Art exhibition in Santa Maria highlights the talents and perspectives of local artists with intellectual and developmental disabilities

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What began as colored pencil drawings depicting local artists’ interpretations and perspectives of the Santa Maria Valley evolved into textile panels now on display at the Betteravia Gallery in Santa Maria. 

The New Muralism: Valley Visions exhibition is a collaboration between the Santa Barbara County Office of Arts and Culture and Slingshot/Alpha Art Studio, a progressive art space dedicated to supporting artists with intellectual and developmental disabilities. Slingshot Gallery Director Jessica Schlobohm hopes that the exhibition will help shift people’s “perception about what individuals with intellectual and developmental disabilities contribute to our society.”

“I hope that people enjoy it and appreciate it because I know that’s what is most important to our artists,” Schlobohm said. “They are really proud of their work and really fulfilled by it, and so the knowledge that other people get something from it is really important to us all.”

As part of this exhibition, which opened on April 10, Schlobohm said that the gallery had artists create new work that focused on their connections to the region and local culture. 

“It’s not in an art gallery,” Schlobohm said. “It’s not in a museum. People aren’t necessarily going out of their way to see the art, and so we wanted to deal with subject matter and approaches that were really accessible and easy to understand.”

Schlobohm described this exhibition as “more of a creative production” rather than “just a standard curation,” adding that after each artist finished their colored pencil drawing, she and another member of her team worked to turn the drawings into larger-scale pieces of art using fabric. While the artists were asked to simplify their drawings in anticipation of the translation into larger textile pieces, the reproduction process still involved experimentation and adjustments to preserve each artist’s original vision. 

“What’s most interesting for us to see when we have these projects where we’re asking the artists to produce new work is the way in which the individual style and way of representation is carried through,” she explained. 

According to Schlobohm, Slingshot Gallery functions under the umbrella of the Alpha Resource Center and takes inspiration from the success of progressive art studios in the Bay Area founded by Florence and Elias Katz. 

“We believe not in explicit teaching methods—like, we don’t exist to show somebody how to be a portrait artist or how to paint a realistic landscape,” she said. “We kind of work with the individuals … and then help to provide them with inspiration, with reference materials, with different methods of art-making, so that we can work with where they are at and just encourage them to keep growing and exploring as an artist.”

Additionally, she said that Slingshot gives people with intellectual and developmental disabilities the opportunity to work as artists in their communities and to get representation from doing so. 

“The artwork from which the reproductions were made was all new work that the artists created just for the exhibition,” Schlobohm said. “That kind of style of working is very much in line with aspects of being a working artist, where you’re responding to needs that are being given, and then you’re contributing creative content based off of those needs. So, I think that finding ways for them to contribute their artistic vision to enrich the community is very much something we were working from for this exhibition.”

Office of Arts and Culture Curator Tom Pazderka explained that exhibitions like New Muralism: Valley Visions help engage community members who don’t typically have access to art shows or museums. He stepped into his role as curator for Santa Barbara County about a year and a half ago, and since then, he has developed a stronger appreciation for the importance of public art. 

“I’m getting more and more of the sense that we need more [public art], and these kinds of shows are what really brings that home for me,” Pazderka said. “It’s just how good some of this can be, and how good it can be for people that have literally no other access to art.”

He highlighted that one of the toughest aspects of being an artist is understanding or knowing what the audience’s response to a piece of work will be. For that reason, he didn’t share what he hopes viewers might take away from the exhibition but instead expressed a desire for people to “look at it and appreciate it for what it is.”

“I think this is one of the kinds of works that demand that you go and see and look at it,” he said. “It looks one way in pictures, and you don’t quite get it until you see it in person.”

Staff Writer Emma Montalbano can be reached at emontalbano@newtimesslo.com.

This article appears in Apr 17-27, 2025.