What a great night last night. After some interesting comments and a lot of community voices, around three hours of discussion and a couple power point presentations, City Council passed Napa’s first ever Public Art Ordinance, based off of a percentage program that is currently working in neighboring cities of Fairfield, Davis, Dixon, and Richmond. What a great way to inspire art!

The program, though barely born, will show tremendous results by the end of the year, with an average yearly fundraising for art of over $250,000. Let’s keep our hopes high and get ready for some quirky beautification of the valley.

If you’re curious about the ordinance, or would like to read more, check out some links:

Arts Council Napa Valley’s Fact or Fiction about the P.A.O.

Public Art Ordinance Breakdown, via The Napa Valley Register

Don’t forget to come to our second information meeting this week!

Thursday, Jan. 21, 2010

6:30-7:30pm

Creekside Community Church

1050 Hagen Rd.

Napa, CA. 94558

Bring your friends, your mothers, your cousins, your coworkers, your employees, your mailman- All welcome!

Last night, I was driving downtown with a friend, and came to a red light on Pearl and Main. I looked ahead at Bloom Gallery and saw a swarm- 50 people, easily- crowded inside, celebrating art, music, and all around weekend festivities. My friend Talia, who sat passenger side, and I, gave a slight gasp. Growing up in Napa, it’s a common-place vision on a Saturday night to see deserted streets, limos pulled up next to $100/plate restaurants, with all the locals elsewhere. What a celebration last night! And I can assure you, it was a local party. And it made my heart warm.

If you want to be a part of events like these next time, check out the Napa Valley Arts Calendar that’s put on by the babes at Arts Council Napa Valley. It’s a great resource, it’s free, and it’s showing us what the future holds for Napa.

Blessings,

Christy

My answer to that?

You’re not looking close enough.

San Francisco based artist Darren Waterston is one of the contemporary painting elite that focuses his work on social influences and generational learning (as most creative people do). His work, as a man growing up in post-war decades, in a technology fueled and environmentally cautious landscape, is driven by experience. It is highly self conscious, and interestingly reads like a prophecy of the future of the natural world.

Waterston depicts creatures with a halo of light- usually placing rats, butterflies, insects, and birds within his foreground- and leaving the viewer to imagine new galaxies of the future with his glowing, glossy work on wood panel.

What is most interesting about his work is the fuel in which feeds his imagination. Apocalyptic imagery fills each scene, and a wave of foretelling hits the viewer each time they see Waterston’s fallen trees, restless animals, and sublime galaxies spinning in a world on their own.

Similarly, looking at the work of Kara Maria, a Berkeley based painter, we begin to see patterns in subject, though through a completely different scope.

Kara Maria, a proclaimed vegetarian and human rights activist, often paints in grid like formats, occasionally plops a piece of steak on the canvas, and constantly- consciously or not- displays a sense of protest in her work. Though of the same subject, Maria’s understanding of the environment and the future is entirely different than Waterston’s. Copying is of no issue in the modern landscape, for even if the same futuristic warning of natural discussion were the topic of each painter today, no hand will paint the same linear path twice.

There is a constant battle for creativity and originality in our modern age of painting. What must be considered instead of originality is personality- and that is what has and always will differentiate the modern Picasso from the Mondrian.

The modern landscape extends further than the stroke of one man’s paintbrush.

For more information on Kara Maria, visit www.karamaria.com

For more information on Darren Waterston, visit www.darrenwaterston.com

Recent works from both artists are also on display at Di Rosa Art Alive! Preserve in Napa, CA. Waterston is featured in a group exhibition entitled Altered States: The Collection in Context, from October 31, 2009 through January 23, 2010; Kara Maria is part of the permanent collection.

Napa Valley’s small town gems are much harder to discover when their titles don’t end with Sauvignon, Franc, or Verdot. Being a native Napan, I have been exposed to viticulture and wine since a wee toddler. If put in a room full of sommeliers, I could battle it out in a proverbial wine throw down and hold my own. But I can assure you- Napa heritage, and as I’m sure many of my hometown peers would agree, is quite lacking in non-alcoholic culture. Suffice to say, I was thrilled to discover Oxbow’s Visiting Artist Lecture Series. Running from September through early November, Oxbow’s Artist Lectures are an autumn conglomerate of Bay Area Artists such as Kara Maria and Darren Waterston, who by support of the Oxbow School, discuss their art and creative inspirations at the Napa River Inn from 7-8:30pm. As many artists around the valley can attest, besides myself, cultural events such as these aren’t a popular occurrence in our valley. Napa is surprisingly hesitant to embrace its artistic younger sister, and so often chooses to promote grapes over community. For these past couple of months, as I gratefully attended the Oxbow Artist Lectures, listening to photographers, painters, and creative thinkers, I felt a creative appreciation I so often have wanted to find in the Valley. I was truly inspired by the thought-process of Darren Waterston and his embrace of community art students. I also thoroughly enjoyed painter Kara Maria’s discussion on environmental concerns, and her willingness to break down her concepts and painting techniques for her audience. As a young woman artist seeking to discover art all across the valley, and often times becoming disheartened from the search, I wanted to truly express my thanks to the Oxbow School and for the lecturing artists for breathing life into Napa’s art community, and hopefully inspiring more similar events to feed the fire.

…Not to get all psychoanalytical on you.

My point is, with all this talk of bubbles, is that it is difficult to merge our interests as a culture completely. Those that are stock-investors and electricians don’t often pick up a Kenneth Clark art essay. I know that as an artist and an art history fan, I’m not the most keen to pick up a copy ofFreakonomics- but these boundaries do not have to remain between us!

Imagine a sink filled with dishwashing liquid and water. As the water level rises, the suds float up to the top, and eventually, they spill over. What we’re left with is a liquid conglomerate of delicious proportions. That soapy water is a combination of each little soap bubble. I wouldn’t recommend drinking this concoction, but I would take a lesson from it:

Don’t be afraid to swim in sudsy water every once in a while.

I have created this blog in hopes of educating fellow art history bubbles, like me, and bringing in others- engineering bubbles, stay-at-home-mom bubbles, student bubbles- and convincing each one of us that it’s ok to embrace the arts and swim in our delightful waters.

Now, you may be asking yourself, Why on Earth am I reading this? I Googled “art criticism,” and I’m reading about liquid soap?

You’re going to find, like I did, and constantly do, that art isn’t always about paint consistency and canvas panels. Sometimes, its more about life, and how we live, that really makes it something worthy of your time.

(Don’t believe me? Ask Andy Warhol and his Brillo boxes).

So if you’re ready to take a dive into some cleaning liquid, follow my blog. Welcome to it. And don’t be afraid of smelling like clean linen and roses. It’s part of the fun.