Inside Santa Barbara: The Artisans Behind California's Most Beautiful Crafts

About This Episode

The season finale of Brand on the Run opens with Casey Brand in a rented minivan, closing the door on her former Houston home, where the series began. After 20 years of building her family and her design business there, she has moved to Santa Barbara, and she spends this episode introducing us to the artists and artisans who make this corner of California so distinctive.

First stop is Dana “DJ” Joaquin of Joaquin Hatbands, a former professional hip hop dancer who toured with P!nk, Beyoncé, and Justin Timberlake. At her home loom she beads each band by hand from tiny Japanese Delica beads and 24 karat gold beads, about six or seven hours a band, and some of her work sells alongside the hats of Kendra Lauren in Aspen. She talks about letting color go where it wants and the Chumash beadwork that inspires her, and Casey leaves with a hatband of her own.

In Montecito, Casey visits Homer, the leather goods brand Terry Pillow named for his grandfather, and his partner, master leather artisan Steven Soria. They tell how the business began with a single well-made wine carrier, show her the shearling-lined bottle cases, the Jackson briefcase, a new bag Steven sketched after switching off his phone, and how a belt is cut from one strip of Havana brown leather. After a taco at Mony’s, a favorite since her first visits, she tracks down Tony, the beach sand sculptor she usually only sees on her morning runs, who says he gets all his joy from the process, not the finished piece.

The next morning she visits painter Colette Cosentino in her studio in the historic San Marcos building, where Colette shares Heart, an oil painting three years in the making, and her work on handmade paper from India. After a stop at Ace Rivington, Beau Lawrence’s menswear shop at State and Figueroa, Casey ends around the corner in the studio of Colette’s husband, Peter Horjus, whose decades in graphic design and editorial illustration now shape his paintings. Whether it is pencil or paintbrush, sand or beads, the day is a reminder that art is for everyone.

“Art is everywhere and it's for everyone. We all have something in us to create.”

Casey Brand

What You’ll See

• Casey's goodbye to her former Houston home, where Brand on the Run began
• Loom beading with Dana “DJ” Joaquin, former dancer turned hatband maker
• Wine carriers, briefcases, and belt-making at Homer in Montecito
• Tacos at Mony's and a beach visit with Tony, the sand sculptor
• Colette Cosentino's studio and her three-year painting, Heart
• Peter Horjus's sketchbooks and graphic, illustrative paintings