Claremont Compendium: Students to Studios

The sampling below of campus activities at the Claremont Colleges and artists whose work can be seen in Claremont completes a two-part series highlighting things to do and see in Claremont, a city of 34,248, located 32 miles east of Los Angeles.

The Claremont Colleges offer a wealth of knowledge and pleasure, not just to their students but to the general public as well. Also, the city of Claremont boasts a number of artists whose work is available for viewing or buying to anyone interested enough to make a telephone call.

This sampling of campus activities offers opportunities ranging from eating a good hamburger to viewing a cuneiform tablet, from a free tour of an 83-acre garden to a free look at a page from a Gutenberg Bible.

When Pomona College opened its doors here 96 years ago, most of those doors were in a hotel. “Hotel Claremont . . . served as classrooms, a dorm and a dining hall,” Judy Wright wrote in her book, “Claremont: A Pictorial History.”

Today, Pomona College covers 130 acres and occupies 42 buildings. Its immediate neighbors include five other institutions of higher learning: Harvey Mudd College, Pitzer College, Scripps College, Claremont Graduate School and Claremont McKenna College.

Many activities on Claremont’s college campuses are organized, as indicated below. And many of them can be as spontaneous as a stroll along campus walks, through secluded courtyards and into remarkably interesting buildings.

The Claremont Colleges Calendar, published monthly, lists scores of activities as diverse as movies, bookbinding workshops, lectures on physics, concerts, club meetings, plays and religious services. The calendar is available free by calling (714) 621-8028 or writing the Public Information Office, Harper Hall, Claremont Graduate School, Claremont 91711 or by visiting that office.

A few artists whose works can be seen in the city of Claremont are listed below. The roster is misleadingly short, because the area is home to many excellent artists whose studios are outside the city limits. Internationally known potter Harrison MacIntosh, for example, lives and works in Padua Hills. Sculptor Norm Hines’ studio is in Pomona.

Numbers below are locaters for the accompanying map.

The Claremont Colleges

1. Rancho Santa Ana Botanic Garden, an affiliate of the Claremont Colleges, 1500 N. College Ave. (north of the School of Theology), (714) 625-8767 (for general information) or (714) 626-1917 (for tours and classes). Daily 8 a.m.-5 p.m. Free. About 1,500 species of California plants cover this 83-acre garden where director Tom Elias says the peak flowering time is now through mid-May. The collection, Elias says, is the most comprehensive gathering of California plants in the world. Flora range from common manzanita and Jeffrey pine to Cercocarpus traskiae, a tree so rare that there are only six of them known to be growing wild in the state. Organized tours are scheduled at 2 p.m. every Sunday through May 19 and can be specially scheduled for groups of five or more on any day. Self-guided tours are available whenever the garden is open. You can call for information on classes ranging from the selection, care and maintenance of trees and shrubs for Southern California homeowners to a field trip to Big Bear Valley to study substrate endemism, which has to do with plants restricted to limestone and pebble-plain environments.

2. Robert J. Bernard Biological Field Station of the Claremont Colleges, 1400 N. Amherst Ave. (at Foothill Boulevard, a block west of Mills Avenue), (714) 621-5425 or (714) 621-8000, Ext. 2679. Open by appointment. Classes and groups can get free one- to 1 1/2-hour tours of this 65-acre classroom of flora and fauna natural to the Claremont area. “We’re involved with environmental education,” Clyde Eriksen, the field station’s director, says. “We’ll show people what the natural world is like, why it’s important to have land like this and why we should continue to have it. Our tours are not just to look at pretty flowers and see bunnies. We’ll see the wildlife, and we’ll try to educate people on the tours about how they fit into the natural system.” The tours will see natural vegetation as diverse as coastal sagebrush and prickly-pear cactus, buckwheat and sycamore trees. They may spot red-tail hawks, road runners, quail, barn owls and horned owls. There’s a 1 1/2-acre lake with a small island where birds nest. And there is a rehabilitation program for birds of prey, where with some luck you may see a golden eagle, a kestrel or a turkey vulture being readied for return to its wild habitat.

3. Grove House of Pitzer College, east of 12th Street and Mills Avenue, (714) 621-8000, Ext. 3654. Daily 9 a.m.-midnight when school is in session. Grove House gets its name from the fact that it once was a private home surrounded by citrus groves. The 83-year-old copy of work by Craftsman-style architects Greene and Greene was moved a couple of miles to Pitzer College in 1977 and became a student center that developed into a student-run coffeehouse/art gallery/poetry studio/women’s center and hangout. Its porch offers what may be the best view of Mt. Baldy anywhere on the six Claremont Colleges campuses. Usually there are students relaxing here, or tossing Frisbees on a nearby lawn. Cappuccino, espresso and regular coffee pour from a marvelous machine that looks as if it should be running a steamboat. You can also buy juices, pastries and sandwiches. Upstairs, there’s a student art gallery and a poetry room where poets give readings (call the Grove House number for reading dates). Thursday nights are music nights, when students and professional musicians get together and play and sing classical, jazz and folk music for a couple of hours beginning at 7:30 or 8 p.m.

4. Denison Library, Scripps College, (714) 621-8000, Ext. 3953. Monday-Thursday 8 a.m.-10 p.m., Friday 8 a.m.-5 p.m., Saturday 9 a.m.-5 p.m., Sunday 11 a.m.-10 p.m. When school is not in session, the library is open Monday-Friday 8 a.m.-5 p.m. This small, intimate structure was modeled on a chapel in Spain. It is an example of Mediterranean Renaissance architecture and is a good place to spend a few quiet minutes. There’s always an exhibit from the library’s collections of books and other materials, such as examples of Japanese paper making, manuscripts by Elizabeth Barrett Browning and Robert Browning and letters and photos from the Gertrude Stein collection.

5. Art Building, Claremont Graduate School, 10th Street at Columbia Avenue, (714) 621-8071. In addition to two public art galleries (Monday-Friday, 10 a.m.-5 p.m. and sometimes Saturday 11 a.m.-4 p.m.) where the shows change weekly, this building houses the graduate art-student studios where you can see work in progress by calling to make an appointment with Susan Lindley.

6. The Motley, Balch Hall, Scripps College Campus, (714) 621-8000, Ext. 3967. Monday-Friday 9 a.m.-5 p.m., Sunday-Thursday 9 p.m.-midnight, Saturday and Sunday noon-5 p.m. Closed when school is not in session. Coffees of various kinds, candy, yogurt, sandwiches, pastries and bagels make up most of the fare at this student coffeehouse. Monday nights there are jazz jam sessions. On occasional evenings, student singers perform or a student film is screened.

7. Clark Humanities Museum, Bette Cree Edwards Humanities Building, Scripps College, (714) 621-8000, Ext. 3606. Monday-Friday 9 a.m.-noon, 1-5 p.m. Through Friday, this one-room museum will feature the manuscript of and original illustrations for the 1974 book “The Academic Bestiary” by Richard Armour, humorist and Scripps professor emeritus. Two exhibits are scheduled from April 5 through May 20: “Five Years at the New Scripps College Press: An Anniversary Celebration,” showing the work of master printer Christy Bertelson and her students, and “The Fine Arts Foundation at Its Half Century: Celebrating With Limited Editions,” a retrospective exhibit of limited-edition prints, pottery and other artworks from the collection of the Scripps College Fine Arts Foundation.

8. George G. Stone Center for Children’s Books of the Claremont Graduate School, 131 East 10th St., (714) 621-8000, Ext. 3670. Monday-Friday 1:30-5 p.m., weekday mornings by appointment. This old house full of books offers an excellent collection of children’s volumes from the past 25 years and selected pre-1960 children’s books. Every June, the center publishes a free annotated list of new kids’ books it considers worthwhile, summarizing the plots and evaluating the contents. You and your children (but not children by themselves) may read at the center free, or you may buy a family membership for $10 a year that entitles you to borrow books.

9. Lang Art Gallery, Scripps College, 9th Street east of Columbia Avenue, (714) 621-8000, Ext. 2241. Daily 1-5 p.m. during exhibitions when school is in session. From April 7 through April 21, the gallery will show works by students enrolled in Scripps College art classes.

10. Institute for Antiquity and Christianity of the Claremont Graduate School, 831 N. Dartmouth Ave., (714) 621-8066, Monday-Friday 9 a.m.-noon, 1-4:30 p.m. The president of Claremont Graduate School once lived in the house in which this research institute holds forth. The institute studies the ancient Mediterranean world, from the 4th millennium BC to the 7th Century. There is a small, changing display of items related to work done at the institute, plus the 3,000-year-old Claremont Ras Shamra cuneiform tablets from Syria. You can see an original book cover and facsimiles from the Nag Hammadi library of Egyptian Christian books from the 4th Century, which are “apocryphal texts that never made it into the New Testament canon,” James Goehring, the institute’s assistant director, said.

11. Honnold Library of the Claremont Colleges, 8th Street at Dartmouth Avenue. Call for hours (they change depending on the school term), (714) 621-8000, Ext. 3968. You can see two leaves from a Gutenberg Bible or Mark Twain’s original manuscript of “The Tramp Abroad” in the special-collections room of this big library housing 1.2 million volumes. The building is open to the public, but you’ll need identification to look at books that don’t circulate. For most books, the stacks are open and you can browse. It costs $25 a year to join the Honnold Library Society, which allows you to check out materials from any of the libraries of The Claremont Colleges. There are always exhibits--usually of items from the libraries’ collections--in the north and south lobbies. For information on occasional public lectures, call (714) 621-8028.

12. The Hub of Claremont McKenna College, on 9th Street east of Columbia Avenue, (714) 621-8000, Ext. 2144. Monday-Friday 9 a.m.-4 p.m., Sunday-Thursday 9 p.m.-12:30 a.m. when school is in session. For snacks at the Hub, you can try one of 12 flavors of thick milkshakes including razzmatazzberry (raspberry and graham cracker) or the favorites chocolate chip and chocolate mint chip. Cheeseburger plates are popular, as are nachos “made with hand-grated cheese, not that yucky, gluey stuff,” manager Jean Daugherty says.

13. Huntley Bookstore of the Claremont Colleges, 175 East 8th St., (714) 621-8168. Monday-Friday 8:30 a.m.-5:30 p.m., Saturday 10 a.m.-5 p.m. Among the 50,000 titles in stock, you’ll find mostly academic books. But there also is material in such diverse categories as science fiction, gardening, mysteries, best sellers, cooking and computers. You can buy works by authors ranging from Victoria Holt to Friedrich Nietzsche. And if the printed word isn’t to your liking, you can find clothes plastered with college names or buy beer mugs emblazoned with college logos.

14. Francis Bacon Foundation Library of the Claremont Colleges, 655 Dartmouth Ave., (714) 624-6305. Monday-Friday 9 a.m.-4:30 p.m. This library is dedicated to promoting “study in science, literature, religion, history and philosophy with special reference to the works of Francis Bacon, his character and life, and his influence on his own and succeeding times.” But you don’t have to get involved with all that to see a 1596 book that belonged to Bacon, an edition of the English magazine The Tatler from 1710 or sundry other literary delights that the foundation’s director, Elizabeth Wrigley, will show and tell you about.

15. Frary Dining Hall, near Smith bell tower on Pomona College campus, (714) 621-8146 (ask for Don Pattison). Monday-Friday noon-12:30 p.m., Saturday-Sunday 10:30 a.m.-noon when school is in session or any time by appointment with Pattison. At the north end of this dining hall is a fresco by the Mexican muralist Jose Clemente Orozco depicting the legend of Prometheus. The picture, completed in 1930, is one of only three murals Orozco did in this country and is generally recognized as his finest fresco in the United States. Weekdays during the hours listed above, anyone can eat lunch in the dining hall for $3.30, and during weekend hours, brunch is available for the same price . . . or you may just stop by and look at the mural for nothing.

16. Coop Fountain of Pomona College, 575 College Way, (714) 621-8000, Ext. 3293. Monday-Friday 9 a.m.-4 p.m. and 8 p.m.-midnight; 8 p.m.-midnight Saturday-Sunday. Popular items at this soda fountain include hamburgers, guacamole, quesadillas and seven kinds of milkshakes. You can take advantage of counter service and carry your food to a table indoors or to a pleasant courtyard. At lunch time there is table service in the courtyard, and a separate menu featuring salads and a wide selection of sandwiches.

17. Montgomery Art Gallery, Pomona College, Bonita and College avenues, (714) 621-8000, Ext. 2241. Daily 1-5 p.m. during exhibitions when school is in session. From April 7 through April 21, the gallery will show works by students enrolled in Pomona College art classes.

Claremont Artists

Karl Benjamin, 675 West 8th St., (714) 626-0553 or (714) 626-1483. Daily 9 a.m.-9 p.m. Call for appointment. Colorful geometric forms typify the work of this artist, who is one of the originators of the hard-edge painting movement. Benjamin’s paintings have been purchased by museums, including the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, the Whitney Museum of American Art in New York and the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art.

Michael Brewster, Art Building, Claremont Graduate School, 10th Street at Columbia Avenue. Tuesday-Thursday 10 a.m.-5 p.m. at (714) 621-8071, Friday-Monday 10 a.m.-5 p.m. at (213) 396-1221. Call for appointment. Brewster creates acoustic sculptures that are not always available for viewing, but he will show you diagrams and slides and play tapes of his work, which he describes as “spaces that are developed by the acoustic effects of pure tones; not something you can see, but something you can hear. The observer walks through these pieces, probing the field of sound volumes as a moving listener, walking through sound made by electronic tone generators rather than around solid objects. What you wind up doing is picturing cavities and solids in your mind. It’s kind of like walking through an invisible Swiss cheese.”

Aldo Casanova, 691 West 12th St., (714) 625-4202, Thursday-Saturday 10 a.m.-5 p.m. (714) 625-5994, daily 6 p.m.-9 p.m. Call for appointment. Casanova sculpts figurative bronzes. He is a fellow and former resident artist of the American Academy in Rome and a Prix de Rome winner. His work can be seen in UCLA’s Franklin D. Murphy Sculpture Garden and at the Hirshhorn Museum in Washington.

Rupert Deese, 601 E. Baseline Road, (714) 626-6640 or (714) 626-6135. Daily 8 a.m.-5 p.m. Call for appointment. This potter describes his work as “mostly vessels, pots for use and show.” Deese begins with dark brown stoneware, which he sometimes incises or etches to create texture. He then uses a soft matte glaze over various colors that impart a pattern seen through the translucent glaze.

Charles Daugherty, 232 Harrison Ave., (714) 626-9963, or (714) 621-8000, Ext. 2221. Friday-Monday 10 a.m.-5 p.m. Call for appointCLAREMONTClaremont Compendium: Students to Studiosment. Daugherty works in a garage/studio behind his house on laminated wood polychrome sculpture, which he calls “sophisticated folk art.” Ideas for his full-scale forms are derived from people and animals in his environment. He carves from mahogany and then colors with paints and pencils.

Gretchen Fassbinder, 1150 N. Indian Hill Blvd., (714) 624-7480. Monday-Friday noon-5 p.m. Call for appointment. Cloisonne jewelry of fine silver wires placed on a bed of fine silver then enameled and fired is Fassbinder’s art form.

John Fassbinder, 1150 N. Indian Hill Blvd., (714) 624-7480. Monday-Friday noon-5 p.m. Call for appointment. Fassbinder is a highly successful artist specializing in colorful and functional handmade ceramic dinnerware.

Elizabeth Fuller, 435 West 8th St., (714) 624-4780. Daily 9 a.m.-5 p.m. Call for appointment. Fuller executes batik and collage fabric designs as well as etchings and prints.

James Fuller, 435 West 8th St., (714) 624-4780. Daily 9 a.m.-5 p.m. Call for appointment. Fuller does watercolor paintings of themes from nature.

James Hueter, 190 E. Radcliffe Drive, (714) 624-2533. Daily 8 a.m.-5:30 p.m. Call for appointment. Hueter creates figurative sculpture paintings using oil paint on wood with glass pieces set in. They are symbolic visages representing masks or heads. He also does paintings on paper with pieces of brass or copper used to create the third dimension.

Anne Flaten Pixley, 200 E. Smith Drive, (714) 593-6068. Daily 9 a.m.-5 p.m. Call for appointment. Pixley makes her own paper for wall reliefs of handmade paper and wood.

Roland Reiss, Art Building, Claremont Graduate School, 10th Street at Columbia Avenue, (714) 621-8071. Monday-Friday 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. Call for appointment. Reiss, an internationally respected artist, describes his recent work as “miniature sculpture depicting different aspects of contemporary life” and his current sculpture as “somewhat larger in scale and less literal. It is figures and shapes seeking to relate to the anxieties and hopes of the 20th-Century psyche.”