Ripple Effect Santa Cruz Arts Festival April 16-26

Ever had a dream, some great idea that just lights up your heart and you wish you could

bring it to life. Well, today's show is all about creativity, community, and what happens

when a vision gets grounded in reality through hard work and collaboration. My guests are

Rose Celery and Melissa Chrysah to exceptional local artists and the founding organizers behind

the Ripple Effect Santa Cruz Arts Festival happening April 16th through the 26th. It's an abundant

celebration of the creative community all across Santa Cruz County. It's happening during California's

Arts and Culture Month and Ripple Effect invites audiences of all ages to experience the transformative

power of art. And I mean all kinds of art, visual, performance, dance, and more. And we are going

to get into it right now with Rose and Melissa, thank you so much for coming into the studio to

share about Ripple Effect. It'd be nice if I turned your mics up. Thank you. That's so great.

And so I first interviewed you both in September of 2022. And after that show, I remember Rose

and you, Melissa, you were standing outside the studio and I interrupted a conversation and it

turned out Rose was talking about this dream of doing an arts festival. It was smaller in vision

at that time, but it sounded so exciting then. And it sounds really exciting now. So let's get

into it. And I also want to let our listeners know the two of you are I think exceptionally qualified

to be putting together a show like this because you have intimate knowledge of the absolutely

extraordinarily rich artistic community that lives in Santa Cruz County. You're both artists,

as I said, but Melissa, you own MK Contemporary, which is a large art gallery right in downtown

Santa Cruz next to the Museum of Art and History. And in that beautiful large space, you have

been curating these incredible shows and hosting many, many artists that come through there. So

you know the arts community and you both are really skilled at organizing and making stuff happen.

So I want to get into it. I touched on this in my intro, but what was the inspiration for this event?

Well, it started when the city of Santa Cruz was offering card grants that were economic recovery

grants to artists and artists would propose an idea and the city would fund it or not fund it or

develop it further. And I had written a grant for an arts festival to take place at the

Tannery Arts Center that would be either a one day or a weekend, really immersive arts festival

that would bring together artists, musicians, dancers, singers and create hands-on experiences

to really ignite the community's interest in the arts because I feel if you get a chance to

try something, you're more likely to fall in love with it. So to make a print, to try some dance

steps, to sing along with someone that that would be an exciting way to help build the arts and we

could bring in different members of the community and organizations to do that. I got the grant

and then circumstances happen that put it on hold and eventually I thought it was just gone,

but we started having a conversation together later that involved drinks caught us

with Melissa, myself and Marla Novo from the Museum of Art and History. And we were wondering

why isn't Santa Cruz an arts destination? And Darnit, we should do something about that.

It's been a long time conversation around the community for years and years too of that exact

thing. Why is Santa Cruz not more of an arts destination when we have this immense talent,

layers and layers of talent? And so that was the Marguerita and Field Conversation

where I was just talking about it. Darnit, this conversation has been going on for years. Why

let's do something about it? So that was the catalyst. Different members of the community have

brought this up and thought, what can we do? And so that started out and I reached back out to

the city and said, hey, is that money still available? And they'd been holding it for me.

So thank you, City of Santa Cruz. It helped get us started, you know, enough to give us

the move forward where we started bringing together arts organizations. And initially,

we thought we would do countywide exhibits, but then have music theater and dance come to the

exhibitions and participate in some ways so we could make it bigger than just the visual arts.

And include all this richness that we have in Santa Cruz County. But eventually it evolved

into a countywide arts festival that included, as you said earlier, music theater, dance,

comedy, culinary, visual arts, performing arts, every organization that we could bring together.

And we're all doing it in this condensed period of time where each organization is having

something happening. So Santa Cruz Shakespeare, which doesn't normally have something during

this time, they're presenting Vincent, a one-man play. The career festival of contemporary music

is partnering with UCSC at CUMBA, the UCSC Music Department at CUMBA to create a performance,

a collaborative performance that's going to believe political in scope.

Yeah, songs of protest. Yeah, songs of protest, you know, really excited about that.

So organizations that don't necessarily do something during this time are jumping in and doing

something during this time because it is an altruistic and very large endeavor, but each of us

are going to work together to raise our voices, to bring more people out from our community to

get involved with arts. What is this? And I want to go see that or I want to go there and do that.

And to bring people from outside our community to Santa Cruz and all the richness we have here.

And this is just the inaugural year is the foundation that we're building with the hope and dream

that it does outlive us. The way other projects in Santa Cruz have just started with the seed and

continued open studios and and Cabri of Festival of Contemporary Music. And oh gosh, I'm sure

Shakespeare Santa Cruz was a similar endeavor where it just starts from a little couple people

getting together with an idea and some margaritas and the question, what can we do? That's like my

favorite question in the whole world. It's like everything becomes possible when you ask that

question and here it is. And I wanted to say, when I looked at the site, I counted more than 40

options to sample visual arts across the county. 15 plus performance arts options over 11 days.

And that's at the actor studio. That's Shakespeare Santa Cruz. That's comedy. DNA's got like three

shows going. Really fun stuff. 11 dance events. And for instance, folks, just to give you a taste,

one really caught my eye. I'm not a photographer. But I thought this sounded so cool. It's a photo walk

with friends, Lunting, the like world renowned National Geographic photographer. I mean, he's more

than a National Geographic. He just a lot of stuff gets shown in National Geographic. And he's

collaborating with motion-Pacific dancers. And you're going to meet at Westcliffe at dawn.

And the dancers are going to be moving at first light. And you can take photographs of this beautiful

thing. Or you can just enjoy the super cool vibe. It's really going to be magical. And

Franz is going to kind of lead people. They can bring their iPhones. They can bring sophisticated

camera. Brownie cameras. They're more sophisticated cameras. And Franz is going to talk to people

as they do this during this magical first light with dancers. The catalyst was Franz. He had the idea

to do this. And then I'm rose this idea to bring in the dancers. We did a test run early one

morning a few weeks ago. And it was spectacular. And it was really interesting to see. So the sun

was rising in the west. He kept pointing over to the east to look, which was crazy and wonderful

for me, because I'm not a photographer. And because I would think, oh, you're going to look at

the sunrise. But he kept pointing us in different directions to look and look at the light and

look how shapes and shadows work. Isn't that amazing to be with this master artist? I mean, world

famous. I'm never part of him. But I went to an exhibition of his that was held in Century City.

It was a Nash. It wasn't him. It was National Geographic. And these huge prints. But so many

were this man, friends, landing. And then I found out, wow, he lives right here in Santa Cruz.

I want to tell you people, this event is free. But you must register in advance. And I'm not the

shivers. I'm going home and I'm registering. So I just because I thought, well, I can't go.

I'm not a photographer. But now I've heard the description. I'm like, no, no, this is just a

life experience. Honestly, it's the best of Santa Cruz because you've got nature right there.

It's steamer lane. You've got fronds. Like you said, world renowned photographer and the dancers

from ocean Pacific are magical. And then you've got the surfers, the little surfers jumping into

the ocean right behind you and the clouds, shapes. And I mean, the best of Santa Cruz, really.

We're gonna get some beautiful photos. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. You just have to get up early.

You just have to get up early. But there's such a reward to doing that thing that you normally

don't do. Absolutely. Magical. In case you just tuned in, let's reintroduce the show.

This is KSQD Community Radio for all of the Monterey Bay on 89.5 89.7 and 90.7 FM where you can

live stream at ksqd.org. My guests are Rose Celery and Melissa Christa, the founders of the

Ripple Effect Santa Cruz Arts Festival. It's a county wide celebration of the artistic riches found

across the county. And it's a wildly collaborative effort involving so many different arts organizations.

And so we mentioned a couple of them, right? But I want to dig in a little bit into this collaborative

experience. What has it been like connecting with the leaders of CUMBO? You know, like, go ahead.

I'll stop talking. Let you talk, you know, because I bet it's been really interesting. These are

amazing people like the head of the Cabrillo Festival. Is it Riley now? Riley Nicholson. Yeah,

there's such an amazing organization. I think having anything to do with them has to just be

super epilogue thing. So would you share with our listeners some of the stories of your collaborative

adventures? So you touched on the magic of the festival and the concept and that has been such

a gift for us to get to know these folks that we wouldn't necessarily have known. Riley and

Chanel and Rika's who's the executive director of at CUMBO and Kristi Jarvis and Val Miranda

and and Hazel's, well, we knew him and pretty well, but all these folks that we wouldn't have known.

And now we're working closely with the same vision under the same umbrella to try to push the

arts forward together. And so that's the whole concept of the ripple effect. It's our little

community spanning out to visitors who come and hopefully meet their people also. And then people

coming from afar to come in and experience this beautiful community and these people too.

And when we started, I think we might have said, well, there's probably 20 or 30 organizations that

we could get involved in. It's it's grown. I think we have over 90 organizations involved. And some

of them are doing multiple events. Some of them are collaborating together. Wantsonville is doing

this fantastic thing on April 18th, where they're bringing together a number of the Wantsonville

entities, the White Hawk dancers, Pajaro Valley Arts, the Cultural Center, Wantsonville Film Festival.

I'm trying to think of them all low writers. So many different things. All the cool stuff.

Wantsonville brillante, if you haven't seen the magnificent mural that covers the four-story

parking structure there that was created and envisioned by Kathleen Crochetty, they're going

to be leading tours. And then they'll have a dance party in the evening up on top. So you'll be

able to look out over Wantsonville. So Wantsonville created their own mini festival for ripple effect

called Ripple Wantsonville. And we're really excited. That one's on April 18th on the Saturday. And

there's a fantastic celebration on that one day. You can go to Wantsonville and just

see St. Dolce and Fees. You get up in the morning, hang out with France. It's going to be a

long day for me. It's a hand of Wantsonville and you can see the sunset over top of the parking

garage. That sounds like a pretty epic one. And then you can come to our gallery in the evening and

see Michael Garland in the afternoon. Who's going to do a lecture and a photo shoot.

Yeah, the 18th is a big day. You couldn't run all the way down the coast. So on a lot of these days,

there's multiple things happening. And you might be torn in what you're going to choose to do.

Should I should I go here and see this or should I go there and participate in that? Sorry.

Do you offer counseling services? Ripple effect counselors are standing by.

That's for you coming. Which one should I do? That's the problem we had hoped to have.

Is there's too much? I can't see it all. Yeah, you know, I'm envisioning people actually coming

in for a few days and like scheduling all of these wonderful events. It makes me think of, say,

the Oregon Shakespeare Festival. We went for 30 years and we would schedule our whole life,

you know, and pick the plays and have these experiences. And it was incredible. And, you know,

and there were great restaurants and there's great restaurants here and you're doing culinary

offerings. Can you speak to any of those? We do have some. We don't have a lot in this first year

because it's been, you know, a gigantic task to bring together all these arts organizations.

But culinary is certainly another art form. So one of the things that we're doing is smoke

cabaret. So it's a big collaboration between Joan Gailer T. Soveritt, Gail's Bakery and Capitola

and Chocolat Restaurant with David Jackman and Laurie Rivera over at Chocolat Restaurant in

downtown Santa Cruz. So we're starting the event with appetizers from Gail's, appetizers in

bread. And then we'll have a performance that Joe has written and Laurie is performing. And then

we'll have a main course by Chocolat and then dessert again by Gail's. And with a cash bar that

Chocolat is also hosting. And we're going to do that all in gallery with a backdrop of our fabulous

exhibit that we have going on right now, two exhibits actually. And we're bringing in tables and

linens and chairs and China from Alexis Party rental. And right now we have 64 of our 65

tickets sold. So there's one left. One left. But you'll have a way of list. That's nice. So people

have to cancel others can squeeze in or you'll just sit them on Zafu's in the corner. Yeah,

we might do it again. I mean, it's been just so much fun working together. And people are asking

if it's a fundraiser and we said no, it's a fundraiser because the first budget that Joe had

we all had made $25 if we sold all our tickets. So the goal is just to break even and have a

really good time and collaborate and in the spirit of the ripple effect where it's just about

community. It's about getting to know people. It's about collaborating on the arts and bringing

in the visual art and our background and the delicious food and the music and the performance

from Laurie. And so I'm personally very excited because I have not heard Laurie in person.

She's a wonderful singer. She's a wonderful singer. And Joe has written many musicals and plays

and Laurie has performed them. So it's not only a collaboration between the two restaurants,

but it's a collaboration from Joe and Laurie for the theatrical side. So this just feels so yummy.

I just love all the connections that are getting woven. And I'm really seeing, you know,

when you have all this weaving, it creates so much strength and beauty and all kinds of things come

from it, which of course you know ripple effect. And so if this event is just wildly successful,

which it's going to be, what are the outcomes afterward that you're envisioning? I mean,

people are going to have a great time. They're going to have a rich experience. People are hopefully

coming in from out of the area. Have you been advertising like over the hill and stuff?

We do. We have advertising at the Chronicle in San Francisco and the San Jose Mercury news.

And locally here, locally here and out good times Santa Cruz Sentinel. All the big ones. All the

big ones. And do you know, have you had a sense if people are coming in from out of town?

We have heard a few people one that are coming in from out of town. And one of the things that's

happening during the ripple effect festival is also Photo Carmel, which is put on by the Center

of Photographic Art in Carmel. And it's a central coast photography exhibitions at venues all across

the central coast that they're organizing. And we participated last year and are participating

again this year. And it brought people from San Francisco and San Luis Obispo to Santa Cruz,

just to partake in the different photography exhibits that we had around Santa Cruz County.

For Photo Carmel. For Photo Carmel. So now we're also doing it with ripple effects. So we have

giant photography exhibition in the gallery at MK right now that's called

Anatomy of Wonder. It's the photo sculptures of Michael Garlington who has built burning man

temples that are covered with collaged photographs and their giant four story edifices that then

get burned down. And we have a huge exhibition of his work in the gallery as well as another

and that's half right now. It's right. Is it going to get switched out before ripple? No,

it's going to stand. It'll be up for ripple. And that's where Lori and performance is going to be.

So we have that side by side. We are very ambitious and had two exhibitions with Michael Garlington

one side of the gallery and then we have another with eight extraordinary artists from Santa Cruz

in the Bay Area. Some photography, mixed with painting, mixed with mixed media, ceramics,

and kinetic sculpture. So that's called Rochambot. And we are finalizing the installation as

not as we speak because nobody's in the gallery, but this week.

Wow, you two are ambitious and ridiculously ambitious. And listeners, in case you just tuned in,

this is KSQD, KSQUID, Community Radio for all the Monterey Bay. I have Ro Celery in the studio

here with me and Melissa Christa. They are the founders of the Ripple Effect Santa Cruz Arts Festival.

This is happening April 16th through the 26th. It's 11 days of just gorging oneself on all the

artistic riches of Santa Cruz County cross fertilizing with theater and comedy and culinary

and dance and music. And because of Ripple, I actually went through the events page and I looked

at Abbott Square, which I'd never realized Abbott Square had a website, duh, but they do. But because

of Ripple, I found it because I knew something would be there and in my head exploded. I'm like,

there's all that happening, just at Abbott Square all the time. And that's one of the beauties,

right? Of Ripple is that people have this concentrated attention because there's so much happening.

And then they learn, oh, there are these amazing things and Watsonville that are happening all the time,

the Arts Council. And it helps educate us about just the outrageousness of creativity in this county.

Exactly the dream. Exactly the dream. There's a music festival that's happening at UCSC during this

period of time as well that the tannery is hosting tannery night during the festival where they're

bringing together a lot of the entities within the tannery to collaborate for a festival on one of the

evenings. There's so many yummy elements. So we do hope that everybody will check out the website

and come visit us. Oh, well, let's talk about the website. Well, if you just do Ripple

affect Santa Cruz, you're going to find it folks. But just to be clear, it's Ripple Arts Fest,

SantaCruise.org. You want me to remember that? Thank you. Just put into your search engine.

Just put in Ripple effect. Ripple effect. You'll get it. And we want to make sure because you have

at the end of all of this, okay, people have got crisscrossed the county and they've tried this and

they tried that. And then at the very, very end, they can just explode with your closing gala,

right? The finale, right? Yeah. You want to talk about that a bit because that is a ticketed

event. And if you want to go, you want to plan. That's going to be at the Grove, formerly the

Coconut Grove at the Boardwalk. And it's a fantastic event center. It's really rich with a number

of different rooms that are going to be activated by artists from the community,

which is going to be an exciting element in itself. But then towards the end, we're going to have

an artist named Helado Negro. He's Ecuadorian and it's so he sings it Spanish in English. And

the wonderful, wonderful artists were really looking forward to him. Yeah. And a shout out to Chanel

Enriquez and Kristi Jarvis for all the hard work that they did in organizing the talent and

finding this fantastic headliner and all the community of artists locally who are also supporting

the finale effort. And is there food drink? There's food and drink that you can purchase at the

finale at the Grove. So you buy your ticket and you can go. And if you want to, you can buy food and

drink there. Or you can enjoy one of them great restaurants and Santa Cruz and then buzz on

over. And you can go into one of the rooms and get activated. I love that word. Let's get activated.

Oh, I'm feeling very visual arts right now. I'm activated. You know, I got to ask,

are you planning to sell patented ripple effect vitamin supplements so that people can get through

this marathon of beauty? I fundraise you for next year. Yeah, you can. We have a son about

vitamins. I might hook up with one of the uh, want to do it all. Yeah, you can. I don't have a

ripple effect. You're getting into danger. So as we begin to wind down anything else that you

want to get in here. I just want to also in parallel to Michael Garlington's gorgeous exhibition

in the front of the gallery side by side. We have Rochambot, which is a dynamic exhibition bringing

together a photography painting ceramics and kinetic sculpture by eight extraordinary artists.

And I'm going to name them for you. Okay. Lara Angdal, Sarah Friedlander, Franz Lunting,

who we just talked about. Maddie Leeds, Joel Levich, Cheryl Moreno, Motowatoki, and Ann Skonberg.

Oh, some of my favorites. And yes, the name was inspired by the game. That was a name

Rose came up with a fantastic name inspired by rock paper scissors. You know, the game where you

play with your hands and the works play up each other in a similar way of moving across mediums.

Oh, it sounds wonderful. And so people can go during the entire event, April 16th through

the 26th, they can go to MK Contemporary to enjoy that amazing exhibition. That's like museum

quality right there. And then anything else. Did we cover everything that you want covered

as we wrap up? Any last thing you want to get in there? I do just want to just say that this

does cover so much of Santa Cruz from up in Felton to UCSC to Cabrillo College and Aptos

and Scotts Valley down to Watsonville and Pajaro Valley that this is really Santa Cruz County.

This is all of us together. And we hope everyone will come out and try something. Get excited

about something. Try more than one thing actually. But you know, check out the website,

go to the things that inspire you and hopefully you'll go to something new and fall in love.

Okay, one last question. Starting April 27th. How long are you going to sleep?

I'm off to France. Okay. She's just melt, melt like a puddle after all this work.

Honestly, it's been a lot. It's been great. It's been really great. But it has been a

work project creep extraordinaire. Yeah, we're so very happy with how it's come together.

And it's coming up soon. Excited for the festival. Okay. I hope to bump into you.

Yeah. There's one of these amazing events. Thank you so much for leaving in your dream and

making it happen. Thank you for believing in us. And while you do to support the arts community

community. Oh, well, thank you. And all the people who have helped to bring the ripple effects

festival together because it's not just us. There's a whole community that are working with us to

bring this together. So big shout out to all our partners. Wonderful. Thank you to the Santa Cruz

community for having the talent and the organizational ability and the volunteer power to make it happen.

Ripple effect April 16th, 26th. Don't miss it. This has been Talk of the Bay. I'm Christine

Barrington on KSQD. KSQD, your ink spot on the dial.