Upcoming January CCC Trip: Riverside

The next highly anticipated Contemporary Collectors Council trip is upon us! On January 30th CCC will make its way to Riverside to explore the wonderful culture and art the area has to offer, organized by Tyler Stallings, director of Sweeney Art Gallery at the University of California, Riverside.

The first stop will be to the studio of the talented London-born painter, David Leapman, who will give a personal explanation of his most recent works. Following the studio visit, the group will then head to the wonderful collection of Connie Ransom, whose art collection is displayed in her home that offers a magnificent and unique view of the wilderness of the county. The CCC will then break at lunch at the highly-praised and creative restaurant, Phood, located in the beautiful Historical Mission Inn District of Riverside.

Following lunch, it is a quick stroll across the street to the Sweeney Art Gallery where the exciting tour of the exhibition, Intelligent Design: Interspecies Art, will be led by the former Laguna Art Museum’s curator, Tyler Stallings. Next up will be a visit next door to the California Museum of Photography for a tour of the current exhibition, The End of Film: A Brief History of Digital Photography 1987-2009. An insightful tour will be given on this show that is second in a series of presentations of the riches of David Whitmire Hearst Jr.’s extraordinary, encyclopedic camera collection. The last visit will be to the Riverside Art Museum where the artists of the main exhibition, Edenistic Divergence, take an in-depth look into the role of landscape art through a contemporary lens. Finally, the trip will conclude with a snack at Tio’s Tacos, a cantina that offers delicious Mexican cuisine as well as a wonderful outsider art environment.

All Museum Members are invited to join the Contemporary Collectors Council. Council dues are $100 per person per year. For more information, please contact CCC Chair Johanna Felder.

Contemporary Collectors Council December Trip: Laguna

The Contemporary Collectors Council reached full capacity for the Saturday, December 5th excursion. The council visited several artist studios including Jorg Dubin, Cheryl Ekstrom, Dennis Ekstrom, Brad Coleman, and Jeff Peters. The group also enjoyed a private tour of Yasuko Bush’s exhibition at Arin Contemporary Art and tour the private collection of Ellie and Peter Clothier in Laguna Beach. In the afternoon, the council lunched at K'ya Bistro.

Upcoming Contemporary Collectors Council Trip in December

In Store for December

Join the Contemporary Collectors Council for a local visit to several artist studios including Jorg Dubin, Cheryl Ekstrom, Dennis Ekstrom, Virginia Katz, and Jeff Peters. We will also tour a private collection in Laguna Beach and we’ll stop for lunch at K’yas. Since this is a very local excursion, we will carpool.

All Laguna Art Museum members are invited to join the Contemporary Collectors Council. Dues are an additional $100 per person per year. The cost for the December 5th art trip is $45 for CCC members, $65 for non-members of CCC. For more information on how to join, please contact CCC Chair Johanna Felder at johanna@felders.net.

San Francisco Day 4 – Sunday, September 27, 2009

Day 4 – Sunday, September 27, 2009

We began our day in the Presidio to see Andy Goldsworthy’s Spire (2008). With the old felled trees in the Presidio, Andy created a sculpture that is meant to be ephemeral as in all his works. Over time, the younger, newly planted trees will grow and surround the sculpture.

After brunch, our final visit was to the de Young Museum in Golden Gate Park before the group headed back to the airport.

San Francisco Day 3 – Saturday, September 26, 2009

Day 3 – Saturday, September 26, 2009

We headed out to San Gregorio bright and early to meet Jane Rosen and assistant/artist, Terrance Tierney. Visiting Jane and Terry was a perfect way to start the day. Jane’s professors in college were Chuck Close and Sol le Witt, but Jane was disconnected to the rise of conceptual art stating, “I don’t like to read standing up.” Early on in her career, Jane was very much aware of understanding who her audience is. She wanted people of all backgrounds to understand her work. Similar to Constantin Brancusi and David Nash, Jane is interested in using the story of art to talk about nature.

From San Gregorio, we drove a few miles north to Half Moon Bay to meet with Ann Hollingsworth in her studio. Ann works with glass, but often her work resembles forms in nature such as petrified wood, shells, and rock formations. Ann was first influenced by her visit to the Corning Museum of Glass in New York several years ago and became fascinated by the process of glass-making. On the upstairs level of Ann’s studio, there are collections of pods, seashells, and other glass works which gives a sense of a cabinet of curiosities.

After lunch, we headed back to downtown San Francisco, visiting a few galleries at 49 Geary. At Haines Gallery, Lisa Lindenbaum gave us a walkthrough of their current exhibitions Adou: Samalada and Julia Oschatz: Odd One Out. We also had a chance to see the gallery’s beautiful back room with an installation by Andy Goldsworthy and works by Max Cole, Mike Henderson, David Nash and Max Gimblett. All the way down the hall is Brian Gross Fine Art with new work by Freddy Chandra, Listening Sequence. And before we left the building, we popped into Gregory Lind Gallery to see Anders Ruwald: Almost Nothing (sculptures) and Aaron Parazette: Air Drop (paintings).

The group went to Catharine Clark Gallery to see Sandow Birk’s American Qur’an and Packard Jennings Afghanistan 1985. American Qur’an is an on-going project where Sandow hand-transcribes and illuminates the Holy Qur’an and illustrates contemporary American life. Packard’s Afghanistan 1985 uses three appropriated films illustrating a humorous dialogue between Regan, the Taliban, and the Soviets. Packard’s film looks at the use of propaganda and the problem of media.

We finished our visit with Frey Norris Gallery looking at the works of Mary Anne Kluth and Laurel Roth. Both artists are interested in the production science and perhaps a personal understanding of science. Laurel creates intricate sculptures with wood or common objects such as fake fingernails, barrettes, and false eyelashes, such as in Birds of Paradise. Anne Kluth meticulously paints the subjects of people and their aim to understand the sciences.

Our evening ended with dinner at Plouf. Items on our menu included: sautéed California calamari with baby spinach, olive tapenade, parsley and garlic; grilled sea bass Mediterranean with pine nut couscous, arugula salad, and Plouf harrisa; and for dessert, banana profiteroles with warm chocolate sauce.

San Franciso Trip Days 3 and 4

Exciting summaries and photos of Days 3 and 4 of the CCC San Francisco trip will be updated tomorrow...

San Francisco Day 2 – Friday, September 25, 2009

Day 2 – Friday, September 25, 2009

Our first stop on Friday morning was at the studio of Walter Robinson and Ray Beldner. Ray began discussing his work and various projects of working with currency, collecting homeless signs, using found words, such as two-word phrases. Walter also mentioned his interest in two-word phrases and how he was interested in the certain archetypes, such as icons in advertising. His more recent body of work, Transport series, looks at the fall of the automotive industry.

At SFMOMA we had a brief tour of the current exhibit Richard Avedon: Photographs 1946-2004 then ended our tour at the new rooftop before heading to lunch.

Our next stop was at Amy Ellingson’s studio. Amy discussed her interest in formal repetition. In Identical/Variation series (2004-2006), Amy essentially creates works that are the same form, but vary in subtle color differences and order of layering. Through this process, Amy creates an interrelated system of forms.

In our visit to Kelli Yon’s studio, we saw some new photographs as well as series from as early as 1997. Often working in series, Kelli works with subjects that are intimate and close at hand, such as her family, unusual landscapes, and estate sales.

Our final stop of the day was at Queens Nails Projects (QNP). QNP is an artist-run space that is dedicated to presenting experimental projects for artist and curators. Julio Cesar Morales was the co-founder in 2004. We were greeted by co-curator Zoe Taleporos who gave us a background of the alternative space and its mission. Ian McDonald whose work is currently showing at QNP discussed the blurring in his work of hierarchy and between function and design. We were pleased to learn that Ian is originally from Laguna Beach where he was first exposed to ceramics. Behind QNP there are several studios and CCC had a chance to meet with photographer, Maggie Preston. Maggie aims to use photography to capture itself.

And finally, the CCC ended the evening with a fantastic dinner at Bar Bambino. Every dish was special, but just to name a few: Pesche cotte – grilled peaches, crisp prosciutto, shaved parmesan and dandelion greens tossed with balsamic vinaigrette; Papardelle with sugo di coniglio – House-made pasta with a divine braise of rabbit; and Una tazza di cioccolata – a flourless chocolate cake made with bittersweet chocolate, topped with chocolate sauce and crumbled espresso beans.

San Francisco Day 1 – Thursday, September 24, 2009

Day 1 – Thursday, September 24, 2009

The CCC arrived in San Francisco in the early afternoon and headed out for lunch at the popular Slanted Door restaurant. Afterward, the group walked to the first appointment to see the Gap Collection with a walkthrough given by Abner Nolan. The first work we saw was the impressive 60-foot tall Richard Serra sculpture, Charlie Brown (2000). Doris and Don Fisher (Gap’s CEOs) began collecting in the mid-70s and believed early on in collecting artist’s works throughout their lifetime, providing an insight into an artist’s entire career and practice. Most of the art collected are made after WWII by American and European artists and the collection includes artists such as Duane Hanson, Sol le Witt, George Segal, Gerhard Richter, Andy Warhol, Agnes Martin, Georg Baselitz, Chuck Close, and William Kentridge.

After an impressive tour, we were blown away again at the home of Robin Wright, the co-chair at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art (SFMOMA). The private collection included works by Sol le Witt (just at the entrance), Tara Donovan, Liza Lou, Marcel Duchamp, Lawrence Weiner, Carl Andre, Martin Creed, Ed Ruscha, Sigmar Polke, Bruce Nauman, Thomas Ruff, Richard Prince, and Joseph Bueys, just to name a very few. It was impressive to learn how Wright’s family lives so intimately with the art, often working with artists on commissioned works.

The following day, we read in the paper that the Fisher’s collection will be housed at SFMOMA:

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/n/a/2009/09/25/national/a143214D98.DTL.

And just two days later, we learned that Don Fisher died at the age of 81: http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2009/09/28/MN6E19TL93.DTL.

Donald Fisher with Brice Marden's "The Sister," a piece in his collection.

Photo: Mike Kane/ The Chronicle

Upcoming San Francisco Trip

The Contemporary Collector’s Council is putting together a trip to San Francisco from September 24 to September 27. We plan to visit SFMOMA (and their new rooftop sculpture garden), the De Young Museum, the Gap collection, as well as prominent artists and private collections. All members of Laguna Art Museum are welcome.

(Image: SFMOMA Rooftop Garden; Photo: Henrik Kam)