Arts & Ends: Sonoma State celebrates University Art Gallery at 40
Jesse Hamlin October 29, 2018Updated: October 30, 2018, 12:50 pm
One of Ronald Reagan's last acts as governor of California was to sign the 1974 bill giving Sonoma State University $2.3 million to build the graceful redwood-and-glass Art Building on the bucolic Rohnert Park campus.
Before the conifer-shaded complex and its spacious University Art Gallery opened in '78, faculty artists put up shows in the lobby of Darwin Hall. It was less than optimal but provided a place in the North Bay to see work by notable local and international artists like Wally Hedrick, Nathan Oliveira and Christo, whose 1976 "Running Fence" wove across the brown Sonoma hills into the Pacific Ocean.
"Good Sharks," a 2018 oil painting by Robert McCauley, is one of 40 works in the exhibition "40 by 40" at Sonoma State's University Art Gallery. Photo: Robert McCauley
The show documenting that celebrated piece was co-curated by painter-printmaker Inez Storer, who taught at Sonoma State and organized the gallery's inaugural show, "Northern California Artists."
Featuring work by major artists like Richard Diebenkorn, Joan Brown and Peter Voulkos, it set the bar for the new gallery, which over the decades has widened its scope and showcased such distinguished artists as Larry Bell, Louise Bourgeois, Hung Liu, Susan Rothenberg, Masami Teraoka, William T. Wiley, William Wegman and Carrie Mae Weems.
Works by some of those names, as well as other artists the gallery has spotlighted, go on view there next Thursday, Nov. 8, in the fine 40th anniversary exhibition "40 by 40." It offers one work each by 40 artists.
Rather than replaying hits from previous shows, Michael Schwager, the art history professor who has directed the gallery since 1990, asked the living artists for recent work. Most of these pieces have never been seen at the gallery.
"It's a vibrant show of contemporary art that tells a history of the gallery," Schwager said.
"I wanted to celebrate 40 years and the directors who came before me, and to remind people in the county that this is a significant gallery — probably the oldest, if not the oldest, contemporary art venue here. It's a chance to show great work."
Pieces by Storer and Schwager's predecessor, painter Bob Nugent, share space with Viola Frey's "Fallen Man," a supine 6-foot polychrome ceramic figure with a furrowed Picasso-like head; Enrique Chagoya's sardonic print "The Pastoral or Arcadian State: An Illegal Alien's Guide to Greater America"; and Weems' tinted-yellow photographic portrait, "High Yella Girl."
"Red Boots," a comically sexual 1980 painting by Hedrick, the late Bay Area Beat artist and Funk pioneer, is "erotic, irreverent and very funky," Schwager said, adding that he borrowed it from Napa's di Rosa Center for Contemporary Art.
That collection was created by the late Rene di Rosa, a onetime Chronicle reporter who planted vineyards in Carneros and championed Northern California artists. One of them is Robert Hudson, the brilliant renegade sculptor who lives in Sonoma County. Schwager was awaiting Hudson's arrival with his contribution to the show.
"It's a big, beautiful steel sculpture with a bunch of things dangling from it," Schwager said. "He's been using pieces of bathtubs he cuts up. It's never been shown here."
For more information, go to web.sonoma.edu/artgallery.
Paul Galbraith, the superior Scottish guitarist who holds his classical guitar like a cello, plans to perform with an actual cellist, Antonio Meneses of Brazil, formerly of the Beaux Arts Trio, at Herbst Theatre on Saturday, Nov. 3.
Co-presented by the Omni Foundation and San Francisco Performances, the program includes Schubert's "Arpeggione" Sonata and Radamés Gnatalli's "Sonata for Cello and Guitar."
For more information, go to omniconcerts.com.
Havana horns
Trumpeter Erik Jekabson's trio, with percussionist John Santos, is set to perform Friday, Nov. 2, at San Francisco's Potrero Hill Neighborhood House. The concert will be a fundraiser for the Horns Project/Horns to Havana, a New York nonprofit that provides young Cuban musicians with instruments, instrument repair, training and cultural exchange with American jazz artists.
Visiting Cuban music professor Camilo Moreira Coro is expected to say a few words, along with the organization's San Francisco-based executive director, Susan Sillins.
For more information, go to www.hornstohavana.org.
Romanian movies
If you're a fan of Romanian New Wave cinema — or you're curious about it — one of its leading directors, Corneliu Porumboiu, plans to be at the Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive next Sunday, Nov. 8, through Nov. 16 to speak at screenings of his films.
They include his debut feature, "12:08 East of Bucharest," a 2006 Cannes Film Festival prize winner, and the first Bay Area screening of his latest, "Infinite Football."
For more information, go to bampfa.org.
Jesse Hamlin
Jesse Hamlin Jesse Hamlin is a Bay Area journalist and former San Francisco Chronicle staff writer.
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