Jurors and curators have left the building, or were disinvited in the first place, with the generously open-armed group show Arte del Pueblo, now bustling on the walls and floor of the Museum of Contemporary Art Santa Barbara (MCASB). Based on the radical notion of a juror-free call-for-artists free-for-all, many are called and self-chosen resulting in a yummy wild ride of a show. It also happens to provide a public-square-style forum for the artistically vibrant and diverse community that is the Pueblo of Santa Barbara.
A certain half-ironic welcome mat of an atmosphere hovers over the show through Jose Galvan Martinez’s large piece “Hello, My Name is…,” a fabric art and alternative quilt work suspended in the middle of the main gallery space. Martinez’s cheeky spin off of the iconic yet mundane “hello” sticker, seen in conventions, meetings, speed dating ops, and elsewhere, combines Americana revisited and an earnest feeling of bonhomie in the room.
Such a greeting spirit touches on the element of this exhibition that extends a rare, uncritical forum — in an actual museum sitting, no less — to artists young to old, professional to amateur. One of the charmers in the show is the lovably loopy, “outsider art-ish” vertical portrait “The Obama and Michelle Obama,” by Jeff Working. He is connected with the admirable Slingshot/Alpha Art Studio program in town, which doesn’t often get such a public spotlight.
Surprisingly, the one “video art” piece, Sophia Mena’s “Tethered,” is actually an indie filmic trailer for a feature-in-progress, essentially a crowdfunding pitch piece. It’s not your typical museum fare, but neither is this show…