As demonstrated in Encounters: Photography of r.r. jones, the well-traveled fine arts photographer captures images that reveal the dynamic and lively curiosity that has sustained his creativity and informed his generous worldview. Featured in his exhibition are portraits from spiritual journeys to Bali, Southeast Asia, and Mexico, where he encountered and connected with spiritual leaders and everyday people in memorable and soulful ways. These photographs reveal the emotional depth, observant eye, and skilled technical skills of r.r. jones.
Encounters was co-created with Stitches & Wiggles: Unraveled and Reimagined Mixed Media Art by Jody Alexander and Thomas Campbell, on view October 24, 2025, through March 8, 2026, by curator Susan Hillhouse Leask.
These two exhibitions are aesthetically separate and emotionally intertwined. The three artists use different materials and tools, but they are unified in their celebrations of resilience, creative impulses, and lively conversations.
The ability to develop resilience activates vast healing powers that can be accessed through making and viewing art. When we open our minds to art—through making or connoisseurship, we have the opportunity to engage in deep, important, or delightfully silly conversations that open possibilities of gaining new perspectives, deepening our observational and critical thinking skills, and finding alternative avenues to self-knowledge.
We are all creative beings, and we all have access to some form of creative expression. For some of us, our creative impulse is quiet and somewhat untapped, and for others, like artists Thomas Campbell, Jody Alexander, and r.r.jones, it is ever-present and full-voiced. Resilient hope and emotional elasticity are threaded into their works and connect their art practices and philosophies. And, if we let art into our lives, we, too, can connect more deeply to ourselves and to each other.
These three Santa Cruz County artists keep their ideas fresh and vibrant. Their works offer front-row seats to the ways they weave and connect disparate approaches, concepts, and aesthetics. They gift us, individually and collectively, with visual manifestations of joy through their shared flexibility and adaptability.
Additionally, there are other elements of collaboration in Stitches & Wiggles. Both artists are featured in portraits by photographer r.r.jones. In the spirit of their shared sensibilities, Alexander and Campbell created a collaborative piece that wiggles and stitches together photography, material, and painting.
No matter how their approaches may converge and diverge, Jody Alexander, Thomas Campbell, and r.r jones bring to NUMU intentional art making that reminds us that art saves lives and can make our lives more beautiful than we can ever imagine.
Encounters: The Photography of r.r. jones is on view in our Spotlight Gallery.
About the Artist
r.r. jones
Fine arts photographer r. r. jones is a world traveler who has the distinction of being invited to sacred ceremonies and has been allowed to photograph the most holy of Buddhists in Asia. He has a gift for capturing arresting images in both film and digital formats.
He brings the same sensitive eye and prodigious technical skills to his work as an in-house photographer for Kuumbwa Jazz Center in Santa Cruz, the Monterey Jazz Festival, the Santa Cruz Symphony, and the Cabrillo New Music Festival. Additionally, he is considered by artists as the best person in the greater Bay Area to document their work, no matter how complicated and challenging it is to photograph.
For this show, jones conceptually stitches a connection to the work of Alexander and Campbell by photographing them in their studios as well as the materials and tools they use to create the work for this exhibition.
