Focused on Culture

Focus on the Masters has grown tremendously in the four years since photographer Donna Granata began documenting and publicizing the county’s most prominent artists through a quarterly newsletter, monthly public forums and school outreach programs.

There is no better evidence of this expansion than the state of her Casitas Springs house and office. A copy machine is crammed between the stove and sink in the little house. Files are all over the living room, the dining nook, even the bathroom. Nine months ago, a conference table displaced Granata’s bed.

“I sleep on the couch,” said Granata, gesturing toward the sofa behind which she stores the large, framed photographs of the artists. “This whole program just kind of squeezed me out the door.”

In reality, Granata and her project are inseparable. She is the reason the budget for Focus on the Masters doubled this year and is expected to again double next year. Last week, the Wood-Claeyssens Foundation of Santa Barbara wrote a $15,000 check to the program and Washington Mutual committed $5,000.

This money will help expand a children’s program, “Learning to See,” and cover the cost of Focus’ first paid positions--five artists who will help Granata teach fifth- through eighth-grade students to appreciate artists and their art.

Granata has photographed 35 local legends. Among those captured by her lens are ceramist Beatrice Wood, photojournalist Horace Bristol and sculptor George Stuart. Some of the photos are displayed at institutions such as the Smithsonian’s Archive of American Artists and the George Eastman House in New York.

Granata researched and interviewed each artist and, with the help of 22 volunteers, compiled files of newspaper clippings, memoirs and audio and video tapes. Ten times a year, she features one of the artists in her popular Tuesday Talks. She is also editor of a quarterly newsletter sent to 3,000 people.

“I think she’s a visionary,” said Gerd Koch, a painter,former Ventura College teacher and director of the new Studio Channel Islands Art Center. “She has great ideas, but unlike many others who have great ideas, she can carry them through.”

For Granata, Focus has been an unpaid job that keeps her busy seven days a week and 15 hours each day. In spite of the recent influx of money, Focus still operates on a “thrift-store type budget” of $50,000 and there isn’t enough money for Granata to justify paying herself.

“Obviously, the sacrifices have been tremendous--my personal life, the isolation,” said the 36-year-old Granata. “It was necessary for it to be all-consuming for it to get to this level. The program could not have evolved like it has without the 100% commitment.”

The idea for the project came to Granata at the lowest point of her life. She had pulled her arm out of its socket while working as a waitress in 1994. A painter-turned-photographer, she couldn’t take pictures, paint or even drive for a year. She broke up with her then-fiance and nearly went bankrupt.

Looking under her bed one day, Granata came across a photo she had taken in 1989 of oil painter David A. Leffel creating a portrait of Beatrice Wood. Struck by the historic nature of the photo, Granata vowed to take more like it if she could.

“I said, ‘If I can get past this horrible period of my life, this is what I would like to do, take portraits of artists,”’ Granata said. “I was broke. It was not the best time to start a [philanthropic organization], but I knew it would work.”

She believed in the project because Ventura County had so many great artists and nothing like this was being done.

“Historically, there’s always this concentration of artists and it’s not until the movement has passed that historians recognize it and here we are documenting it as it happens,” Granata said. “This is a huge legacy that will be left.”

Since Focus’ inception, the county’s two best-known artists, Wood and Bristol, have died. But Granata had become close to both of them. Wood treasured the photo Granata took of her surrounded by four shirtless young men bearing plates of chocolates, a reference to the Ojai artist claiming young men and chocolate were the secrets to her longevity. A month before her death in 1998, Wood wrote Granata a letter addressed to “Photographer of my favorite picture” and told her the portrait was “all I have left to reassure me life is worthwhile to hang on to.”

Particularly poignant was the death of Bristol, an Ojai photographer who chronicled the Dust Bowl migrants John Steinbeck later wrote about in “The Grapes of Wrath.” Bristol was the program’s first documented artist and donor. As he neared death, Granata, who knew that most of Bristol’s large collection of photos were unlabeled, felt compelled to try and document the 16,000 photos he had taken. She and the interns she recruited identified only a small fraction of them before Bristol died in 1997.

“It’s just heart-wrenching when they die, but it just underscores the importance of what we do,” Granata said.

Granata’s mission is not just about recording local art history. It’s also about advocacy. She organizes exhibits and leads bus tours of artists’ studios. She coordinated a Ventura candidates’ forum on cultural issues in October and has written letters to newspaper editors and spoken at city council meetings urging government support for the arts.

“Without her I think we’d be a lot less visible as an arts community,” Koch said. “She is indispensable.”

Granata’s commitment to the local art scene means she spends more time on the couch in Casitas Springs than in the Santa Monica apartment she shares with her husband (when not in the Casitas Springs house), writer and film director Rick Berger. Vitamins, green tea and a great sense of accomplishment keep her going.

“The rewards are phenomenal,” Granata said as she pulled a pile of students’ thank-you letters from a drawer.

The most cherished of the letters wasn’t even addressed to her. It is a copy of a letter 14-year-old Justin Miles of Thousand Oaks wrote to New York photographer Arnold Newman. Justin sent the letter after Granata showed his class a photo Newman took of Otto Frank in the house in Amsterdam--now designated the Anne Frank House--where he and his family hid during World War II. The note, Granata believes, demonstrates that “Learning to See” is opening people’s eyes to art.

“I could see, in [Frank’s] eyes, his face, that he could see what I saw, and more, and the Annex spoke to him, and it was loud, it yelled to him, and he was breaking down,” Justin wrote. “Tears came to my eyes, and I almost could not force them back. I was deeply moved.”

FYI

For more information on Focus on the Masters, call 649-9366.