Artist: Ricardo Soltero
Description: Larger than the afterlife sculpture installation for the Dia de los Muertos (Day of the Dead) holiday.
Host: The Pier Corporation
Location: Santa Monica Pier
Dates on View: This artwork was on view October 31 – November 2, 2020 and is no longer installed.

Artist: Bob Baker Marionette Theater
Description: The Bob Baker Marionette Theater and their precocious puppets took over the merry-go-round windows for a one-of-a-kind installation that celebrated the theater’s most beloved historical productions.
Host: The Pier Corporation
Location: Santa Monica Pier Merry-Go-Round
Dates on View: This artwork was on view November 25, 2020 – January 7, 2021 and is no longer installed. 

Artist: Marcos Lutyens
Description: An exhibition and collective memorial of felt roses, made by community members, each honoring someone from Los Angeles lost to COVID-19.
Host: Building Bridges Art Exchange, Bergamot businesses
Location: Building Bridges Art Exchange
Dates on view: This artwork is currently on view.

Artist: Marni Gittleman. Collaborating artists: Kaveri Singh Artworks​, ​Bobby Z​; Student artists: Katie Irish, Joseph Kahlr
Description: An Instagram pass-it-on challenge of community inspired physical distancing decals for essential businesses and shared public space. A resiliency campaign to highlight our humanness, honor, show & share experiences of living life at a distance during the pandemic and foster connection via participatory street art.
Host: Santa Monica Cultural Affairs
Locations: Santa Monica Pier Carousel, Virginia Avenue Park, Huckleberry, Milo & Olive
Dates on View: This artwork was on view February – July 2021 and is no longer installed.

Artist: Facilitated by Sara Dalieden, Sue Bell Yank
Description: A community conversation exploring the social power of art in our public, civic spaces, imagining its role in the future direction of Santa Monica.
Host: 18th Street Art Center, Santa Monica Cultural Affairs
Location: online
Dates on View: March 11, 2021, 5-6:30pm 

https://vimeo.com/user128783776

Dates on view: Ongoing

Artist: Cog•nate Collective
Description: An Instagram pass-it-on challenge of community-inspired physical distancing decals for essential businesses and shared public space. A resiliency campaign that sought to highlight our humanness, honor, show and share experiences of living life at a distance during the pandemic and foster connection via participatory street art. Pico Pop Up was envisioned to capture the creativity and art that plays a lively and colorful role in the success of Pico merchants. The storefront space reflected Pico Blvd’s economic and community importance, and highlighted it as a place of culture and unique experiences.
Host: PicoPassport.com
Locations: 2917 Pico Blvd., Santa Monica, CA 90045
Dates on View: This artwork was on view June 4 – Fall 2021 and is no longer installed.

Artist: Very Gay Paint
Description: One of 13 incredible one-of-a-kind art installations by LGBTQIA+ artists as part of Rainbow Road Art Walk, a month-long art walk that celebrated Pride Month. Very Gay Murals painted two colorful, geometric murals on the Pier driveway and on the K-rail.
Host: Santa Monica Pier Corporation
Location: 200 Santa Monica Pier, Santa Monica,CA 90401
Santa Monica Pier bridge: one on the driveway and the other on the south facing side of the K-rail
Dates on View: This artwork was on view June – July 2021 and is no longer installed.

https://vimeo.com/user128783776

Dates on view: This artwork was on view May 11, 2021 – August 20, 2021 and is now available for viewing online.

Artist: Mark Grey and Júlia Canosa i Serra
Description: Birds in the Moon is a fantastical story with live music, soundscapes and video projections that conveys the urgency and hope that the Bird-Mother experiences as she protects her young daughter from menacing forces that threaten to derail their journey – one that embodies themes of freedom, migration and borders. This is a new, mobile chamber opera performed inside and on top of a specially designed shipping container.
Host: The Broad Stage
Location: This event was presented outdoors on Santa Monica Lot #27, located at the corner of Arizona and 5th Street
Dates on view: This project was on view September 1 – 4, 2021 and is no longer installed.
Project website: https://thebroadstage.org/showinfo.php?id=378

Artist: Here.LA
Description: The Ocean Avenue Artists in Residence Program (Ocean AiR) was created as an extension of the City of Santa Monica’s ongoing Ocean Avenue Project, which was prompted by the onset of the pandemic and aims to revitalize and enhance public use of the streetspace. Ocean AiR was sponsored by Metro through the City’s Art of Recovery initiative, which funds artistic works and creative projects that strengthen and connect Santa Monica in its recovery efforts. Here LA (HLA) was selected for the residency and led an arts-based community conversation that informed the creation of temporary prototypes that explored how Ocean Avenue could better utilize and bridge its public spaces, support local businesses, and connect with adjacent corridors. The “prototypes” tested solutions that could be made more permanent, whether a program or a physical design solution. View the final report here: https://drive.google.com/drive/u/0/folders/1AaBLgDDZjplA93_cpZzv8EIAmvsKUx9i
Location:Ocean Avenue between Santa Monica Blvd. and Colorado Ave.
Dates on View: Installation December 2020 – still on view; Community Pop Up Event December 4, 2021
Watch video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1dwiXKYgFxY

Artist: Pacific Design Services
Description: The art and light installation spans ten blocks of the Montana Avenue business district and aims to support the economic recovery of the area amidst ongoing challenges brought on by the COVID-19 pandemic. Each block features a ficus tree that has been transformed into a unique, illuminated work of art with themes that range from whimsical butterflies and flowers to hanging lanterns, chandeliers, and colored panes.
Locations: Montana Avenue between 6th and 17th Streets
Dates on View: This project is currently on view April – September 2022.
Project website: http://montanaave.com/new-tree-art-light-installation/

Artist: Teresa Flores
Description: Experimental Quesadilla Lab is an artist-led workshop series exploring identity and wellness in Santa Monica through quesadilla making, art making and movement workshops.
Location: Virginia Avenue Park
Dates on view: This project is currently on view May 1 – June 25, 2022.
Project website: https://www.experimentalquesadillalab.com

, https://18thstreet.org/event/sea-change-marcus-kuiland-nazario/

Artist: Suchi Branfman
Description: In 2016, choreographer and educator, Suchi Branfman, began a five-year choreographic residency inside the California Rehabilitation Center, a medium-security state men’s prison in Norco, California. The project, dubbed Dancing Through Prison Walls, developed into a critical dialogue about freedom, confinement, and how we survive restriction, limitations, and denial of liberty through the act of dancing. The project abruptly ended in March 2020, when the California state prison system shut down programming and visitation due to Covid-19. The work was rapidly revised, and the incarcerated dancers began sending out written choreographies from their bunks to the outside world. The resulting collection of deeply imagined choreographic pieces, written between March and May of 2020, was dubbed Undanced Dances Through Prison Walls During a Pandemic. With artistic direction by Suchi Branfman and cinematography by Tom Tsai, the dances are powerfully narrated by Marc Antoni Charcas, Ernst Fenelon Jr., Richie Martinez and Romarilyn Ralston (formerly incarcerated movers and organizers) and choreographically interpreted by a group of brilliant choreographers: Bernard Brown, Jay Carlon, Irvin Gonzalez, Kenji Igus, Brianna Mims and Tom Tsai (all of whom have joined Branfman dancing inside the Norco prison). Each team was entrusted with bringing one of the written dances to action. Between them, they are steeped in hip hop, tap, breaking, performance art, quebradita, spoken word, Bhutto and contemporary dance forms. Released from prison during the summer of 2020, Richie Martinez joins the cast as he narrates and performs in Richie’s Disappearing Acts which he wrote while incarcerated at the Norco prison during the pandemic. The virtual event included a film of the written work transformed into embodied dances in sites throughout the Santa Monica civic center area, drawing focus to the nation’s school to prison nexus (Meiners, 2007), followed by a conversation with the eleven artists involved.
Host: Produced by 18th Street Arts Center
Locations: Online
Dates on View:4/16/2021, 6:30 – 8pm