In Plain Sight: Public Art in Santa Barbara
by Dedicated Staff

As you all know Edhat has been pointing out Santa Barbara things in plain sight for over four years now. Our very first contest in November 2003 was of the Luria Fountain at SBCC. Since that time, we have coined the phrase Wednesday Where Is It (WWII), and we have gotten in the habit of quizzing local knowledge each week. Every March we turn up the volume to full blast with two Where Is It locations every day!

As you can understand, when we heard there was a movie at the Santa Barbara Film Festival called, In Plain Sight: Public Art in Santa Barbara, we felt a little territorial. Would it just be WWII The Movie, or something else?

It turns out that even though the movie shows many of the same spots we have detailed on our site, it provides more in-depth coverage. And, the spots shown are mostly the ones that have been easy locations for most of our readers to find. For instance, one of the first public art items shown in the movie is the Luria Fountain at SBCC.

The historical perspective of public art in Santa Barbara and the interviews with the artists behind the art proved to be interesting and informative. The dedicated staff of edhat.com learned a lot of interesting details about the who, what, where, and why of many of the pieces for which we had already done research.

In our dedicated opinion, the movie should have stopped there. Unfortunately, the last many minutes are spent presenting sound bites from local figures who tout the benefits of public art. We hear repeatedly in the film that art allows the expression of ideas that cannot be expressed in words. Well, if this is true...show us more Art!

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In Plain Sight was playing with the movie Thinking Grande. A documentary film about Jose Luis Bonilla, who built a "Mexican Disneyland" in Cuyama, without any County permits. This is an amazing story that has been covered recently by the media. The film provides beautiful images of the estate and fun interviews with Bonilla.

0 breasts; 0 butts; 0 bodies