Arts

By leaping lightly and bounding gracefully across the stage, a good ballet dancer makes a story come to life through dance. Muscles flex and bodies stretch, making light of months of repetitious practice and extreme discipline. For ballet dancers, tying on toe shoes to perform muscle-burning movements is worth the reward of a perfectly executed […]

A painter’s soul is hardly ever at rest. Goaded by a need to create and a desire to manifest the source of driving inspiration, an artist finds only temporary reprieve in completing a work of art before inspiration takes over once again. Henry Asencio is an artist driven by contrasts. He hails from Santa Maria, […]

Gaetano Ferro has the accent of a Latin lover, a natural singing ability, and the voice of a man many years his junior. At 71, Ferro said he’s often told that he sounds much younger—a feat he chalks up to good living. “I don’t care what the calendar says, I just don’t feel that old,” […]

In a time before mass production, abundant materials, and cheap labor, garments were made one at a time, each piece fashioned by hand. In the 19th and early 20th centuries, a family’s means were typically meager, and that often meant clothes were handed down from child to child and sometimes to grandchild. Some of those […]

Life-affirming moments come in various forms, from times of quiet reflection to exhilarating successes. For Damon Castillo of the Damon Castillo Band, such a moment came in the form of a brush with death that confirmed music was his destiny. After the band’s tour van flipped five times on the freeway en route to a […]

I  have a confession to make. I am completely enamored of a big ugly fish. I am fascinated by all things in the ocean world, but I absolutely adore the giant sunfish at the Monterey Bay Aquarium. It has a face that both repels and attracts me, with those gigantic eyes and that puckered mouth. […]

Some songs seem to pulse with the very rhythm of life itself, creating a soundtrack for reality, whether slow and dramatic, loud and chaotic, happy, melancholy, or meditative. If you’re Chris Burton Jácome, your soundtrack has an exhilarating little kick. As flamenco guitarist Jácome’s fingers fly, they flick out notes one by one, which string […]

It’s rather difficult to believe it was only last year America was first able to elbow its way onto the musical stage of the Late Show with David Letterman. America. The band that rings out on commercial classic radio stations all around the world. The band that gave us modern classics such as “Horse With […]