santa ana

Doing It Anyway: What the 2026 Creative Futures Survey Reveals About Artists (and What It Means for OC)

Feb 13, 2026 | 0 Comments

Metalabel's second annual Anonymous Creative Futures survey just dropped, and it reads like a dispatch from the creative frontlines. Over 300 artists and creative workers across disciplines and geographies were promised anonymity and asked to be brutally honest about what it means to make art right now. The result is a portrait of creative practice at a moment of profound transformation, and profound anxiety. The timing feels urgent. We're watching the creative class navigate a perfect storm:...

Visual Morphology: Brennan Roach at OCCCA

Sep 12, 2025 | 0 Comments

By Tyler Stallings Brennan Roach, Garden of Earthly Absurdities, 2017-2025,paper, pencil, pen, acrylic, oil on triptych wood panel, 55 x 102 inches. Photo by Tyler Stallings.] Brennan Roach’s Visual Morphology, his first solo exhibition in twelve years, is less a return than an accumulation. Thirty works spanning more than a decade hang at the Orange County Center for Contemporary Art (OCCCA), each piece another link in a chain of restless inquiry. The surprise is not that Roach has been...

To Be Among Friends: Desire, Containment, and Communion in the Space Between Floors at Grand Central Art Center

Apr 10, 2025 | 0 Comments

By Tyler StallingsAt the Grand Central Art Center in Santa Ana, the mundane elevator is transformed into a liminal chamber of longing in To Be Among Friends, a collaboration between artist and sound designer Joshua-Michéle Ross and typographic textile artist Hope Meng, and curated by GCAC Director/Senior curator, John Spiak. As part of a continuation from Ross’s earlier virtual performance The Adjacent Possible, this immersive installation is both a time capsule and a collective exhale. Over a...

Video: Community Engagement Interview

Aug 28, 2023 | 0 Comments

The OC Art Blog sat down with some of the leadership of Orange County based nonprofit Community Engagement to discuss their programming and support of local artists. In this wide ranging interview we discuss their new pop-up gallery, The Art Space OC, on Third Street in Downtown Santa Ana. Their grants program that includes grants for local artists who have been historically excluded from the mainstream art world. And their next show featuring William Camargo, a local photographer telling...

Ask a therapist

Feb 6, 2022 | 0 Comments

Q: I'm an introverted artist and it seems that the art world awards extroversion. Meaning people that are out all the time at openings and artist talks networking are more successful. How can I move from being introverted to extroverted? My career depends on it! Dear Fellow Traveler, Want to know a secret? I’m terrified of public speaking. The pounding heart, the drunk-dizzy-sweating-profusely kind of afraid that grips me in a vice and paralyzes me. Eventually, I somehow pull from the...

“Art Along the Coast” Highlights Local Artists But Lacks Diversity of Art and People

Sep 21, 2020 | 0 Comments

Last month, over thirty artists from the 2020 Festival of Arts of Laguna Beach opened their private art studios and gallery venues for visitors to take a no-cost, self-guided journey through the Orange County coast in an event called “Art Along the Coast.” For two consecutive weekends, artists from San Clemente to Santa Ana shared their new art as well as works in progress to locals looking to support and connect with the art scene in their community. This was a great opportunity for both...

Transitions, Tussles, and Tenacity: Christian Ramirez @ The Painter’s Room

Jun 29, 2020 | 0 Comments

In Greek mythology, Sisyphus, the existentialist anti-hero, is punished for being so full of himself that, as he valiantly rolls his rock up the mountainside, the Gods have it roll back down just as he nears the top, doomed to do it again and again forever with the same result. In his way, he’s the perfect absurdist saint for artists: Daily work in isolation, never reaching the end of the journey, valiantly continuing, despite the cost of supplies, the inability to make rent, or difficulty...

Catching Up with Local Artist Yevgeniya Mikhailik

May 11, 2020 | 0 Comments

In the frostbitten daylight of Wexford, Ireland's lush landscapes, Yevgeniya Mikhailik woke to pieces of freshly baked sourdough bread and hot coffee. After she ate her breakfast, she walked over to the old barn that was converted into an art studio and draw for about four hours. During this time in Ireland, her studio work was inspired by the vast evergreen scenery that surrounded the cow-house-turned-studio that was built in 1915. For one week, she basked in the rugged...

Jeff Gillette: An OC Artist Playfully Exploring Our Urban Blight

Apr 6, 2020 | 0 Comments

While baby boomers are the first generation raised with television as a major life influence, Jeff Gillette surpasses most of his contemporaries with his fascination for TV images, particularly for animated characters. The Costa Mesa-based artist recalls his earliest major artistic influence to us in an interview, “I grew up in Michigan in the 1960s through ‘80s, often watching The Wonderful World of Disney, and I loved the shows, especially the cartoons.” Yet when Gillette first...

Examining Expectations with Flavia D’Urso at Grand Central

Mar 3, 2020 | 0 Comments

In the current exhibition, “Slippage of a Strand,” at Grand Central Art Center in downtown Santa Ana, artist Flavia D’Urso attempts to convey the feelings of a queer woman and how identity and sex can cause feelings of unrest and at times, conflict with others. D’Urso thoughtfully utilizes repetition and replication with her symbolic works of art as she dissects the societal expectations of female and queer identity. There are many expectations in our society for women, including appearances,...

Satiated in Santa Ana: “Pleasure Objects” @ Gallery 211

May 11, 2016 | 2 Comments

Local artists Alyssa Arney and Liz Flynn are very aware of the superficial nature of Southern California, where beauty is valued over health, and the constant presence of advertising is louder, brighter, and more attractive than honesty. Finding their way, separately, toward fiber arts, was an important journey for each artist, but finding their way toward each other, and creating an open dialogue with their community, other women, and internally, has fueled their artwork and their...

Best Wurst Option

Mar 1, 2015 | 0 Comments

Every arts district needs a Bavarian beer hall serving fancy Old World weiners. Downtown Los Angeles has Wurstküche, San Diego's Gaslamp has the sausage fest known as Sausage Fest, and now, on Santa Ana's Fourth Street, with a soft opening through March, comes Wursthaus. Some kinks are still being worked out, but the food is worth engaging. Order at the front counter — try the smoked cheddar bratwurst on a pretzel bun or go exotic with the hickory smoked wild boar — then look for the hidden...

Love from the Hate Crew: Children of Bodom at the Observatory

Mar 9, 2014 | 0 Comments

I know a concert was good when every time I try to sit down and write my review of it, I get distracted by composing music myself instead. This was most gloriously true of the Children of Bodom concert at the Observatory in Santa Ana on March 2, supported by Tyr and Death Angel. Even though I love the word, I reserve it only for special occasions like this one- fuck… Children of Bodom were so fucking good. That does sum it up, but I will elaborate. Children of Bodom, a melodic death metal band...

Art Opening: STOCK | California at Coastline Art Gallery

Feb 6, 2014 | 0 Comments

By Jared Millar This weekend saw the opening of “STOCK | California” at Coastline College’s Costa Mesa-adjacent gallery which overlooks the (as yet) undeveloped coastal wetlands of the Lower Santa Ana River. Much of the work in the show consists of collage or mixed media, playing with the definition of “stock” that relates to paper stock or card stock. Standout images include Elena Mary Siff’s playful collages and unique book objects and Julie Easton’s striking construction of burned cigarette...

Artist Interview: Tim Youd Fetishizes the Typewriter

Dec 11, 2013 | 1 Comment

“Do some living and get yourself a typewriter.” ― Charles Bukowski, On a recent Friday night Tim Youd sits in front of a small table at the Grand Central Art Center in Santa Ana typing away on an Olympia SG-3 electric typewriter, shifting his gaze between the Phillip K. Dick novel to his left and the typewriter keys in front of him. When he reaches the bottom of the page he re-inserts the same sheet back in the typewriter and continues typing on what is now a rectangle of dense black ink, by...

Our Holiday Guide to the OC Art Walks

Dec 5, 2013 | 0 Comments

Tis’ the Season for the December OC Art Walks! This month we highlight some of the special events at each location including openings, receptions, books signings and parties (Fullerton is looking pretty lively this month). Get out there, have some fun, see some art and tell us where the best eggnog is: Text by Natasha Shah, graphic by Jared Millar

Tonight! Artist Tim Youd reproduces Philip K. Dick novel as part of Santa Ana Art Walk

Nov 2, 2013 | 0 Comments

Written by Jared Millar It was around 1976 that Philip K. Dick moved into a third-story condominium on Civic Center Drive just east of downtown Santa Ana, living and writing there until dying of a massive stroke just months before the release of the Ridley Scott-directed Blade Runner, the first in a long run of Hollywood adaptations of his novels and stories ... Starting tonight at Grand Central Art Center in downtown Santa Ana, artist Tim Youd will pay homage to the cult science fiction...

To Rome With Love: The Vatican Ethnological Collection comes to the Bowers

Oct 21, 2013 | 2 Comments

Walking through Gods & Gifts: The Vatican Ethnological Collection is akin to traversing the globe while simultaneously travelling through time. Through February 9th over 70 objects from the Vatican Ethnological Museum are on display at the Bowers Museum in Santa Ana, the largest collection to ever leave Vatican City. The exhibit spans all six inhabited continents as well as 7,000 years of human civilization, and several of the objects have never been seen outside the Vatican. Collectively...

The Great Art Walk Round-up: Santa Ana

Oct 9, 2013 | 0 Comments

Concentrated on the pedestrian Second Street Promenade, Santa Ana had the liveliest street scene with DJs, street performers and multiple bands. The Santora Building has beautiful architecture but the galleries inside can be hit or miss. Get there anytime: from 6 to 10ish p.m. The Crowd: 20’s+, eclectic, families, and students The Art: Large scale installations, artists-in-residence, student art, performance art, video and everything in between What you won’t find: Established commercial...

Escaping the Pits of Despair: The work of Michael Giancristiano

Sep 2, 2012 | 2 Comments

Upon entering artist Michael Giancristiano's newly-minted Santa Ana workspace, you are greeted by the renowned collection of cylindrical plywood sculptures rising in various heights and circumference from the concrete floor in a scattered formation, The Pits of Despair: Regret, Uncertainty, Credit Card Dept, and the smaller works in between entitled "Empty People". As pits go, they are incredibly beautiful, hard to miss and it is not until you are peering directly into them that you are struck...

The OC Art Blog was created in 2004 as a way to build community and promote the marginalized but dynamic Orange County art scene.

Daisy Chain Fields Sets Bigger ‘Expectations’

Sep 6, 2026

By Maggie Luy Paper decor fluttered overhead as baby doll dresses and flower crowns filled the crowd. Women-owned vendors lined the walkways as festivalgoers moved through the sunlight, surrounded by bursts of color and music. That vibrant atmosphere captured...

The Tipping Point: Einar and Jamex de la Torre at the Laguna Art Museum

Aug 26, 2026

By Mason Fujikawa The Tipping Point is a two-story installation at the Laguna Art Museum by Einar and Jamex de la Torre. The de la Torre brothers, glassblowers by trade, are prolific mixed-media artists who have exhibited internationally for over thirty years. Born in...

42nd Irvine Annual Takes a Closer Look

Aug 10, 2026

By Maggie Luy Take another step and lean in. Ordinary objects reveal deeper stories than they first appear to hold. From delicate threads woven into a portrait to bold images capturing moments of social change, the 42nd Irvine Annual transforms familiar...

Nothing But Net: From Hoop Dreams to Art Scenes at Great Park Gallery

Jul 14, 2026

By Maggie Luy Where does the game end, and the art begin? A basketball court is usually defined by rules and competition. In “GAME! Basketball and Contemporary Art,” that definition expands as the court becomes a surface for design and intervention. The...

The Machine in the Studio: OC Artists and Gallerists Reckon with AI

Jun 12, 2026

By Chris Hoff There’s a particular kind of vertigo that comes with watching a technology arrive faster than the culture can metabolize it. Photographers felt it in the 1840s. Painters felt it again when Photoshop showed up. Now it’s AI’s turn, and the stakes feel...