Photograph by Tim Kao
Theres Rohan holds a coreopsis blossom, one of a variety of natural sources of color available to amateur artists at the current Montalvo exhibit. Works by Larry Lippold are in the background.
By Sue Fagalde Lick
Anyone can be an artist at Villa Montalvo's current gallery show, "An Invitation to Draw," which runs through June 30.
Although professional artists have created the drawings that hang on the walls, visitors are invited to sit at a table in the middle of the gallery and create their own artworks with the paper, charcoal, pastels, chalk and other tools they find there.
Gallery director Theres Rohan intended the show title literally, hoping to blur the line between professional and amateur artists and show that all art begins with a drawing.
To that end, she said, she purposely selected drawing materials that won't intimidate people. Laid out on the table are art paper and roofing paper purchased at a hardware store, charcoal, white chalk, pastels, and sponges. Rohan has also put out natural materials that can be rubbed onto the paper for color, including bright yellow coreopsis flowers and green linden leaves. "Pigment doesn't always come out of a tube," she explained.
The drawings people have produced since the show opened on May 18 range from the simple to the sophisticated and from the abstract to the precisely representational.
"It doesn't have to be a thing," she tells people. Some of the artists take their drawings home, while other works are left to be admired by future gallery visitors.
The Montalvo show includes the work of eight Bay Area artists: Penelope Adams, Kim Anno, Sandra Beard, Marguerite Fletcher, Leigh Hyams, Larry Lippold, Nicole Lenzi and Lynn Powers.
Drawings by the artists are hung unframed, secured with push pins, clips and masking tape, much as they might be hung in the artists' studios.
"Drawing is the first element of art-making," Rohan said. She wanted to show that an artist needs to develop an idea before creating a painting, she said, noting that she hopes the show will allow people to "see the genre of drawing afresh.
"What's on the walls is not intimidating," she added.
Nicole Lenzi, a recent artist in residence at Montalvo, created a series of sketches of pomegranates and raisins. Cupertino artist Sandra Beard offered charcoal abstracts on tea-stained rice paper. Marguerite Fletcher contributed "Study for Creation/Ocean," a mixed-media piece that may be the basis for future work. Leigh Hyams' works in the show include combinations of charcoal and oranges and pastels and dirt.
"An Invitation to Draw" is the first Montalvo show under Rohan's leadership. A native of Switzerland, she previously was curator at the Meridian Gallery in San Francisco and the Art Corridor at Sacred Heart School in Atherton. She succeeds the late Russell Moore, who was honored with two shows, "Moore Art "and "Moore Art II," in recent months.
This article appeared in the Los Gatos Weekly-Times, June 12, 1996.
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