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The perfect gift. All proceeds go to the Arts Council of Santa Cruz County!
Available for purchase here and at Bookshop Santa Cruz.
The Creatives Among Us:
Celebrating 20 years of the Gail Rich Awards & the Artists of Santa Cruz County.
Photos by Shmuel Thaler
Text by Wallace Baine
11 x 8.75 inches
172 pages
Softback Limited Edition
ISBN: 978-0-9833434-2-4-4

Maybe it’s the weather. Maybe it’s the coastal views. Maybe it’s the seismic energy seeping out of the ground. There are plenty of theories, but clearly something is attracting creative, artistic people to Santa Cruz County, California.
The photographs in this collection represent a 20-year effort to acknowledge the creative souls of Santa Cruz, a community that can best be understood as a tapestry of surprisingly rich subcultures—from the visual arts to music, from the literary arts to theater, from food and design to philanthropy and even surfing.
Photographer Shmuel Thaler and writer Wallace Baine of the Santa Cruz Sentinel provide a compelling portrait of a community that can be favorably compared with cities many times its size in artistic ferment and ambition. Still, however broad this cross-section may appear, it’s not even close to the full picture. Like beautiful beaches and good surf days, Santa Cruz offers a seemingly endless bounty in the arts.
Wallace Baine, The Creatives Among Us
