Santa Cruz Design+Innovation Center

Jim Denevan pioneers creativity as an artist and chef. Denevan's freehand sand drawings have been featured in New York Times Magazine, National Geographic, Elle, GQ,  The Surfers Journal, and Outside. His sand sculptures take up to seven hours to complete, often requiring him to walk more than thirty miles. When he is done composing them (with a beach stick), they transform the beach into a serene painting from afar and a sprawling environment from up close. The rising tide usually washes the images away within hours. When not creating on the beach, Jim tours the country, organizing organic dinners for more than one hundred guests and staging them in the middle of the field where the food is grown. Outstanding In The Field aims to raise awareness of the organic food movement, and the local famers who work hard to provide the ingredients.

Bathsheba Grossman explores the intersection of science and symmetry to create stunning works of art. Though she runs a one-woman grass roots operation, she made over a quarter million dollars in 2007, and continues to produce compelling sculptures as they are requested. Instead of inflating prices to turn a profit, Bathsheba would rather see her artwork circulate, and therefore happily keeps the cost of her pieces as low as production will allow.

The superiority of carbon bicycle frames is widely acknowledged today, and much of the credit goes to Craig Calfee. In the interests of making a frame that was tough and lightweight, he built his first prototype in 1987. Since then, his durable carbon frames have been a much sought-after favorite of professional athletes and recreational riders alike. His unique Bamboo Bikes began as a publicity stunt, but offered a smooth-riding alternative to the majority of consumer models--so Calfee Design began production. On a recent visit to Africa, Calfee developed the idea for his current passtime: creating jobs (and much-needed bikes) through local manufacturing and distribution of the bamboo frames.