As part of the winery’s Second Saturday poetry night, CORE Winery in Orcutt presents a reading from Susan Terence on Aug. 11. Terence’s poems have been published in journals including the Nebraska Review, San Francisco Bay Guardian, Southern Poetry Review, and the San Francisco Chronicle as well as numerous other literary magazines and collections. She […]
REBECCA ROSE
PCPA’s Instagram features backstage footage and more
Followers of Pacific Conservatory Theatre (PCPA) on Instagram will be able to view exclusive behind-the-scenes videos during productions of upcoming performances. Actors from various projects periodically shoot brief videos and answer questions from followers live, giving followers and fans a chance to see what goes on during a typical production. In addition to the videos, […]
Valley Art Gallery hosts reception for Hattie Stoddard
Orcutt’s Valley Art Gallery will host a meet-and-greet with local artist Hattie Stoddard on Aug. 3, at the launch of her new show, Botanicals From My Garden. Stoddard is a former graphic artist who launched her own successful line of handcrafted teddy bears. She retired to Santa Maria and began her work in botanical illustrations. […]
Artist Carol Simon featured at Gallery Los Olivos
Gallery Los Olivos will present A Country Ramble, a one-woman show featuring the work of Carol Simon through Aug. 31. Simon is an oil and watercolor painter who uses her personal travel photography as inspiration for her paintings. Originally from the San Francisco Bay Area, Simon is also a classically trained musician who plays organ, […]
Drinks and more: Pico’s bar highlights drinks influenced by the chef’s imagination
Chef Drew Terp of Pico is easily most at home when he’s stomping around the restaurant’s backyard garden, but on this day, he’s more excited than usual. Terp is showing off an impressive large-scale smoker that he built himself. He can now smoke multiple cuts of meat at once, as opposed to the smaller version […]
Free wheelin’: Open Streets event celebrates second year in Lompoc
On any given day, the streets of downtown Lompoc are typically filled with a steady cluster of cars, weaving in and out of lanes and whizzing through intersections. It’s not always a picnic for pedestrians. But that will change on Aug. 3. For one day, the city will host a unique event which eschews cars […]
Joyful: Tonya Romano Schultz brings her radiant worldview to the Lompoc Valley Arts Association
People. Nature. Life. Love. These are just a few of the things Lompoc painter Tonya Romano Schultz listed as the main influences of her work. She paused on “love” to explain further. “I think more than anything else in this world, we need love and acceptance,” she said. “I try to emulate that in my […]
Shop not: Rebecca fights a bored man for one Sunday of shopping
One of my biggest joys in life (aside from revelling in the downfall of Natalie Portman, but I’ll get to that another time) is shopping. I’m so good at shopping I consider it my cardio. I love nothing more than strolling around any shop picking through jewelry, clothes, shoes, decorative items, and more. That would […]
Festival fare: Guadalupe Buddhist Church celebrates annual Obon Festival
Food is and always will be a reflection of our culture. What we put on the plate isn’t just an expression of what we’re hungry for, it’s a window into where we come from. And there’s no better time to get a look in the window of another culture’s rich cuisine history than at the […]
A fine pair: Local artists team up for poetry reading at Wildling Museum
Allen Koehn never thought of himself as a poet. Koehn spent years as a Presbyterian pastor and later as a practicing therapist who trained as a Jungian analyst. But there was something about a certain style of poetry that drew him in. “I really liked the haiku model,” he said. “A few years ago, I […]
Shutterbug: Pat Stalter’s photography blends whimsy with an eye for realism
Pat Stalter’s two Cavalier King Charles spaniels are bored with her. By now, the dogs are so used to the Orcutt photographer using them as models for her images, they barely raise an eye when she wants to film them. “If I aim the camera at them, I swear I hear them say, ‘Oh not […]
Bright lights, small town: A group of independent filmmakers bring Hollywood to Santa Maria
Santa Maria is going a little bit Hollywood, thanks to some local filmmakers. Cindy Kitagawa was born and raised in Santa Maria and worked in Los Angeles as an aspiring writer and filmmaker. Now she and a group of local and non-local filmmakers are in Santa Maria shooting a feature length film called Coast. Like […]

