On The Road
by: Bill Oetinger 6/1/2006
The Art of Cycling
The details of this column are specific to locales in Sonoma County, but the general premise holds true for wherever you live...assuming wherever you live has public art on display.
I wrote an essay in this space exactly three years ago this month called Extreme Noodling. It was about the simple pleasures of riding around aimlesslessly, taking in whatever the passing scene has to offer. It was an ode to the joy of going nowhere and doing nothing. The anti-hammer bike ride. I rattled on about all the interesting things one might find along the way for entertainment, from better domestic architecture to collectable classic cars. But one thing I didn't mention was art. And I can't believe I didn't, because visiting and admiring art is one of the things I do most often on my solo, noodle-tempo rides.
I was reminded of this recently when the local paper ran an article about a new sculpture installation along the recently completed Foss Creek Pathway in Healdsburg. According to the story, several large, contemporary sculptures have been placed along this new recreational path, thanks to the efforts of the Voigt Family Sculpture Foundation (as in Al Voigt, a wealthy high tech mogul). This is just the sort of public art I enjoy seeing on my bike rides, and this batch of work is being installed right along a bike path. What could be better? Next chance I got, I rode up to Healdsburg to check it out. Was it worth the trip? Hey, the trip was worth the trip...you know: getting there being half the fun. But the art was good too. Not, perhaps, great. But good. There are about six pieces, and while not all of them knocked my socks off, the best were better than average, in particular a large, tilting house of cards (actually red metal parallelograms) called Big Joe by Peter Forakas.
I have a special fondness for monumental sculpture, especially displayed outdoors. As a callow youth, I fell in love with the works of David Smith, Anthony Caro, Tony Smith, George Rickey... For awhile, I imagined it would be my destiny to create such lunking, looming works myself, and I spent a brief time studying with James Reineking at the SF Art Institute in pursuit of that lofty dream. But life's river has a way of carrying us along, and somehow my monumental sculptures morphed into commercial illustration. I'm not complaining. It has been a good career for me. But sometimes I still get an itch to do something really, really big, and always, always, I brake for sculptures. And I don't really care if it's a minimalist Serra, a chunky Rodin, or a Civil War general sitting on his horse with a pigeon on his hat.
I rejoice in the fact that the human species creates art: that there is something within us that demands this form of expression, this reach for another kind of truth. I don't agree that--as the swami might say--all art is good if received as such. There is definitely a lot of mediocre art out there. Some is overly ambitious, trying for more than the artist's skill can command. Some is pretentious and some is delusional and at least a little is fraudulent: self-serving shuck and jive to gull the gullible. But most of it--even most of the poor stuff--still has the power to make us stop, look, and think. To open us to new possibilities. To new ways of seeing.
Sonoma County is not an absolute paradise for free range sculpture, but if you keep your eyes open as you ride around, and if you take the time to contemplate what's out there, you might be rewarded with some real plums.
Take for one very obvious example the works of Patrick Amiot. This amiable French Canadian sculptor moved to the county awhile back, and after toiling in relative obscurity for several years, he became an overnight sensation, as the saying goes. Amiot collects junk and welds it into whimsical, quirky assemblages, usually in the shapes of human or animal figures or cars or other vehicles. Half the fun of looking at an Amiot is deconstructing it: figuring out what the constituent bits were that went into it. An old percolator for a head; a Weber kettle for a body; a colander for a hat. They're never pretentious or snooty. Always amusing and accessible. Everyone likes them. Well, almost everyone.
Amiot lives on Florence Avenue in Sebastopol. A few years back he started putting some of his goofy constructions out in his front yard. A couple of neighbors asked it they could have pieces in their yards too. Then someone got upset. This someone wrote an anonymous letter to the local paper saying the sculptures were garbage and should be outlawed or whatever. Well! This self-appointed art critic might as well have stuck a stick in a hornets' nest, for Florence Avenue happens to be the very epicenter of Sebastopol's left-wing, progressive, activist, bohemian counter culture.
Suddenly everyone was up on the barricades! All up and down the three-block street, the outraged neighbors rallied round in support of free speech, the sanctity of art, and all the rest of it: everyone said, "I'll have a sculpture in my yard too, please!" (This is the overnight sensation part.) Almost overnight, there were Amiots in nearly every front garden on the street. The local joke is that eventually every house on the street but one will have its own sculpture, and then we'll all know who wrote the letter. It hasn't quite come to that yet. There are still a handful of houses without their crazy yard art, but close to 30 sculptures are on display, and it makes a delightful little bike crawl to roll up and down the street, chuckling over the nutty fabrications.
And they're now spreading outward, throughout other Sebastopol neighborhoods and on out into the rural surrounds. They're even immigrating to nearby towns. One of the biggest and best of them is a great Mother Nature Wine Goddess at the Davis Family Winery in Healdsburg, not far from that Foss Creek sculpture promenade. Seems like every time I go for a ride, I stumble upon a new Amiot somewhere, and I always stop to check them out because they're always worth a look.
Some might argue, as the anonymous critic did, that these are not real art. They're just junk, right? Others with more serious artistic pretentions, might argue that, because they're cute and whimsical; because children and dogs get a laugh out of them, then they can't be real Art with a capital A. That question's too deep for me. One thing's for sure: they don't take themselves seriously, so why anyone else would want to is beyond me. For me, they meet the only criteria that really matter: they pry open a hole in my head and let a few rays of light shine in.
Another of my favorite outdoor art haunts is the Sculpture Grove at Paradise Ridge Winery in Fountaingrove. This is in Santa Rosa. Fountaingrove is a vast, hilly tract neighborhood of ostentatious, up-market trophy homes. Not everyone is thrilled that it exists, as the monster mega-mansions have besmirched a good chunk of what used to be virgin ridgeline on the north end of town. But for better or worse, the sprawling project is about built out now, and on the bright side, the new network of roads serving the homes includes some seriously wicked climbs and gnarly descents for hardcore cyclists.
Nestled in amongst the mansions is Paradise Ridge, and a good chunk of its lovely wooded acreage is given over to sculpture, both permanent installations and seasonal exhibitions. I stop by there two or three times a year to see what new art is on display. They always seem to have at least a few pieces by one of my very favorite local artists, Bruce Johnson. I love his stuff. How to describe it? Great hulking, monolithic slabs of redwood, often clad in beaten copper, usually with at least a hint of Japanese temple or portal about them. Huge and powerful, but at the same time light and graceful. But don't take my word for it. Click on the link and see for yourself. Or better yet, ride up the pretty little lane that leads to the winery and walk among the many pieces scattered through the oak forest.
There is another Johnson, as well as several other nice sculptures hard by the Prince Greenway along Santa Rosa Creek, near the new convention center in downtown Santa Rosa. These are all worth a visit. Just around the corner, at Third and B, Ned Kahn's flittering, glittering bangle array shimmers in the wind and light across the entire wall of a multi-story building. One block away, a Ruth Asawa fountain is the centerpiece of Old Courthouse Square. Indeed, if you dig a little, you'll find treasures such as these all over town. If you're in your car, bustling about your business, you will likely blow right past any number of pieces of art without the least glance. But if you're on your bike, and if you're inclined to stop and sit for a spell, you can soak up a little of what the artist might have been trying to say.
Or not! Sometimes the magic works, and sometimes it doesn't. Sometimes we get it and sometimes we don't. It may be the artist has failed in his task of putting across his vision. It may be that it's the eye of the beholder that is coming up short...not enough wit to understand what's right in front of us. But that's okay. Whether it works or not; whether we get it or not; our world is better because the artist has made the effort, and because someone or some agency in the government has seen fit to fund the placement of the piece where we can find it.
Last summer, Santa Rosa staged a massive sculpture event that was easy for anyone to understand. Nothing highbrow or arcane about this show. Something like 50 fiberglass statues of Charlie Brown were decorated by local artists and deployed all over the city for the summer. They had the little round-headed kid dressed up as everything from a scuba diver to an orchestra conductor. It was a huge success, and to understand why, it helps to know that Charles Schultz lived most of his life in Santa Rosa, and was in fact the city's most famous, most beloved citizen. The Charles Schultz Museum of Peanuts memorabilia and cartoon history is here. More than Luther Burbank; more than Levi Leipheimer, Schultz is the biggest thing around in these parts. So when Charlie Brown went out on parade, everyone saluted. Our bike club even listed a ride that toured as many of the far flung army of Charlies as they could find.
One might argue that dressed-up fiberglass statues of a cartoon character are not real Art. Okay...so what? They made many, many people happy last year, and how many of us can say we accomplished that? This year, the powers that be have declared it the Summer of Woodstock, and are placing decorated statues of Snoopy's little avian pal all over town. This one baffles me a little bit. Why couldn't they have waited until the summer of 2009 for the 40th anniversary of the real Summer of Woodstock? Personally, I would have preferred to see a batallion of Snoopys out there, or a Summer of Linus or Lucy. But they didn't ask me, did they? I can't imagine that the little birdies will have quite the charisma that good old Charlie Brown had, but what the heck... It will still be fun. It will get people out of their houses, walking the streets, cracking a smile or two. That's a net positive. I can live with that.
All the good sculpture sightings aren't confined to the urban centers, though. Bike rides along the back roads can lead to some surprising sightings. On an obscure little road north of the Geyserville Grange, you can see a Bruce Nauman sculptural staircase cascading down a hillside out of an oak grove. When I first saw it, I had to stop and wonder what this narrow, almost endless stairway was doing, wandering off through the woods. Only later did I find out it's part of the Oliver Ranch, a sprawling estate that's home to dozens of exceptional sculptures.
Or, further afield, visit Clos Pegase Winery south of Calistoga, where you'll find a Rickey mobile and a couple of Dubuffets and several more large-scale pieces dotted about the grounds of the impressive Michael Graves-designed compound. Okay, now I've strayed out of Sonoma County by a few miles. Sorry about that. But I love the Clos Pegase "campus" and I couldn't resist this opportunity to give it a plug.
Let's hope you don't have to ride a long way to find art alongside your biking back roads. Let's hope the artists and art collectors and civic entities in your neighborhood are active and vibrant, and that some sort of public art is on display--in parks, in front yards, in town squares--in some setting where you can get at it on your bike. It's probably out there somewhere, shedding spring rains, reflecting summer sun, patiently waiting for you to noodle along...to slow, put a foot down, and spend a few quiet minutes opening up a new window in your way of looking at life.
During your next hardcore training ride, while you're hammering through those intervals, sit up and take a break when art looms on the horizon. Hit the pause button when you see something extraordinary by the side of the road. You can get back up to speed again in no time, and when you do, you might find you're dancing on the pedals with more energy than before because you've been refreshed by that brief encounter with the creative spark of art.
Bill can be reached at srccride@sonic.net