Art Counts! The Santa Cruz County Art Collection Sponsored by the Santa Cruz Arts Commission

Exhibited from December 17, 2005- February 12, 2006

The Santa Cruz County Board of Supervisors established the Santa Cruz County Art Collection in 1976 to collect high quality artworks produced by local artists. Over the past twenty years, the County of Santa Cruz has accumulated a collection of over thirty works by more than thirty artists. An Arts Advisory Panel has chosen artwork from various exhibitions at the Santa Cruz County Fair, the Santa Cruz Art League and the County Government Center. This exhibition consists of paintings, sculpture, and photography that have never been seen before in its entirety.

Feature artists include Gypsy Ray, Carol Summers, Schmuel Thayer, and Jack Zajac.

Local artist Gypsy Ray has pioneered new directions in documentary photography that include her series of male nudes in the late 70s – at a time when the word “nude” was synonymous with the female body – and a mid-80s project aimed at breaking stereotypes about AIDS. Carol Summers “is renowned for his intensely vivid colors and his revolutionary woodblock techniques.” Summers’ radical sense of design is integral in creating his loose, dreamy landscapes and graphic still life images. Schmuel Thaler has bee a staff photographer at the Santa Cruz Sentinel since 1987. Award winning photojournalist Thaler has had his images published in Time, Newsweek, and People Magazine as well as most of the major newspapers in the United States. He has won numerous awards including Clip Contest Champion of the California Press Photographers Association in 2002 and 2003.