THE  CAMILLE  AND  ERIC  DURAND  DOCENT  COUNCIL  

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December  2013  2012  

President’s Message

Dear Docents, December is a hectic time of shopping, parties, and commitments to family and friends. As you navigate your way through the month, please take a moment to check our dates to remember. Our docent holiday party is on December 9, and the new exhibition, California Landscapes into Abstraction, will open December 15, followed by a continuing education program on December 16. Make sure you RSVP for one of the walkthroughs, and consider an OCMA visit during the holidays—just for fun!

Happy Holidays!  

Looking forward to celebrating the 45th anniversary of our OCMA Docent Council in January.

 Bonita Stern President    

Important Dates to Remember

12.8.13/11:00am  Free Second Sunday    12.9.13/10:00am  Docent Council Meeting    12.13.13/12:00pm  Afternoon Exhibition Walkthrough    

12.15.13/11:00am  California Landscape into Abstraction opens    12.17.13/7:00pm  Evening Exhibition Walkthrough    12.29.13/11:00am  Studio Sunday: Renewed Technologies  Based on video works by artist Diana Thater, give new life to old technologies when function and technology collide in repurposed digital media.   Education Department  

Docent Kudos  

Big  thanks  to  Desiree  Glenn  and  Lynda  Wilson  for  their  thoughtful  contributions  during  the  last  training  session.    Kudos  to  our  studio  process  brainstorm  session  participants  for  kick  starting  our  thinking  for  California  Landscape  into  Abstraction.   Education Department

Docent - to - Docent

Book Group Reads Reporter’s Travel Memoir

If you could travel to any place in the world - study its culture and learn new skills – where would you go? Alice Steinbach, a former feature reporter on the Baltimore Sun, chose Kyoto, Florence, Paris, Scotland, Cuba and Winchester, England, planning cultural activities in each.

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Members of the Docent Council Book Club learned of her travels by reading her memoir “Educating Alice: Adventures of a Curious Woman,” our November selection. Jane Fowler led the discussion, but all who attended chimed in with their opinions and ideas. After cooking lessons at the Ritz in chapter one, Steinbach, who won a Pulitzer Prize for feature reporting in 1985, takes the reader along on a trip to Japan where she is introduced to traditional Japanese flower arranging, wood block printing and geisha culture by modern-day women who are breaking tradition by forging careers independent of their husbands. Throughout her travels, Steinbach seems to learn the most not from the formal instruction she has arranged, but through casual strolls and personal encounters with congenial strangers. In Florence, she wanders into a 13th century church on the Borgo Pinti, where she learns about a priest’s efforts to save a priceless Perugino fresco endangered by the disastrous flood of 1966. In Havana, on an art and architecture tour, she experiences the splendid decay of a city where visible progress stopped in the 1950s. At a bar on the Calle Obispo in the old city, she and a friend enjoy the rhythms and camaraderie of an Afro-Cuban band. In later chapters, Steinbach herds sheep on a hillside in Scotland and traces the life and times of Jane Austin by touring the places she lived in Winchester, England. In her leisurely recounting of her experiences, the reader also gets glimpses of the author’s past life – her Paris friendship with the enigmatic Naohiro, her amiable divorce, her loving grandmother. Reading the book was a bit like receiving letters from a friend, so it was sad to learn that Alice Steinbach died in 2012, at age 78, some nine years after the book was written. Another book, “Without Reservations,” recounting her extended stay in Paris, was published in 2000. In January, the book club will discuss “Where the Heart Beats: John Cage, Zen Buddism and the Inner Life of Artists,” by

Kay Larson, led by Lynda Wilson. We hope you will join us.

   Barbara De Groot Day Mentor

Day trip to the Palm Springs Art Museum, Richard Diebenkorn The Berkley Years 1053-1966 exhibit.

Stunning blue skies, rolling brown hills, and desert high clouds greeted us as we exited our bus at the Palm Springs Art Museum. Right away, we saw Gretchen Diekenkorn Grant who captured personal reflections of her life with her father in her talk and power point presentation, “Father as Artist.” Her father frequently maintained a studio at his home. He invited fellow painters David Park and Elmer Bischoff over for weekly drawing sessions in his studio where paper plates used as palettes spread over the tables. Her father taught her to look at the water and notice the daily changes like the water’s variation, reflections, and shadows. This is a memory she carries with her today each time she goes over the Bay Bridge. She explained how comfortable he was in going in and out of fantasy, and that their home included his drawings and paintings on the walls and above the mantle. She told of how he often used the objects in their home for his paintings, including the Indian bedspreads used as table cloths and sofa coverings. She showed slides of the drawings he personally made for her and family members. We begin our tour with, Richard Proctor, a very knowledgeable docent for the museum, walked us through the rooms stopping by a few of the one hundred drawings, portraits, paintings a part of this exhibit. A couple of highlights were when he brought our attention to the colors that showed Diebenkorn’s movements in his work from his time in Urbana, Illinois, his short time in New Mexico, to his time in northern and southern California. He stopped at significant

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paintings that showed transitions marking the exhibits bookends, Diebenkorn’s Urbana period at its start and ending with the Ocean Park period. At one point Proctor showed a picture of the Bayeux Tapestry that had intrigued Diebenkorn as a child. He showed how this tapestry evolved to vertical lines appearing in the colors represented in some of Diebenkorn’s paintings. He talked about how on many occasions the canvas was turned sideways or upside down, and other times a male figure washed out and layered over and then appeared as a female on the other side of the painting. Mr. Proctor discussed various painting techniques, such as, scumbling where light layers of paint are brushed over darker areas, and then showed us examples in Diebenkorn’s work. He discussed Henri Matisse’s influence and showed examples in various paintings. He also pointed out the repeated objects, like the metal chair, that were kept in the studio that would show up again and again in many paintings. Proctor said, “The empty chair in paintings is usually a metaphor for the artist.” Phyllis, Diebenkorn’s wife, was a model for many paintings and sketches where the figure’s limbs or arms would extend off the page, and occasionally a foot would remain, possibly from a former sketch. Mr. Proctor also told a couple of stories as we looked at the paintings. He told us about the painting, Interior with Flowers, 1961. This he said was a memorial painting for Diebenknorn’s close friend David Park. At the conclusion of the tour, we were invited to watch the 1969 eight minute CBS Sunday Morning video that captured Diebenkorn walking along the Russian River in northern California with his dog Valentine. He talked about how he contemplated the canvas before picking up a brush. The film captured what Richard Diebenkorn says in a quote from the Beginning category, “All paintings start out of a mood, out of a relationship with things or people, out of a complete visual impression.”

After a luscious lunch at Cafe Lulu, the bus transported us home in the carpool lane on Highway 15. The desert landscape and sky just outside, just beyond the inside window. We carried Diebenkorn with us back to OCMA. Florence Murry Guest of Connie Sakamoto

Figure  1  Florence  Murry  at  left  &  Phyllis  Ham  on  right  

“Tell me and I forget, teach me and I may remember, involve me and I learn.”

Benjamin Franklin

On Monday, December 18th, Jenni Stenson, Kelsey Ward, and Kaitlyn Sturgis-Jensen invited docents to help brainstorm ideas for the

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studio portion of school field trips. I arrived at the studio armed with the checklist of requirements for studio visits and a few rudimentary ideas about landscapes; abstract art, sketching and sculpting with natural materials. I generally find it hard to come up with workable ideas on the spot in a group and wondered whether this meeting would come close to meeting the challenge we had been given. I have always been impressed with the variety of ways the Education Staff has found to connect to exhibitions and wondered what I could offer that was as creative. I expected to walk into the studio and still see the remains of the last show’s activities or maybe blank walls waiting for centers still to be designed. Sometimes delight upends expectation. Monday was such a day. As all of us arrived at the door to the studio, we were invited to choose a color we remember seeing in sunsets and drop the color chip into a container. What would they do with the color chips we picked? What other colors would I have added to the choices? How did they come up with this clever idea? I had not even gone into the studio and was already experiencing a rush of creative adrenaline. Once inside, rather than bare walls, we encountered five different activity centers which we explored on our own. Each one tapped into a strand related to California Landscape to Abstraction in a way that was both simple and elegant, sort of little black dresses of brainstorming to peak our interest and get us thinking. One center was called “Image Investigation” and involved an array of images from the upcoming show with open-ended questions for us to consider. Another focused on photographic works in the exhibition and raised questions about the power of photos. One center challenged us to make our own connections between quotations from artists and thinkers. Because many works in the new show

raise concerns about our relationship with Nature, one center invited us to share our ideas about being in Nature and what being a steward of Nature might mean. There was also a mapping activity that allowed us to show with pushpins and string the routes we travel every day from home, to work and beyond. The activity generated lots of comments about how we engage with our area and what places are important to us. Is it Fashion Island or OCMA that is the center of life? How should we interpret the map we created? What was our intent as we marked the places with pushpins? After we had time to explore each center, Jenni revealed the results of our sunset project. It became a metaphor for the whole morning for me. Each of us had submitted just one color chip but from all our choices, Kelsey fashioned a beautiful sunset of many colors. Next Jenni invited us to react to the experiences and to jot down ideas for studio activities. The wall space the staff created for our ideas began to fill up. I realized that together we were making something special happen. I cannot wait to see the studio transformed for the next round of eager kids. Lynda Wilson Continuing Education Co-chair

Deadline for next DOCENT DOINGS

December 30, 2013

Submit  all  copy  in  writing  to:  connies7@verizon.net  

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January Birthday Corner

1/3 Michael Marcus 1/4 Katherine Jacobs 1/5 Sandy Simar 1/7 Lynda Wilson 1/8 Joanne Mercer 1/19 Susana Schwartz 1/20 Karen Evarts 1/27 Desiree Glenn      

 Figure  2  January  flower  called  Snowdrops.