Catherine Evans' acrylic/multi-media work, "Ancestors," was
awarded first prize out of over 170 entries in the Mendocino Art
Center's "Members' Juried Exhibit."

The Mendocino Art Center has announced awards for the current "Members' Juried Exhibit," which will remain on display through February 23, in the Main Gallery. The Art Center's contributing members submitted over 170 pieces of artwork for consideration, with 60 selected for exhibition.

First prize was bestowed on Catherine Evans for her acrylic/multi-media work, "Ancestors." Second prize was awarded to Milo Needles for his acrylic painting, "Exposing Her Salmon." Nan Noeau was honored with third prize for her clay work, "The Earth Our Mother."

In addition, five honorable mentions were awarded: Karen Bowers, "Family Outing at Navarro Beach," watercolor/watercolor pencil; Nancy Collins, "Parasole," watercolor; Janis Gavin, "Woman with a Cocked Foot," stoneware figure; Eleanor Harvey, "My Favorite Road," colored pencil; and Suzi Marquess Long, "Small Craft Warning," pastel. A People's Choice Award was presented to Jim Vickery, "Au Pear," oil on board.

Each year the competitive juried selection process leads to an exceptionally creative, high quality, and much-anticipated gallery showing, featuring the finest works created by the Art Center's contributors over the last year, including paintings, ceramics, sculpture, collage, wearable art and photography. Mendocino area artists and Mendocino Art Center instructors Dale Moyer and Susan Louise Moyer juried the show.

Other current Art Center exhibits include photography by Allan Droyan and Peter Dobbins of the Rural Murals Project in the Abramson Gallery; "Water Towers of Mendocino," with multi-media artwork, in Gallery Ten; and a multi-media Artists in Residence Exhibit, "Come and Get It," featuring ceramic guerillas, sushi vessels, bronze goddesses, and more, in the Nichols Gallery.

2nd Saturday Artists Reception
The next 2nd Saturday Artists Reception will be held Saturday, February 9, from 5:00 p.m. to 7:00 p.m., at the Mendocino Art Center. The free reception offers guests the opportunity to meet and mingle with the featured gallery artists, while enjoying food, wine, fabulous artwork and live music.

The galleries and gift shop are open Wednesday through Sunday, 10:00 a.m. to 5:00 p.m.

In a gathering constituting a veritable who's who of Mendocino area artists, the Mendocino Art Center will host the artists featured in local photographer Larry Wagner's beautiful photography book, "The Artists of the Mendocino Coast," for a group signing and party, Sunday, January 20, at 5:00 p.m. Many of the 77 distinguished artists will be on hand to sign copies of the recently released book for a small donation to the Mendocino Art Center. Wine and hors d'oeuvres will also be available.

Those who already own a book may have their books signed for a $5 per copy donation to the Mendocino Art Center. The books are available for purchase at the Mendocino Art Center and those buying a book the day of the event will be able to have their copies signed at no charge.

Larry Wagner describes photographing the area's finest artists "to be one of the most enjoyable projects of my career. The artists' openness, creativity and willingness to work with me in capturing an important aspect of each of their personas made every session unique and rewarding. This book is intended to communicate the richness and diversity of the talent of our painters, jewelers, ceramicists, sculptors, photographers and weavers who thrive in the stimulating environment of the beautiful Mendocino coast."

Visit Wagner's web site to see a preview of "The Artists of the Mendocino Coast." For more information on the book signing event, please call 707-937-5818. The Mendocino Art Center is located at 45200 Little Lake Street (at Kasten Street) in Mendocino Village.

The Mendocino Art Center is now accepting applications from marine wildlife artists for the Fifth Annual Marine Wildlife Exhibit. The multi-media juried gallery showing is scheduled for February 27 through March 29, 2008, and will be juried by Christiaan "Dutch" Mostert, an internationally recognized marine watercolor artist.

Mendocino Art Center is seeking original artwork from local, national and international artists in a variety of media, including oil, acrylic, pastel, water media, drawings, three-dimensional works and limited edition photography. A $500 cash prize will be awarded for the "Best in Show," and first place winners in each category will be awarded limited edition bronze marine wildlife-themed medals.

The deadline for submitting a completed entry form and color slides, photographs or digital images of artwork is Friday, February 1. There is a $10 jury fee per entry and applicants may submit up to three pieces of original artwork. Accepted artwork must be shipped to the Mendocino Art Center by Friday, February 22, or hand delivered on Sunday, February 24.

Coos Bay, OR, area resident Christiaan “Dutch” Mostert, a member of the prestigious American Society of Marine Artists, has enjoyed a successful career as a professional artist. Painting with transparent watercolor, his work reflects, with striking realism, the everyday scenes of life around the waterways of the Northwest United States. Born in Holland, the son of an artist father, the young painter’s early visual impressions were influenced by ships and barges working the canals and waterways in his European hometown.

For an application form, please call the Mendocino Art Center at 707-937-5818 (toll free 1-800-653-3328) or download a printable PDF.

For those of you tracking John Fisher, after completing the Three Ages of Woman for the Art Center, John traveled to Yucca Valley, California to create a marble sculpture for the local arts council. He was given the theme, people helping people, and titled the sculpture, Together We Can.

"I had a great time," he writes, "I was hosted by Eric Mueller and the Water Canyon, the local coffee shop where there was live music every night of the week. The township and the local Arts Council were thrilled with the sculpture which is being temporarily kept in the county library."

Together We Can

THANKSGIVING ARTS & CRAFTS FAIR
Saturday & Sunday, November 23 & 24, 10 am - 5 pm

In what has become a north coast tradition, over Thanksgiving weekend the Mendocino Art Center transforms its galleries and workshop studios into a two-day holiday marketplace, providing a pleasant alternative to hectic and stressful mall shopping. Over 40 Northern California juried artists and craftspeople will showcase a wide array of quality, handmade original artwork, including glass works, jewelry, paintings, photography, ceramics, sculptural work, wearable fiber art, local art books and more.

The fair will also include a food court serving an assortment of yummy items, a selection of Mendocino County beer and wine, a special recipe mulled wine, and Jennie Zacha's traditional blackberry sundaes.

And, after Thanksgiving weekend, the Art Center's Gallery Shop will be open Wednesdays through Sundays, 10 am - 5 pm. The Gallery Shop features locally handcrafted inventory and consignment art from dozens of accomplished Northern California artists. Visit our Gallery Shop page for a sampling of great gift ideas.

I'm taking advantage of my position as the webmistress and blogger-in-chief to invite friends and supporters of the Mendocino Art Center to come out in support of the literary arts this coming Wednesday. The literary arts are one of the few forms of artistic expression that have little representation at the Art Center, but being a writer, I hope that will change in the not too distant future. The Mendocino Arts magazine, of course, reflects the power of a well-turned phrase, but I'm hoping that eventually the Art Center will engage the literary arts with the same professional intensity they do the visual arts.

The Mendocino Coast is remarkable for many reasons, one of which is the great number of truly talented artists who make this region their home, and that's as true for writers as well. There's a well-established community that hosts the Mendocino Coast Writers Conference every summer and meets regularly throughout the rest of the year to sharpen their craft. This merry band of authors is led by the intrepid and brilliant novelist Charlotte Gullick, the Director of the Mendocino Coast Writers Conference. We are the folks who will be reading at Good Words this coming Wednesday—I say "we," because I will be there. I'll be reading a very brief excerpt from my soon to be published, first novel, Requiem for the Author of Frankenstein. A lot of other charming, funny, brilliant and entertaining writers will be there too.  So we hope you'll come out and lend your support. The venue is small, the evening informal and the words.... well, they're Good.

I'd also like to take this opportunity to congratulate Mendocino Coast poet, Barbara MacKay, who just had a poem accepted into the Look of Love literary exhibit being sponsored by the Northwest Cultural Council of Bloomington, Illinois. Barbara will be reading at Good Words. Her winning poem was called, If I Could.

If I Could

I would choose to be a stowaway
on a tramp steamer going anywhere.
I would travel everywhere around the globe
stopping at this or that port, here and there.

My horizon would be unlimited, as vast
as the universe, and I would visit each star,
the moons of Jupiter, the rings of Saturn,
to you I would never return.

But oh my love you hold me tight and fast.
I am becalmed as is the fly in a spiders nest.
You are my universe, my sun, my moon,
so I hug the shore and give up all the rest.

—Barbara MacKay



Hope to see you there: Wednesday, November 14, 6-8pm,
The Fort Bragg Library, 499 Laurel Street, Fort Bragg.

As the temperatures cool and the skies turn gray on the Mendocino Coast, the Mendocino Art Center has scheduled 20 fun-filled, creative workshops and open studios to warm up any blustery winter weekend or brighten any dark, foggy evening. One-day, two-day and weekly courses in ceramics, digital arts, fine art, jewelry and textiles, as well as young artist activities, begin December 1 and run through mid-March.

Adult workshops include clay throwing on the wheel, hand built ceramics, Internet basics, Photoshop, painting in soft pastels, Valentine book arts, jewelry stone setting, weaving, dyeing and paper sculpture with mushrooms, and silk painting, as well as many other activities. Seven on-going, low cost open studies will continue through the winter months on a drop-in basis. Learn or sharpen your skills in digital camera and basic photoshop, watercolor, figure drawing, surface design, jewelry fabrication, sculpture and figurative sculpture.

Girls, five to 11, and any mothers who would like to join, will enjoy "The Magical Tea Party," Sunday, January 20, 12:00 p.m. to 4:00 p.m. Participants will set up a tearoom and dress up in costumes, masks, painted faces and fancy hats for a magical tea party.

Discount Program for Mendocino County Residents
All Mendocino County residents who are also Art Center members are eligible for the local stand-by enrollment program. A $25 deposit on any workshop will reserve space on a stand-by basis. If space is available two weeks before the workshop begins, registration will be confirmed at 50 percent of the regular rate. The deposit is refundable if the class fills.

Visit the winter workshops page for a complete schedule and course descriptions or call 707-937-5818 (toll free 1-800-653-3328) to request a free winter workshop catalog.

ECONOMIC REALITIES – Emergency Funds Needed
A Word from Executive Director Peggy Templer

Please help us ride out these trying times. The economy is not healthy, and the Mendocino Art Center has certainly felt the fallout from the fact that we live in financially discouraging times. WE NEED YOU, MORE THAN EVER. People are not traveling as much, not spending as much money on recreational and luxury items. They don’t have the same amounts of discretionary time and money that they have had in years past. The result, for the Mendocino Art Center and many comparable organizations, is less revenue from tuition, from art sales, and from lodging. People are also behaving differently: not making long range plans, deciding things on the spur of the moment, signing up and then dropping out in record numbers. All of this makes life very challenging for us.  

There are other challenges as well. There has been a real proliferation of non-profit organizations on the Mendocino Coast, all competing for the same donor dollars. Grants have become very difficult to get; we are “outside the geographical funding area” for many grantors, and foundations that formerly gave grants to small organizations are now opting to grant to larger umbrella organizations instead, such as the Community Foundation. Finally, as an arts organization we have an especially difficult task.  There is a very high “feel good quotient” when giving to organizations that help the needy (Habitat for Humanity), help the sick (Hospital Foundation), help animals (the Humane Society), help the environment (Mendocino Land Trust), help children (Mendocino Children’s Fund); there seems to be less of that feel good sensation when donating to arts organizations. If any of you are feeling that way, I suggest you come by and watch any of the 1,000+ schoolchildren who come here for free art instruction, or watch what goes on in our workshops for adults, as students experience inspiration and find their creative passions. It quickly becomes obvious how important “art” is to the overall well being of young, old, and everyone in between.

A rule of thumb for non-profits is that 50% of budgeted revenue should come from donations. As of the end of August, donations and memberships accounted for just 5% of our revenue (straight donations were only 1.9%). The Art Center cannot sustain itself with those types of figures. WE NEED YOU, MORE THAN EVER. Please consider a donation or a membership. If you have donated before, or are a current member, please consider giving at a higher level. Please help us ride out these trying times. We appreciate in advance your recognition of the importance of the arts to our children, and to our society, culture, and community.

Click here to make an online donation

With the recent unveiling of world-renowned sculptor John Fisher's exquisite public sculpture, "The Three Ages of Woman," we would like to thank the many people who contributed to the success of this monumental project.
 
We are immensely grateful to John Fisher, who over an 11-week period worked tirelessly, six to seven days each week, sculpting and carving, while enriching our lives and sharing his creative gifts with all who came to watch, including nearly 300 captivated Mendocino County school children he hosted for question and answer sessions.
 
The project would not have been possible without the dedication of a number of volunteers who "sat the rock" greeting visitors, including Project Manager Liliana Cunha, Volunteer Coordinator Marty Roderick and docent mainstays Molly Dwyer, Dale Gaynor, Sandy Oppenheimer, and Pat and Richard Jones. We also would like to express our appreciation for support received from our sponsors River Rock Casino, Coppola Vineyards, Goldeneye Winery, and Jeff and Joan Stanford; Gala Dinner and Dance performers, the Brown Brothers Blues Band; wine donations from Whaler Vineyards and Charlie Tomka; and food donations from Harvest Market.
 
And, finally, we would like to thank you, the Mendocino Coast community. Many of you came out and watched John work – some of you returning again and again – inspired by this unique opportunity to witness the creative process first hand. We appreciate your donations to the sculpture project, which has served as a fundraising catalyst for the Art Center's Building Renovation Project to rebuild campus structures.

— The Mendocino Art Center Board of Directors and Staff

Last week the Arts Council of Mendocino County announced the winners of the 5th Annual Art Champion Awards as part of the local observance of National Arts and Humanities Month.

The recipients of the 2007 Mendocino County Art Champion Awards were: John Fisher in the category of Artist; Robert Rhoades in the category of Individual Patron; The Willits Nickel and Dime in the category of Business; and the Tree of Life Charter School in the category of Education. Nominations for the Art Champion awards were received from members of the community and the winners were selected by the Board of Directors of the Arts Council of Mendocino County.

They said the following about John Fisher:

If you're wondering where John Stewart is coming from in this bit, a number of paintings surfaced last year that might or might not be previously unknown works by Jackson Pollock.

The question of whether they are authentic and just how to determine their authenticity has been a hot topic in the art world, inspiring among other things a documentary called, Who the #$&% is Jackson Pollock? which is getting coverage in the latest issue of the New Yorker.  Here's an excerpt:

The art world, we keep hearing, is in a fine mess, awash in money and bereft of direction, and a recent documentary, “Who the #$&% Is Jackson Pollock?,” seems to prove the point. In it, a retired truck driver in California named Teri Horton buys what she considers to be an ugly painting as a gag gift for five dollars at a thrift store, is later told that it looks like a Jackson Pollock (the title refers to her initial reaction), and then struggles to convince anyone who matters that it could be the real thing. The film pits old-fashioned art authenticators (Thomas Hoving, the former Met director, runs his fingers over the painting before declaring, “It’s dead on arrival”) against a forensic scientist in Montreal, Peter Paul Biro, who finds what he believes to be Pollock’s paint-stained fingerprints on the back of the canvas.

Mind Over Splatter
... Richard Taylor, a physics professor retained by the Krasner Foundation to subject six of the paintings to computer-assisted analysis, discovered that the paintings may well be fakes — at least, the drips lack Pollock's characteristic geometric pattern. The collection's owner disputes that this finding is conclusive.

At the heart of the controversy lie critical questions about artistic meaning and value that have vexed literary scholars no less than art historians...

"What matter who's speaking?" asked Michel Foucault, quoting Samuel Beckett.

What matter whose painting? The implied answer — no matter at all — takes for granted that cultural artifacts are symptomatic of the society that produced them.

The critic's job, then, is to assess the product on its own merits, quite apart from the artist's name or reputation. If "Hamlet" had been written by Christopher Marlowe or Edward de Vere, not by William Shakespeare, would the text therefore be less great? Perhaps not, but we would think of it in a different way...

At stake in such attributional debates is a question of methodology: how can experts tell the difference between the real thing and an imitation? If the qualitative judgment of Pollock or Shakespeare scholars differs from quantitative analysis of a computer-assisted study, whose verdict will carry the day? That Richard Taylor's analysis can inform us of patterns generated by Pollock much of the time provides no guarantee that Pollock reproduced those patterns all of the time.

And here's an excerpt from a recently posted article on the Blog, Raise the Hammer that seems to adds to the question of whether a computer is better than a human at analyzing artistic ownership. (The whole post is worth a read.) This bit comes close to the end:

Stan Brakhage, the experimental filmmaker, tells a story of being in Pollock's studio in the late 40s with a bunch of composers who were discussing the use of "chance elements" in their music and how Pollock was doing something similar in painting.

Pollock, not the most articulate man, was getting visibly angry at this talk and finally said: "Do you see that doorknob?"

According to Brakhage the door was between 20 and 30 feet away. He dipped his stick in an open pot of paint, hurled it across the room and it hit smack in the middle of the doorknob and then he said: "That's what I think of chance. Now use it!"

Whether you like the paintings or not, Pollock knew where the paint was going and what it would look like when it got there.

A couple of months ago, I wrote about seeing Ed Harris play Jackson Pollock in the film Pollock, which Harris spent close to ten years researching. He not only studied Pollock, he learned to paint, and ultimately directed the film. Harris created a striking portrait of a man whose ghost is most likely enjoying all the hubbub over whether it's a "real" Jackson Pollock. Again from the NY Times: