New Arts in State Parks Grant Seeks to Increase Access

0:00I'm Rachel Ann Goodman and you're listening to Talk of the Bay on KSQD, KSQT in the Monare Bay area, home to many beautiful state parks, as many of you know. I'm here with Armando Quintero, who is the head of the California State Parks, and we're very lucky to have him today on the program to talk about a brand new grant program that will bring arts into our state parks. Now many of you may feel like just looking at the redwoods is artistic enough. So why bring the arts into our state parks. Well Rachel, thank you so much and I am very familiar with the Monare area. I've spent much of my life playing around in that area. I mean, Monare, there is beauty wherever you look. And in some ways we can take that for granted. And I think that one of the things that the arts programming programming does is it creates a new way of looking at the places that may be familiar to you and engaging.

1:01You know, the people who know a region, but for people who haven't ventured into parks, providing arts programming is an invitation for those folks to come into parks that they may not have visited before. And it may be that they didn't visit those parks because they were not familiar with what the experiences are there and culturally there are cultures where if you say a trail, they immediately imagine that they need hiking boots and a backpack. And I think that's one of these things when in fact many folks know that a trail means you can go there with tennis shoes in your family and just go for a leisurely hike. So the arts become a doorway for folks to experience places. And I also feel very strongly that the arts help create memory. The memory creates a connection with these places and the memory in a place also becomes an avenue to let folks know that this is where they live.

2:01And to live in a spectacular place like the Monterey world goes south and north of Monterey Bay is just such. I mean, it's almost like a world onto itself. We are so lucky, you're right. And it was so we all took it very personally when big basin burn, for example, and right now big surburning. So tell us about how we inhabit these places in a different way with the arts. What kind of arts are you thinking of that, can you give a specific example of the type of art project that might happen in a state park. Sure, it can be every anything from an art exhibit visiting artists that are showing their work as they produce it. It could be a dance event. It might be events at a silamar, which is a conference center that's actually a state park. You can go there and experience all kinds of things at a place like a silamar. And when big basin burned down the year after that happened, we hosted a group of artists to spend three days in the park.

3:07And a year after the fire, big basin had already started to recover. And these artists hiked and I was there and I spent the time with them. And they had a couple of sketches and created ideas. And then the subsequent months that followed, they created various pieces of art. And I, after a whole lifetime of going to parks, experienced something that I'd never experienced before. When they brought the art to the park, to big basin, the team at big basin actually mounted the art at the former headquarters of big basin, which was right in the heart of the red woods. And I talked through that area with these, with this art on display. And instead of interpretive panels with all kinds of words, there were paintings and photographs and carvings. And the amazing thing is that right now as I'm talking with you, I can visualize the art that I saw in those forests on that day. It's beautiful. Yeah, I was at park aid, one of my first jobs out of college was to work at big basin, checking people into the campground. So I have a very personal relation to that park, as well as on your Nuevo.

4:16So I can visualize what that must have felt like. And also when you talked about memory, it's a way of watching the changes over time. If you document what it looked like right after the fire. And if you go there now, it's quite different six years later. So that sounds like an exciting project. You have specific applications already in for different ideas from people. Yes, and I can't give you a list, but I know it's quite diverse. We're going to be announcing the awardees in early October. And you can go to our website, parks dot ca dot gov slash events. And that will list not only the arts events that are going on, but other events that are happening in parks throughout California. There's 280 of them. And if you want to look specifically at these arts programming events, you can look at parks California dot org slash parts. I mentioned one thing you mentioned on your Nuevo years ago when my fourth grade daughter went there for a field trip. My mom had Alzheimer's.

5:22And I brought her with me because she could walk and she could talk and enjoy the place. And we were hiking on the trail toward the elephant seals. And the kids had gone on and we stayed up on the plateau. And my mom turned to me and she said, me whole. I'm going to be in heaven. And I said, yeah, mom, it is. And my mother started dancing on that trail. And she was a violent folklorico dancer. And so literally, in this state park, I got to witness my mom dancing in heaven. And I was a woman who created a painting of onion. I will because of that event. And I know our listeners can't see it, but behind you looks like a painting. Is that one of yours? It's of redwood trees burned in the middle, but still growing. Yeah, it's actually an art piece done by a friend of mine, whose name is Tom Killian. And actually hang on to second.

6:26And there are huge fans of his and have some of his woodcuts hanging in my hallway here in Bonnie, Dune. So it's nice to be able to see one in the radio. Oh, beautiful. Yes. There it is. Beautiful. The memories that we can create connect us. And I think that's the point of the work that we're doing is providing the experience of new memories for people who have never been to the parks and people who are going to the parks for the first time. Yeah, I didn't notice in the list. There was visual artists performing artists did to envision music as well as another type of art. And the range isn't limited. We've actually had, I'll put it, excuse me, we've had circus group in Southern California.

7:26Do circus performance workshops where people learned how to do elements of circus performance as a part of that. So it's a wide range. Great. Sounds really wonderful. And what's the total size of the money that is granted for this project all across the state. Well, we've invested $8.25 million over the last of three years. And I would say that the return on investment is is early in its longer term benefit because we've engaged new populations and reconnected people who are familiar with these places in ways that expand what parks mean to them. Right after COVID, we saw a flood of people. No, during because that was the time you could go somewhere where you weren't breathing the indoor air of people who might be sick. And I remember people coming to the parks and the beaches and Santa Cruz and not really having a good introduction to them. And so there was a lot of trash left and they were kind of over touristed.

8:35I wonder if the people who came will come back now that things have come down and it's not so crowded anymore because it seemed like these were people would never been to the parks before. That's exactly our experience. But I think the becoming a park user also develops an etiquette that is familiar. I think just like with any community experience. You go there for the first time and it is something that changes you and perhaps not immediately. But over time, it becomes a part of your culture. And yeah, so I think that it's your exactly right during COVID, all public lands suddenly became crowded places. Yeah, but I think it is it's proven that going to parks and public lands benefits us both physically and has a huge impact on our mental and physical and our mental health.

9:37It's good for your heart. It's good for your muscles. It's good for your peace of mind. Thank you so much for your soul. And thank you for sharing such a beautiful story about your mother. I appreciate your time with us. We're speaking with Armando Quintero, the director of California State Parks. I wish you all the best of luck. And I look forward to seeing what happens in our own Monterey Bay Parks. Beautiful. Thank you so much. Thank you very much.