The Diversity Center

Center Art Gallery

The Diversity Center is proud to feature local LGBTIQ and LGBTIQ-friendly artists at the Diversity Center Art Gallery located at 1117 Soquel Ave. Please visit the space during our open hours or during our Artist Reception and Open House. To get the most up to date times for open hours, please call 425-5422.

If you are a Santa Cruz County artist, or know of an artist in the community, who would like to inquire about being a featured artist, please click here for more information or contact us at 425-5422 or .

Featured Artist This Period

June - July 2008 - Steve Homer

I'm a fine-art photographer living in Santa Cruz. I work exclusively in black-and-white, using conventional and infrared films. I do all of my film processing and printing in a traditional "wet" paper-and-chemical darkroom.

My usual subject matter is the female body, clothed and unclothed. I see my figurative work as more akin to "portraiture of naked people" than to classical figure photography or erotic/glamour photography. I have a particular fascination with the androgynous body and with people who present themselves to the world in a gender-ambiguous way. Photography is my way of exploring and commenting about gender politics. I've been doing this sort of photography since 1990.

Locally, I have exhibited my work at UCSC's GLBTI resource center, the Santa Cruz Mountains Art Center, and the Pajaro Valley Arts Council gallery in Watsonville. I have also exhibited in Portland, Oregon, and in San Cristóbal de las Casas, Chiapas, Mexico, where I spend part of each year volunteering as a photography and English teacher for indigenous (Mayan) cultural organizations.

My Diversity Center exhibit will include the more "modest" side of my work over the past few years. I'm hoping that through this show I'll be able to connect with other local photographers and with prospective models.

 

Previously Featured Artists

March - June 2008 - Hedwig M. Heerschop

Hedwig is currently studying for her MFA Degree in Fine Arts/Photography and is a lecturer at San José State University, San José, CA. She divides her time with her studies as well as working as a free-lance photographer. Enjoys working with alternative photographic processes such as Cyanotype prints and Gumbichromate prints. Both are non-silver printing techniques from the mid-1800s. She is also interested in taking pictures of all walks of life with her 35mm. camera documenting life as it is all around us.

Dutch-born photographer Hedwig M. Heerschop received her B.F.A. Degree in Fine Arts/Photography, Cum Laude, from San José State University. She has received several art scholarships. Hedwig's work has been exhibited in the USA and the Netherlands. Her work has been published in Californian newspapers as well as in catalogues and art papers. Hedwig lives and works in Santa Cruz County, CA.

February - March 2008 - Gregory

Gregory recently moved to California from Texas. He is currently living and working in Spreckles. His work is dramatic and colorful human forms in acrylic on canvas. He recently showed his work at the National Steinbeck Center in Salinas.

December - January 2008 - Alene Smith

October - November 2007 - Jeff Billett

Jeff Billett is a local painter who has exhibited at Open Studios, the Pajaro Valley Art Center, and SPLAT. His work has been shown in galleries in Santa Fe and Reno, as well as local venues.

The works shown here include abstraction in acrylic, oils from the live figure, and figurative pastels. The tradition of impressionist color in these works reflect Jeffs training at the Pacific Academy of Fine Art and the Cape Cod School of Art.

Jeff is currently working in digital art and sculptural concrete, and Dry media. Contact the artist by .

August - September 2007 - Nana Mongomery

June - July 2007 - Steve Thomas

Steve Thomas was born in San Jose. His family built a home in the hills of Soquel in 1974, and, for the most part, this area has been his home ever since. He is currently an "independent contractor" but finds his passion in photography. Using both film and digital formats, color and black and white, he shoots just about everything that ends up in front of the camera. "I don't consider myself a particularly good photographer; I just take a lot of picture."

This was the first public display of his work. The show included landscape, close-focus, portrait and digitally manipulated photos as well as a number of pictures of local personalities and events.

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The Diversity Center of Santa Cruz