ART / SIGHTS : Canvassing Artists’ Lives : Visitors Invited to Peruse Ojai This Weekend, Get Feel for Community Diversity

For one weekend a year, during the Ojai Studio Artists tour, certain rules of order and protocol are upended. Doors to the inner sanctums of artists are flung open and the private becomes public.

The opportunity to see from whence art comes, at least physically, is a large part of the appeal for visitors to the tour. But there are other factors in the success of the tour, which hosted 2,000 visitors last year and is gearing up for this year’s affair on Saturday and Sunday.

For one thing, this is also a fine way to tour Ojai itself, in all its diversity. The tour literally covers the Ojai valley, from Meiners Oaks to the heart of Ojai, to the enchanting studio of wry realist Frank Kirk--in the middle of an orange grove--to the rural upper Ojai splendor of the grand home where Nancy Whitman shows her post-impressionist canvases.

Founding tour members Gayel Childress and Bert Collins now have galleries of their own, within shouting distance of each other by the Maricopa Highway.

Along the way, you can check in on some of the celebrated veterans of the Ojai art circle. Artful photojournalist Horace Bristol, whose powerful images tell a bold American/global story, lives in the maze-like Arbolados area of Ojai. Beatrice Wood--that 102-year-old sprite--has her home-studio in upper Ojai, where she shows her ceramics and two-dimensional work.

It all began 12 years ago, as a source of fund-raising for the Ojai Arts Center--now the annual site of a group exhibit showcasing artists involved on the tour roster. By the late ‘80s, the tour became more formalized.

Taking the tour can provide a worthy lesson in the variety of circumstances, personalities and aesthetic ideas that make up this thing called art. Every artist has a different tale to tell. Here are but a handful.

BEYOND WOODWORK

Sculptor Gretchen Greenberg lives and works in a Meiners Oaks house that she shares with furniture maker Keith Buchan. The common denominator: wood. They repair to separate studios on the property, but have collaborated extensively in the past.

Greenberg is not one to draw hard and fast lines between art, craft and religious artifact. “So much of what I think is the most exquisite art in the world isn’t an object unto itself, but a part of a larger whole--maybe a carved panel in an old palace in Kyoto, or some funky building somewhere.

“I like the Eastern attitude about not separating art from craft, not sanctifying one particular object as art as much as seeing it more integrated with things that are functional and things that are a part of your daily life--not having such a separation between the sacred aspect and profane and temporal aspects. I like to mix it all up.”

SELF-RELIANCE AND THE FOUND OBJECT

Sculptor John Farnham, at age 76, is as deep into his work as ever. Just check the ample back-yard-cum-sculpture garden of the downtown Ojai house where he lives with his wife, Ruth, a painter whose signature muted impressionism has been shown regularly in the area.

The affable sculptor offered me an informal tour of the garden and the workshop the sculptures were created in. We passed through the house, where Ruth was at work at an easel in her in-house studio. John shrugged, “We tried sharing a studio once, but it didn’t work.” Ruth commented, “His studio is just too noisy, and too messy.”

It comes with the territory. Farnham’s abstract metal works, which often suggest organic or natural forms, are models of illusionism, balance and the artistic salvage process--he gets much of his material from scrap. Some pieces are massive, while others echo the delicacy of Calder mobiles.

HIGH ART MIX & MATCH

One of the more provocative artists based in Ojai, painter and assemblage artist Alberta Fins lives on a rambling property adjacent to a golf course and a creek. In recent years, Fins’ densely layered pieces have shown up in various group shows around Ventura County and in Los Angeles.

In a memorable one-person show at the now-defunct Momentum Gallery in Ventura, Fins’ paintings questioned the function and symbolic aspects of religion. At the time, her studio was as thick and disorderly as her probing, unsettled imagery. What we find these days is a lighter, friendlier air in her studio, right down to the lighter carpet and a sense of neatness--a place for everything.

NEW DIMENSIONALITY

Sherry Loehr is--and isn’t--a newcomer to the tour. For a few years, Loehr’s home-studio was on the tour map, when she worked as a ceramic artist. That was then, this is now.

Since going back to school to study painting five years ago, Loehr has transformed into a diligent painter of still-life subjects. Her inventive and finely painted variations on the themes of fruit, juxtaposed with snippets of text or exotic decorative grids, have gained acclaim in local group shows in the last couple of years.

CONTINUING THE LEGACY

A favorite destination on the tour since the beginning has been the home-workshop-showroom of internationally renowned ceramic artists Otto and Vivika Heino. This year, though, a bittersweet air hovers over this plot of land, down the road from Thacher school.

On Sept. 1, Vivika died of liver cancer at the age of 85, ending a remarkable 45-year career the Heinos enjoyed as an actively creative couple. They taught and worked together, selling their coveted wares around the world, in galleries and museum shows. A dazzling show at the Ventura County Museum of History and Art last spring was one of three exhibitions they prepared for in the last year.

Otto Heino, a gentle but determined character, recalled: “We would throw in the morning. In the afternoon, while I worked with the kilns and fired them, she would do the paperwork. At night, we’d trim them. She spent a little more time on the paper work, because someone had to do it.

“Great experiences I’ve had in my days. I’ve enjoyed it. You’ve got to be positive in this life.” That they were, and he is.

* The Ojai Studio Artists Tour, 11 a.m. to 4 p.m. Oct. 14 and 15. Tickets are $12 in advance, $15 the day of, and are available through the Ojai Chamber of Commerce, 338 E. Ojai Ave.; 646-8126.