Artists’ Haven Blooms Near Moorpark

This rural neighborhood just west of Moorpark hasn’t developed the reputation as an artists’ hub like Ojai. The neighborhood of about 500 families has no art association, art center or galleries.

Yet amid the occasional rooster crow, peacock cry and horse whinny, five Home Acres artists who live in separate houses are trying to forge their own identity, inspired by the natural beauty of their environment.

“Almost everybody has a view,” said artist Michelle Weise, at her home studio that opens into a garden with a panoramic view of the mountains. “When you look out the window, you don’t see a house next door. You see a koi pond or horses. That’s more conducive to being creative.”

The neighborhood has a small, but diverse cross-section of artists: a potter, a painter, a photographer, a weaver and a folk artist. They take pride in the area’s open space and independent spirit.

And they have fought hard to keep their rural lifestyle by staying separate from the city of Moorpark, which has transformed itself from a mostly rural area into a booming bedroom community.

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When Moorpark incorporated in 1983, Home Acres remained outside city boundaries. Residents even succeeded in keeping a road from Moorpark’s Mountain Meadows subdivision from cutting into their neighborhood.

Unlike the city’s newer subdivisions, there are no tract homes in Home Acres. Nor does it have a homeowners association to dictate colors, landscaping or whether residents can hold garage sales. On parcels of half an acre or more, residents tend to keep a number of animals. And the rule of thumb is that folks pretty much leave each other alone.

“If someone wants a goat, let them have a goat,” Weise said. “If someone wants to make art out of their house, we say, ‘Good. That’s nice.’ ”

The free-spirited nature of this neighborhood nurtures creativity, residents say.

“If everything starts looking alike, it’s real hard to be creative,” weaver Lynda Brothers said. But in Home Acres “there’s enough space between all of us that we can all do our own thing.”

Fred Bauermeister, a photographer who likes to take landscapes of Yosemite, the Grand Canyon and Zion National Park, has nearly finished building his photography studio. The open space in Home Acres is what artists here treasure, he said.

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“I would find it too restrictive to live in a community where it was highly populated and there was little in the way of nature around,” Bauermeister said. Home Acres “connects to your creative side and lets you think freely and openly.”

The Home Acres artists have always worked on their own without support from any artist associations. All the artists have held other jobs. Weise is a framer. Brothers, folk artist Billie Pass, and potter Donna Scott are all art teachers. Bauermeister is the director of a Simi Valley clinic that provides medical, legal and family counseling.

When she has more time, Weise hopes to work on promoting Home Acres as an artists’ colony. She wants to push for self-guided art tours with artists in Simi Valley. The closest association to the unincorporated Home Acres is in Thousand Oaks. But it’s not feasible for visitors who purchase the maps of the artists’ homes to travel from Thousand Oaks to Camarillo and also Home Acres for a day tour, Weise said.

“I think we have enough people here, and if people in Simi come out of the woodwork, maybe we could make an association,” she said.

Aside from Brothers, who receives commissions internationally, the artists do most of their showings in small galleries and art fairs in Southern California.

If Pass lived in the city, it’s likely some residents would have called for animal control by now. Pass, who said she’s inspired by the open space and animals in Home Acres, has a backyard that resembles a country farm, with donkeys, chickens, Arabian horses, geese and peacocks.

Pass plucks feathers from her chickens and peacocks to use in her artwork.

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With quick strokes, she uses black ink to draw horses on a peacock’s flight feather. She also creates stained-glass windows of horses that she has sold at art fairs, earrings out of sliced-deer antler that have hand-painted horses on them and bathroom tiles and drawings of the koi in her pond.

Just across the street from Pass lives Brothers. Brothers, who has received weaving commissions from throughout the world, has always lived in places with enough breathing room: Ojai and Aspen, Colo.

“It’s what I’m most comfortable with,” she said, “not a lot of people and traffic. Here your mind can wander.”

For inspiration and peace of mind, she occasionally walks up her hillside to view the mountains that stretch toward Fillmore and Santa Paula. Hilly landscapes are Brothers’ specialty. On her giant looms--one as long as 15 feet--she creates tapestries often using six or seven strands of colored yarn to create woven pieces that look more like oil paintings.

One tapestry hangs over her living room couch. The hills start with a buttery yellow hue at the bottom and fade into lavender toward the top. Depending on how the sun shines in the room, it can look like sunrise, midday or sunset on her tapestry.

Then there are artists like Scott, who use Home Acres material for the right effect. Scott is a potter, who spins and fires vases, pots and cups in her backyard studio. Instead of using shiny glazes, her pieces absorb muted colors when she fires them up in her kilns with materials such as copper, galvanized nails and seaweed.

One material that she often uses in her work, Scott joked, is readily found on the streets of Home Acres: horse dung.

Sometimes while working amid the chirping crickets and howling coyotes, Scott dashes onto the street in her nightgown and brings back some dung to burn in the kiln. That tends to give her pieces an ashy look.

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“You can’t do that in the city,” Scott joked.

Weise recently received two banana trees from a neighbor. She promptly planted them in her backyard so she could use them in her watercolors.

“I was so happy to get them because I was dying to use them in my paintings,” she said.