The following article first appeared in the Wednesday, December 6, 1967 edition of the “OJAI VALLEY NEWS” on page A1. The article is reprinted here with their permission.
Santa will visit homes Xmas eve
Santa Claus will be making personal visits in the Ojai Valley on Christmas Eve, according to the Ojai Valley Jaycees.
Once again, as for the past 19 years, the Ojai Valley Jaycees have persuaded Santa to visit homes in the valley between 6 and 9 p.m. on Christmas Eve. Entry blanks have been sent to the elementary schools and any school child, seven years of age or younger, can have Santa visit his home.
Santa will visit areas as follows: Ojai, Meiners Oaks, Ojai Highlands, Mira Monte, Skyline and Oak View.
Applications or notes to Santa must include: child’s name, age, sex, parent’s name, address and phone number, names of pets or other information that may help Santa on his visit. Send to: Santa, c / o Jaycees, P.O. Box 1057, Ojai, Calif. 93023 no later than 12:00 midnight, December 18th.
Santa will deliver gifts that parents have placed outside the front door and will present each child with a candy cane, courtesy of the Ojai Valley Jaycees.
Anyone who has a child not yet in school may obtain an entry from one of the following stations: In Ojai – Fitgerald’s, Van Dyke Travel Service, The Yellow Door, Rains, Callender’s, Cole’s Mens Shop or Hammond’s Union Service; for Mira Monte – Trudi’s Dress shop and in Oak View – Dickinson’s Family Kitchen.
Anyone wishing more information may contact Project Chairman Jim Michalopoulos at 646-2783 or Jaycee President Orville Kiso at 646-3397.
This book offers a glimpse into the lives of 60 artists who live and work in Ojai, a small town, more of a village really, nestled in a fertile mountain valley surrounded by nature of breathtaking beauty and bathed in legendary light. Together as members of the Ojai Studio Artists, yet always alone as individuals, they weave stories reflecting their life and their vision in this magical place.
Consider the spectrum of artists in this group. Stylistically, they represent a vast range of visual arts creativity, from figuration and hyperrealism to expressionism and abstraction, from traditional to experimental, from plein-air to political. They use most media: painting in oil, acrylic, encaustic or pastel; drawing with pen and ink; printmaking; photography; collage; assemblage; making sculptures, ceramics, pottery.
If one of art’s highest purposes is to ask questions of those making it and of those experiencing it, it seems relevant to ask questions about the OSA group: why does it exist? And why here?
Geography and nature have much to do with the group’s existence. Ojai, an old Chumash Indian outpost, was always a land cultivated for its agricultural abundance. In the late 19th century it was embraced by many newcomers for its beneficial climate. During the 20th century it became a magnet for educators, writers, artists, celebrities, creatives in all fields, and seekers of life’s meaning and higher purpose.
By now Ojai is renowned as a fertile paradise for its orchards and its artists.
My first visit to Ojai was an invitation to lunch at Beatrice Wood’s. It was the early 1970s. I had just moved from Paris to Los Angeles, and Beatrice had just moved to her new house and studio in the Upper Valley, facing the Topa Topas. I was mesmerized by Beatrice’s iridescent luster glazes and whimsical sculptures, and charmed by her conversation and personality. On that very first trip I fell under the spell of the Ojai Valley.
Why have so many visual artists chosen to settle here? Ojai is a place unlike most others. Those drawn to this valley have a strong sense of belonging here, of living in an earthly haven. A few other art communities are famous for their singular settings. Taos comes to mind. The Hudson Valley. St. Paul de Vence. Similarities abound: natural beauty, spiritual energy, space, silence, light quality, a protected environment, a gentler life than in the cities, yet a convenient proximity to important art centers.
Artists use their imagination to create worlds: theirs, and ours. The process is fraught with uncertainty and doubts about the purpose of their life work, about exposing it and exhibiting it, about financial survival, about recognition. That takes courage. A support system is essential. Ojai offers a nurturing environment for all creatives, but members of OSA choose to participate in a somewhat structured community of kindred souls. Their homes and studios are within minutes from each other. So they meet, they party, they talk, they bond.
For “Reflections,” an OSA group exhibition organized by the Ojai Valley Museum in 2013, the museum asked participating artists to ponder what it meant for them to belong to the group. The painter Elisse Pogofsky-Harris wrote on that occasion: “Art making for me is a solitary undertaking, which being an only child, suits me well. But as I journey down the path my paintings require I follow, I am grateful that there is an OSA to provide the possibility of having colleagues, peers and even friends with whom to share moments of joy as well as times when the muse is hiding.”
Being an artist carries the central contradiction of a self-enclosed, isolated life trying to connect with others in the world. Not an easy balancing act. As Georgia O’Keeffe famously wrote: “I found I could say things with color and shapes that I couldn’t say any other way – things I had no words for.” Artists tend to favor solitary lives, and usually do not like to talk about their work. Yet here they come together once a year in October for the OSA Tour.
The tour has drawn thousands to Ojai over the years. Most art lovers cherish the opportunity of being welcomed into the artists’ studios, to connect with them in an intimate manner: It’s a highly charged personal experience, one of immersion into that individual life, work and environment. The power of images in an intimate setting has a singular quality far different from their effect in public museum spaces, or in the often desensualized world of big city galleries, or in the all-encompassing, fast-paced, consumer-oriented international art fairs, which in recent years have changed the nature, geography and economics of the art world.
Picasso’s comment about art being “just another way of keeping a diary” rings true as one looks at the stories told by this group of OSA artists. As painters, sculptors, photographers, et al., they leave a palpable trace of what they see and what they feel. Yes, artists do tell stories: about fruits and vegetables; mountains and skies; their loved ones, dreams and visions. The thread of a singular life’s story interwoven with others creates the fabric of their connection. It keeps changing slowly under our eyes, just as do the shifting rays of light in this valley.
People walking into canvas and paper are in for a surprise.
The approach is slow.
From the outside, one friend thought it was an art supply or a stationery store. Another, a framing shop. The name is simple and it can lead to various interpretations. Spelled in white lower-case letters on a square, grey sign, the name is clearly visible from the street.
Located on Montgomery Street a couple of blocks north of Ojai Avenue, this small California bungalow house looks renovated and appealing. Soft greys, white trims. Two large, square windows flank the entrance. A flagstone path carves its way through a sea of pea gravel, leading to the front door.
A rekindled interest in pottery activity around the Ojai Valley.
Story by Anca Colbert
In Ojai’s history and reputation of attracting artists and creatives of all kinds we know that potters and ceramic artists have long been drawn to live and work here, in this place, this small town nestled in a heavenly mountain valley.
Naturally, Beatrice Wood’s storied life and career first comes to mind. “Beato” lived here from 1947 (when she built her house and studio in the East End) until her death in 1998, at the ripe age of 105. For many, she put Ojai on the map. She did so for this then-young art lover, freshly arrived from Paris to Los Angeles, who first came to Ojai in 1973 invited to lunch by Beatrice, who at the time was just settling into her new home in the Upper Valley, next to the Happy Valley School. That home and studio, now transformed into The Beatrice Wood Center for the Arts, welcomes visitors on pilgrimage seeking a glimpse into the famed artist’s inner and outer landscapes.
Read the rest of the article in the Ojai Magazine.
The following is the text of a talk given by historian and author Craig Walker at the Ojai Valley Museum’s 2018 Annual Meeting at the Acacia Mansion.
The Acacia Mansion was originally named Acacia Lodge. The acacia tree was a symbol of purity, renewal, and immortality. A lodge is a meeting place; it is an organizational term used by Theosophists—as in The Ojai Lodge. This large, two-story home has 10 rooms and is a wonderful blend of both formal and exotic architecture. We are so fortunate the building has retained its integrity of design over nearly 90 years. It is now a Ventura County landmark and eligible for the National register of historic places.
Designed in 1927, the Acacia Lodge was one of the first homes built here in Meiners Oaks. If you look at photographs taken from the hill above the Ranch House around 1928 or 29, you see this house standing pretty much by itself. In 1924, Meiners Oaks was a 1,200 acre working ranch. By 1927 there were only five families living here.
Although the architect, John Roine, isn’t the most famous architect to have worked in the Ojai Valley, the house is a genuine masterpiece of Spanish-Revival architecture… rivaling those designed by more famous architects like Wallace Neff, George Washington Smith, and Mead & Requa.
The Architecture is Spanish-Moorish, with a heavy emphasis on the “Moorish.” All Spanish architecture has Moorish features.
Moorish culture–“North-African Arabic”–influenced all Spanish Architecture because the Moors invaded Spain in 711 a.d. and ruled the Iberian peninsula for over 700 years. Examples of Moorish architecture in Spain include the Alhambra in Granada and La Mezquita in Cordoba.
Some California architects, however, included more Moorish features than others. Richard Requa, the primary architect of Ojai’s downtown buildings, really liked Moorish architecture. He travelled extensively in North Africa making lots of sketches, but his Moorish design elements were much more subtle than Roine’s. The Ojai Arcade is a good example. You can see the Moorish influence, but the emphasis is more on the California Mission style. It should be noted that the Moorish influence on the Arcade was diminished when the two spires on top of the Arcade were removed in the 1940s or 50s.
The Acacia Mansion on the other hand has much more of an exotic, Moorish look. It more closely resembles the buildings constructed at Krotona when it was located in Hollywood. (More about that later.)
Madeline Baird, the original owner of the Acacia Mansion, spared no expense in creating this beautiful, eclectic work of architecture. Most of the materials and decor were imported from Europe. This included terrazzo tiles, pink marble, mahogany doors, Italian lamps, etc. A particularly American feature, however, are the Ernest Batchelder tile fireplaces in the living room and master bedroom. Batchelder’s tiles, manufactured in Pasadena, were used in many of California’s finest Craftsman-style homes.
Skilled craftsmen were also imported..from Finland. Some of the descendants of these workers still live in Meiners Oaks. One of these craftsmen was Uno-Pal Kangas, a Finnish sculptor who created a reflecting pool and a fountain for the Mansion. During the depression, Kangas created many statues for the New Deal “Works Progress Administration.” One of his projects was the Statue of Father Serra in front of the Ventura County Courthouse (now Ventura City Hall). Kangas’ concrete statue was recently replaced with a bronze casting of the original. He lived and worked in M.O. for the rest of his life.
The owners of the house were David and Madeline Baird, who immigrated here from Canada. They commissioned the house in 1927; Mr. Baird died before the home was completed two years later in 1929. The Bairds made their fortune in the fish industry in Nova Scotia. David was known as “The Sardine King of Canada.”
The Bairds were Theosophists who came here to be part of the new Theosophical Center Annie Besant was creating in the Ojai Valley. Besant came to Ojai in 1926 to meet with Krishnamurti and begin purchasing property for the new center.
Annie Besant bought 200 acres across Lomita that was to be the valley’s spiritual center. Krishnamurti began holding talks in the Oak Grove in 1928. This area across the street was named Starland after the Order of the Star, Krishnamurti’s religious organization. Besant purchased 500 Acres in the Upper Ojai to be the organization’s educational center, with a Theosophical school and college. Her plan was that she would head the educational center and Krishnamurti would head the spiritual center.
Meiners Oaks was to be a community where Theosophists would live. Siete Robles was also developed as a housing tract for Theosophists. Ojai was advertised around the world for Theosophists to come and purchase lots. John Roine, the architect, advertised his services as architect and builder. The Bairds were among the first to respond.
John Roine was the architect of the Acacia Mansion. He, too, was a Theosophist. He immigrated to California from Finland in 1916 at the age of 39. He settled first at Krotona Hollywood, a Theosophical Colony and Educational Center, located in Hollywood. It was nestled in Beachwood Canyon–under the Hollywood Sign. He most likely began working as a construction manager and builder at Krotona Hollywood. He also was also very active in Theosophical affairs, writing articles, speaking at conventions, and serving as a liaison with the Finnish Theosophical Lodge.
As a builder at Krotona Hollywood, Roine worked under some of the most accomplished architects in Southern California. The Theosophists loved fine architecture, and they hired only the best, including.
Mead & Requa.
Arthur and Albert Heineman.
Marie Russak Hotchener.
The style of architecture at Krotona Hollywood was much like that of the Acacia Mansion… Spanish-Revival with a BIG dose of Moorish design elements. The buildings there were very exotic! One of the more beautiful buildings was named Moorcrest. It was designed by Marie Russak Hotchener, a self-educated architect who was a former opera star. Two early residents of Moorcrest were Charlie Chaplin and Mary Astor—both Theosophists working in Hollywood’s film industry.
Roine also worked on the Pilgrimage Theater in Los Angeles. On that project, he worked under the renowned architect Bernard Maybeck. Maybeck designed the Palace of Fine Arts in San Francisco and was Julia Morgan’s mentor. Julia Morgan designed the Pierpont-Ginn House here in Ojai, and Hearst Castle in San Simeon.
So, Roine learned architecture on the job, while working at Krotona Hollywood on all its magnificent, exotic buildings.
In 1922 Krishnamurti came to Ojai and established a home in the east end on McAndrew Road. He was the Theosophist’s spiritual leader at the time, so in 1924, Albert P. Warrington, the head of Krotona, moved the organization to Ojai. Warrington wanted the new Krotona buildings to match Libbey’s downtown, so the Krotona buildings in Ojai were done in a more traditional Spanish style. Robert Stacy-Judd was the architect.
John Roine followed Krotona to Ojai in 1926 and lived here full-time for about 9 years. By then, he was a skilled architect, with an architectural office located in the Arcade. He designed and built many buildings and homes in Ojai in addition to the Acacia Mansion.
In 1926 Roine was hired by Frank Barrington to make major additions to the El Roblar Hotel (Now the Oaks at Ojai). Roine partnered with Carleton Winslow (architect of the Ojai Library & Presbyterian Church) to add the whole west wing to the El Robar. His addition extended the original building 38 feet west and 77 feet north—adding 16 new rooms, each with a private bath.
In 1926 Roine made additions to Arya Vihara (Krishnamurti’s guest house on McAndrew Road) in preparation for Annie Besant’s visit in 1926-27. He added a study and meeting room so Dr. Besant could continue her extensive work in religion and politics during her stay here in Ojai.
In 1927, Roine was hired to add 4 new arches to the east end of the Ojai Arcade. Both the East end and West end of the Arcade were remodeled that year. Robert Winfield worked on the West end, remodeling the Arcade in front of the old Clark livery; Roine designed and built the 4 arches at the East end.
In 1929, Roine designed and built the original Liberal Catholic Church, which still exists as a social hall at the LCC out on Ojai Avenue past Gridley. It was originally built in M.O., but was later moved to the East End site when the church expanded. Roine, by the way, was the first priest ordained in the Ojai Liberal Catholic Church.
From 1927 to 1929, Roine worked on The Acacia Lodge, now known at the Acacia Mansion.
In 1930, he designed and built The Pleiades, a house out in Siete Robles that is known today as “the Taj Mahal.” Edward Martin and his wife, Rhoda, wanted to build a home that would honor Krishnamurti. Rhoda named the house “The Pleiades” because Krishnamurti’s Astrological name was Alcyone, which is the brightest star in the Pleiades star cluster in the Constellation Taurus, Krishnamurti’s Astrological sign.
Roine designed numerous other small, Spanish-style homes around the Ojai Valley: There’s one down the street, one on Aliso across from the Presbyterian Church, one on Thacher Road…and several others. There may be quite a few more in the valley we don’t know about.
Roine moved back to Los Angeles in 1935, but he continued to visit Ojai frequently. It’s possible he came back to Ojai at the end of his life. His last known address was, ironically, the Acacias…the nursing home located across the street from Grey Gables.
This article appeared in the Fall 2017 issue of The Ojai Quarterly, and is posted here with permission. “The Art of Dennis Shives” exhibit is on view at the Ojai Valley Museum from Oct. 14, 2017 through February 25, 2018.
Dennis Shives His Way
by
Mark Lewis
For the better part of seven decades, self-taught Ojai artist Dennis Shives has followed his own path, often while going barefoot. Now, that long and winding road has led this notable free spirit to the Ojai Valley Museum, which this fall is honoring him with a career-retrospective exhibit. After forging a career on his own terms, far from the art-world limelight, Shives finally is ready for his close-up.
THE BUILDING was nondescript, an unassuming stucco affair fronting on El Roblar Drive west of Padre Juan Street in Meiners Oaks. But its display window was lit up at night, and something in it caught the eye of the artist Gayel Childress as she passed by one evening in the early 1980s.
“There was this wonderful wooden Gatling gun in the window,” she says. “I said I had to meet whoever made that.”
The creator turned out to be Dennis Shives, an artist and woodworker who used the building as his studio and the window as his gallery. Childress discovered to her delight that Shives’s hand-cranked Gatling gun actually worked, except that it fired rubber bands rather than bullets. He had crafted it a few years earlier using wood left over from another project – oak, ash, a bit of walnut – and part of a bronze light fixture he had salvaged from the Smith-Hobson House while it was being converted into Ojai’s City Hall. Childress was charmed by this whimsical, one-of-a-kind creation, and by the man who made it.
“I’ve been a fan ever since,” she says. “He really is a wonderful artist.”
That’s high praise coming from Childress, a co-founder of the Ojai Studio Artists group. Nor is she the only one who thinks so.
“A really incredible talent,” says Khaled Al-Awar, who in years past has featured the Gatling gun and other Shives pieces in his Primavera Gallery in the Arcade.
“He’s brilliant,” agrees Danna Tartaglia, who sells Shives prints, and framed photographs of his “Making Faces” rock art, in her Tartaglia Fine Arts gallery. “He’s an original – maybe the original Ojai artist.”
But Tartaglia and Al-Awar agree that Shives is not the easiest artist to represent, because of his unconventional attitude toward his career. He insists on asking dauntingly major-league prices for his major pieces, in part because of all the work he puts into making them, and in part because he seems too attached to his creations to let them go.
Partly as a result, Shives has struggled all his life to make a decent living, and to win wide recognition in the art world. Nevertheless, he has remained true to his chosen vocation. And now, on the eve of his 70th birthday, the spotlight finally has found him, in the form of a career-retrospective exhibit opening Oct. 14 at the Ojai Valley Museum. Which prompts the question: After a lifetime of wandering in the wilderness, is Dennis Shives ready for the red carpet?
“The Art of Dennis Shives” at the Ojai Valley Museum.
BORN in Santa Paula in 1947, Shives mostly grew up in Ojai’s Upper Valley, where he attended the Summit School. Later he attended Matilija Junior High and Santa Paula High, from which he graduated in 1965. As a child he was drawn to art, due in part to encouragement from his maternal grandmother, a talented amateur painter.
“I always knew I would be an artist,” he says.
But he hated the art classes he took in high school and at Ventura College. There were too many rules about how to make art, and too much emphasis on how to make a living from it.
“I really didn’t learn anything in school,” he says. “So actually I’m self taught.”
The point of art classes, as Dennis saw it, was to tame the wildly creative urges that welled up within him, and channel them in approved directions. He declined to submit. He was a classic case of the child who refuses to color inside the lines.
“They are trying as hard as they can to kill that thing within you,” he says. “You’re supposed to be who you are. People need to do what they need to do, instead of sitting and copying other people.”
Despite his interest in the visual arts, the first career he pursued that of a musician. A true child of the ‘60s, Shives grew his hair long and tried his hand at rock ‘n’ roll, playing harmonica and singing with the Ojai All Stars, the house band at a rowdy, rough-and-tumble dive called the Ojai Club (located where Ojai Pizza is today). This was a fraught period when the local flower children and the local rednecks were frequently at odds.
“We were the hippies and they were the alcoholics,” Shives says. “This was a drunk cowboy town. There was a brawl every Saturday night.”
The All Stars’ lineup also included local guitar legend John Orvis, along with the brothers Norman and Curtis Lowe and others.
“We had a great time,” Shives says. “But then I switched into the arts.”
He took up woodworking, sculpture, painting, and whatever else intrigued him. He was a craftsman too, creating gold and silver jewelry, custom-carved rifles, exoticlooking furniture, even a house in Alaska for his Ojai friend Jack Estil. He never worried about not being formally trained. He just plunged in, and figured it out for himself.
“What the process is all about is learning not to be afraid,” he says. “Fear is the biggest killer of creativity.”
His longtime friend Sergio Aragones, the famous Mad Magazine artist, admires Shives’s extraordinary versatility.
“He’s the true Renaissance man,” Aragones says. “He’s a man who can do everything – and well! He has spent his life perfecting every craft.”
And to what end? To amuse himself, and other people, by telling stories that make everyone smile. There is an implied narrative embedded in most Shives pieces, whether it’s a painting of snails in a garden eating a flower, or a carved-wood door featuring a charging rhinoceros, or a soapstone sculpture of an octopus going for a walk.
“It was the storytelling process that I was interested in,” he says. “You’re playing with the story. It’s a way of entertaining people.”
When Shives turned his hand to creating parade floats, he entertained the entire town. People in Ojai still talk about the one he and his friend Rick DeRamus came up with in 1984, the year the Los Angeles Summer Olympics held rowing events at Lake Casitas. Shives’s float for that year’s Fourth of July parade was inspired by the legend of Old Hoover, the monster-sized largemouth bass said to lurk in the Casitas depths, too wily for any angler to hook.
“All the local kids dressed up as minnows and frogs,” he says, “and we chased ‘em down the street with the fish.”
The first Old Hoover float in Ojai’s 1984 Independence Day Parade.
For the 1986 parade, Shives and DeRamus constructed an even more elaborate version of Old Hoover. This second mechanized fish float was 40 feet long, 10 feet wide and 14 feet high, with a tail that wagged, gills that emitted air bubbles, and a huge mouth that swung open and shut as the bass pursued a man in a frog costume riding a bicycle along Ojai Avenue.
This was classic Shives: He put in seven months, uncompensated, to create Old Hoover II, then spent his last $5 on gas so he could drive it in the parade. People loved the float, of course, but they didn’t pay anything to see it.
“I never did anything that made me money,” he says. “I just barely scraped by.”
That period in the early ‘80s when he had the building on West El Roblar Drive was an anomaly. Generally, Shives has made his art in borrowed spaces, or at home. These days his studio is the house on Willow Street he shares with his life partner, the acupuncture provider Laurie Edgcomb. Here, Shives is surrounded by his sculptures, paintings, carved masks, bubble-blowing devices and fanciful furniture pieces. Many have attracted the attention of collectors, but Shives seems reluctant to part with them.
“Making art is completely different from making money,” he says. “I’m not doing this to sell stuff. I’m doing this because it makes me want to get up in the morning.”
On the other hand, he concedes, “You need to make a living.”
Indeed, and making a living as a working artist poses enormous challenges. Those who succeed usually find that they must put as much time and energy into marketing their art as they do into creating it.
“I guess you have to go out and seek it and chase it down,” Shives says, with a noticeable lack of enthusiasm. He’d much rather drive his ancient Volkswagen van out to the East End, take off his shoes, and go for a walk in Horn Canyon.
Shives is not averse to making a buck or two, if he can do it his way. He sells hand-carved wooden walking sticks, baby spoons and magic wands (a Shives specialty). He also sells copies of his charming 2014 book, “True Stories To Be Read Aloud,” a collection of autobiographical stories. (A follow-up collection is due out this fall.) And, while he seems reluctant to sell his paintings, he happily sells prints of them at Danna Tartaglia’s gallery. She says they are popular choices with visitors looking for something Ojai-esque to take home with them – such as “Smudgepot Bears,” featuring merry ursine revelers cavorting in an orchard on a cold winter’s night, with Chief Peak providing the backdrop.
The Smudging Bears by Dennis Shives.
“I’m not sure what success is,” Shives says. “I do what I do, and feel pretty successful in my own little realm.”
Case in point: Shives is spectacularly successful at sand sculpture. He has a shelf full of first-place trophies won at contests held at Cayucos Beach and elsewhere. This probably is the art form for which he is best known outside of Ojai, but these are things he cannot sell – and that’s partly what attracted him to sand sculpting in the first place. He creates a large-scale piece in a few hours, takes a photograph, and walks away.
“If these things last the afternoon, they’re lucky,” he says. “Nothing lasts forever.
Dennis Shives and MAD Magazine cartoonist Sergio Aragones in a sand sculpture car by Shives.
SHIVES is a familiar sight in Ojai: tall and tanned with long white hair, a flowing beard and a gentle smile, he favors khaki work shirts and cargo shorts, and gives the impression that he has never owned a pair of socks. If you want to walk a mile in his moccasins, you’ll have to do it barefoot, for when Shives hits the trail in the Los Padres National Forest he does it sans shoes.
“For two years, I took every Wednesday off and walked with him,” Khaled Al-Awar says. “This man has an incredible knowledge about nature.”
Roger Conrad of the Ojai Valley Museum says that Shives’s art is powerfully informed by his strongly felt connection with the natural world.
“His vision is derived from nature with childlike enthusiasm to see, touch, and create vivid experiences for himself and those that interact with his art,” Conrad says. “Whimsy is his language to find the spiritual in all living things. His message is that the lives of all creatures matter.”
“Whimsical” is a word often applied to Shives, and it’s not one that connotes serious artistic purpose in today’s high-powered art world. Untutored artists like Shives who lack academic credentials often are pigeonholed as outsider artists or folk artists. But Gayel Childress says Shives falls into none of these categories.
“I love outsider art, but his is quite sophisticated,” she says. “He has that outsider spirit, but his art is certainly not naïve. I don’t think there’s a term for Dennis. He’s one of a kind – part inventor, part engineer, part dreamer, part carpenter, part painter. Little touches of everything.”
Conrad, who is helping to organize the museum’s upcoming Shives exhibit, is similarly unwilling to hang a label on this unique artist.
“His art defies categorization,” Conrad says. “Some of his work seems primitive but other works display the hand of a seasoned artist. He pleases himself and dismisses being labeled. Above all else his art is enchanting and fun.”
The museum exhibit is a big deal for Shives, and his friends and supporters are thrilled for him.
“It’s his time,” Childress says. “I really want everyone to see this show. I want everybody in Ojai to know about him. I just want to see him honored because he surely deserves it.”
“It’s about time,” Aragones says. “He deserves it because of the variety of his art.”
To be clear, Shives had not exactly spent the past few decades hiding his light under a bushel. He creates his strikingly original artworks and steampunkish devices, and puts them out there. He writes and publishes his stories and reads them aloud to audiences. He paints frogs and other fanciful figures on classroom walls at the Monica Ros School. He shapes his sand sculptures for all the beach-going world to enjoy, if only for an afternoon. And everyone who drives along Ojai Avenue through the center of town has seen his work – he crafted the replacement lion’s face for the Pergola water fountain, after the original deteriorated.
Shives also provided facelifts for the stone lions at the entrance to Foster Park, and he designed the life-size sleeping bear that reposes near the front door of the Ojai Valley Museum (one of his “Specialty Monuments” for Rodger Embury’s Rock & Water Creations).
Bear sculpture in the museum’s front courtyard.
“The most important part of the whole thing is to stay an artist,” he says. “Most of the people I know who went to art school don’t do art anymore.”
Remaining an artist allows Shives to wake up in the morning knowing that he will spend the day doing what he wants to do, and being who he is. “Then I feel as good as I can feel.”
Shives is pleased about the upcoming exhibit in part because he hopes to inspire other would-be artists to follow their own paths, as he did.
“What you’re doing is inventing your life,” he says. “Anyone can do this if they really wanted to. You sit down and figure out how to do it. But most people are too smart for that. They go for the money.”
Not Dennis Shives. He chose freedom instead. He’s happy with the way things have worked out for him, and he thinks more people should make the same choice, so that they “can have a great life too.”
“I had a wonderful time,” he says. “I really did.”
This article first appeared in the Ojai Valley News on February 19, 1999. It is used here with their permission.
Evelyn Nordhoff is Returned
By
David Mason
“The People of The Ojai can best show their appreciation of the generosity of the donors by keeping the fountain free from defacements, and by gradually developing around it village improvements of other kinds.” –The Ojai, Saturday, October 15, 1904
The journey to the town of Nordhoff, now Ojai, was long and tiring.
The dusty road was hardly passable in many places and the fact that the buggies had to ford rivers at least a dozen times didn’t help. The wild berries hanging down from the low tree limbs seemed to cover the trail.
There was a sign of relief when the buggies made it to the small camping area, now Camp Comfort, to take a rest. The stream was always running with cool water and the towering trees provided a shady nook.
When travelers finally reached the small western town of Nordhoff, the first stop was the conveniently placed watering trough and drinking fountain in the center of town.
The fountain was a beautiful addition to the small community which had earlier lacked any architectural charm – it’s design would eventually become known as “Mission Revival” and it was one of the earliest examples.
The Ventura Free Press called it “one of the finest fountains in the state,” and described it in detail.
“On the side facing the middle of main street, we see the drinking place for horses, consisting of a stone trough about twelve feet long, two feet deep and two feet wide, always full of running water supplied from a pipe running out of the lion’s mouth.
“A division, the centerpiece of the fountain, runs lengthwise directly back of the horse trough, and is made prettier by having the stone cut into mouldings at either end. This piece is about fourteen feet long and fully eight feet high in the middle, and is rounding at the top. At each end of this, only a few inches above the ground, the poor thirsty dogs find drinking places.
“The drinking place for humanity is found on the side next to the Ojai Inn, and consists of a large bowl hollowed out of a piece of stone, into which runs a tiny stream of water from a small lion’s mouth.
“The donor has not forgotten the tired traveler, but has built a broad resting place for him on a big slab of stone. The Ojai newspaper refers to as ‘an ornament we should be proud of.'”
Early image of the Nordhoff drinking fountain, before the pergola was built.
Lion head fountain on the horse trough.
Lion head fountain on the street side of the pergola, 2017.
The fountain, built in memory of Evelyn Hunter Nordhoff in 1904, was indeed an improvement to the downtown block. The community of Nordhoff, the principal settlement in the Ojai Valley, had been established in 1874 and was still in its early stages of development. Evelyn Nordhoff was the daughter of Charles Nordhoff, the well-known author for whom the town was named.
Evelyn Nordhoff’s early life was spent at the family home on the New Jersey palisades, in an area which would eventually become known as “Millionaire’s Row.”
As a young woman, Evelyn enrolled at Smith College, located in west-central Massachusetts and founded in 1871 for the education of women. Her schooling was cut short after one year, with the reason given that “she was needed at home.”
Evelyn learned to etch copper and gained notice by producing decorative, printed calendars. She also created artistically-worked leather pieces.
According to researcher Richard Hoye, “An opportunity opened for Evelyn to visit England when her brother Walter was posted there as a newspaper correspondent.”
In 1888, the first Arts and Crafts exhibition was staged in London, and a co-founder of the exhibition society, Thomas Cobden-Sanderson, presented four lectures on bookbinding. Evelyn’s attendance at these lectures piqued her interest in that line of work.
When she eventually returned to America, the Nordhoff family made a touring visit to California. The Ventura County newspaper reported that the Nordhoffs passed through the seaside town and went directly to the Ojai Valley.
Returning to New York City, Evelyn obtained work with a bindery to pursue her interest in the art of bookbinding. There she learned to sew pages and to mend old books. This was the first level of the craft. Evelyn would learn the business from many teachers before she became proficient in the skill of bookbinding.
Evelyn opened her own workroom in Greenwich Village across from the New York University. Her artistry in the work of bookbinding began to gain attention for the young Evelyn as a woman and an artist. She possessed the Nordhoff sense of independence, and the initiative in pursing against the odds.
Training in a craft from which women had previously been excluded reflects a high degree of personal determination and she was a good example of a confident and talented woman, the first woman in the United States to take up the vocation of artistic bookbinding.
Evelyn Nordhoff spent her summer months in California with her parents, who, by this time, made their home in Coronado. In late summer of 1889, when Evelyn would again have departed from Coronado after a summer’s visit, her parents did not realize that this would be their last parting with their daughter, for in November they received word she had died.
She had suffered an attack of appendicitis, was operated on, and failed to recover.
The Nordhoff fountain was given to the community of Nordhoff by sisters Olivia and Caroline Stokes in Evelyn’s memory. The Stokes sisters had inherited wealth from banking, real estate and other interests in the New York City area. They were lifetime companions, never married, especially devout and well-known philanthropists. Their gifts were numerous and worldwide.
The Stokes sisters visited the Ojai Valley in 1903, staying at the Hughes home on Thacher Road, and were probably influenced by Sherman Thacher, founder of a nearby boys’ school, to build the fountain as a lasting memorial to this talented young lady.
Richard Hoye suggests that, “There may also have been a temperance motive. The banning of liquor was strongly supported in the community and by the Stokes sisters. A drinking fountain closely located to a horse trough would remove an excuse that stage drivers and their passengers might have had to resort to alcohol to slacken their thirst after a dusty trip from Ventura to the mountain town.”
In 1917, when Edward D. Libbey, Ojai’s greatest benefactor, began his transformation of the small town, he had the fountain moved back four feet to widen the roadway.
Libbey removed the Ojai Inn and built a beautiful, wisteria-covered, arched and walled pergola. With the fountain as the center focal point, an attractive entrance was created into the Civic Center Park, now Libbey Park.
The pergola with fountain in snow, January 1949.
Colorized post card of the pergola with fountain.
In the 1960s, the whole structure began to shown signs of age and suffered major damage from vandalism. In the turmoil of this period, the entrance arch was damaged by explosives and by 1971 the pergola and fountain were removed.
The pergola was bombed in 1969 and later removed.
The bronze plaque on the fountain that was inscribed, “In memory of Evelyn Hunter Nordhoff, this fountain is given to the people of Nordhoff, 1904” was returned to members of the Nordhoff family.
With the restoration of this landmark – the pergola and the Nordhoff fountain – the bronze plaque has been returned to the people of the Ojai Valley. The plaque will once again be placed on this beautiful fountain which will be rebuilt in memory of Evelyn’s aspirations and accomplishments – a spirit which has prevailed in the history of the Ojai Valley, in its schools and its artistic culture.
Celebration of the newly rebuilt pergola with fountain, July 4, 1999 .
Florist and historian David Mason getting flowers ready for the pergola restoration celebration. He was the driving force behind the project to rebuild the pergola.
