Welcome To The Santa Cruz Creative Exchange

Welcome To The Santa Cruz Creative Exchange

In 2022, Mat Bevel Company launched The Santa Cruz Creative Exchange (The Exchange), a multimedia program that connects people to our local creative place-makers who are using their art to create a creative economy sector in Santa Cruz County. This new programmatic area offers regional stakeholder strategic planning, marketing and multimedia art services to other artists and arts group starting with a new Morley Avenue Arts District in Nogales, Arizona.

The first project is a new Morley Avenue Arts District website that benefits any artist and arts organization in Santa Cruz County by providing visibility for their arts and cultural programs. The website is now live at MorleyArts.

A second component of The Exchange program is a series of Morley Avenue Arts District artist digital stories that will add an intimate element to the Morley Arts website and arts district. To start, five artists will be featured whose work is in the performance, visual and culinary arts disciplines. The videos will encourage others to tap into their natural creative genius with a little inspiration from this corner of the world.

 

For the artist stories, Mat Bevel Company’s Paula Schaper is Executive Director. She says says, “We’ve been looking for an artistically oriented video team to work with for quite some time on this video project and other projects. Verónica Weatherbie and Michael Kaufman have the experience, passion and insight to help us capture powerful artist stories from the U.S.-Mexico border region. These videos will encourage others to tap into their natural creative genius with a little inspiration from this corner of the world.”

Born and raised in Nogales, Verónica is an artist who finds life at the border to be her central source of creative inspiration. Through performance, education and the preservation of culture and history, she brings to light the beauty and value of Nogales’ cultural capital. She attributes her time and work with Borderlands Theater on Barrio Stories Nogales to the enrichment and growth for her relationship to home.

Michael is co-owner of Desert Spotlight, a multi-media brand devoted to connecting, promoting, and archiving the entirety of the Arizona arts and Southwestern culture. Michael has a passion for authentic storytelling and passionate creativity that supports the Southwest’s local communities and cultures.

Mat Bevel Company is collaborating with nine other local non-profit organizations: Santa Cruz Advocates for the Arts, Cultural Committee of Nogales, Nogales Community Development, La Linea Art Studio, Pimeria Alta Historical Society, Tubac Center of the Arts, Border Community Alliance, Border Youth Tennis Exchange and Circles of Peace.

This collaborative program will positively impact the region by contributing to a creative sector of our economy.

 

The program uses a creative placemaking process to engage community members, artists, arts and culture organizations, community developers and other stakeholders to increase the vibrancy of our place, improve our economy and build capacity through the arts.

For rural regions such as ours, creative placemaking is especially important because rural places like ours have some of the nation’s most beautiful landscapes and cherished heritage. Like other rural areas that have prospered, we’re leveraging our unique place-based creative sector assets to bring visitors to our place, and catalyze economic and workforce development initiatives. 

Technology will help us export our art to the world, too. MorleyArts.org will vastly expand artists’ and arts organizations’ customer base by sharing our local flavor of fine art, entertainment and inspiration online with people everywhere. 

A federal grant from Santa Cruz County (SCC) American Rescue Plan Act (ARPA) and an SCC ARPA  forgivable loan for small businesses, artists and nonprofits is making this work possible.

SPONSOR HIGHLIGHT: Mary Estes, Landscape Architect and Principal with Norris Design

SPONSOR HIGHLIGHT: Mary Estes, Landscape Architect and Principal with Norris Design

MBC sponsor Mary Estes is a Landscape Architect and Principal at Norris Design, an integrated planning, landscape architecture and branding design company.

Collaborating with our sponsors, we’re sharing the many ways professionals cultivate and use creativity to improve their personal lives, their careers and their communities. This article features Mary Estes, Landscape Architect and Principal at Norris Design. Read on to learn more.

Mary Estes is a Professional Landscape Architect and Principal at Norris Design, a firm with multiple offices in Colorado, Texas, and Arizona.  Norris Design specializes in creating places where people live, work and play.

Landscape architecture encompasses the analysis, planning, design, management, and stewardship of the natural and built environment through science and design.  The fundamental practice of landscape architecture includes keeping the public safe from hazards, protecting natural resources, and sustainably managing the natural and built environment surrounding our homes and communities.

For Mary, part of exercising creativity involves foreseeing conflicts between design disciplines (architects, structural engineers, civil engineers, electrical engineers, etc.), constructability concerns, zoning code requirements, all while ensuring that client goals are met.  Her role is to help the design team deliver the best possible solutions for their projects.

Mary says, “There are always unforeseen issues in the field where we need to make a quick decision and maintain the integrity of the design. The Landscape work evolves over the course of the entire design and construction process. When the construction is complete, a project can take years before it realizes its full potential from a landscape perspective.  The plants need time to mature, creating habitat, shade, defining space, and providing maximum value.”

Mary Estes in Germany, March 2020, in front of Neuschwanstein Castle.

Mary always considered herself to be creative. In high school, her drawings won a few art contests, and she even sold some of her artwork. When she arrived at Texas A&M University, they didn’t have a Fine Arts school, so instead Mary studied Environmental Design.

She studied abroad for a semester where she had the opportunity to work together with Landscape Architecture students on some projects. Once she graduated, she moved to New York City and accepted a position with a small architectural studio. There, she met a landscape architect who had a growing practice in the city where she eventually worked for seven years, learning much of the profession while on the job.    

While working as a landscape designer, she went back to the City College of New York to take some courses in their Urban Landscape Program. Eventually, she had enough experience and education to take the landscape architectural registration exam and receive her license in 1996

Mary in the foreground at a job site visit where the crew is placing giant boulders in Glendale, AZ.

Mary explains, “All of landscape design is creative, which means thinking outside the box…. and looking for solutions to problems in new ways by unlocking your imagination. To stimulate my creativity, I listen to various genres of music and try to clear my mind of other ‘life stuff.’  I find that exercise—like walking, trail running, bike rides—helps me to focus and tap into my natural creativity. For a more challenging design problem, I like to tackle it first thing in the morning, when my mind is fresh.”

Creativity requires Mary and her team to ask a lot of questions, like:

  • How will the plant combinations go together?
  • How do you circulate through or around the space?
  • What are the needs for the community or resident or homeowner?
  • How do we make sure the space is comfortable, safe, inviting, and accessible for all?
  • What clues can we draw from history that might help inform our design?

Mary’s career path was not a straight line. She advises people starting out in their career to, “Be open to possibilities that you haven’t perhaps even thought about yet! I never considered being a landscape architect and when I enrolled in the University, I didn’t really know about the profession.  Now, I could never imagine being anything but a landscape architect!  It’s truly a creative passion of mine and I learn something amazing every day.”

THANK YOU, MARY ESTES!

SPONSOR HIGHLIGHT: Q&A With Cayley Hoffman, Mine Engineer With South32

SPONSOR HIGHLIGHT: Q&A With Cayley Hoffman, Mine Engineer With South32

MBC sponsor South32’s Mine Engineer Cayley Hoffman with her dog Riggs hiking on Mount Lemmon.

Collaborating with our sponsors, we’re sharing the many ways professionals cultivate and use creativity to improve their personal lives, their careers and their communities. This article features Cayley Hoffman, Mine Engineer with South32. Read on to learn more.

Cayley Hoffman is a Mine Engineer with South32. Even though the majority of her work involves managing technical details, she finds plenty of opportunities to use creativity in her line of work. She defines creativity as the ability to see a problem and come up with multiple solutions that might be quite different from the straight-forward or obvious answer. A creative solution doesn’t have to be a “new” thought, it can be a new way of thinking, a new approach to a problem or a new way of implementing a previous thought or plans.

She explains her work at South32: “We’re in the pre-mining study stage, which means we are planning The Hermosa Mine outside of Patagonia, a mine that has not been built yet. The geologists on our project have defined an orebody, and part of my job is to determine how we can build a mine to get to the orebody and extract it. I work with software that allows me to design the underground mine in 3D, and then produce a sample schedule showing all the steps that we need to take to actually mine the ore from underground.”

There are a lot of factors and inputs that go into making the mine plan as accurate as possible. So Cayley works with many subject matter experts every day to gather all the required information and help determine the optimal design based on endless configurations and layouts.

Cayley Hoffman using 3D software to design the underground Hermosa Mine outside of Patagonia.

She says, “When I am going through the design process I am able to flag elements that have potential to impact the environment. It is very exciting to have the opportunity to use my creativity to help develop an environmentally sustainable mine from the ground up.”

As a former mountain bike athlete who competed all over the world, Cayley found that creativity frequently came into play when she was riding on the trails. Many times there were sections of trail where every racer would take the same path, without thinking about whether it was the fastest. Her team took the time to look at all the options and sometimes come up with a ‘creative line’ that shaved a few seconds off their race times. This could be the difference between winning or losing a race, and many times not following the same path as everyone else paid off.

It was during her travels that she saw many mines, both active and closed. She always found mines really interesting, and this coupled with her love of working outdoors, influenced her to major in geology. During Cayley’s second year of school she learned of the Mining and Geological Engineering department at the University of Arizona (UA) through a friend who was in the program. She was attracted to the many different areas of study within mining at UA. She chose to focus on sustainable resource development, taking courses on how mines can affect the environment.

In her job she often reaches a point where she has to make a design decision based on many possible options. Taking the time to sort and select potential solutions helps her streamline the review process for others when discussing design decisions with a larger group.

Cayley is an avid hiker, mountain biker and in her spare time also likes to go on camping trips with her husband and their two dogs.

To stimulate her creativity, Cayley says, “I have always found that getting outside and moving really gets the creative juices flowing. I like to go for a walk to the nearby park and leave my headphones at home, so that I can be alone with my thoughts. I find sitting at my computer for too long really impacts my ability to think creatively. If there is a particular problem that I am focused on solving, I will take a small note pad with me to make some notes as things come into my head.”

Her advice for young people thinking about going to college is, “Don’t be afraid to start classes, even if you aren’t sure what you want to major in. Your first couple of years are mostly general education courses that will apply to any major you decide on, and you really only find out what you don’t want to do once you start taking classes.”

She also recommends joining as many clubs and organizations as possible to meet more people. Tapping into a big network is another great creativity tool that comes in handy when tackling challenges at school or work. Cayley says, “More than likely someone in your network has already been through what you’re facing, and they can help guide you through it.”

THANK YOU, SOUTH32!

LAUNCH PAD FEATURE: Artist Spencer Edgerton Creates The Merkaba Molecule Sculpture

LAUNCH PAD FEATURE: Artist Spencer Edgerton Creates The Merkaba Molecule Sculpture

The Merkaba Molecule sculpture was made by Launch pad artist Spencer Edgerton and his crew.

In May, Launch Pad artist Spencer Edgerton made a beautiful sculpture called The Merkaba Molecule. Spencer says, “The inspiration for my latest sculpture came from research I was doing for the original Heart Chakra Temple sculpture prototype. At the time, I had been asked about creating a building inspired by the lotus form of the Hindu Anahata Mandala containing a Hologram as its centerpiece.”

In the course of researching the possibility of making a hologram he discovered something called the Pepper’s Ghost illusion. It’s a way of creating a 3D image that appears to float in the air. To make a 3D version of this viewable from all sides, he started making pyramid-shaped translucent projection screens.

Simultaneously, while researching the symbolism and mythology surrounding The Heart Chakra, he came across mystical texts, thanks to fellow Launch Pad artist Thom Jordan, explaining that the part of the symbol that looks like the “Star of David” was actually an attempt to represent a Hindu concept called Shatkona, which is the union of Male (upwards triangle) and Female (downwards triangle).

In the American New Age reinterpretation of this symbolism, the symbol can be extended into the third dimension to become the Merkaba Light Body. This concept is something like an energy aura, and invokes a field of study called Sacred Geometry.

The Sacred Geometry concepts draw inspiration from mathematics to denote spiritual ideas. One such idea is Metatron’s Cube which uses a Stellated Octahedron to tie together several other concepts.

One such concept is the Flower of Life, which is made out of overlapping circles that have a harmonious mathematical relationship with the Stellated Octahedron.

He came up with the idea of supporting it inside a system of rings like the Flower Of Life. He had already done something like this previously when I built an aerial trapeze apparatus for Cirque Roots called the Orbit, which you can see below.

So in this present sculpture, the Merkaba is an illuminated sculpture inside another sculpture called the Molecule. The Molecule gets its name from the ball structures at the intersections of the circles, which he hopes to someday recreate in a larger form and integrate digital projectors into. This would fulfill the promise of being able to use holographic projections in 3 dimensions in conjunction with the current internal lighting system of the Merkaba Molecule.

He started with a 3D print of the Merkaba. The Merkaba is technically a stellated tetrahedron. All the stainless steel parts were made with Spencer’s plasma table from his original CAD designs. The Molecule is three tangentially intersecting rings.

The sculpture has 8 LED flood lights inside, but it’s ultimately a projection screen for sacred geometry video content.

The Merkaba Molecule was constructed at Launch Pad Enterprise by Spencer with lots of help from his friends and crew. He says, “I would not have been able to make this sculpture without a generous grant from the Arizona Regional Burning Man arts team. It was first shown at their event ” Saguaroman” at Landy McLandface in 2022.

Thanks everybody!

SPONSOR HIGHLIGHT: Q&A With Eric Herman, Wildlife Biologist & Owner AtoZec

SPONSOR HIGHLIGHT: Q&A With Eric Herman, Wildlife Biologist & Owner AtoZec

MBC sponsor Eric Herman owner of AtoZec, wildlife biology consulting firm, in the field east of Tucson performing a native plant inventory.

Eric Herman is a Wildlife Biologist who works around the Southwestern United States. We spent some time with him to find out more about his work, how creativity helps him, what traits he associates with creativity and why he supports Mat Bevel Company. Read on to find out his answers.

How would you describe your work?

With my work, we have a plant or animal species that we’re looking for in the field. Before going into the field, I learn as much as I can about the science of the species, what’s its behavior, where and how do we find it.

The bulk of my work involves hiking through a variety of habitat looking for that species. That entails using your senses. Often it’s sight and sound.

You have to be patient, because literally I’m hiking all day and looking or staying in one spot waiting to see the species. Once we find the target species, we collect data. It’s a search and investigation mission that we’re on.

What role does creativity play in your work?

Things change in the field. Where you may have easily found a species before, may not be where you find that species now. That species may have moved away or still be present in limited numbers, making it hard to find. Issues arise and you have to be ready to respond to logistics, injuries, the species changing its behavior because of our presence.

The plants and animals do not read the books that we’ve written about them. They may do different things and be in different places than what we expect. The cliché “think outside the box” to me means creating alternatives to your standard search pattern. You have to be very creative to put yourself in the mind of an animal. How do they move? What are they looking for?

I ask myself, “What do I need as this bird or tortoise? What is my day like?” When you figure this out, it will help you find what you need rather than relying on a text book. I use my mind and my instinct to solve problems in the field.

Answering the why of a particular situation takes creativity. As a part of creativity, I use intuition all the time. I trust my feelings and my gut. Instinct is an immediate reaction. If those patch of trees look promising, pursue it. Trust it. That’s how I got good at looking for Yellow Billed Cuckoos. We found them in areas that weren’t in the textbooks.

In the end, creativity is not so much about the plants or the animals, but using the six senses! It helps me learn about myself. There’s a link between self-awareness and awareness of an environment in general. That’s where the sixth sense is so important. Intuition taps you into the energy of the habitat.

Eric Herman making found-object art from nature’s treasures.

What traits do you associate with creativity?

Let’s say you planned, but everything went south. A crew member is sick. The animals are acting differently. The habitat is different. The weather changed. You have to get creative.

Adaptability is a trait directly linked to creativity. How do you use original thinking to change your approach due changing situations? How do you adapt your survey to that? It might mean preparing how you get in and out of the canyon, or exiting before the weather turns bad. Adaptability all comes back to out-of-the-box thinking which opens you up to a wider range of options.

Another trait connected to creativity is trust which largely overlaps with instinct. This is a behavioral thing. It requires maintaining an optimistic thought. You have to be realistic too, knowing that trust doesn’t mean everything will turn out, but you keep the door open for things to work out.

Identify a positive and practical way that having creative capacity has improved your life and your work.

Creativity has given me more options and experiences. It allows my passion to grow and expand. For science based work, it helps me solve challenges, opening up more solutions, more answers.

Going back to the Yellow-Billed Cuckoo work, the creative thoughts have helped me find similar attributes of the species but in areas that have different vegetation. In this case, I identify more factors that might attract an animal to an area, such as prey…what they are going to eat here? Is there a food source in different places than previously defined?

Do you work your mind out to practice creativity?

Yes, I mentally shut the thoughts of my mind down and listen to what my six senses are telling me, with instinct as the sixth sense.

I also work on found-art object sculptures to create art. Throwing things together in ways that aren’t uniform increases my creativity. Running my mind and hands through the process of creation is very useful.

Eric is an EMT and wildland firefighter with Patagonia Volunteer Fire and Rescue. He also offers free snake relocation services.

What science concept do you use often in your work?

Patterns. We use the term search pattern which means I am almost thinking of anything I’ve learned. It’s heavy on instinct. Gazing across a scene, I let a sixth sense suck up what data is coming in. Often sight and sound patterns allow the mind to receive data and calculate in my head, “Is this the right area?” The patterns are coming in so fast but you’re picking up shapes, or colors that help cue you into to finding the species and its habitat.

Getting to the touch part…how will you move yourself through the given area. Is the best way to walk a straight line or shift your movement. If I walk a straight line I may miss the snake behind the rock.

The un-creative mind will stay on the straight line. The creative mind will follow the patterns which may mean deviating and curving my way through the environment. With this approach, I’ve seen many more species than I would have otherwise.

Why did you donate again to Mat Bevel Company this year?

I donated to Mat Bevel Company this year again because I know the people involved and I know their hearts are into the mission. I’m donating to the passion. When making a decision to donate, I ask myself, “How are they using the money?” With Beveldom, besides the actual construct…the art and science that are being taught through The Daily Doodle, The Time-Space machine, I’ve met Bevel and Kid Bevel, I know the passion! Passion is how I live.”

THANK YOU, ERIC!