Aesthetic Voyeurism

A comfy chair--a lounger, no less--sat perched in front of a noisy, cheap TV set right there at the top of the driveway, an empty beer can on the table attesting to couch potato inaction. It was right there for all on Tico Road in Meiners Oaks near Ojai to see. Cars whizzed by, no doubt shooting second glances at the odd, roadside site. Some must have misunderstood the nature of the display, to which a sign had been attached: “This is not a garage sale.”

Indeed, this was no garage sale. It was art rearing its head in a more-or-less public way.

Last weekend marked the time of year when Ojai played host to meandering cars full of art gawkers coming out for the “Ojai Studio Artists” tour. And the piece in question, one of the more distinctive and elaborate sites on the tour, was a funky and ambitious installation by Ronda Linette Larue called “Remote Voyeur: Outside In.”

Larue, taking aim at the near frenzied pitch of media-fueled voyeurism in the era of “zippergate,” filled her driveway with living-room settings. Couches held dolls called “drones,” sitting before televisions blaring tasteless newscasts and Jerry Springer-brand irritations. Two walls of her house had been painted by a mural team of high school students led by Lisa Kelly, to reveal ostensible goings-on inside the house, adding to the general atmosphere of lurid curiosity.

LaRue’s eye-grabbing, site-specific venture notwithstanding, the tour, affectionately and acronymically known as OSA, has become a perennial local ritual, one with a comforting familiarity. Many of the artists have been on the tour map for years, including Christine Brennan, showing an inviting new series of fantastical and bittersweet paintings; downtowners John and Ruth Farnham; and Meiners Oaks-based sculptor Gretchen Greenberg. Off in the eastern corner of Upper Ojai, in an idyllic woodsy niche, resident neo-fauvist Nancy Whitman’s paintings fill the studio and living quarters.

Guerrilla activity, off the official map of the tour, added to its character as well. Some of the biggest crowds, in fact, were drawn by hand-painted signs to the property known as the “Art Detour.” It was up on McAndrews Road, just below that other popular, official OSA destination, the showroom of ceramist Otto Heino.

At the “Detour,” paintings--including works by the fine Ojai-based artist Ernesto Seco--refreshments and an actual live band created an atmosphere of celebration off the beaten path. The driving force behind “Art Detour” is artist Carmen Abelleira-White, who makes paintings with folk art-like charm and festivity, and dabbles in another, less common, medium as well: She does fanciful paint jobs on cars, including a Jaguar and her own Volvo in the driveway.

Taking the OSA tour is to visit Ojai in a unique way, observing both the diversity of artistic instincts and the diversity of real estate. One could develop theories about the interaction of the two aspects. Note, for instance, the aesthetic and geographical proximity of whimsical assemblage artists Leila Kleiman and Sylvia Raz, both of whom live near Thacher School. Is it something in the air up there?

For an overview of the variety of OSA artists, check out the exhibition at the Ojai Center for the Arts gallery, which surveys the artists involved.

On a sadder note, this marked the first year without art scene matriarch Beatrice Wood, who died last spring after turning 105. Wood’s showroom studio in Upper Ojai used to be a beehive of warm energy on the tour, and her presence was felt this year in a small exhibit at the Ojai Historical Museum, as well as at the show at Milagro’s Nest, downtown.

Then again, the Nest was not on the official OSA map. One important point to be drawn here is that Ojai’s art scene hums beneath the surface all year long, in all corners of the valley. If, once a year, OSA draws us into the town’s vortex, the artistic impulse is pervasive and never-ending.