Posted by DavidMitchell under General News, Point Reyes Station, The arts Comments Off on Gallery Route One in Point Reyes Station closes annual Box Show with party & silent auction
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Gallery Route One’s popular Box Show closed today with a silent auction, drinks, and hors d’oeuvres. A throng of art lovers and curious tourists filled the gallery within an hour after today’s show opened.
A box titled “XXI Century” by Ted Stoeckley, like several boxes in the show, amounted to artistic social-commentary.
“Thinking Outside the Box” by Rich Bolececk and Margaret Boehm.
A visitor studies “Celebrating Their Legacy,” a box by Bruce Burtch.
“Off We Go” by Dennis Ludlow and Prartho Sereno.
“The Bear Valley” by Bernie Schimbke.
“Where Are the Children?” by Suzanne Radcliffe.
More social commentary, “Immigration Policy” by Kieu Lam.
“Sticks and Stones” by Earl Speas.
The annual box show is both an exhibit and a fundraiser for Gallery Route One, and today’s show appeared successful on both fronts. Past Box Shows are archived on GRO’s website.
Posted by DavidMitchell under Photography, Point Reyes Station, The arts Comments Off on Marna Clarke’s captivating portraits of older West Marin residents
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Photographer Marna G. Clarke of Inverness (at left) on Saturday opened an exhibit of portraits of older West Marin residents. The display at Gallery Route One in Point Reyes Station is called Autumn, and Marna explains: “In 2010 I turned 70 and wanted to document that stage of my life. I photographed myself, my partner and both of us in our daily lives…. Surrounded by fascinating, vital and active seniors, I began taking portraits of them as well….
“These portraits are of people I know, some well, others tangentially. They are in their 70s, 80s, and 90s, with one in his 60s…. Our youthful ‘Summer’ bloom has moved into ‘Autumn,’ for some more than others. We’re all having to adjust to the changes happening to our faces and bodies. A distillation of our life experiences has been gurgling away for years leaving a wisdom that now informs and guides us.”
Here are a few of the 20 portraits Marna is exhibiting, along with her notes identifying them:
‘ANDREW. Born 1923 in London. Grew up at Grace & Favor House, Windsor Great Park, England. Came to West Marin in 1974. Photo taken in 2010.’
‘SANDY. 1924-2015. Born in Chicago. Grew up in Evanston, Illinois. Came to West Marin in the 1950s. Photo taken in 2006.’
‘JOE. Born 1935, Johannesburg, Transvaal, South Africa. Grew up in Johannesburg. Came to Inverness in 1971. MO. Born 1934, Belgian Congo, now Lubumbashi. Grew up in Johannesburg and Belgian Congo. Came to Inverness in 1971. Photo taken in 2019.’
‘PAUL. Born in 1951, London. Grew up in London. Came to West Marin in 1993. Photo taken in 2010.’
‘MURRAY. Born 1942, Cleveland, Ohio. Grew up in Cleveland Heights, Hollywood, Florida, New England. Came to West Marin in 2001. Photo taken in 2006.’
‘NED. Born in 1947, Cincinnati, Ohio. Grew up in Menlo Park, California. Came to West Marin in 1993. Photo taken in 2019.’
‘LAURE. Born in 1931, Paris. Grew up in a small village in the middle of France. Came to West Marin in 1972. Photo taken in 2018.’
‘VAN. Born 1949, New Orleans, Louisiana. Grew up all over (father was a US naval officer). Came to West Marin in 1976. Photo taken in 2019.’
Marna’s photography is straightforward but intense, which makes her portraits quietly dramatic. Visitors this past weekend were fascinated by the exhibition, which will hang in the gallery through June 16.
“What sort of day was it?” the late CBS anchorman Walter Cronkite used to ask at the end of each installment of You Are There, a reenactment-of-history series that aired from 1953 to 1957. Then answering his own question, Cronkite would add, “A day like all days, filled with those events that alter and illuminate our times… and you were there.”
And I was there, but rather than try to reenact events, I’ll just show you the pictures. Yesterday at the foot of Tomales Bay, the neighboring small towns of Inverness and Point Reyes Station were filled with events that alter and illuminate our times in West Marin.
The biggest event Saturday, the Inverness Fair, as always offered a mix of music, fundraising for local civic groups, people selling arts and crafts, and good food.
The fair is held each year along Inverness Way between the firehouse and the library. On Saturday, Latinas sold Mexican food beside the firehouse to raise money for Tomales Bay Waterdogs, which teaches children living around the bay the crucial skill of swimming. (Maria Niggle at right)
The women’s aprons all said, “Thank You, Maidee Moore.” Maidee, who founded the Waterdogs almost 45 years ago, died last month at the age of 101.
A display that attracted crowds throughout the fair was this Planned Feralhood cage where young people played with kittens that were up for adoption. Kathy Runnion of Inverness Park, who heads the program, was able to find new homes for five of the nine available.
Because the kittens are in the midst of spay, neuter, and vaccination routines, the new owners could not take their cats immediately home from the fair. The delay will at least give them a few days to prepare for the kittens.
Inverness Garden Club again this year sold plants to raise funds for its civic programs. The club maintains plantings on the median of Sir Francis Drake Boulevard through downtown, at Inverness, aptly named Plant Park, at the Gables (which houses the Jack Mason Museum and Inverness Library), at the Point Reyes Station Post Office, and at the Point Reyes Station Library.
The KWMR radio van, which also provides communications for the West Marin Disaster Council, was on hand to raise funds for the community-radio station and recruit volunteers for the Disaster Council. Here Point Reyes Station Disaster Council coordinator Lynn Axelrod talks about communications with Richard Dillman as he sits inside the van.
Dillman is the communications engineer for the Disaster Council and the “transmitter wrangler” for KWMR. He spent 30 years as a special-services officer for Greenpeace, and in 2011, the environmental group donated the van to the nonprofit radio station.
Inverness Yacht Club Youth Sailing program sold grilled hotdogs as a fundraiser for its classes that have taught many young people how to sail. As a former sailboat owner, I didn’t want to be tacky, so I bought a hotdog. Yummy.
Outside the Inverness Library, used books were sold as a benefit for the library system. By the end of the fair, the sellers were offering: “All the books you can put in a shopping bag, $5!”
Tables displaying a variety of arts and crafts for sale attracted fairgoers arriving and leaving on Inverness Way.
Meanwhile in Point Reyes Station, Gallery Route One is in the midst of its annual fundraising “Box Show.”
The show is both an exhibit and a silent auction, featuring three-dimensional works that at least in part take their shape from a box. This box created by Jane Santucci is called Sail A-Weigh.
I’m Feeling Beachy is the title of the box at left, which was created by artist Geraldine Lia Braaten. The box at right, Searching for Water, is the work of artist Ellen Gray. ______________________________________________________________________
Meanwhile, five blocks away at the other end of Point Reyes Station yesterday….
Gathered below Ralph Stein’s painting Negative Spin.
Friends, relatives, and admirers of artist Ralph Stein of Point Reyes Station gathered at the Dance Palace Community Center for a memorial showing of his paintings. Stein, who was born in Milwaukee in 1928, died Feb. 24 in Sausalito surrounded by his family. An intermittent resident of Sausalito, Stein had moved to Point Reyes Station in 2012. _____________________________________________________________
Stein (right), an abstract expressionist like Jackson Pollock, had studied art in New York City.
While hanging around with other “Bohemians,” as they were called, he got to know such art-world luminaries as Pollock, William de Kooning, and Robert Motherwell.
He became a personal friend of poet Grace Paley. ___________________________________________________________________
During a reception for the memorial exhibit, Bruce Fox performed surprisingly melodic music on this steel drum from Switzerland. The UFO-shaped instrument is called a hang (pronounced hawn). By tapping on different parts of the hang, Fox was able create an impressive range of resonant notes.
Stein’s determination to become an abstract expressionist painter intensified after he suffered a stroke in 1962, which affected his language center. As a painter, he would not need to use words, he told himself. Fortunately, he was able over time to regain his ability to speak normally.
The artist’s paintings will remain on display in the lobby of the Dance Palace until Sept. 14.
Gallery Route One in Point Reyes Station on Sunday held an opening reception for a three-woman exhibition of highly individualistic, often whimsical art. The crowd that showed up loved it.
Jessica Eastburn of Oakland, recipient of the gallery’s first Fellowship for Young Artists award, hung an exhibit titled “Mutatis Mutandis,” which is a commentary on today’s rampant consumerism. This work by Jessica is called “Trouble with the Sweet Spot.” _________________________________________________________________
Jessica calls this picture “Pistols at Dawn.”
Given the current corruption and gun-dealing scandal involving State Senator Leland Yee and gangster Raymond “Shrimp Boy” Chow, I asked the artist whether she had Shrimp Boy in mind when she created Pistols at Dawn.
Jessica told me with a laugh that she painted the picture before the scandal broke.
“Bad Vibrations: Middle Class,” meanwhile, includes a crime in progress. The picture in the middle shows what appears to be a security-camera video of an armed robber fleeing a convenience store. _________________________________________________________________
Former West Marin resident Lauri Studivant, is displaying an exhibit of “Applied Junk Art.”
Lauri, who now lives in Siskiyou County, once worked for the County of Marin organizing West Marin’s recycling program.
These days she collects litter and turns it into art.
Here Lauri (right) stands with her sister, Linda Sturdivant of Inverness Park, in front of a nine-foot-high, three-foot-wide hanging made of waste paper. It’s appropriately called “Scraps.”
The artist Vickisa of Bolinas, a long-time member of Gallery Route One, displayed the most-colorful art in the exhibition. The artist told me this painting, “Precious Things,” is her favorite among the pieces she has in the show. ________________________________________________________________
A circus-like scene painted by Vickisa includes a fire eater, a sword swallower, musicians, and acrobats on horseback.
Another whimsical, circus-like scene, comes complete with musicians, a clown and a unicycle rider.
My favorite character in the painting, however, is the woman being drenched by rain falling from her umbrella which she is holding over her head on a clear day.
West Marin is finding ways to deal with the federal shutdown as conservative Republicans in the House of Representatives hold the national budget hostage to their goal of eliminating the country’s new affordable-healthcare program.
With the Point Reyes National Seashore, Golden Gate National Recreation Area, and Muir Woods National Monument temporarily closed, some residents and visitors are paying more attention to the coastal art scene.
At least on the first weekend of the closure, some pieces of national parkland were less closed than others. In the town of Stinson Beach, sybarites continued to use the federal beach but were barred from its parking lot. At Pierce Point, some park visitors simply ignored the “closed” sign in the parking lot. “This was all they put up in the way of a ‘barricade,'” wrote Sarah Paris of San Francisco, who took the photo. She added there were “lots of people parked there and quite a few on the trail.”
Meanwhile, other visitors upon learning they couldn’t explore the Point Reyes Lighthouse decided to explore Point Reyes Station instead. What they found were two art galleries showing a variety of first-rate exhibitions.
Point Reyes Station artist Sue Gonzalez (left) is showing her highly regarded paintings of Tomales Bay at Toby’s Feed Barn Gallery. This painting titled Evening Fog is priced at $4,800.
The exhibition at Toby’s will run throughout October, and Sue will hold an opening reception from 1 to 3 p.m. Saturday, Oct. 12. The gallery is open until 5 p.m. seven days a week.
Sue at work in the studio of her Point Reyes Station home. She attended the University of Wisconsin at Madison and graduated from the San Francisco Art Institute with a major in painting. She also studied with prominent Beat artist Wally Hedrick at Indian Valley College and with Ted Greer, who in 1981 made a video of Hedrick.
A visitor to Toby’s Gallery is intrigued by Sue’s painting titled Tomales Bay.
Ripples on the surface of the bay are almost always prominent in Sue’s paintings, but that doesn’t make her art redundant. The movement of the water and the play of light upon it are a large part of her paintings’ appeal. Sue is seen here with her painting titled Reflections 2.
A visitor from Australia admires Sue’s painting titled Teachers Beach.
Besides being a painter, Sue is a “reading-intervention” instructor at West Marin School.
The elementary school includes students with a wide range of abilities in English, especially because many of its students come from Spanish-speaking homes, although Sue herself does not despite her last name being Gonzalez.
That’s the surname of her husband Anastacio Gonzalez, who’s known in West Marin for his jars of Anastacio’s Famous BBQ Oyster Sauce.
Here Sue stirs a brush in the paint on her palette while working in her studio.
Also exhibiting his art this month at Toby’s Gallery is printmaker Tom Killion of Inverness Park. Tom works in Japanese-style woodcut and lino-style prints.
Nicasio by Tom Killion.
Vicente Canyon, Big Sur by Tom Killion. Actually it should be Dr. Tom Killion since he holds a PhD in history.
The opening reception for Tom’s exhibit will also be from 1 to 3 p.m. Saturday, Oct. 12.
As it happens, just a block away, Gallery Route One also has some fascinating exhibits at the moment. One that I found particularly engaging was a display of works by members of the gallery’s Latino Photography Project.
In the GRO project, professional photographers coach Latinos as they document the immigrant experience, and 10 up-and-coming photographers are represented in the show. This photo by Juanita Romo is titled Mi Primera Comunión.
The Abundance by Ruben Rubledo shows workers with a barge of oyster bags.
Gathering the Harvest by Ruben Rubledo.
The present exhibitions at Gallery Route One also include humorous paintings by Andrew Romanoff of Inverness, grandnephew of the last tsar of Russia, and mixed-media art by Madeline Nieto Hope, who has a wide variety of interests. She holds a Master of Arts degree from UC Berkeley and is the county’s “West Marin education coordinator” for its solid-waste-reduction program.
The exhibits at Gallery Route One will remain up through Sunday, Oct. 20. The gallery is open from 11 a.m. to 5 p.m. every day but Tuesday.
