The Carl Cherry Center looks back on its illustrious past with modesty.

As a longtime steward of the 69-year-old Carl Cherry Center, Executive Director Robert Reese has had a front-row seat to luminous guests like poet and essayist Mark Strand, dancer Tandy Beal, photographer Morley Baer, actor Peter Coyote, writer Suzanne Loomis, painter Neil Welliver, children’s storyteller Virginia Lee Burton.

Typical of the Carl Cherry’s history, they’re celebrating their own birthday June 23 by celebrating others – poet/teacher Elliot Ruchowitz-Roberts and artist and curator Amy Essick.

Ruchowitz-Roberts taught humanities at Monterey Peninsula College for 32 years, has published two poetry chapbooks, and has mentored thousands of kids through the Cherry’s Thinking Out Loud poetry program. Essick serves on the board of the Center for Photographic Art, and steers the Community Hospital of the Monterey Peninsula and Montage Health’s art collections.

Both have contributed greatly to the county’s art and culture scene, but how does a celebration of the Carl Cherry Center fit next to a celebration of these two people?

“The Cherry Center is, in one sense, composed of artists, actors, poets, curators and writers,” Reese explains in an email. “They are the living expression of the Cherry Center. The Cherry Center is nothing more than people creating art.”

Both will speak and read poetry, maybe about the ties that bind us all.

“One of the common threads between Elliot and Amy is the activity of healing in their respective work,” Reese says.

CELEBRATING THE CHERRY is 4pm Saturday, June 23, at Carl Cherry Center, Fourth and Guadalupe, Carmel. $45/general; $20/student. 624-7491, info@carlcherrycenter.org