The Jefferson Agrarian

Ed. note:
As a fundraiser for one of our most cherished local non-profits, the Siskiyou Land Trust, local scholar William Miesse will be presenting his take on the ongoing fascination with Lemuria, and the relevance of this cultural and even spiritual phenomena to the State of Jefferson.

Hope to see you there!

The State of Jefferson’s own Finley Fryer is having a major solo exhibition of his paintings and sculptures at the venerable John Natsoulas Center for the Arts in Davis, CA.

Usually referred to simply as the Natsoulas Gallery, this important northern California exhibition space has earned a reputation for shows that underscore the importance of the post-WWII to present northern California art scene. Seminal artists such as Robert Arneson, Roy De Forest, Joan Brown, Hassel Smith, Elmer Bischoff, Deborah Butterfield and William T. Wiley have all had major shows at the Natsoulas. John Natsoulas’ dedication to art history, arts education and the exhibition of regional talent and California artwork has contributed strongly to the international stature of the northern California art scene as it continues to develop.

So, this is no small feat for Fryer to have a major show at the Natsoulas Gallery – congrats, Finley. We’ll be there for the opening on January 13th. We’re hoping to see lots of Jeffersonians in attendance.

John Natsoulas Center for the Arts
521 1st Street
Davis, CA 95616
Phone: (530) 756-3938

Hours:
Wed-Thurs 11am-5pm
Fri 11am-10pm
Sat-Sun Noon-5pm

Map:

(View Larger Map)

Ed note: Open by appointment only, but totally free, Pier 24 Photography has rocketed to the top of the Jeff’s West Coast ‘must-visit’ list. Monday, January 2 at 3:15pm – we’ll be there.

HERE.
May 23, 2011 – January 31, 2011
Walk Through

Pier 24 Photography is pleased to announce the exhibition, HERE. This exhibition presents a selection of works produced by Bay Area photographers as well as a range of images of San Francisco, with an emphasis on the late-twentieth century. HERE. highlights the vibrancy of San Francisco and the surrounding areas through the work of 34 photographers and over 700 images.

The San Francisco Bay Area has inspired photographers since the early stages of the medium. From the rolling hills, breathtaking vistas and dynamism of local redwood forests to the linking bridges and bay itself, this area evokes wonder and curiosity. As subcultures developed alongside urban and suburban sprawl, photographers flocked to the Bay Area to capture the distinctive character of the region’s people and land. From the drama of early landscape photographs by Carleton E. Watkins to intimate portraits of youth on the streets by Jim Goldberg and Richard Misrach, both beauty and tragedy have compelled photographers to document the Bay Area.

On view, the paired panoramas of Eadweard Muybridge and Mark Klett chronicle urban growth over a 100-year span, while Todd Hido, Bill Owens and Larry Sultan examine the effects of suburban advancement. Arnold Genthe’s documentation of the urban disasters resulting from the1906 earthquake and Richard Misrach’s large-scale prints recording the 1991 Oakland fire encapsulate the volatility of the Northern California landscape.

The exhibition also features images by photographers visiting San Francisco. The energy of urban life captured in the street photographs of Lee Friedlander, Paul Graham and Stephen Shore; development as represented by the vacant interior images of Oakland by Anthony Hernandez; the devastated landscape of Candlestick Point by Lewis Baltz; the remarkable architecture of local theaters as examined by Hiroshi Sugimoto all serve as vignettes of life in San Francisco.

Artists presented in the exhibition HERE. include: Diane Arbus, Lewis Baltz, Ruth Bernhard, Leon Borenstein, John Chiara, Kota Ezawa, Robert Frank, Lee Friedlander, Arnold Genthe, Jim Goldberg, Paul Graham, Katy Grannan, John Gutman, Johan Hagemeyer, Chauncey Hare, Anthony Hernandez, Todd Hido, Mark Klett, Dorothea Lange, Richard Misrach, Eadweard Muybridge, Bill Owens, Irving Penn, Doug Rickard, Stephen Shore, Peter Stackpole, Hiroshi Sugimoto, Larry Sultan, Catherine Wagner, Carleton Watkins, Henry Wessel and Edward Weston.

Ed. note: Happy New Year! 2011 has been an active one for State of Jefferson artists. Eloise Larsen and Nickki Lee Hill had a successful exhibition in Anchorage, Alaska – the Red Door Gallery opened in Mt. Shasta – filmmaker Mark Oliver launched his new project Where is Our Water? – Brenda Woods, Nikolas Allen, Kim Presley (et al) continue to work hard ensuring that Liberty Arts continues to be a dynamic art space in Yreka – photographer James Gilmore claimed first prize at both the West Coast Biennial and a juried show at Viewpoint Center in Sacramento – the 4&20 Blackbird Festival launched in July – and Finley Fryer’s epic figurative sculpture “Stan the Man” found a temporary home as public art in Davis, CA. We’re sure we’ve missed a few!

To kick off 2012 with a bang, the aforementioned Finley Fryer (click for website) is having a major solo exhibition of his paintings and sculptures at the venerable John Natsoulas Center for the Arts in Davis, CA. Usually referred to simply as the Natsoulas Gallery, this important northern California exhibition space has earned a reputation for shows that underscore the importance of the post-WWII to present northern California art scene. Seminal artists such as Robert Arneson, Roy De Forest, Joan Brown, Hassel Smith, Elmer Bischoff, Deborah Butterfield and William T. Wiley have all had major shows at the Natsoulas. John Natsoulas’ dedication to art history, arts education and the exhibition of regional talent and California artwork has contributed strongly to the international stature of the northern California art scene as it continues to develop.

So, this is no small feat for Fryer to have a major show at the Natsoulas Gallery – congrats, Finley. We’ll be there for the opening on January 13th. We’re hoping to see lots of Jeffersonians in attendance.

The following is a press release written by Nancy Resler of the John Natsoulas Gallery:

Neo-Assemblage: The Creative Force of Finley Fryer

(PRWEB) December 06, 2011

Experience the image of the found object popularized by the San Francisco Bay Area Funk Movement as it has been reinterpreted and developed in a modern context by the talented and multifaceted artist Finley Fryer. On Wednesday January the fourth, the Natsoulas Center for the Arts will dedicate all three floors of the gallery to “Unique Creations of Finley Fryer.” The exhibit will feature a diverse body of work ranging in medium from Fryer’s expressive color collage paintings to his organic consumer waste sculptures and will span from earlier in his career to his more recent developments.

Symbolically towering in front of the gallery itself, at nearly eighteen feet in height and approximately 2,300 lbs in weight, is the daunting Stan the Submerging Man, an internationally acclaimed sculpture of Fryer’s constructed and installed at the 1999 Burning man Festival in the Black Rock Desert, Nevada. A collaborative piece constructed with the help of Fryer’s wife, artist Jayne Bruck Fryer, and Kirk LeClaire—whose wildly eclectic musical show called Stan’s Room provided the inspiration for the statue of the titular character—Stan aka the Diver serves as a brilliant introduction to the exhibition as well as an emblematic induction into the creative mind of the artist himself. Stan’s internal structure is fabricated of various dimensions of steel and can be disassembled into fourteen individual pieces. Using 600 tubes of clear latex acrylic adhesive caulk, Fryer attached an exterior ‘skin’ of donated plastic and colored vinyl’s collected by LeClaire that are illuminated at night by 1000 LED lights, illuminating the reclaimed consumer detritus in the spirit of a new realism.

“My first memory of making art is at about four years old, when my mother rolled butcher paper across the floor, laying out our crayons, pencils and paints”—Since his humble indoctrination into the world of art, Fryer has not looked back. He received his BFA from Davis in the mid-seventies studying under pioneers of the first and second generation of the Bay Area Figurative Movement such as Roy de Forest, William T. Wiley, Wayne Thiebaud and Manuel Neri. Despite the rich environment he was exposed to, Fryer felt constricted by an underlying conformity that did not suit him. Traveling east to work in lumber mills and then returning to west to repair stained glass church windows, Fryer compiled a collection of loose pieces of glass that would later serve as a catalyst for his assemblage constructions.

Currently, he resides in Dunsmuir, California where he has found a respite from urban society that has allowed him to develop art on a grand scale and with a spiritual awareness which, entertaining a post-modern sense of loss, remains optimistic nonetheless as it redefines our understanding of waste and decay. “I guess I have come to a point where this studio in this small town has become a home and the place where my wife, Jayne, and I have come to create, collaborate and send those creations out into the world.”

John Natsoulas Center for the Arts
521 1st Street
Davis, CA 95616
Phone: (530) 756-3938
Hours:
Wed-Thurs 11am-5pm
Fri 11am-10pm
Sat-Sun Noon-5pm

Map:

(View Larger Map)

The Jefferson Agrarian always been fascinated by the postcards generated by Eastman Studios throughout the first half of the 20th century. Made directly onto Kodak paper from original negatives rather than the halftone process favored by nearly every other postcard maker of the era, the images always seem to be of places we’re familiar with – predominantly, scenes from California, Nevada and Oregon. Without realizing it, I was beginning to collect images by Jervie Henry Eastman, whose ties to the State of Jefferson are long and deep.

While he was actually born in Michigan in 1880, his family moved to the wilds of northern California in 1886. By 1898, at the age of eighteen, Eastman was a practicing ‘view photographer’ in Sisson, which of course in now known as Mt. Shasta. By 1907, he was a partner in the Shasta View Company, and lost all of his burgeoning collection of photo plates in a fire in 1912.

In 1921, Jervie Henry Eastman moved to Susanville and established Eastman & Company as a commercial photography and post card studio. In 1936 he hired Mirl Simmons, a young photographer from Hillsborough, West Virginia, to help with the postcard photography. In 1947, Eastman and Simmons became partners. The business had expanded to provide photographic supplies to southeastern Oregon and studios in Westwood, Weed, and Susanville.

By the end of his long career, Jervie Eastman and his company amassed over 13,000 images – contributing a prolific archive of our area in the 20th century. While his images of the construction of Shasta Dam and the highways that began to proliferate as access to rural areas began to be realized are important contributions to the history of the State of Jefferson, it’s his images of the downtown areas of our communities that really resonate. Towns like Klamath Falls, Weed and Alturas are frozen in time inside these arresting images, often easily attributed to a year by the automobliles in the photos. Eastman also understood the value of ‘kitsch’, evidenced by his images of playful bears, squirrels and other wildlife that probably sold very well in their time.

Eastman retired from photography in 1959 and sold his share of the business to his partner since 1947, Mirl Simmons. Jervie Eastman died in Susanville in 1969.

Mirl Simmons ran the Eastman Studios until 1980, when he retired and sold the business to John and Shirley Castle. Mirl Simmons died in 1987, in Jamestown, California.

The Eastman’s Originals Collection (the historical postcards and negatives) was sold to Anne Fisher in 1982, presumably by Simmons. Fisher managed the collection until her retirement in 1994, when she donated the collection to the University of California, Davis.

The Library at UCD now manages The Eastman Project, part of the Library’s Special Collections Department, designed to “provide digital access to the 12,500 images in the Eastman’s Originals Collection, a series of photographic negatives depicting California life, created by Jervie Henry Eastman and Mirl Simmons of Eastman Studios, Susanville, California”. This collection may be searched using the UC Davis Harvest Catalog.

For more on Jervie Eastman, check out the Sierra Nevada Virtual Museum project, which has chronicled Eastman’s life.