Community Calendar

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.

The 32nd annual Art in the Gardens at Mendocino Coast Botanical Gardens will take place on Saturday, August 2 and Sunday, August 3. Join us in a celebration of creative expression, gorgeous gardens, wine tasting, music, and food. This year’s event will include more than 50 artists, dramatic summertime blooms, as well as entertainment by Circus Mecca and the Sonoma County Pomo Dancers. Enjoy performances by talented Mendo Coast musicians, including The Real Sarahs, Mama Grows Funk, Moon Rabbit, and The Runabout. Food, craft brews, and wine will be available for purchase.

While the Mendocino Coast Botanical Gardens is typically pet-friendly, the growing popularity and large crowds at Art in the Gardens make it unsuitable for pets, so we kindly ask that you leave them at home or arrange for doggy daycare—dogs are not allowed at this event, with the exception of service animals.

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!

Featured Artist Shanti Benoit has painted sites and scenes dear to her heart as she reviewed her travels and ventures past and present. She shares her bright paintings during the month of July. Meet the artist and hear her enthused talk at 5:30 on Second Saturday, July 12, at Kasten & Albion Sts Mendocino.

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.

Come Celebrate all things Vinyl with KZYX DJS and bring any record to spin from your own collection of any style or gene. DJ Deck, turntables, vinyl press and lots and lots of records. Enjoy an afternoon on the cool coast with vinyl heads and KZYX!

Celebrate all things Vinyl with KZYX! You are invited to bring a record (or a few) to share, spin, DJ Deck, turntables, spin-art for the kids, vinyl press and more! Spend the afternoon with us!

We will create marks and shadow puppets using supplied and found materials for the HAPPENING performance on Aug 9 and for inclusion on the community-made fabric redwood round. ALSO, check out the results of our SOIL CHROMATOGRAPHY experiments

The Lot on Main is a community powered space where artists, makers, musicians, and creatives come together to showcase, sell, and share their work.

First Friday's at The Lot showcases over 20 different artisans, live music, and local food trucks.