Community Calendar

It’s going to be a hoppy summer thanks to the Kelley House Museum’s new exhibit on Mendocino’s beer brewing heritage. On Tap traces the deep roots and rich stories behind one of Northern California’s most spirited industries—from the small breweries that served the local lumber workers to the craft beer renaissance that put Mendocino on the national brewing map. Kelley House members are invited to an opening reception on Saturday, June 7th, 4:00pm – 5:30pm.

The exhibit showcases the evidence left behind by the 19th century breweries through archival photographs, newspaper clippings, and maps, while spotlighting the people—German immigrants, local entrepreneurs, and counterculture trailblazers—who turned hops and barley into a beverage that has sustained the community for almost two centuries. Well, except for those Prohibition years, but even then the beer makers and consumers could not be thwarted! (You’ll have to visit the exhibit to discover what a “blind pig” was.) Learn how the region’s natural abundance, independent spirit, and love of experimentation gave rise to groundbreaking breweries like the North Coast Brewing Company, one of the pioneer craft beer makers in the United States. Guest Curator: Robert Dominy.

Pomo Land is a dual exhibit coming to Willits Center for the Arts in July, focusing on Pomo art and life in northern California. Our north gallery will feature the artwork of Melody Williams and her extended family, and will include Pomo coil and twine basketry, beadwork, and quilt making with an emphasis on the Northern Pomo language. The south gallery will present an exhibit of photography by Craig Gardner, in collaboration with Pomo artist Misty Reyes. This exhibit of over 50 portraits has been created in response to the national crisis of Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women (MMIW), featuring indigenous women from nearly every tribal group in the region, who are all survivors of violence or are personally connected
to someone who has been taken.

Pomo Land will open on Saturday July 5 from 6 to 8pm, with art, food and refreshments from 11am to 5pm on Fridays, Saturdays, and Sundays through Sunday August 3. We await your visit at Willits Center for the Arts, 71 E. Commercial St., in Willits. For more information, please email manager@willitscenterforthearts.org.

We are pleased to host an exhibition of beautiful, colorful paintings by Ellen Heise! She paints tranquil landscapes and is known for her 'paintings inside paintings'. Since she was a child, she had already made up her mind to become an artist who would travel and capture the beauty of nature by pen, brush and colors. She feels lucky to do what she really likes to do. She loves it when her audience tells her that they want to live inside her paintings where it is peaceful, quiet and relaxing...a moment to escape from daily life. Her show will run from August 1st through September 1st, 2025. We are located at 10480 Kasten Street in Mendocino and are open daily from 11am to 4pm. On August 9th, from 4pm to 7pm during Mendocino's Second Saturday event, Ellen will be in the gallery for a meet and greet so please come by and see her wonderful art and say hello!

In July Partners is showing new mixed media artwork of Karen Fenley. She describes her work as "an exploration of the fertile ground that keeps me connected to the earth beneath my feet. This ground can be any substance or idea that lights the spark that becomes the vision that gets a new work going." Materials collected over time, such as pressed plants from years of constant gardening, now obsolete papers and pigments, wood grain in panels along with the influence of the still life works of early modernists painters are some of the ingredients that make up her recent work. As in seventeenth century vanitas, she sees this work as a celebration of temporality and the limited time before all living things transition to become fertile ground.

The show opens July 10 and continues through August 4.
There is a Second Saturday Meet the Artists July 12, 5-7pm.

Gallery hours are Thursday through Monday 11-5pm.

"The Art of Wonder" highlights work by 15 Mendocino County artists that create a sense of wonder, emanating from the subject matter, the style, or both. Ranging through various mediums and featuring a vast catalogue of creatures, "The Art of Wonder" playfully and reverently pushes the boundaries of their artwork.

'Playing With Perception' is an exhibition of mind-bending optical illusion paintings by local artist Richard Weiss here at Highlight Gallery in Mendocino. Henry Matisse has said: “We should always see life as we did in childhood.” Adhering plainly to this statement, Richard says, "I enjoy creating interactive mind bending optical illusion paintings. The work is in relief but is painted to appear like a conventional flat picture. Movements of the observer result in fluid distortions of the pictorial image, engaging viewers into a playful participation. The goal of my work is to infuse whimsical happiness to viewers by surprising and engaging them into a playful participation, allowing them to create their own unique experience of the optical illusion."

It’s going to be a hoppy summer thanks to the Kelley House Museum’s new exhibit on Mendocino’s beer brewing heritage. On Tap traces the deep roots and rich stories behind one of Northern California’s most spirited industries—from the small breweries that served the local lumber workers to the craft beer renaissance that put Mendocino on the national brewing map. Kelley House members are invited to an opening reception on Saturday, June 7th, 4:00pm – 5:30pm.

The exhibit showcases the evidence left behind by the 19th century breweries through archival photographs, newspaper clippings, and maps, while spotlighting the people—German immigrants, local entrepreneurs, and counterculture trailblazers—who turned hops and barley into a beverage that has sustained the community for almost two centuries. Well, except for those Prohibition years, but even then the beer makers and consumers could not be thwarted! (You’ll have to visit the exhibit to discover what a “blind pig” was.) Learn how the region’s natural abundance, independent spirit, and love of experimentation gave rise to groundbreaking breweries like the North Coast Brewing Company, one of the pioneer craft beer makers in the United States. Guest Curator: Robert Dominy.

Pomo Land is a dual exhibit coming to Willits Center for the Arts in July, focusing on Pomo art and life in northern California. Our north gallery will feature the artwork of Melody Williams and her extended family, and will include Pomo coil and twine basketry, beadwork, and quilt making with an emphasis on the Northern Pomo language. The south gallery will present an exhibit of photography by Craig Gardner, in collaboration with Pomo artist Misty Reyes. This exhibit of over 50 portraits has been created in response to the national crisis of Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women (MMIW), featuring indigenous women from nearly every tribal group in the region, who are all survivors of violence or are personally connected
to someone who has been taken.

Pomo Land will open on Saturday July 5 from 6 to 8pm, with art, food and refreshments from 11am to 5pm on Fridays, Saturdays, and Sundays through Sunday August 3. We await your visit at Willits Center for the Arts, 71 E. Commercial St., in Willits. For more information, please email manager@willitscenterforthearts.org.

We are pleased to host an exhibition of beautiful, colorful paintings by Ellen Heise! She paints tranquil landscapes and is known for her 'paintings inside paintings'. Since she was a child, she had already made up her mind to become an artist who would travel and capture the beauty of nature by pen, brush and colors. She feels lucky to do what she really likes to do. She loves it when her audience tells her that they want to live inside her paintings where it is peaceful, quiet and relaxing...a moment to escape from daily life. Her show will run from August 1st through September 1st, 2025. We are located at 10480 Kasten Street in Mendocino and are open daily from 11am to 4pm. On August 9th, from 4pm to 7pm during Mendocino's Second Saturday event, Ellen will be in the gallery for a meet and greet so please come by and see her wonderful art and say hello!

In July Partners is showing new mixed media artwork of Karen Fenley. She describes her work as "an exploration of the fertile ground that keeps me connected to the earth beneath my feet. This ground can be any substance or idea that lights the spark that becomes the vision that gets a new work going." Materials collected over time, such as pressed plants from years of constant gardening, now obsolete papers and pigments, wood grain in panels along with the influence of the still life works of early modernists painters are some of the ingredients that make up her recent work. As in seventeenth century vanitas, she sees this work as a celebration of temporality and the limited time before all living things transition to become fertile ground.

The show opens July 10 and continues through August 4.
There is a Second Saturday Meet the Artists July 12, 5-7pm.

Gallery hours are Thursday through Monday 11-5pm.