February 2, 2012

$1.50West Marin’s Pulitzer Prize-Winning

Volume LXIV No. 49/ Point Reyes Station, CA

Agricultural plan set forth to supervisors

ROADS: Readers have remarked on the recent proliferation of dead skunks, a consequence of the animal’s winter mating season and unfortunate combination of fur color, poor eyesight and nocturnal nature.

David Briggs

INSIDE > B Ranch goes organic Page 8 George Lucas’ next fortress: Grady Ranch Page 18 Tomales Food Pantry Page 19

School boards get ready to start sharing

Shoreline Unified, Bolinas-Stinson Unified, and Lagunitas school districts met again this week to brainstorm ways to pool resources and cut costs in the midst of looming state budget cuts, reaching no concrete conclusions but agreeing that action is the next step.

The meeting, which took place on Tuesday at West Marin School, was the follow-up to a joint session convened and mediated by Marin County Super-intendent of Schools Mary Jane Burke at Walker Creek Ranch in September.

After a brief introduction and elabo-rate snack—prosciutto-wrapped melon, soft white cheeses, Pellegrino—board members divided into breakout sessions to generate ideas for possible ways to share personnel and resource services. The entire group then reconvened for a

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Time and extinction drive Bolinas sculptor

ARTS: A retrospective of Ron Garrigues’ work opens in San Francisco this month.David Briggs

The Marin Agricultural Support Plan, developed by local agricultural leaders and partners based on input from last Novem-ber’s Agricultural Summit, was presented to the Board of Supervisors Monday.

“I think that here what we have is a very clear direction of where we’re go-ing,” said Supervisor Steve Kinsey fol-lowing the overview. “And that’s really because we’ve found that by creating a prioritized plan—doing a few things well, [and] the most important things first—we can really make a difference.”

The plan aims to ensure the future vi-ability of Marin’s strong agricultural her-itage, in part by offering programs like apprenticeships and community educa-tion workshops. Other initiatives are for-ward-thinking efforts to promote finan-cial sustainability amid what is generally considered a bleak landscape for small agriculture. For Marin, which in the last 15 years has witnessed a proliferation of

In 1989, after the Exxon Valdez oil spill killed hundreds of thousands of ani-mals and wrought havoc on 1,300 miles of pristine Prince William Sound coastline, sculptor Ron Garrigues was compelled to change course. Instead of continuing his series of Earth Mother pieces—rounded, abstract depictions of the large-breasted goddess of creation—Garrigues needed something darker. He wanted to acute-

ly communicate what he saw as man’s reckless and perverse annihilation of the earth.

Garrigues settled on the image of a skull. And, inspired by wrenching pic-tures of oil-covered Alaska shorebirds and the mythology of Pacific Northwest American Indians, a raven. The resultant sculpture, “Raven—Oil Spill Sacrifice,” was a stark rendering of a prominent

beak extending from two large, empty cranial lobes. The piece was the first of what would become a series of 70 animal and human skull depictions, a compila-tion the prolific Bolinas artist now calls the centerpiece of his life’s work.

A selection of 33 sculptures from that series, “The Man and the Beast,” along with an equal number of two-dimen-sional pieces from a pair of more recent collections, “The Big Bang: Somewhere East of Nowhere” and “Next One Billion Humans 2025 A.D.,” will be presented by Varnish Fine Art in San Francisco in late February.

Taken collectively, the series portray nothing less than the entire spectrum of humanity’s place in the universe, encom-passing the artist’s imaginings of both the beginning of time (“The Big Bang” series, black and white etchings on clayboard) and, through the metaphor of sperm rac-ing towards an egg, the ongoing popula-tion explosion he sees as the harbinger

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February 2, 2012 POINT REYES LIGHT 9

ARTS: “From Beginning to End,” Ron Garrigues’ new retrospective, opens February 25, with an opening from 4 to 7 p.m. David Briggs

continued from page 1

Time and extinction

of an inevitable human extinction (“Next One Billion,” Sumi ink drawings on paper).

The latter series, with their gravity of subject and originality of medium—the ink drawings, on Chinese silk scroll, evoke East Asian calligraphy—are com-pelling, but it is the skulls that carry the most immediate emotional resonance. The razor-sharp juxtaposition of pieces like “Fossil Fuel Man,” in which an enor-mous black oil drop sits atop a bare hu-man skull, conveys a perspective that is both detached and haunting—and com-municates, powerfully and viscerally, the artist’s portentous message of mankind’s destructive path.

After Garrigues created his first sculp-ture more than 50 years ago on a kitchen table, “with a steak knife and a piece of sandpaper,” his path to prominence was relatively streamlined. He began study-ing sculpture under the tutelage of estab-lished artist Richard Whalen while still working fulltime for his father’s thriv-ing coffee-industry business, rushing to sculpting sessions with Whalen without pausing even to change from his three-piece business suit. Within a year of cre-ating his first sculpture, a bird in flight, Garrigues was offered a show at the Cali-fornia Palace of the Legion of Honor in San Francisco.

Long friends with legendary Bay Area painters like Nathan Oliveira and Joan Brown, the San Francisco native quickly developed a strong reputation of his own, enjoying commercial and critical suc-cess at museum and gallery exhibits in California and New York. At a foundry started by iconic sculptor Peter Volkous, Garrigues dived into metal, never blink-ing an eye in the company of the notori-ous wild-man Volkous.

“He was really crazy,” Garrigues says. “He worked at night. We were casting in shorts and tennis shoes—there’s bronze flying all over the place. And we never got hurt. I mean it was crazy.”

When Garrigues’ father had a heart attack, the artist rejoined the family busi-ness for a time, while maintaining a stu-dio underneath his office. And when the elder Garrigues’ heart failed a second time, the young father—Garrigues has three children, two from his first mar-riage—took over the company. His art ca-reer would have to wait.

“I took about a 27-year hiatus from art,” he says. “For almost 30 years I didn’t show anywhere. I made sculptures. I mean, I did stuff—I was always doing stuff for myself—but I wasn’t showing anywhere. And I couldn’t take an obliga-tion to put together a show.”

When Garrigues, now 81, opened the door to the expansive Bolinas home he shares with his wife, María, one recent afternoon, he looked comfortable in sev-eral layers of sweaters and plush brown boots. He’s tall—at least 6’3, although

he says he’s lost several inches over the years—and noticeably thin. His thick white beard is trimmed below the jaw, and when he speaks his voice is low and coarse. Despite having contracted em-physema, Garrigues appears somewhat younger and more vibrant than his years would suggest, an impression possibly enhanced by his habit of coloring his speech with the occasional four-letter word. “The façade looks good,” Gar-rigues joked about his appearance. “It’s the plumbing [that’s the problem].”

Displayed throughout the home’s styl-ish living room are numerous sculptures and paintings, only a minority done by Garrigues. He has been particularly in-fluenced by Tibetan art, he said, having developed an affinity over multiple hik-ing trips in the Himalayas. “Those are made for God,” Garrigues explained. “They’re not signed. They’re just, you know, they’re done for belief.”

When he turned towards a darker subject matter, Garrigues knew he would have a harder time selling his work. Some of the pieces are visually shocking—in one the skull of a Pope gives birth to a baby—but as much as anything it’s the image of the skull itself consumers are uncomfort-able with, Garrigues said.

“Very few people want to have skulls anywhere,” he said. “It reminds them they’re going to die. They just don’t want to know.”

In the studio adjacent to the artist’s house, several bronze sculptures lie neat-ly on benches. The room’s white walls are covered with prints, including sever-al from the Big Bang series in one corner. The skulls took Garrigues over a decade to complete; it’s only been over the last several years that he conceived of and

completed the other two series featured in the exhibit. He says he switched me-diums because his body could no longer handle working with the bulky sculp-tures, but also because the series served its purpose. Garrigues said what he want-ed to say; the anger that initially inspired the series has dissipated.

“I got it out of my system,” Garrigues says. “I‘m not pissed off anymore. I’m just really satisfied that the earth will always exist with us or without us.”

When he speaks, Garrigues sounds con-tent. As he discusses human evolution and what he sees as the inevitability of man-caused catastrophe, he seems to acknowl-edge his own small role in the universe—indeed the smallness of all humanity.

“Essentially I believe that we are in the midst of the sixth great extinction, and that we have to go and will go,” Garrigues says. “We have to go. We’re the great-est predator that ever strode the earth. We’ve taken everything we can out of ev-erywhere and occupied every niche.”

Not that Garrigues has stopped car-ing. Sitting in a chair in his living room, he switched on the table lamp to read the opening remarks of the book correspond-ing to “The Man and the Beast.”

“Having travelled on foot for the past quarter century in the great mountain ranges and rain forests of the world, I am an appalled witness to the rampant destruction wrought by man’s presence on our fragile planet,” Garrigues began, the passion palpable in his voice. “No one with eyes can miss it, yet it continues unabated and accelerated. It is denied, dismissed or simply excused by most of Earth’s six billion humans.

“Since 1990, I have turned to the stark metaphor of the skull, animal and

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adventures while she tries to master the art of existence in the midst of a

crumbling relationship.Saturday, February 18, 7:30 pm

Point Reyes Bookstore

Meredith Sabini author of The Earth Has a Soul: Jung on

Nature, Technology and Modern Life. Meredith Sabini, Ph.D., will include a 30-minute performance, The Medicine

of Enchantment: C. G. Jung as Culture Shaman.

Sunday, February 26, 3:00 pmPoint Reyes Community

Presbyterian ChurchFree Event

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human. The skull both attracts and repels. There is a beauty in the skull but it implies foreboding. The skull is a signpost on the road we travel.” — Trevor Bach

Retrospective honors Bolinas artist Ron Garrigues' dark commentaries

By Vicki LarsonMarin Independent Journal

Posted: 02/21/2012 08:20:00 AM PST

RON GARRIGUES has no idea what will end up on the canvas when he dips his paintbrush into oil paint for first time in his 81 years sometime next month.

It won't be pretty, though.

"It's not going to be still lifes like the Dutch Masters," the longtime Bolinas resident says, grinning.

While his artworks are striking and unquestionably beautifully crafted, their messages speak to a world that is not-so-slowly destroying itself.

Overpopulation, war, starvation, ecological disasters, extinction, consumerism — Garrigues isn't shy about addressing

society's most pressing problems and making people uncomfortable along the way.

"When I first started doing

this, it was to affect people's consciousness about what was going on in the world. I thought it was an indignity to the planet, what was being done for profit," he says. "Mankind is the greatest predator that ever lived on earth. If humans were to continue doing what we're doing, there'd be nothing left."

"From Beginning to End," a retrospective of Garrigues' works, including bronze sculptures, etchings and sumi ink paintings, will be on display from Feb. 25 to March 31 at Varnish Fine Art in San Francisco.

It is an impressive collection, especially considering Garrigues didn't study art until he was 29, when he took a foundry class. Two years later, he had a solo show at the California Palace of the Legion of Honor. Before

moving to Marin almost 40 years ago, Garrigues called North Beach home and

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Ron Garrigues, 85, demonstrates the technique he used in his Simi ink onhandmade paper paintings in his home art studio in Bolinas. Garrigues ishaving a retrospective show of the past 25 years of his sculpture, paintingsand etchings that focus on the environment, at San Francisco gallery,Varnish Fine Art, from Feb. 25 through March 31, 2012. ((Special to theIJ/Jocelyn Knight))

immersed himself in the vibrant Beat community, befriending artists Joan Brown, Manuel Neri and Bruce Connor, partying with Alan Watts and Allen Ginsberg and studying with Richard Whalen, Peter Voulkos and Harold Paris. "I'm self-taught," he says, "but I always found a mentor."

"Garrigues' art is very personal yet it functions as beautifully accessible, if disagreeable, reminders of humanity's careless disregard and self-important illusion of permanence," writes Amy Baker Sandback, a curator and art historian with the Dia Center for the Arts in New York, in the introduction to the exhibit catalog. "The message in each of his sculptures comes across loud and clear: Disrespect for the forces of nature leads to disaster. By opening our eyes to these core truths, the artist gives form to mysteries. This mutation of mind and matter is rendered with a steady hand, a bitter smile and always a telling eye for detail."

His early sculptures focused on what he considers "the lyric purity of form and line." It was 1989's Exxon Valdes disaster, which dumped some 11 million gallons of oil along the pristine Prince William Sound shoreline, killing hundreds of

thousands of birds and wildlife, that prompted Garrigues to examine man's disregard of nature. His sculpture "Raven — Oil Spill Sacrifice" became the first of numerous works in his "Man and Beast" series, all of which incorporate skulls.

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Overpopulation-The Mother Cannot Bear So Many, 1995Cast bronze, Ed. 5, by Ron Garrigues, 85, in his home artstudio in Bolinas. ((Special to the IJ/Jocelyn Knight))

Garrigues sees beauty in skulls. They're also a powerful image to convey his fears for our planet.

In "The Nature of the Beast I," coins stuff a skull's eye sockets and mouth cavity, a statement on greed. In "Overpopulation — the Crux of the Matter I," Garrigues points his figure at church policy against birth control with a skull, donning a pope's mitre, giving birth to a baby. In "End of the Trail, Homeless," a hand stretches out from a skull's drooping mouth cavity, a coin in its palm.

"I do things that galleries generally will not handle because they're not going to sell them. I haven't done anything with the intent of selling it," he says, pointing to "Famine II — The Children Go First," a skull devouring a baby — a dark commentary on the world's most vulnerable. "Who wants that? These remind people of their own death."

His newer works explore Earth's beginnings, "The Big Bang: Somewhere East of Nowhere," a series of black-and-white etchings, while "The Next One Billion Humans 2025 A.D.," a collection of sumi ink drawings depicting sperm racing toward an egg, is a visual polemic about overpopulation.

Garrigues isn't an activist nor, he insists, a doomsayer. But as he rattles off facts and statistics about dwindling fresh water supplies or the loss of arable land or overfishing, it's clear he's passionate — and well-educated — about the issues that drive his art.

"We'll have another billion people in 13 years. There isn't food enough to feed the ones we

have," he says matter-of-factly. "There have been five major extinctions on earth; we're the sixth. I don't know when we're going to go, because everything goes, but we're going to go. By implication, we're extincting ourselves."

Tall and slender, his thinning gray hair pulled back into a small ponytail, Garrigues still works several mornings a week in his studio, just steps from the spacious Santa Fe-style stucco home he shares with his wife of 41 years, Maria, a Spanish instructor. "I run out of energy after lunch," he admits.

But not enthusiasm for trying new things. At 75, he took up charcoal and pastel for a series of images of Mount Shasta, an homage to the Japanese print maker Hokusa. Next, oil paints. "I like to go from one medium to another; it becomes more of a challenge for me and I like challenges," he says.

"He's trying to get people to think," says Jen Rogers, who co-owns Varnish Fine Art with Kerri Stephens. The two women met Garrigues through Berkeley's Artworks Foundry. "There's tremendous worry, and

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rather than pretend there isn't or not want to speaking about it, he's using his artwork to directly address it. It's timely but he's also trying to make something beautiful."

Vicki Larson can be reached at vlarson@marinij.com; follow her on Twitter at @OMGchronicles, fan her at on Facebook at Vicki-Larson-OMG-Chronicles

IF YOU GOWhat: "From Beginning to End: Ron Garrigues"When: Feb. 25 to March 31: artist reception 4 to 7 p.m. Feb. 25Where: Varnish Fine Art, 16 Jessie St., No. C120, San FranciscoAdmission: FreeInformation: 433-4400; http://varnish fineart.com

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