The Big Work: 125 Years of California Art History

Join us for an official First Friday event on Friday, Oct. 3, at The Old Wrigley Building ont he Westside of Santa Cruz for this unique event.

Come celebrate a rare collection of 20th Century California art produced by the Wallace Family of Carmel, Calif., who participated as artists and writers during America’s most important periods of literature, fine art, journalism, and the occult. Between father, daughter, and son — and the many collaborators between them — the Wallaces produced a vast body of art, illustration, and writing that sheds fresh light on the past 125 years of California and American art history.

View and learn about important works from this 200-plus piece art collection that includes sketches, paintings, and original newspaper illustrations created by Grant Wallace (1868-1954) and his two kids: Kevin Wallace (1918 – 1979), a journalist and illustrator, and his prodigy sister Moira (1910-1979), a painter, artist, and muralist who took the San Francisco and Los Angeles art worlds by storm in the 1920s and ’30s, but struggled to catch on in the art history books.

View a 14 ft. mural study depicting the invention of “Air Mail” created by Moira Wallace for a 1930s WPA Mural Competition for the San Pedro Post Office. Be amazed and enthralled by the intracate illustrations and occult artwork of her father Grant, who devoted his later life to communicating with spirits and beings from other dimensions through a technique he called “Psychic Radio,” and then drawing their self portaits via mental telepathy.

Join us for some light refreshments and a guided tour of the collection from the artists living ancestors, who discovered the cache of artwork in 2019 and have since worked to document the art for posterity and and showcase select pieces at gallaries and museums around the country. Works from the collection are included in the permenant collection of the Minneapolis Institute of Art, the Keen Collection of Outsider Art at Bethany Mission, and the Ricco/Maresca Gallery in New York City.