Caleb Wiseblood

About a year before his passing in 2015, Austrian-American film actor Theodore Bikel (The African Queen, My Fair Lady) wrote a memoir, describing a year in the life—between 1937 and 1938, during his childhood in Vienna. The short story was published in Moment Magazine and explored Bikel’s confusion as a child in response to rising […]

Titled New Visions, the latest duo exhibition at Gallery Los Olivos showcases several nature-based landscapes by artists Sheryl Knight and Britt Friedman. Waterfalls and other water-centric scenes are the subjects found in most of the show’s featured paintings. With the new year only a month in, why not ring in the roaring 2020s with some […]

Spotting the Milky Way at night is one thing, but catching a glimpse of it in broad daylight is quite another. Beginning Feb. 1, museumgoers in Solvang can do just that. Open as early as 11 a.m., night and day dwellers alike can stop by the Wildling Museum of Art and Nature to enjoy paintings […]

All it took was one impromptu meeting between educator Ann Dittmer and Elverhoj Museum Executive Director Esther Jacobsen Bates to seal their fates as the future co-authors of The Spirit of Solvang: A History of the Danish Capital of America. It was a spring day in 2007, Bates recalled. “Ann walked into my office unannounced,” […]

After her father’s passing two years ago, Lompoc-based artist Elisa J discovered the source of inspiration for her latest endeavor. The photos were taken sometime in the late 1960s, when Elisa J’s family owned a Chinese restaurant in Chicago, where she was born and raised. Although she didn’t personally know many of the people in […]

A tabby cat named Thomasina, nicknamed Sina for short, graces the January page of the inaugural Pinups and Pets—a locally produced 12-month calendar to benefit the Santa Barbara County Animal Care Foundation. Like all of the featured animals in the calendar, Sina is accompanied by a pinup model and appears in a glamour-shoot-friendly setting. Each […]

The title of Central Coast local Wendelin Van Draanen’s new book alludes to the author’s persistence in sending her unpublished novels to various New York publishers and agents—week after week, year after year. Van Draanen referred to the submission process as “putting hope in the mail.” After 10 years of rejection letters and other setbacks, […]

Even with two months of winter still ahead of us, things are heating up at Gallery Los Olivos—at least in a non-literal sense—according to local stained glass and mosaic artist Michele Knect. “The gallery is warm and welcoming, both for patrons and artists to connect with each other,” Knect told the Sun, while discussing the […]

Works from more than 40 artisans are on display and available for purchase at the 13th annual A Crimson Holiday, a special pop-up studio that returns to Santa Barbara’s La Cumbre Plaza every holiday season.  If you weren’t able to check out the gallery in time for Christmas gift giving, there’s still one week left […]