GOINGS ON : Shakespeare Festival to Open at Center Stage : ‘The Merchant of Venice,’ running concurrently with ‘The Lion in Winter,’ will open the season in Santa Barbara.

Friday night’s performance of Shakespeare’s “The Merchant of Venice” will mark the official start of the Santa Barbara Shakespeare Festival’s 1994 summer season at Santa Barbara’s Center Stage Theater. The company will present the bard’s work concurrently with James Goldman’s “The Lion in Winter,” which opens Saturday.

The plays will run through July 2, with “The Merchant of Venice” on Wednesdays, Fridays and Sundays, and “The Lion in Winter” on Tuesdays, Thursdays and Saturdays. General admission is $12 Sunday through Tuesday, $14 on Fridays and Saturdays. Discounts are available for senior citizens and students. All shows are at 8 p.m., except Sunday performances, which begin at 7 p.m. Call 963-0408. Center Stage is located on the second floor of the Paseo Nuevo shopping center, at Chapala and De La Guerra streets.

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Artists Christel Dillbohner and Manfred Muller will open their “Transformer” exhibit Saturday at Santa Barbara’s Contemporary Arts Forum. The artwork, on display through Aug. 6, is created from worn-out and thrown away machine parts and tools from the aerospace industry.

The gallery is also showing the artwork of Andrea Lang in commemoration of the fourth anniversary of her death in Santa Barbara’s Painted Cave Fire, and the photographs of John Lofaso, illustrating the Brooks Institute of Photography graduate’s rural Louisiana background.

CAF is located on the second floor of the Paseo Nuevo shopping center. It is open Tuesday through Saturday, 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. Admission is free. Call 966-5373 for more information.

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Come up to the Santa Barbara County Bowl on Sunday and you’ll no doubt run into some traffic. Make that musical Traffic. Steve Winwood and the band, on its “far from home” world tour, will pull into Santa Barbara for the 7 p.m. concert. Tickets are $35.50, $30.50 and $28. Call 568-BOWL or 583-8700. The bowl is located at 1122 N. Milpas St.

Note: Tickets went on sale last weekend for a Neville Brothers concert set for July 16 at the Bowl. Tickets for that one are $25.50, $23, and $20.50.

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Young musicians who were awarded 1993 scholarships from the Leni Fe Bland Foundation will present a free concert Sunday at 3 p.m. at the Music Academy of the West’s Lotte Lehman Hall. The performance culminates three days of auditions for the 1994 awards. The Music Academy is located at 1070 Fairway Road, Montecito.

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Santa Barbara resident Ron Ely, star of television’s “Tarzan,” will discuss his first published novel, “Night Shadows,” Monday at the San Ysidro Ranch Literary Club luncheon. The story, a suspense-mystery, is set in a seamy side of Santa Barbara’s affluent community. Admission to the lunch is $40, which includes a copy of the novel. Reservations are required. Call 969-5046.

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Ongoing:

The work of 10 top Santa Barbara photographers is on display at the Santa Barbara Museum of Art through July 24 in the “Santa Barbara Connection: Contemporary Photography” exhibit. The photographers include Jesse Alexander, Bob deBris, Nell Campbell, Macduff Everton, Kip Fulbeck, Timothy Hearsum, Susan Jorgensen, Barbara Parmet, Richard Tullis and Ann Muir Weinberg. The museum is located at 1130 State St. Hours are 11 a.m. to 5 p.m. Tuesday through Saturday, noon to 5 p.m. Sunday, and 11 a.m. to 9 p.m. Thursday. Call 963-4364.

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And, in recognition of the restoration of Santa Barbara’s historic Casa de la Guerra adobe, top local plein-air artists are showing their interpretations of 19th Century Santa Barbara County land grants. The exhibit will be on display through Aug. 14 at the adobe, located at 17 E. De la Guerra St. It is open Thursday through Sunday, noon to 4 p.m.