Sand City’s charm rises from a small footprint, its sandy locale cordoned off by abandoned train tracks, its collision of light industrial concerns and boutique art studios. It’s eclectic.
The Sand City Art Committee, formed in 1995, and its signature event, the West End Celebration, now in its 14th year, are meant to shape and define that character as SoHo of the West: artists with easels next to fabricators with power tools, with sculptors popping into the furniture builder’s shop next door to borrow a welding gun clamp.
The artists you’ll see this weekend at WEC, christened The Power of Art, pour in from all over Monterey County and fill Ortiz Avenue and surrounding streets to teeming, so it’s not indicative of what Sand City is like.
“There are some artists none of us [on the Art Committee] have heard of,” says WEC coordinator Steve Vagnini. “The real underground, with little lofts popping up, won’t even be at WEC. Then there are well-established artists. They’re too big for it.”
But that leaves plenty of visual artists – about 100 of them – to see, augmented by the musical artists on stage. (See a full WEC schedule in the insert.)
David Wagner is creating a giant paper mache Jack Kerouac head for some lucky person to walk around in, spouting beat poetry maybe. Glass artist Shelby Hawthorne, daughter of renowned local artist Gregory Hawthorne, is one of a dozen Sand City artists opening up their studios to the public.
Lori Bala will be there with her naturalistic and spiritualistic paintings. Sculptor Karl Schaefer, a former heavy industrial construction engineer, will open his Sand City studio to show works like a Jimi Hendrix sculpture influenced by Greek sculpture. Urban Arts Collaborative will come from Salinas to represent.
Booths will be curated into blocks of painters, photographers, nonprofits, crafts, etc.
Taking a step closer to the moment of creation, Arthur Rodgers, president of the Pacific Grove Art Center, does a live pottery throwing at the PGAC booth. The Monterey Sculpture Center does a demo of a live bronze pouring on both days at their Sand City studio.
But there are some concentrations of art happening that raise the levels.
Seaside’s Open Ground Studios is being featured by Community Palette, that day-long, circuitous creativity contest, which OGS won, that took place in Sand City’s Independent gallery space earlier this year.
Open Ground is bringing their toys with them in an outdoor studio that basically replicates some of what they offer at their Seaside studio, learning annex and coworking space. And they’re inviting the public to come play. Artist instructors will guide you in bookbinding (11am Sat), live figure drawing (1pm Sat, 2:30pm Sat, 1pm Sun) printmaking (3:45pm Sat, 4pm Sun) and more, all for free (donations are accepted).
Supplies are provided for the workshops, with participants welcome to stay for 10 minutes or the entire 45.
Participants can take home what they create. And that’s part of Sanders’ point.
“Everyone has an inner voice that can get accessed when their hands are touching something,” she says. “All humans want to make stuff with their hands.”
Granite Rock will turn a warehouse space, called the Carol Building, into a big industrial art gallery the committee is calling Art & Industry. It will contain one work from each WEC artist, like a compilation CD.
That’s a lot of stuff to see and do in the two days of this outdoor (and indoor) art and music bazaar, but here’s a key component to such events: the people there. This is, at heart, a community event, without which the music and the art would have no reason for being. The power of art – and Sand City – is in the eye of the beholder.
14TH ANNUAL WEST END CELEBRATION 11am-5pm Sat, noon-5pm Sun, Ortiz Avenue and surrounding streets, Sand City. Free. www.WestEndCelebration.com