University Art Gallery, Sonoma State University, Rohnert Park

Let’s be frank: We’ve all wondered if that garage sale splatter fest we purchased for $5 is actually a Jackson Pollock or if the anti-consumerist slogan silkscreened in bold letters across that halftone photo on your wall isn’t perhaps Barbara Kruger. Pro tip: You can ditch all the guesswork about provenance and head straight to the source—a cultural jackpot sequestered on the Sonoma State University campus—The University Art Gallery.

Since its grand opening in 1978, this almost 2,500-square-foot creative wonderland has been more than just a feast for the eyes; it’s a veritable incubator for the next Basquiats and Warhols of the world.

With over 40 years under its belt, the gallery has seen everything from avant-garde installations that make you go, “What the…?” to more traditional pieces that whisper sweet nothings about the beauty of life. It’s not just a gallery—it’s a time machine showcasing the evolution of contemporary art, all while giving art students and faculty a platform to shine.

And let’s talk about the annual Art from the Heart auction. It’s not just an event; it’s a treasure hunt. With artworks donated by emerging talents and national darlings, it’s your chance to snag a masterpiece before the artist hits the big time. Imagine telling your friends, “I bought it back when they were still a student,” as you casually adjust your monocle.

Hats off to interim gallery director and exhibitions and collections manager Claudia Molloy and her team for providing an excellent experience for artists and art lovers alike. And, of course, it’s not all about potentially striking it rich as an early collector. The gallery serves as a hands-on classroom for students across majors, teaching them the ropes of museum and gallery management. It’s where theory meets practice, and dreams meet reality. And maybe, just maybe, you can say, you “knew them when.”

University Art Gallery, School of Arts & Humanities, Sonoma State University, 1801 E Cotati Ave., Rohnert Park. artgallery.sonoma.edu.

The Goodwill DVD section, Sonoma and Napa counties

If I have my media history correct, video killed the radio star, then streaming killed the video store. ’Twas a cycle of violence and retribution cinematic in scope with which we’re still reckoning as a culture.

Sometime in the ’90s, Bill Gates observed that “content is king,” presaging the digital commodification of art and its consumption (tellingly, the photo for the WIRED.com article I used to fact-check that quote has disappeared, with only a broken image icon and an alt text tag to suggest it was once there). And thus began the gradual degradation of art and media as not only “content” (a loathsome term) but as infinitely replicable and—significantly—malleable.

The powers that be can’t mess with your CDs, but they can change a lyric on any tune on Spotify at will, and the cloned AI “performance” will be so damn good you’ll ask, “Is it real or is it Memorex Mandela effect?” Consider this: Only when our culture is experienced digitally (and thus controlled by billionaires and their corporations) could an online book retailer, for example, make textual changes to your ebook edition of Orwell’s 1984 at will (which it did), or could your favorite streamer vanish whole swaths of films and series because it no longer wants to pay residuals to the artists who made them.

The remedy? Become a Movie Prepper and own physical media before your favorite flick vaporizes in the digital cloud. Buy a hybrid Blu-ray and DVD player online for under $30 (they’re everywhere, even—gulp—Amazon). Then go to any one of the at least nine Goodwill stores between Sonoma and Napa counties (which is way more of a footprint than Blockbuster ever had!) and buy DVDs for only a few dollars each. Build your own cinematic library and lean in as the credits roll on the End Times.

Sonoma Community Center’s Trashion Fashion Runway, Sonoma

A very special community effort is underway in the town of Sonoma to recycle and creatively reuse what it has always needed and lacked—namely glamor, charisma and oomph.

For this effort and more, I nominate Sonoma Community Center’s partnership with Recology, the trash fashion (“trashion”) runway, now in its 14th annual run.

In each and every year since its inception, tailored garbage gowns and suitings of verve and refinement have paraded an elevated runway at Sonoma, accompanied by trad house music, ear-scorching punnery by color commentators and rapturous applause. The program is divided into adults and juniors and requires two seatings to accommodate its popularity among the fancy-person patrons of Sonoma. Proceeds from this ticketed event go to support and discount the center’s hefty calendar of offerings. Volunteers are comped.

The runway that leads to that flash-bulb apotheosis begins the process as much as a year before as 30 to 50 single-entry designer models humbly reflect on their own wastefulness. It’s born of thoughtless habit. Do you toss a single-use Flamin’ Hot Doritos bag away each day? That’s a pile of 365 bags on a landfill field or it’s a sumptuous ’80s prom dress! Success!

Have a bag of expired coupons? Well, snip snip, it’s now a cocktail dress that gets free drinks. Have 40 neon nylon onion sacks? Well, that’s what you need for your coronation gown for your crowning as camp queen.

In the years succeeding its founding by artist Margaret Hatcher, Trashion has expanded, adding classes and labs to support its designers, a trash fashion Barbie moquette program and a free-to-all-closing-party, The Trash Bash. There you can see the gowns up close, live-modeled and on mannequins, meet the makers, bid on Barbies, tipple and enthuse about the future or how fashionable we will be on the post-apocalyptic wastes.

Held each April as Trashion Week, our own Sonoma Community Center hosts and nurtures one of our best efforts to turn April’s Earth Day into a global 365.

Learn more at sonomacommunitycenter.org/trashion-fashion. Or listen to my interview with Spencer De la Silva, the trashion icon. It is episode 19 on ‘Sonoma County: A Community Portrait’ on Apple, Google and Spotify podcasts.