Dancing Waters

“Dancing Waters” was a project commissioned by the Santa Cruz City  Redevelopment office.  It was part of their card program. Community Arts and Empowerment was happy to partner in this endeavor as it met several of our community engagement goals.

 In order to complete the project, we needed to open a satellite office in Santa Cruz. For 4 months we occupied the now non-existent NIAC building. Maha Taitano was both the designing artist and the studio manager for this project.

 We were delighted to have her join us not only for her teaching skills, compassion and empathy for new learners but her deep understanding of the need for cultural education in our community.  

  Forrest and Paul Cheney were key Partners in this project being metal fabricators who designed and helped us install the artwork which is in frames. Generally our work is applied directly to the substrate but in this case the city of Santa Cruz may be demolishing the Front Street Garage in the future and they wanted to be able to remove the artwork in order to rehang it on a new garage at some point in the future.

 The following is Maha’s speech from the dedication party.

Hello, First I would like to say thank you to all our community volunteers who participated and made this project happen. You are all an integral part of community building and public art! I would like to thank the city, the mayor, Kathy Mintz, the Parking dept., water dept. and of course, the arts commission. Thank you for making public art a priority in the city, this builds culture and community, and a sense of home.  And a huge thank you to Community Arts and Empowerment and their fearless leader, Kathleen. It has been an honor to work under this organization. I have worked with Kathleen many times before and it has been so fun, great, and rewarding to collaborate with Kathleen again.

 This time it was very special for me, Kathleen’s organization chooses BIPOC emerging and established artists to create the design for the piece. Not only has it been an honor to be the chosen artist for this public art piece, but Kathleen also let me create the content within the city’s requested prompts for the proposal. This is huge! I was able to learn and be a part of every step of the process, bureaucracy, and communications, leaving me with the skills to be able to approach future public art pieces of this magnitude with confidence and experience while staying true to my artistic practice!! I want to thank you for your real white allyship work and dedication. I also would like to add that this work is a path or journey and not a destination. While White supremacy and patriarchy are ever present and shifting forms; to combat this dominating system we must all continually pivot, grow, let go, and learn in order to work toward equity. 

Back to the concept and direction of Dancing Waters.Since Santa Cruz had many different cultural influences and appropriations I wanted to give back to at least two. I was thinking about the huge surfing community and culture and how gorgeous the land, mountains, and rivers are which are on the stolen Amah Mutsun land. I wanted to give recognition to these two cultures.  The Surfing came from indigenous Hawaiians, specifically 3 princes, as some people know and the Ohlone tribe is one of the indigenous tribes of this area. Many cultures have oral traditions and ideologies Native American and Oceanic share this in common. Kathleen has a dedication and practice of community engagements. Kathleen and I decided to bring in two storytellers an Ohlone tribal member, Kanyon Sayers-Roods Coyote Woman and Hawaiian Native, The Surf Professor Ian Masterson. We are so honored and grateful for their contributions to this piece.  These storytellers spoke at two community meetings.  Kanyon and Ian talked story about water and creation at two community meetings.  From there the community members would share what resonated for them within the story. I would then take those elements and create an image blending both cultures and stories as well as using my own oceanic heritage to inform the image. 

Thank you all again for coming and sharing this moment.