THE GROUND MURAL AT SAND CITY ART PARK CAN BE SEEN FROM AN AIRPLANE, ANNOUNCING TO THE WORLD THAT SAND CITY IS THE OFFICIAL COLORING BOOK OF THE MONTEREY PENINSULA. Local painters Bryan Gage and Paul Richmond are finishing the piece, their jeans covered with Jackson Pollock-like patterns, cans of spray paint still in hand. The mural is shiny from fresh paint; the gigantic letters “art park” scream in royal blue, deep berry and fluorescent orange on the black hole of a dark background. This mural, roughly 20 feet by 30 feet, now covers a former city public works yard, now an outdoor venue for murals, community gatherings, cornhole, etc. It’s one piece of Sand City’s evolution into a center for the arts.
Urban legend or not, Sand City has been enjoying a reputation as an artistic neighborhood for years. And now it’s ready to live up to its legend, gearing up for the 20th West End Celebration, combined with the finale of the second we.Art mural festival.
“I grew up in this area,” Gage says. “There have been rumors about Sand City being a center for artists 20, if not 40 years ago. So it’s really exciting for me to see it finally happening.”
Richmond moved to the area from Ohio in 2016 and, just like Gage, was part of last year’s inaugural we.Art mural fest, which went on even during pandemic restrictions.
“I noticed there are a lot of artists in the Peninsula, but it’s hard to find them,” Richmond says. “I guess everybody works in their houses, on their own. So I love the idea of Sand City becoming an artist community that can connect artists. I love the West End Fest energy.”
Seven murals were produced as part of we.Art last year, and 13 more are coming between Monday, Aug. 23 and Sunday, Aug. 29. After this year’s edition, murals will be visible from the freeway, promises festival coordinator and mural artist/expert Pat Milbery.
The West End Celebration (Aug. 28-29) features multiple stages with dozens of vendors selling food and artwork, musicians and dancers, and has been a massive free block party every year for the last 20 years, except in 2020 when Covid-19 forced a cancellation. (This year’s theme, fittingly, is “Art is Healing.”)
The Art Park and we.Art are newer inventions and have a lot to do with Aaron Blair coming on board as city manager in 2019. Under his leadership, city officials revitalized the abandoned parking lot. They installed lights and panels for murals, and watched the artists drawing initial lines, filling them with color and then bonding over pizza.
The city spends around $65,000 on public art per year and that includes the we.Art festival costs: materials, staffing, printing, stipends for artists and equipment. The city also spends around $85,000 yearly for the West End Celebration.
“We currently have over 25 pieces of public art,” says Blair, who impressed Sand City’s council with his previous experience working with artists. “And yes. There are a lot of people who invent and create stuff here. Maybe not artists in the traditional sense, but steel artists, wood artists or glass artists.”
There are also plans to have repurposed cargo containers as work spaces for artists in the new art park.
A lot of artist spaces are shutting down along the Peninsula. “Artists are losing their space,” Blair says. But Sand City is moving in the opposite direction: “We are trying to solve problems and pull artists together.”
TO IMAGINE THE EXACT SIZE OF SAND CITY, think about the area stretching from Home Depot on Canyon del Rey Boulevard in the north to Target on California Avenue in the south, a thin, mile-long strip of warehouses, sun-exposed and sheltered from a spectacular ocean view just around the corner. The population is about 400 residents.
A commercial warehouse district during the week, the city reveals its murals on lazy Friday afternoons when shadows deepen and workers with their cars are gone. It stays like that, spacious and quiet, through Sunday – murals, quirky little houses and big industrial buildings.
In one of the massive warehouses with a big echo, sculptor Taylor Hawthorne is working on one of 10 totems for the West End Celebration.
“It’s an industrial area so you can make a lot of noise,” he says by way of explanation for why he chooses to work here. “That’s part of the appeal.”
The Hawthorne family has been active in Sand City for about 10 years. It started with Greg Hawthorne, Taylor’s dad and also an artist and member of Sand City City Council since 2017, but now not only Taylor but also Greg’s daughter, artist Shelby Hawthorne, are involved, Shelby sitting with her dad on the city art committee.
“It used to be affordable,” Taylor Hawthorne says. “I work in this building because it belongs to my dad.”
(According to Alison Goss from Mahoney & Associates, which has been leasing space in Sand City for 15 years now, prices per square foot have tripled within that period, from $0.50 to $1.50.)
It was the Hawthornes who got Steve Vagnini involved. Vagnini is known in the community from 40 years of promoting music and being the main force behind the West End Celebration, at first in charge of finding bands and gradually taking the responsibilities of the event coordinator. (When he’s not working or volunteering in the music realm – he also founded a local chapter of the nonprofit Guitars Not Guns, and is currently national chair – he works by day in a more buttoned-up role, elected as Monterey County’s assessor/clerk/recorder.) Born in Germany and having a degree in religious studies from the University of Virginia, Vagnini brings both a German work ethic and religious ardor to his lifelong pursuit of fostering good music and good concerts in the area.
He is also concerned about Sand City becoming gradually more expensive to live or work in.
“For a long time Sand City was the only place artists could afford around here,” he says. “A springboard for artists, even if many of them eventually moved out.”
Some of them left with the 2008 recession when the Sand City farmers market stopped and things grew quiet. Subsequent attempts to create a market and gathering place inside The Independent building at 600 Ortiz Ave. – an old refurbished warehouse that was eventually turned into 68 rental units and is home to craft beer destination Post No Bills on the first floor – fizzled out. Last year, 2020, was unusually quiet, too, and this year, Vagnini was thrilled when the city gave him a green light for the celebration.
“It’s a labor of love,” he says. “We started a couple of months behind, but the community is very willing. I’m the person who walks around and checks with everyone if they want to participate.”
They do.
“I have been here all my life,” says Barney Cullen, standing at the door of his house-turned-shop-turned-gallery on Ortiz Avenue, rock music blasting from the open garage. “I remember riding my bike after school to help at the restaurant.”
Cullen is one of many locals who are heavily involved in whatever art-related activity is happening in Sand City. He grew up here and has a wood and metal artisan gallery. When asked about his own abstract art, he says that he “does stuff.”
Some newcomers like Nate Sambar, owner and lead glassblower at the collaborative art space GlassWorks that opened in November and makes tableware, chandeliers and candelabra, moved here exactly for that reason.
“It’s a perfect place,” he says about Sand City. “I was ready to set up my own thing and I was looking for a community. People here are very hands on. Like us. Always ready to help.”
Sambar has his own idea for taking Sand City to the next level. He is planning to start First Fridays – a missing element for this art-centric town, he says, referring to the tradition of many cities across the U.S. (and Monterey County) to celebrate the first Friday of every month with community events and gallery openings.
Sambar says Sand City has a perfect layout, atmosphere and size for large, family-oriented community celebrations, not just West End.
Hidden yet accessible, Sand City doesn’t charge for its permanent – and growing – mural exhibits, which are viewable any time.
AS OPPOSED TO LAST YEAR WHEN PART OF THE GUIDING PHILOSOPHY WAS TO DRAW NATIONALLY NOTED MURALISTS TO SAND CITY, at this year’s we.Art Festival the emphasis is on locals. Of 31 participating artists, 20 are from Monterey County. (Milbery says they received over 40 local applications and approved half, a sign that the concept is catching on among local artists after just one year.)
There is a lot of time and care that goes into the selection process, because while murals have to be approachable, quality is a must. Both the art committee and city council look at each project carefully, debating details, assuring diversity of styles. When it comes to murals, “dynamic” seems to be the main adjective they are looking for. There are things that need to be negotiated with building owners, who donated walls for murals, and with artists, who sometimes are not ready to compromise.
And artists need to be prepared to work on a large scale and be comfortable using ladders or scaffolding to access their full canvas. That’s where the idea of pairing nationally acclaimed muralists with locals came from.
“We paired the artists in teams like last year,” Milbery says. “They have a lot of ties to the community. They are in for a good challenge.”
The mural artists stared their work on Monday, Aug. 23 and the public can walk around and see murals in progress. By the last day, which coincides with the West End Celebration, murals will be complete, awaiting just finishing touches and sealant. And then even after the festival is over, the art can be experienced for years to come.
THE MAIN ENTRANCE TO THE ART PARK IS ADORNED WITH A TRIPLE IMAGE OF THE SAND CITY KITTY, his fur covered with zebra-like stripes. You can see the same cat on festival spray paint cans – and, if you get lucky, a friendly real-life cat strolling nearby. In the mural, even the cat is portrayed as an artist, wearing an elegant Parisian beret.
“We are all artists in our own sense in Sand City,” says Dawn Peters, a member of the Sand City Art Committee, a resident of Sand City for six years and the person who runs the official Sand City Instagram account. “There is so much talent in the area. One of my favorite things is that you never know what’s behind the door here.”
Like many locals, Peters lives in “the Indie” – that is, The Independent – and she moved from the Bay Area and found her peace and happiness here, running her own business and living close with her community. Decorated with a sculpture by local artist, resident and city councilmember Hawthorne, the Indie was a focal point for the community until the opening of the Sand City Art Park.
“There is a very consistent theme in Sand City,” Peters explains, walking and pointing out at places, often knocking doors that look locked, but open for an insider. “Living quarters upstairs, art or commerce downstairs. There is a tattoo artist in here, a spirit reader there. There, they restore cars. Some of the most expensive cars in the world are hidden behind these big warehouse walls.”
A gym, a nonprofit, a gallery, a custom woodwork shop and a pasta shop, and then, again, living space on the upper level. And of course big walls, just waiting to be covered with murals.
“That’s what makes Sand City work,” Peters says. “A combination of artists, community and commerce.”
Art comes in so many different forms, according to Peters. It can be taking the body of the car and making it whole again. It can be house decor or a community garden. It can also be a bakery, where aside from pastries, another local artist, France-born Elena Salsedo created a gallery with some pieces from a private collection and some for sale. She does events for the community from time to time. Right in front of her roll-up garage-style door, Sand City ends and Seaside starts.
(Sweet Elena’s is, in fact, the official starting point for the city art walk; view a map at sandcity.org/our-community/public-art.)
Peters knows that Sand City is going to be changing. It is already becoming less affordable, even though there are 44 new affordable housing units coming along with a 500-guest hotel being built. The Salvation Army building on Scott Boulevard will stay, and one day, Peters hopes, they will donate their big back wall for a beautiful mural.
“Can you even imagine?” Peters asks rhetorically, squinting as if she is seeing it already. “Sand City is not Carmel. It’s not a lot of things. It’s an eclectic hot mess, but it’s our hot mess. And now, it’s a place for artists to come.”
The West End Celebration
Happens Saturday-Sunday, Aug. 28-29 throughout Sand City. To view the full lineup, go to westendcelebration.com. The we.Art Mural Festival happens from Monday-Sunday, Aug. 23-29 throughout Sand City. More about the artists at wecreateart.co. All free to attend.