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BOLINAS - WILBUR HOT SPRINGS 02.19-23.06 Comment: First stop, Bolinas, home of iconic counterculture activist sculptor Ron (Ronald) Garrigues. Garrigues has been sculpting and exhibiting since the late 1950's including solos at the Pasadena Art Museum, the Santa Barbara Museum of Art, and the California Palace of the Legion of Honor, all by 1961, showing most recently at Varnish Fine art in December 2005. He tells me he has over 70 sculptures here and in storage (all superbly executed, by the way), and we're gonna get the tour. He lives with his wife Maria in a spacious open Santa Fe style stucco home that they completely renovated after their Mill Valley exodus a few years back. The home easily doubles as a gallery, plus there's a stand-alone studio packed with art, plus extensive scaped sculpted grounds. The couple couldn't be more welcoming and hospitable even though they've just returned from several weeks in southern Mexico. Let's have a look, shall we? Here we are. Intros, left to right: StuArt (artist, columnist for the Bolinas Heresay News), Ron Garrigues. StuArt. Out back. To the studio. Studio tour time. Ron Garrigues - sculpture. Ron Garrigues - sculpture. Right foreground, man/animal mismatch = end of animal; That's all for now. *** Comment: Next, Ron Garrigues fires up his trusty VW Rabbit (it's never been to the repair shop, he tells me) and we head on over to the rustic home and studio of Bolinas stalwart Arthur Okamura, resident since 1959. Okamura's been exhibiting since the mid-1950's, teaching since the late fifties (mainly at CCAC, now CCA), most recently showing with Braunstein/Quay Gallery. He's currently painting a series of watercolors based on a circumnavigational journey he took with several other artists, including Garrigues, around the base of Mount Shasta. Each watercolor offers a different perspective on the mountain viewed from a different direction-- all nicely seasoned with artistic license, Okamura tells me. Then he shows a healthy representation of his productive life work including paintings, drawings, watercolors, illustrated books (plenty of those), and hanging painted paper mache fish (showed 200 at Braunstein/Quay; sold most). Once again, consummate hospitality, delightful visit, pure enjoyment. Here we are. In we go. Welcome from Mme. Okamura. Arthur Okamura greets us in his studio. Arthur Okamura explains art. Arthur Okamura explains art. Arthur Okamura explains artistic license. Arthur Okamura shows illustrated books. The family's visting for the day. Finis. Off we go. *** Comment: So farewell Arthur Okamura and on we putter to metropolitan downtown Bolinas. Funky bucolic Bolinas (population 1800), as you may have heard, is not the most hospitable place in the world even though it's got a cafe, a hotel, a bar, a grocery store, a very respectable little museum, and several art galleries (the town brims with creatives of all disciplines, especially artists). In fact, the residents are notorious for tearing down any and all highway signage that gives drivers even the slightest hint about how to get there. But outsiders visit anyway, those who know the roads, that is. Once there, the Bolinians don't bother you, assuming you don't bother them. Coexistence is an uneasy unspoken stand-off, perhaps a bit like visiting a demilitarized zone. I decide, however, to sacrifice myself, go briefly public, and take a few pictures-- so that you won't have to. For my efforts, I get one tongue lashing, several icy stares, and a handful of cold shoulders. You get this... City Center. Grocery store. Grocery store inner. Bolinas Museum-- most enjoyable. Wish every town had one. Bar. Eats. Arts. *** Comment: OK. Ready to fall off the power grid and go remote? Really remote? A mere 2 1/2 hours from SF? Of course you are. And of course the destination would be Wilbur Hot Springs, once my happy hippie home way back in the primeval mid-1970's. Today, a Wilbur stay is an astonishingly effective way to wring every last toxic dram of bigtown boogie-down burdensome blues clean clear out of your system, courtesy of the magical mineral waters, bubbling up from deep beneath the earth, and penetrating your core like nothing you have or will ever experience anywhere else in your lifetime. Think I'm talkin' through my hat? Bet me. While there, I meet artist Virginia Ray who has a show of soothing serene steady spiritual harmonic collaged stitched assemblage works in one of the main hotel's dining areas. Ray tells me her art incorporates objects found on the grounds at Wilbur Hot Springs as well as in her travels elsewhere. The essence of each finished piece and its component parts is to initiate, promote, and progress the healing process, whatever the ailment may be. They do it for me. Refreshing too-- a type of art not often seen at San Francisco venues (although she's exhibited here), but certainly worth showing. Most pieces priced under $500. I'm puttin' a buy on this one. Wilbur Hot Springs Hotel. Hotel, road, bath house gate (left). Aerial. Hotel, center - bath house and pool foreground. Front desk. Main dining, lounging, community area. Music/lounge/reading area. Guest kitchen facilities. Virginia Ray dining area art show. Virginia Ray - art. Virginia Ray - art. Virginia Ray - art. Virginia Ray - art. |
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