plants and their pollinators are interwoven in and sustain our tenuous lives. Her artwork and her educational approach emphasize the importance of connection to our origins through place, community, and plants.
Vincent Waring is a maker of sorts based out of Santa Cruz, CA. He is interested in the ecology of wild and intentional spaces, which he often explores through imagery reflecting parts of the whole. He utilizes a variety of mediums, including printmaking, painting, and drawing. Born and raised in the Central Valley, he moved to Santa Cruz to attend the University of California where he received a BA in Studio Art. In the midst of making art, he also spends his days working with textiles, wood, and plants.
@vinwaring
vinwaring.com
The Sea is Rising: Reflections on the state of California Kelp Forests
The Sea is Rising: Reflections on the state of California Kelp Forests,
an exhibit of new works by Janina A. Larenas is on view for the month of August. Join us for the opening reception this Friday, August 2nd
About the exhibit:
The Sea is Rising: Reflections on the state of California Kelp Forests is a visual and emotional portrait of the Monterey kelp forest from 2013-2019. In this new exhibition, Janina A. Larenas explores the impacts of climate change on local kelp forest ecosystems, now in ecological collapse linked to a perfect storm of extreme water temperature, a disease outbreak on sea stars, and a population explosion of a voracious kelp grazer, the purple sea urchin. By visually interpreting the data collected by Reef Check California over the course of six years, Larenas gives the viewer a physical and emotional experience of this rapidly disappearing ecosystem. The Sea is Rising frames unprecedented extinction and environmental loss not simply as the consequence of human action but as inextricably tied to the imperatives of capitalist development.
Artist Bio:
Janina A. Larenas is a printmaker and book artist who works with a variety of mediums to create narrative imagery. Her pieces range from science illustration to stickers and posters, embroidery to zines, prints to paintings, often merging technical crafts with fine art presentation. She is a trained California Naturalist and AAUS certified diver, founder of Print Organize Protest, and co-founder of Little Giant Collective and People's Disco.
Detail of yoy fish, linoleum print on unryu paper by Janina A. Larenas
Mixed Bag Group Show
Join us at Little Giant Collective tomorrow night for the opening reception of our latest group exhibition, "Mixed Bag." This exhibit will showcase our works in other media in addition to printmaking.
Also opening, just down the street..
LGC member Louise Leong is opening a new solo exhibit of gouache paintings at Stripe Men. Reception 6pm onwards.
Seabright Caddy (2019), gouache on paper
CARS: new paintings by Louise Leong
I love cars. I love my car. I love the Cars. I love songs about cars and driving. Cars are sleek, sexy, shining, and also busted, boxy, and ugly. I love those too.
STRIPE MEN
117 Walnut Ave
Santa Cruz, CA 95060
June First Friday events!
An exhibit of political posters by Ry Faraola opens on June 7th at Little Giant Collective Studio. Join us for a reception from 7pm-9pm
PEOPLE'S DISCO RETROSPECTIVE
TABBY CAT CAFE
1101 Cedar St, Santa Cruz, CA 95060
Opening reception June 7 6pm
LGC member Janina Larenas will be having a retrospective exhibit of People's Disco posters at the Tabby Cat Cafe. The People's Disco is a free disco / funk / boogie / revolution dance party started by Janina and her partner, Jared Gampel.
Tabby Cat Cafe hours
M-F 7am-6pm
Sat/Sun 9am-6pm
STEAM ROLLER PRINTMAKING ALERT
SOMETHING BADASS HAPPENING AT THE MAH THIS FRIDAY
THE WORLD IS YOUR PRESS BED
THIS IS NOT A DRILL!!! I REPEAT, THIS IS NOT A DRILL
Museum of Art and History: Do It Together
705 Front Street
June 7, 2019 5pm-9pm
Free First Friday event
Melody, Campbell, Ash, and Louise of Little Giant Collective will be printing a 4'x16' wood block on Cooper Street with a little help from a big ole steam roller. You may have witnessed this badass printmaking spectacle a few years ago, also at the MAH. The following photos are from the steam roller print event in 2013.
Here we go, one more time!
Ash Armenta, steam rolling into our hearts.
On view in June: works by Campbell Steers at India Joze
418 Front St, Santa Cruz, CA 95060
YOU'RE INVITED! MAY FIRST FRIDAY AND MORE
May is jam-packed with events. Mark your calendars!
YOU'RE INVITED
"BREAKUP WITH THE OCEAN"
New works by Ash Armenta
Opening reception May 3 6pm-9pm
COLD BEER - KARAOKE - BREAKUP JAMS - LIVE BLOCK PRINTING
Little Giant Collective is proud to present our next exhibit, "Breakup with the Ocean" featuring new relief prints and woodblocks by LGC member Ash Armenta. Please join us at the opening reception this Friday, May 3rd from 6pm-9pm with a block printing demo from 7pm-8pm.
Ash’s all new work looks at the relationship they have with the ocean and some the coastal animals. The show is Ash’s bittersweet farewell to the Pacific coast as they will be starting an MFA program at University of Wisconsin Madison.
Ash Armenta is a print media artist based in the Bay Area of California. Ash concluded the two year program at Tamarind Institute and received the title of Tamarind Master Printer in 2017. The program included several collaborations with artists such as Matt Shlian, Rashaad Newsome, Nicola Lopez, and Nina Elder.
Ash enjoys printing collaboratively with artists as well as printing personal work, painting outdoor murals, illustration, woodworking, sign painting, and anything involving handmade fine details. Ash also teaches studio art and art history lecture classes.
Other interests include organizing collaboration, investigating how queer bodies navigate public spaces and visual manifestations of community. Additionally what constitutes the multiple or edition and how principles of traditional printmaking can be expanded in similar practices of making.
Little Giant Collective is being hosted by the Art Cave gallery for an exhibit for the month of May. We're stoked to show our work in this new contemporary gallery. Keep an eye out for other events at the Art Cave.
Art Cave (in the Wrigley Building)
2801 Mission St, #2803
Santa Cruz, CA 95060
We'll be having a closing reception at the end of the month. Stay tuned!
6th Annual Catamaran Magazine exhibit opening at R. Blitzer Gallery
LGC members Lucas Elmer and Louise Leong are included in this exhibit
R. Blitzer Gallery
2801 Mission Street
Santa Cruz, CA 95060
Opening reception May 3rd 5pm-9pm
Original works from these artists featured in the 2018 quarterly issues of Catamaran:
Robert Bilensky, Jack Chapman, Hallie Cohen, Tom Bottoms, Kit Eastman, Alan Feltus, Sara Friedlander, Lisa Hochstein, Lucas Gasperik, Peter Hiller, Enrique Leal, Louise Leong, Stephanie Martin, Ursula O’Farrell, Minerva Ortiz, Hearne Pardee, Ed Penniman, Roland Peterson, Dorothy Robinson, Robynn Smith, Susan Solomon, Danielle Torvik Staffen
All events are free and open to the public
Exhibit runs May 3 – June 1.
Gallery hours: Tuesday – Saturday noon – 5:00pm
Closing Reception and Artists Talk
Saturday June 1, 2-4 pm
Participating Artists:
Sara Friedlander, Peter Hiller, Louse Leong, Minerva Ortiz, Ed Penniman, and Susan Solomon
BIKE NIGHT @ THE MAH
We're participating in Bike Night at the Museum of Art and History this Friday, May 3rd by live screenprinting (surprise)! We'll be posted on Cooper Street to help the public print up some juicy bicycle imagery on paper and fabric.
Bike Night @
the Museum of Art and History
705 Front St.
Santa Cruz, CA 95060
5pm-9pm
ONGOING EXHIBITS
"We're Still Here" at the MAH on view until September 22, 2019includes work by LGC member Ry Faraola. The exhibit explores senior isolation in Santa Cruz county and was created with local seniors and advocates.
COMING SOON
Little Giant Collective will be opening applications soon to experienced printmakers interested in becoming studio monitors. Please stay tuned!
"We're Still Here" opens April 5th at the Museum of Art and History
"We're Still Here" opens April 5th
at the Museum of Art and History
Ry Faraola, Little Giant Collective member, is an artist-in-residence in the Museum of Art and History's latest exhibit entitled "We're Still Here." The exhibit explores senior isolation in Santa Cruz county and was created with local seniors and advocates.
Ry Faraola uses art to create empathy. For this project, Ry worked with seniors to design an interactive Game of Life. These prints explore some of the challenges and triumphs seniors experience each day.
Social isolation impacts all of us and is a growing health epidemic in our community. In 2017, people over 60 who reported feeling lonely saw a 45% increase in their risk of death and in that same year over 1 in 3 seniors in Santa Cruz reported feeling socially isolated. (Source)
Over the course of seven months, a community group of local seniors, advocates, and artists called C3 (the Creative Community Committee) poured their ideas, art, hopes, and stories together to create this inspiring exhibition. C3 created personal artwork about loneliness, brainstormed solutions to build connection and offered their words of wisdom for future generations.
Featured artists: Wes Modes, Gina Orlando, Ry Faraola, and Cid Pearlman.
HOMEGIRLS VS. MEGABABES: WORKS BY AMANDA PAYNE AND LOUISE LEONG
HOMEGIRLS VS. MEGABABES:
WORKS BY AMANDA PAYNE AND LOUISE LEONG
FRIDAY, APRIL 5 2019 @ LITTLE GIANT COLLECTIVE
115 RIVER ST SOUTH
SANTA CRUZ, CA 95060
6PM-9PM
LIVE SCREENPRINTING - COLD BEER - HOT ART
This event is wheelchair accessible: ramp to the right of JC Nails
Homegirls vs. Megababes
A joint exhibit of art by Amanda Payne and Louise Leong featuring screenprints and ink illustrations of women in sensuous repose, solitary, in their squad, and ready to kick your ass. Whose team are you on?
Join us for the opening reception, Friday April 5th from 6pm-9pm at the Little Giant Collective studio. We will be live screenprinting Homegirls and Megababes paper pennants to show off your team of choice. BYO shirts and fabric to print on if you'd like!
Louise Leong:
The title of this show came from a daydream I had inspired by the movie A League of Their Own of two competing women's baseball teams called the Homegirls and the Megababes. Both teams were full of women that I couldn't tell if I wanted to be or be with (a timeless queer dilemma). The big twist was that the same women played on both teams (ha-ha).
My work for this show includes one of my recurring woman characters who has embodied both the casual badass-ness and unabashed sexiness of the "homegirl" and "megababe" type to me. My images also referenced other women who embodied these qualities including Chinese-American nightclub performers from the 1940's, Hong Kong actresses from the 1960's and 1980's, the musicians La Luz and the Ronettes, and of course the All-American Girls Professional Baseball League of the 1940's.
Follow @louleo_ for more art and minutiae
Amanda Payne:
Making art featuring attractive naked ladies with full manes of luscious hair is a very easy thing to do. The nude female form has been celebrated throughout the ages, lounging about, eating fruit, ignoring cherubs.
These women, from Venus to Salomé, were depicted as soft and delicate, eyes cast away. Despite goddesses, warriors, or noble ladies, they all lack agency over their bodies as could easily be viewed as sexual objects.
As time went on, with the invention of photography, nudity for the sake of readily available erotica became more prevalent. From the run of the mill nudie shots to highly specialized fetishism, erotic photography allowed women the opportunity to simultaneously be admired for their form, admonished for being naked, and judged for making the choice to do so.
My goal is to give agency to the naked. Often looking you in the eye, asking you to enjoy, respect, and possibly even find a piece of yourself, in size, shape, or attitude. Some of my proudest moments as an artist are when ladies take a print because the woman in the piece felt like it was a reflection of themselves.
You can find more of Amanda’s work on Instagram.
@_kupferdach_ for paintings
@amanda_payne for tattoos
@thegettysburgundress for performance
ORIGINS: A Collective Art Opening
ORIGINS is a show that features 11 artists and their ongoing relationship to printmaking. Each artist shares an early hand-pulled print alongside their most recent work, engaging in a conversation with how we each began on this path, as well as where we are now. It is our hope that through sharing this work, that we make visible the magic that emerges from the learning process. Join us as we celebrate endless beginnings and the threads that connect our past to our ever-evolving present.
Join us this coming Friday, March 1st at 115 River Street South from 6:00-9:00pm. We hope to see you there!
JANUARY FIRST FRIDAY EVENT - January 4th, 2019 at the Tabby Cat Cafe
Join the Little Giant Collective 6-9 this Friday, January 4th at the newly opened Tabby Cat Cafe for a group show & print sale with interactive printing demos!
Little Giant Collective is a group of 11 printmakers in Santa Cruz who are opening a collectively owned printmaking space this winter. We will be signing a lease for our new space next week, but we still need to raise $1,500 for a use permit before we can open. To raise this amount we will be selling artwork at the Tabby Cat Cafe from 6-9 on Friday, January 4th. We will also be holding print demos where you can print one of our prints yourself to take home for free!
Tabby Cat Cafe was recently opened by long-time Cafe Bene employee Lisa Curran and her partner Jeb Purucker.
Little Giant Collective is: Ash Armenta, Lucas Elmer, Ry Faraola, Janina Larenas, Louise Leong, Enrique Lopez, Melody Overstreet, Amanda Payne, Derek Pratt, Campbell Steers, and Vincent Waring.
THIS FRIDAY - Poetry and Book Arts
Dive beneath the printed word at an evening featuring the most impressive poetry and book arts in Santa Cruz County.
Enjoy poetry readings from powerful new voices as well as some of the county’s most seasoned and sublime. Make monotype prints, bind booklets, learn the art of paper folding, repurpose books, and create poems with other community members. By the end of the night, you’ll be convinced that there’s much more to the story than meets the eye.
← Back to All Events, 3rd Fridays, Art Events, Evening Events, Family Events
3rd Friday: Poetry and Book Arts
WHEN:
Fri, Mar 17, 2017, 6–9 pm
WHERE:
MAH
705 Front Street, Santa Cruz, CA 95060 United States
PHONE:
(831) 429-1964
COST:
$10 General, $8 Students, $5 MAH Members, FREE for children under 5
Save to:
Dive beneath the printed word at an evening featuring the most impressive poetry and book arts in Santa Cruz County.
Enjoy poetry readings from powerful new voices as well as some of the county’s most seasoned and sublime. Make monotype prints, bind booklets, learn the art of paper folding, repurpose books, and create poems with other community members. By the end of the night, you’ll be convinced that there’s much more to the story than meets the eye.
MAH members get in half price.
Join today.
Performances
6 – 7:15pm – Poetry Readings hosted by Poetry Santa Cruz and Cabrillo College: Poetry for the People
Poetry Santa Cruz, featuring Nancy Miller Gomez, William Ward Butler, Carolyn Brigit Flynn
Participatory Workshops
Engage in Poetry in a Time of Division with Cabrillo College students. Art can cross political divides and heal the soul. In order to celebrate the creative spirit, Cabrillo College students will read their own poems while hosting a poetry table where students will write “Poems on Demand” and inspire participants to write poems and create mini-books.
Create your own monotype print using a printing press with Printmakers at the Tannery.
Build a collective narrative with artist Veronica Wang’s Cyanotype Dreams. Each print will serve to capture a memory or thought that haunts you. Write your own story and create a series of cyanotypes that captures sociological hauntings.
Create a children’s book through community collaboration, inspiring laughter and sharing ridiculous jokes with Giggling Geckos author Thecla Campbell.
Join Little Giant Collective and Print Organize Protest with a Politics and Poetry workshop. There will be live printing political haikus on t-shirts and posters, live printing the collective’s Political Haiku book for participants to cut, fold, and take home, a large accordion book for people to contribute their own political haiku, a pamphlet bookmaking station, and a print/make your own bookmark station! Special bonus: Artwork from the collective will be available for purchase!
Create your own rap and learn about creative accessibility with Creative Young Artists from the Heal for Real project.
Join your library for some poetry in motion! Create a temporary poem with Kermit, the Santa Cruz Public Libraries Book Bike – add your own words to the magnetic word bank or simply see the cycle of poems change as they pedal into the creation of a veritable visual & verbal mobile work of collaborative art.
Be a part of a communal poem with editors of the UCSC Chinquapin Literary Magazine.
Learn, discuss, and write poetry with members of the Santa Cruz Word Church.
Learn the art of Yotsume Toji with the Young Writers Program in Four Eyes and Three Lines: Japanese Bookbinding and Haiku. Then use calligraphy pens to fill the pages of your newly bound book with Haiku, Tanka and Renga.
Participate in positive civic engagement by decorating postcards with art and mailing them to our representatives with Kids Art Congress.
Write a collaborative poem in a workshop with Magdalena Montagne and share your cover ideas with editor, Elizabeth Schilling, to be included in History Journal No. 9, on Land Use, Preservation and The Environmental Movement.
Repurpose old book pages and create poems on the pages in Black Out Poetry with Chloe Tsolakoglou.
Learn how to make Pocket Zines out of A4 paper with Kevin Zavala-Zimerer.
Be a part of the Word Quilt with MAH Intern Marilyn Padilla. Find a word you feel connected to and create a paper quilt square for it.
Be inspired by the colors in Poetry Swatch with MAH Intern Radhika Tandon. Create a poem based on emotions, memories, and purpose of color in life.
Add your community contributions to The Giving Tree with MAH Intern Stephanie Howe. Watch the leaves multiply as visitors share what they give to their community.
About the Poets
William Ward Butler studied literature, creative writing, and education at the University of California, Santa Cruz. He’s a Writing Project Assistant for the Young Writers Program, and his poems have appeared in Assaracus, By&By Poetry, NightBlock, voicemail poems, and other journals.
Carolyn Brigit Flynn is a writer and teacher dedicated to language as a pathway to soul and spirit. She is the author of the poetry collection Communion: In Praise of the Sacred Earth, and editor of Sisters Singing: Blessings, Prayers, Art, Songs, Poetry and Sacred Stories by Women, and The New Story: Creation Myths for Our Times. Her poems and essays have appeared in literary journals and anthologies nationwide. She teaches writing groups and retreats in Santa Cruz, CA and in Ireland.
Little Giant Collective goes to the MAH!
On Friday, March 17th the Little Giant Collective will be partnering with the MAH for their Poetry and Bookarts Fair! You will find us in the atrium with Print Organize Protest hosting a Politics and Poetry workshop. During the workshop we will be live printing political haiku on t-shirts and posters as well as live printing the collective's Political Haiku book for participants to cut, fold, and take home! We will also have a large accordion book for people to contribute their own political haiku, a pamphlet bookmaking station, and a print/make your own book mark station. Artwork from the collective will be available for purchase.