Ojai History

PATH OF FLAMES MARKED BY BARE HILLS AND RUIN (Article #1)

There were two articles published on the front page of THE OJAI on Friday, June 22, 1917. THE OJAI is now the Ojai Valley News. The first article is reprinted here with their permission. The author is unknown. The second article will be posted on this site at a later date.

Where the Fighting was Fiercest Along Great Battleline of Flame, with Figures, Facts and Fancies Concerning the Devastating Disaster

In our last issue we were only able to refer briefly to the devastating fire which with almost resistless force swept the adjacent hills for miles, leaving the watershed of a green forest reserve bleak and barren; then lashed into fury by a terrific gale, shot into the valley by leaps and bounds, leaving in its wake a checkered area of ruins, where a short time before stood the homes of our citizens, or the rich fruitage of orchard and field.

And even now, no word picture can be traced upon paper that would adequately and accurately portray scenes and incidents following closely the first realization that the civic center was in the lurid path of danger. It was the noon hour, or thereabouts, when the contingent of Ojai’s heroic fighters headed for the fireline in the Matilija, where the first struggle for mastery over the relentless fire demon was staged by our home guards and citizens generally, although at Wheeler’s a brave band of sixteen were at that moment facing a hell of fire, which commanded a position cutting off possible assistance, having eaten its way through the north fork, over and along the ridges, at a point near the new bridge at the turn leading to Matilija Springs, jumped into the canyon, while another lurid line reached out towards Fred Sheldon’s and the more open valleys beyond, until shooting hither and yon the billows of flame penetrated to and beyond Lyon’s Springs. Even then the hot breath from the seething furnace had not shaken us in our deep-seated sense of security. Men, women and children watched the rising pillar of smoke blacken and broaden without fear or apprehension, little dreaming that a few hours later the somber hues would be reflected in a bright red glare up and down the post office tower from the Ojai Avenue and Signal St. sides, with ominous significance.

It was at about this time that reports passed from lip to lip, highly tinged with exaggeration—Lyon’s Springs, rumor said, was burned and that Mrs. Lyon had perished in the flames; that the Sheldon place was in ashes and sixteen women and children were hemmed in at Wheelers, the latter statement being true. Then followed the terrorizing news that the Farnum place was in ashes and that the Lamb house did not burn and the family was safe, Mrs. Land and a few days old infant, with the nurse, finding refuge in a near field. The infant has since died, and the death of the nurse from shock was reported early in the week in these columns.

Forest Ranger Bald, at one time hemmed in by the fire at Wheelers, made his way to Ojai, reaching here almost exhausted at about 4 o’clock Saturday afternoon, to get in communication with Santa Barbara forest service station. The telephone line at Wheeler’s going out of commission 15 minutes after the first sweep of flames, but more particularly to get a line on the situation here. He found that most of the available men were fighting in the Matilija, at Fred Sneldon’s and in the vicinity of Cozy Dell and Loring Farnum’s. When asked his opinion of the situation here, he said it was very grave, and immediately began to muster a fighting force here and to get some of the 150 or more men back from the hills. It was then that the first real alarm was felt, and only shared in by a few. But as the moments flew by the menace grew, and with the approach of dusk the threatening tide of fire was rolling onward, nearer and nearer. After the Farnum home had been wiped out, the word passed along that the beautiful Sinclair home was doomed, and from the tower an appalling sight fairly blanched the faces of those who watched. A little before 7 o’clock, machine after machine rolled in from Ventura, in response to the call for aid to move out the women and children, and a little later Santa Paula got the startling message: “Ojai is doomed” and the response was immediate. At 7 o’clock, or a little later, a terrific wind added to the fury of the conflagration, which had divided and spread, reaching the southward to Sid Graham’s and beyond, cutting off escape in that direction and thereafter, for hours, cart loaded with terrified refugees sought safety in Santa Paula and Ventura via Sulphur Mountain Springs, until, so far as known, only Mrs. Hudlburg, Mrs. Munger, Mrs. Gallantine and Mrs. Russell remained, all refusing to go, but some time after midnight Claude Gallantine forced his mother out although at that hour most of the carnage had been done.

Before 9 o’clock a perfect whirlwind of fire was roaring through the northern, northwestern and western portion of the village with freakish, uneven strides, refusing to be conquered, the the cry, “we are doomed!” on many tongues, or reflected in the faces of those upon the street, and while it seemed a bedlam with whirring , honking cars, there was but little disorder and no hysteria when the excitement and danger was greatest, although the scene was most appalling to the clearest heads and stoutest hearts.

Fanned by the gale the flames shot upward from base and brow of the hills beyond the Foothills hundreds of feet, and the drop into the valley was swift and sudden. The destruction of property was just as rapid. When the Foothills hotel formed a pyramid of fire, with the Robertson and Sinclair homes in ruins, the work of havoc had begun in the valley. The streets were carpeted with ashes and cinders like glaring torches hurtled through the air, starting fresh fires far from the parent body of flame. Its early entry into the village was heralded by the report that the Hudlburg home was afire, to this was soon added Judge Wilson’s, but neither had to see his home and sit upon the porch (where a chair had caught fire and gone out) before he would believe it.

But there was still an abundance of costly fuel for the flames, which ate their way into the heart of the residence section, leveling the homes of F. H. Osgood, A. Rudolph, R. P. Menefee, S. L. Smith, D. D. Schurman, G. W. Mallory, Mrs. F. Weir, Mrs. B. S. Stewart, John King, John Timms, Jim Fraser, Geo. Foreman, Morris Cota, P. A. Crampton, C. A. Stewart, O. H. Busch, Mrs. W. L. and Clarence McKee, Mrs. T. G. Gabbert, Mrs. Wermuth, Frank Wolfe, Frank Kelley, C. C. VanFleet, P. K. Miller, Mrs. Ella Miller, G. B. Turner, Ed. Haas, Boyd Gabbert, Chas. Gibson, A. W. Helm, and further north and east those home of Jack Edwards, Dave Warner and Mrs. Rich. In the work of destruction on the hill and the flat below, Dr. Van Patten, Fannie Johnson, Miss Draper and Miss Scott shared the same fate.

Sweeping through Libbey park, the fire reached the high school grounds and reduced to ashes the Manual Arts building, leaving the main building and Domestic Science building to pounce upon the home of W. W. Bristol, the Bristol private school and Presbyterian manse, all being destroyed, while opposite, across the highway, the new residence of John Flanagan, not then occupied, and S. D. Nill escaped, after scorching shrubbery and burning paths around the houses. How the Kenworthy home in the open field south of the high school escaped, is one of the mysteries of the freakish fire. It was burned bare to the house and out buildings, but in spite of the wind the family conquered in the desperate fight. The escape of the Ojai Inn was just as miraculous, although mighty hard fighting was in progress in that quarter, and the fire was kept at bay along the west line of Ventura street, and little damage was done in that entire section of town, but close shaves were many and frequent during the rain of fire and reign of terror.

When a cinder-torch dropped into Frank Wolfe’s eucalyptus grove, sown to grain, short work wa made of the task of wiping out the home, and crossing over to Hugh Clark’s barn quickly reduced to an ash heap, clearing the yard of a valuable collection of wagons, buggies, ranch and road machinery. Tom Clark’s t * o tally-ho coaches were in the ruined area. In the tool house were stored Bill Clark’s fine saddle and Chas. Brady’s tool chest—now a scrap heap.

From there the fire swept down the alley between the Drumgold cottages and Drown place, burning outbuildings of Mr. Findley; setting fire to Willard William’s woodpile, burning our portable hen roost and charring the back-porch railing of the house, but the entire row was saved through the heroic efforts of Andy Crowe, who was on the job all the time.

The successful struggle to save Taylor and Clark homes and the garage, with the fighting sentinels back of the business houses, and on top of them, saved the entire row and the arcades, and probably about everything else now most happily in sight.

At that moment, all north of Ojai avenue and to the west was baptized in flames—the buildings heretofore mentioned, with the Baptist and Catholic churches, barns, garages, etc., included, were scattered heaps of smoking, blazing ruins, and that the village was not laid waste completely is an incident entitled to a place with the miracles.

An abundance of water, judiciously applied, backed by a strong fighting force, saved the Hermitage ranch of the Orr estate and the Fordyce place. Chas. Orr’s loss was confined to orchards and apirary, and Fordyce lost a line of flume along with the orchard loss.

Water also save Judge Daly, Mrs. Gardner, the Stetsons and others. The Limonerie firefighters numbering 35 accomplished heroic work on and near the Orr place, and on Sunday were hurried to Wheelers to relieve the high tension, it being the first outside help to reach that blazing inferno, where Forest Range Reyes, with a determined but inexperienced squad of employees of the Springs, and guests, including Webb Wilcox and his plucky wife, made a name for himself that will go down in history. Jacinto is a demon of the fire line, and the work done by Geo. Bald, his son Howard and Bert Cooper—all rangers—was of high order of efficiency, and Geo. Macleod, int the rural carrier service, aided loyally.

And the women of the Red Cross, and others—God bless them!—how they worked to sustain the firefighters! Mrs. Wilda Church kept open house for days, preparing food. Over 600 meals were carried by messengers to the exhausted men.

There wa not busier place—not even where flames were the thickest—than the telephone office. Miss Lewis, local manager, was at her post of duty, assisted by Miss Myrtle McQuiston when the excitement was at its zeneth, and a perfect bedlam of calls kept the wires hot. These young ladies kept their mental faculties clear and hands and tongues busy, but the strain was terrible, and when the danger was over Miss Lewis suffered a partial collapse, and Miss Ethel Dear, of Fillmore, has been assisting at the board for several days, and Miss Gifford is on duty for her regular shifts. Saturday night Mrs. Sam Hudlburg, former manager, came up from Ventura to do relief work, and was on duty when the fire burned brightest and when the shingles were hottest. All honor to there brave young women, one and all.

The work of Santa Paula and Ventura was the sort that makes mankind more akin. The response to the dry distress was instant and the efforts were unceasing. The honor roll is too long for publication, but Ojai is too deeply grateful to find expression in words. They inspired courage: they threw open their homes to the flood of refugees. None were neglected. Let us not forget.

THE INSURANCE

With the ruins of many homes still smoking, President E. W. Gerry, Secretary L. P. Hathaway and John Burson, representing the Ventura County Mutual Fire Insurance Co., arrived on the scene Tuesday, and without any quibbling passed out checks to the policy holders of the full amount of the risks, as follows:
C. A. Stewart…………………………………$1100
G. W. Mallory……………………………………1400
G. B. Turner………………………………………3000
R. P. Menefee……………………………………1550
Boyd E. Gabbert…………………………………750
Mrs. E. H. Hass…………………………………..800
Presbyterian Manse…………………………1800
Dr. P. S. Van Patten………………………….1000
F. A. Crampton…………………………………..1400
W. W. Bristol……………………………………….400
John Timms………………………………………….500
F. J. Bates (3 res.)……………………………3200
Mrs. Ceorgena Kelley……………………….4500
Baptist Church…………………………………….600
Total paid…………………………………….22,000
Frank E. Wolfe, insured for $1300—not adjusted as yet.
Boyd E. Gabbert is the legal agent and is fully justified in feeling proud of the prompt action of his company.

Representatives of five insurance companies—the Aetna, Hartford, Firemens Fund, N. Y. Union and Home—have been busy since the fire adjusting losses, the following are the fortunate policy holders, with the amount of insurance, several having more than one policy, covering different classes of property, the figures being in the aggregate.
O. H. Busch, $1100
Olive L. Bristol, $3750
Charlotte S. Draper, $2500
Loring Farnum, $5650
Fred W. Hawes, $1500
Edward H. Hass, $1500
Krull & Roeper, $800
J. B. King, $500
R. H. Miller, $1000
Geo. L. Marsh, $1000
P. K. Miller, $1000
John Meiners heirs, $1000
R. P. Menefee, $800
F. H. Osgood, $8800
Ojai Improvement Co., $37,650
Lucy Rudolph, $2200
Louis Roeper, $500
C. S. Rich, $2400
Harriet Robinson, $3000
Grace Sinclair, $10,400
Mrs. B. S. Stewart, $2000
High school, $3000
D. D. Schurman, $1400
Mary N. Smith, $2700
Henry Teideman, $200
Phillip S. Van Patten, $5500
Emily A. Van Patten, $1000
Frank E. Wolfe, $300
Susan D. Weir, $700
David Warner, $1000
Isabella Warmuth, $800
Total $107,100

These two articles were published on the front page of THE OJAI on Friday, June 15, 1917. THE OJAI is now the Ojai Valley News. The articles are reprinted here with their permission. The authors are unknown.

HUNGRY FLAMES DEVASTATE VALLEY

The devastating torch of carelessness was applied by campers in the Matilija Canyon, near the ancient Berry cabin, Saturday morning, causing a spread of flame that swept the near hills for miles, the lurid tongues of fire reaching to the beautiful Ojai, lapping up 60 or more buildings, with a toll of three lives from heat, shock and fright, with enormous property loss.

When the first alarm was sounded, The Ojai had gone to press, being late, owing to lack of help and too much heat, and with the menace of the flames growing greater every moment as the line of fire crept this way, with the Sheldon, Farnum, Lopez and other homes apparently in its path, the village awoke to the grave danger—not of the Ojai, but of the Matilija, of Lyon’s, of Wheeler’s, and concern and excitement grew until the climax was reached when all believed that Ojai was doomed, and the flight to safety began early Saturday evening.

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Property Loss is Great, Number of Families Homeless

Details of the appalling calamity, and the many distressing incidents associated therewith during the hours of intense battling with the seething mass of stubborn, hungry flames, will form a later story, as at this time a brief reference to the sad fatalities, together with an unofficial summary of property loss, with the telegram of sympathy and cheer from Ojai’s greatest benefactor appended, must suffice.

THE TELEGRAM:

Toledo, O., Apr. 17 H. WILSON—Am greatly shocked by calamity visiting Ojai, which I know must be a great loss to many. Please express to every citizen in Ojai Valley my sympathy.

From such devastation and ruin will spring renewed energy and courage. If I can be of any assistance, command.

Kind regards,
E. D. LIBBEY.

THE FATALITIES

Miss Sawyer, of Ventura, formerly employed at the Bard hospital, of late attending Mrs. Herb Lamb, to whom a son was born last Thursday, died suddenly at the Farnum place, soon after the home was destroyed, death resulting from shock.

As the result of fear and exhaustion, after a fruitless battle to save the family home, Miss Theresa Maroquin dropped dead at 5 o’clock Sunday afternoon. Eight hours later, Y. Valenzuella, a relative of Miss Maroquin, and aged father of Mrs. Frank Lopez, died suddenly, as the result of the intense heat.

John Travino, while fighting fire near his home close to the Van Patten residence (burned down) by Foothills Hotel, was struck by an automobile and suffered a fractured skull, injured eye and compound fracture of one limb. He is in the county hospital. His family knew nothing of the accident which occurred Saturday night, till today (Monday). He is unconscious.

The Loss

Foothills Hotel and three cottages; residences of H. T. Sinclair, Loring Farnum, Miss Draper, Miss Scott, Fannie Johnson, O. W. Robertson, F. H. Osgood, Dr. Van Patten, Pres. manse, Bristol school, W. W. Bristol, H. S. Manual Arts bldg., A. Van Curen, A. W. Helm, Chas. Gibson, Morris Cota, Bates cottages (3) Mallory & Dennison (3) Mrs. B.S. Stewart, F. A. Crampton, S. L. Smith (2), Mrs. W. L. McKee, Clarence McKee, Mrs. T. G. Gabbert, Geo. Foreman, Jim Fraser, Jno. King, John Timms, Mrs. A. I. Wermuth, D. D. Schurman, Mrs. Ella Miller, P. K, Miller, Frak Kelley, O. Klein, R. Menefee, Ed. Haas, Fred Hawes, G. B. Turner, Mr. Rudolph, Mrs. Rich, Jack Edwards, Meiners (small house), Frank Wolfe (2), Dave Warner, J. Maroquin.

Baptist and Catholic churches, Linder’s unoccupied plumbing shop, besides barns of G. H. Hickey, Hugh Clark, J. C. Leslie and Hobs, and a number of garages.

This article was published in the Ojai Valley News on June 12, 1974. It is reprinted here with their permission. It has been slightly edited for accuracy. 

 

How Soule Park Happened – “You can have your park and golf course”

 by Jerry Crary

One of the jewels in this Shangi-la called Ojai, is the Soule Park and Golf Course along the foot of Black Mountain. When it was suggested that our tree planting program, to further beautify the area, be dedicated to Zaidee Soule, we thought it an excellent idea. We also felt we should find out further facts about Miss Zaidee and the Soule family who left us such a lovely legacy to see what made them tick.

As a result we have interviewed a number of Old Timers, some native to the area. We have found in most cases that their forgetery is better than their memory, but let us pass the story along to you.

Actually it can be recorded that the Soule Park and Golf Course was born that February day in 1959 when Zaidee Soule walked into Doug Jordan’s Ojai Valley Grocery, saw Doug working in the produce department and said to him, “Doug, you can have your Park and Golf Course any time you want it.” Let’s let Doug recount the story. “I just about fainted, but after pulling myself together I asked her if she really meant it. She said, yes, that she and Nina had had an agreement that as long as the two of them lived they wouldn’t sell the ranch. She continued that Nina wanted it to go where the most people could enjoy themselves – like a golf course and park.”

“My produce stand could wait and I just took off to see Art Johnson, mgr. of the Bank of America to tell him the good news. He, in turn, dropped everything and immediately called Zaidee’s Attorney, Ferguson Fairbanks of Fillmore, who confirmed her decision. We stayed right with it and set up a meeting the following day with the Board of Supervisors. The meeting was held at the Pierpont Inn with Mr. Fairbanks, his son and the Board of Supervisors and the Park and Golf Course was in the mill.”

But let’s go back to 1874 when Cyprus E. Soule, who had a ranch near Healdsburg on the Russian River in Sonoma County, sold that ranch and purchased 310 acres in the Ojai Valley. He was born in Canada, his parents being of English-German descent and had come to California in 1859. In 1862 he had met and married Miss Addie Koger, the daughter of William and Matilda Koger from Virginia who was a prominent rancher in Sonoma County. There were four children when the Soules moved to the valley, William E., Lillian E., Nina E., and Earl E. The journey to Ojai took days with two wagons, a four horse wagon for equipment and home furnishings and a covered wagon for the family. Soule had visited the valley in 1873, purchased the land and arranged for a house to be built that was ready for them on their arrival.

Previous to this time the valley had been operated as a sheep ranch by Messrs. Olds and Daily with some 10,000 sheep. In 1874 there were eight families in the valley including Robert Ayers, H. J. Dennison, Richard Robinson and Joseph S. Waite. The early settlers had to get their mail at Ventura and for years had to pay themselves for delivery of mail in the valley. Originally Mr. Soule engaged in wheat farming but later went into hay, raising horses and fruit.

Zaidee was born here March 12, 1878. The family took an active part in the community life. They were charter members of the Grange, Soule was first Master of the Lodge and his wife held important offices in the same. Soule served as Justice of the Peace for four years, Clerk of the School Board for fourteen years and a member of the Board of Trustees during the building of the first Presbyterian Church. He also served for ten years as a member of the County Republican Committee. He died in 1890 at the age of 62.

Following Soule’s death Mrs. Soule, with Earl’s assistance, took over the management of the Ranch. We gather from those who knew her that Addie Soule was a real dowager, a woman of imposing and dignified appearance. She evidently not only supervised the ranch but ruled over the family circle. The following is a quote from and article written by Mona Breckner on the Soule family and published in the Golden Book on the 50th Anniversary of Ojai by the Ojai Valley News.

“Mrs. Soule was a very devout and social-minded individual. Mrs. Ray Craft, who knew and worked with her in community service, recalls she was an active member of the benevolent committee of the Society of Kings’ Daughters, a fore-runner of the Ojai Valley Women’s Club.”

“Writes Mrs. Craft, “Many early residents will remember the familiar sight of her buggy and old horse, Toby, going about the valley on errands of mercy: a cow was furnished to a needy family with small children; food, especially fruit and vegetables, was donated daily, from crops grown on the Soule Ranch; and finally the generosity of the Soule family thru the last two members, Nina and Zaidee, who gave the beautiful Soule Recreation Park, the picnic grounds of the old ranch, along with the Golf Course.”

“Perhaps bringing with them memories of manor house living in the south, the Soules sought to enjoy the same type of social life on their ranch. Centered in their picnic grounds and surrounded by gardens and fruit orchards, was the entertainment area where regular gatherings took place. “Ladies and Gents” in their “best bib and tucker” congregated to partake of the good foods. the watermelons were particularly famous, and Howard Gally recalls the watermelon patches as “nothing like them in the entire valley”.

Gally, whose family lived on an adjacent ranch, remembers how the Soule family improvised. He remembers very little of the father who must have died early, but he especially recalls Earl Soule. Water was one of the scarcest commodities facing the ranches, and he recalls the excitement when a drill point was sunk to deep levels and water was pumped out by hand. Eventually Earl Soule improvised and operated a gasoline engine to provide power, guarding this engine with his life, even sleeping in the engine house for fear that it might be tampered with. Later he used this power to bring natural gas, tapped from the mountain above , into the house for lighting and cooking purposes.”

In 1922, [one year after] City of Ojai was incorporated, Early Soule was elected as Chairman of the Board of Trustees – the equivalent of mayor in today’s government. [He succeeded Glen Hickey who served for only one year. Soule served as Chairman for four years] until 1926.

The following is a quote from the “History of Ventura County” published in 1926. “Mr. Earl E. Soule has made a fine record since becoming the mayor of Ojai, exercising the same sound business methods in that office that he does in his private affairs. During his administration a bond issue was authorized by the voters for the purpose of constructing a sewer system, which is now being installed. He is jealous of his community’s good name and reputation and is devoting himself indefatigably to the welfare of the town and the upbuilding of its interests.”

Earl continued to serve as a member of the Board until 1932. In the mid-forties he suffered a severe heart attack and was nursed and cared for by his two sisters in the family home until he died July 6, 1953.

We again quote from Mona Breckner’s article. “Mrs. David Davis, who now live in Siete Robles, Ojai, knew the sisters intimately, and knew that hard times had befallen on them. She describes Nina , who was slowly dying of an incurable disease, as the most talented of the family, of brilliant mind and happy disposition, who passionately loved the valley. In the last days of her illness Mrs. Davis visited her daily, and Nina loved to share her treasures with her – perhaps a beautiful poem which she may have composed, or and unusual wild flower, or a much loved story.

It was Nina, says Mrs. Davis, who handled the family business and carried out her mother’s wishes that no encumberance of any kind ever be placed against the property. It was Nina who sought out the council and advice of Al West at the Ojai Branch of the Bank of America on financial matters. And it was Al West and their old friend, Mr. Ted Fairbanks, Sr. of Fillmore, an attorney, who helped them draft and execute their final will.

Offer after offer, fantastic in price, came to them for the sale of the ranch for subdivision purposes, but always the same answer: “This beautiful spot will never be subdivided; it will remain as one piece for the people of Ojai to enjoy as we have enjoyed it.”

From the Ventura County Star Free Press of September 28, 1964, “Ojai Mourns Its Beloved Benefactor Zaidee Soule. Everyone who knew her knew Zaidee Soule loved Ojai, and when she died Saturday night of a lingering illness, it appeared that Ojai loved her, too.”

Unfortunately, park and golf courses require cuts and fills and unsightly wire fences, The Soule Park Tree Committee believes that the tree planting program will dress up the scars of progress. It is certainly most appropriate to dedicate the program to Zaidee, Nina and the Soule family. If they could speak we feel sure it would have their whole-hearted approval.

Mark Frost is the co-creator of “Twin Peaks,” with David Lynch. On May 15, he shared his own story in a Town Talk interview with Mark Lewis at the Ojai Valley Museum. Lewis’s story about Frost originally appeared in The Ojai Quarterly’s Spring 2016 issue: 

 

The Storyteller

Ojai writer Mark Frost is working with David Lynch on the sequel to their classic television series “Twin Peaks,” set in a small town in Washington state. But Frost’s next writing project will be set in a different small town: Ojai.

 

By Mark Lewis

When Mark Frost moved to Ojai four years ago with his family, he was not quite sure what he was getting into.

“I’d always been a big-city guy,” Frost says. “I didn’t know what to expect.”

The only small community Frost really knew well was Twin Peaks, the fictional setting of the classic 1990s television series of the same name, which he co-created with David Lynch. Twin Peaks is an idyllic-looking place – until Frost and Lynch pull back the veil to reveal a surreal snake pit full of psychotic drug dealers, greedy intriguers, and murderers possessed by evil demons. A person nowadays who binge-watches “Twin Peaks” on Netflix might easily develop an aversion to small-town living.

But to Frost, Ojai is the opposite of Twin Peaks.

“There’s something very special here,” he says. “There’s a kind of magic that you rarely find in other places.”

Nevertheless, Frost has been spending a lot of his time in Ojai thinking dark thoughts about strange doings. The explanation is simple: He and Lynch were writing a “Twin Peaks” sequel, which will feature many of the original cast members, including Kyle MacLachlan as FBI Special Agent Dale Cooper. Currently in production with Lynch as director, the sequel is scheduled to debut early next year on the Showtime premium cable network.

So the fictional town of Twin Peaks is much on Frost’s mind these days – but then so is Ojai, which will figure prominently as a setting for his next project, a book about Krishnamurti. Nor will that be the first book Frost has set in this valley. He may only have lived here for four years, but in a way, his association with Ojai goes back four decades, to the very beginning of his career.

BACKSTORY

Frost was born in Brooklyn in 1953, and grew up in New York, Southern California and Minnesota. His father was an actor and his sister became one too, but Frost would rather put his own words on paper than read someone else’s aloud.

“I knew I was going to be a writer by the time I was 7,” he says.

After spending two years in a high-school internship program at the Guthrie Theater in Minneapolis, Frost enrolled in the drama program at Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh, with the goal of becoming a playwright. But in the summer of 1974 he took a break from his studies and went out to L.A., where a Carnegie Mellon alum named Charles Haid introduced him to another alum, Steven Bochco.

Bochco at the time was story editor of “McMillan and Wife,” a TV series starring Rock Hudson that was produced by Universal Studios.

“He got me in at Universal,” Frost says.

As a result, Frost stayed in L.A. and began his career by co-writing two episodes of the Universal series “The Six Million Dollar Man.” It starred Lee Majors as Steve Austin, an astronaut-turned-cyborg who, per his backstory, had grown up in Ojai. (The town would figure even more prominently in a spin-off series, “The Bionic Woman.”)

“It’s almost like it was foretold that I was going to end up here,” Frost says.

It did not seem that way at the time, however.

“I was aware that the show had an Ojai connection – it was mentioned in the scripts – but it made no impression on me,” he says. “At the time, I don’t think I even knew it was a real place.”

Then he began hearing about Ojai in a different context.

“My interest in Krishnamurti and Theosophy dates to the ‘70s, under the category of ‘spiritual curiosity’ for a young adult who was decidedly non-religious by nature and nurture,” Frost says. “K was still speaking in Ojai and I did have a couple of close friends who attended lectures in the Oak Grove, but regrettably I never made the trip.”

Still set on becoming a playwright, Frost returned to the Guthrie Theater in Minneapolis, where he was a “literary associate” for several years. But he kept in touch with Bochco, who meanwhile had gone on to develop a groundbreaking police drama, “Hill Street Blues,” which debuted in 1981. (The cast included Charles Haid as Officer Andy Renko.) Bochco lured Frost back to L.A. to join the writing staff starting with the third season, and Frost worked on 35 episodes as a writer and/or story editor.

“Hill Street” was an enormously influential show. With its large ensemble cast, its gritty themes, its realistic sets and exterior locations, and its use of sophisticated cinematic techniques (including hand held cameras), the show looked and sounded like nothing else on TV.

Another innovation was its complex narrative approach: “Hill Street” featured multiple story lines, many of which unfolded from week to week instead of being wrapped up neatly within each hour-long episode. During its seven years on the air, the series racked up 98 Emmy nominations (including one for Frost) and a record 26 wins.

“It was a hell of a ride,” Frost says.

The “Hill Street” writers’ room constituted a challenging, competitive, high-pressure environment, where Frost had to keep up with the likes of David Milch (who went on to fame with “NYPD Blue” and “Deadwood”) and Anthony Yerkovich (who went on to create “Miami Vice”). To decompress, Frost liked to get away from Hollywood occasionally to relax on a golf course. As it happens, there was a good one in Ojai.

By this point, Ojai was no longer the make-believe home of the Six Million Dollar Man and the Bionic Woman. But it was the real-life home Linda Kelsey, an old friend of Frost’s from Minneapolis, and more recently an Emmy-nominated actress on “Lou Grant.”

“I remember her telling me about it,” Frost says. “I started coming up here to play golf at the Ojai Valley Inn. Who knew that that would end up being my home course?”

After three years on “Hill Street,” Frost tried his hand at screenwriting, and he often incorporated supernatural elements into his scripts. Among his early efforts was “The Believers,” adapted from a novel about a murderous voodoo cult. “The Believers” was produced and directed by the noted filmmaker John Schlesinger, with Frost serving as associate producer and directing some of the second-unit work.

“That was sort of my master’s education in filmmaking,” he says.

It was around this time that Frost began working with the writer-director David Lynch. Best known at the time for “Eraserhead” and “The Elephant Man,” Lynch was wrapping up work on “Blue Velvet,” and preparing to make a film about Marilyn Monroe. The script was to be adapted from “Goddess,” a recently published Monroe biography.

“David and I were introduced by a mutual agent of ours at the time, who thought we would hit it off on the Monroe project,” Frost says. “We met over coffee and did hit it off and went from there. It’s hard to pinpoint exactly what makes a creative match like that persist other than chemistry and affinity and, as it turned out over the long haul, tolerance, friendship and success.”

The Monroe project didn’t pan out. But Frost and Lynch went on to collaborate on a script called “One Saliva Bubble,” a comedy about two sets of twins and switched identities. Steve Martin and Martin Short signed on as the stars, with famed producer Dino de Laurentiis providing the funding. Frost says they were only a few weeks away from production when the De Laurentiis production company went bankrupt, pulling the plug on the film.

Next, the ABC network suggested that Frost and Lynch try their hands at creating a television series. The result was “Twin Peaks.”

The two-hour pilot episode aired on April 8, 1990, and created an immediate sensation. Co-written by Frost and Lynch and directed by Lynch, it introduced MacLachlan as Agent Cooper, who arrives in Twin Peaks to investigate the murder of a local high-school student named Laura Palmer. Twin Peaks is a small community surrounded by a thick forest, which hides many secrets. Cooper soon finds that nothing in this bucolic-looking town is as it seems.

As the series unfolded during the first season, the clues lead Cooper to a supernatural suspect, a demon who has possessed a local resident. But which one? Viewers tuned in week after week hoping to find out who – or what – had killed Laura Palmer.

“We were trying to do something a little different,” Frost says.

They succeeded, and then some. “Twin Peaks” was unlike anything seen on TV before. Like “Hill Street Blues” before it, but to an even greater degree, “Twin Peaks” was novelistic and cinematic. It was also deeply, compellingly weird.

Frost and Lynch took a surrealistic approach to storytelling, grafting dream sequences and otherworldly elements onto their murder-mystery plot. On one level, the show came across as a parody of a genre that did not actually exist: the horror soap opera. But on another level, “Twin Peaks” was genuinely scary. It was smart and funny and creepy and disturbing, all at the same time. It caught America’s imagination and became a cultural phenomenon, the sort of hit show that everyone talks about, whether they watch it or not.

Lynch was a recognized film auteur, and “Twin Peaks” seemed to be of a piece with “Eraserhead” and especially with the much-celebrated “Blue Velvet.” But Lynch was not involved in every episode. He had other irons in the fire, such as directing the film “Wild At Heart,” while Frost, as the “Twin Peaks” show runner, kept his hand on the tiller. When the show took off, both co-creators found themselves in a powerful media spotlight.

“It was like hanging on the end of a rocket,” Frost says.

In addition to its edgy themes and artsy affect, “Twin Peaks” stood apart for its long-form approach to storytelling. At the end of the first season, viewers still did not know who had killed Laura Palmer.

“Long-form drama was always very compelling to me,” Frost says. “I felt we could take it further.”

Ultimately, they may have taken it too far, at least for TV audiences of the time. Halfway through the second season, under pressure from the network, they finally identified the killer. After that, some of the audience faded away, in part because ABC kept moving the show to different time slots, and in part because it was frequently pre-empted by coverage of the Persian Gulf War.

“The wind went out of the sails,” Frost says.

Amid diminishing ratings, the second season ended with a cliffhanger episode designed to pique viewers’ interest in Season 3. But at that point, ABC pulled the plug. There would be no third season, and no plot resolution. Nevertheless, “Twin Peaks” already had made a permanent mark on the culture. Frost suspected as much, even at the time: “I felt like we were building something that might last.”

He was right. “Twin Peaks” has endured, and not just as a fondly remembered cult classic. Cultural historians regard it as a milestone television event that paved the way for the sophisticated, challenging, novelistic shows that have flourished since the advent of cable – shows like “The Sopranos,” “Mad Men,” “Breaking Bad” and “True Detective” (the latter created and written by Ojai resident Nic Pizzolatto). In short, “Twin Peaks” was important, and it represents a career peak for the team that created it.

“We all realize this is going to be the first line in our obituaries,” Frost says. And that’s OK with him: “Everybody wants to be remembered for something. It may as well be this.”

PLAN B

After “Twin Peaks,” Frost co-wrote and directed “Storyville,” a 1992 movie starring James Spader. But he also started writing books, both fiction and nonfiction, and these days he views himself primarily an author rather than a scriptwriter.

“That was Plan B,” he says of book writing. “I now consider that my primary career.”

His first novel, published in 1993, was an occult murder mystery called “The List of Seven” that featured Arthur Conan Doyle as a protagonist, with Helena Blavatsky, the founder of Theosophy, in a supporting role.

“I started writing “The List of Seven” right after “Storyville” – another disillusioning experience in the Hollywood shark tank, this time as a director – so Plan B was officially launched at that point,” Frost says.

He continued to work for the studios as a screenwriter for hire for the next dozen or so years, to pay the rent while he developed his book-writing career. (His screen credits during this period included the first two “Fantastic Four” films, based on the Marvel comic book series.)

“It’s a terrible way to make a terrific living,” he says. “As Oscar Levant – or maybe it was Dorothy Parker – once said: The thing about Hollywood you have to understand is, underneath all that tinsel is real tinsel. The impulse to write books harkens back to why I originally chose to be a writer instead of an actor: the overwhelming desire to be able to speak, and write, in your own voice. “

He now has seven novels to his credit. (His most recent effort, published last fall, was “Rogue,” the third installment of Frost’s “The Paladin Prophecy” series for young-adult readers.) As for his four nonfiction books, they have all been inspired by historic sports contests. They include “Game Six,” about the epic sixth game of the 1975 World Series between the Boston Red Sox and the Cincinnati Reds; and “The Greatest Game Ever Played,” about the 1913 U.S. Open, during which a young, unheralded American amateur defeated the famous English professionals Harry Vardon and Ted Ray in a playoff.

In 2005, Frost adapted “The Greatest Game” as a screenplay and then co-produced the film version, which was directed by Ojai’s own Bill Paxton. Paxton’s friend and fellow Ojai resident, the artist Mick Reinman, served as a visual consultant. And that was how Frost eventually found his own way to Ojai as a permanent resident.

“We really bonded on the movie and became really good friends,” Frost says. “I have to give Bill Paxton and Mick Reinman a lot of credit for beguiling us with tales of the Ojai while we were making the picture, which led directly to our exploratory interest here.”

Frost and his wife, Lynn, were looking to escape from L.A. and raise their son, Travis, in a child-friendly environment. Lynn grew up in a small town in Tennessee, so she was primed to embrace Ojai. Frost, a city boy, was more hesitant about settling full-time in such an out-of-the-way place. His ambivalence seems to have colored the first installment of his “Paladin Prophecy” series, which he was writing at the time. The book begins in Ojai, where teenager Will West and his parents recently have settled:

“After only five months here, he liked Ojai more than anywhere they’d ever lived. The small-town atmosphere and country lifestyle felt comfortable and easy, a refuge from the hassles of big-city life.”

But, this being a Mark Frost novel, sinister machinations are stirring beneath the town’s placid surface. Will detects intimations of a “queasy cocktail of impending doom,” which haunts him like “the hangover from a forgotten nightmare.”

Unsurprisingly, the move to Ojai ends badly for the Wests. But that did not deter the Frosts. The turning point came one day during a scouting expedition, when Mark and Lynn were driving around the East End and they passed three teenage girls walking along the road. The girls did not know the Frosts, but they smiled and waved, as people do in a friendly small town. That was enough for Lynn.

“She turned to me and said, ‘We’re moving here,’ in a way I knew better than to argue with,“ Frost says.

Continuing on their drive, they ended up at the end of Thacher Road, where they encountered a sign that was a sign in more ways than one: “Twin Peaks Ranch.”

That did it: “Six months later, we were here.”

Four years later, all three Frosts have taken root. Travis attends the Ojai Valley School, and Mark and Lynn are big supporters of the Ojai Valley Defense Fund.

Ojai reminds Frost of the Southern California he fondly remembers from his childhood during the 1960s, before most of the orange groves were paved over for shopping malls. The idea behind the Defense Fund is to amass a war chest big enough to deter mining companies and big-city developers, and thus to preserve Ojai as a pristine rural paradise.

“I don’t know of any other town that’s taking these steps to defend itself” from encroachment, Frost says. “It’s the walls of Troy!”

If Frost needed a sign that moving to Ojai had been the right decision, he found one shortly after he settled here, while he was playing a round at the Inn. Arriving at the 13^th tee, he encountered a commemorative plaque that he had never noticed before, which highlighted two very familiar names. The plaque informed Frost that when the Inn (then called the Ojai Valley Country Club) first opened in 1924, Harry Vardon and Ted Ray played an exhibition match there. Having already written both a book and a movie featuring these two English golfing legends, Frost now found himself literally following in their footsteps.

“I have this secret theory that all roads lead to Ojai,” he says. “Every time I start down a path, it leads me here.”

He encountered yet another sign in the Fall 2013 issue of The Ojai Quarterly, which featured an article about Thornton Wilder’s time as a student at The Thacher School. Wilder is one of Frost’s favorite writers, and “Our Town” is his favorite play, so he was fascinated to read that Ojai – or Nordhoff, as it was then known – may have been the original model for Grover’s Corners, the small town where Wilder set the play.

Whether it’s Wilder or Krishnamurti, or Vardon and Ray, or even Steve Austin of “The Six Million Dollar Man,” Frost keeps turning up Ojai connections that long preceded his arrival here as a full-timer.

“This place has been calling me for a long time,” he says. “I’ve never felt as much a part of a community as I do here.”

BACK INTO THE FOREST

More recently, another community has been calling to Frost, the one he and Lynch invented: Twin Peaks. People who watched the original show still recall it vividly, and it has won new fans over the years via video rentals, cable reruns and Netflix streaming. Meanwhile, cable television evolved to the point where today it offers a vastly more hospitable environment for Frost and Lynch than they found on broadcast television back in the early 1990s. Eventually it occurred to them that the time was ripe to have another go at it.

In a way, Lynch had given it another go back in 2001 when he created “Mulholland Drive” as the pilot for a proposed ABC series.

“It began, much earlier, as a piece we were going to do as a ‘Twin Peaks’ spinoff, following the Sherilyn Fenn character, Audrey Horne, to Tinseltown,” Frost says. “Although I ultimately was not involved with either the pilot or film, I was living on Mulholland Drive at the time, and that’s the title comes from.”

By 2001, the concept had evolved to the point where it was no longer a “Twin Peaks” spinoff per se, although stylistically and thematically reminiscent of the earlier show. But ABC passed on the series, so Lynch completed the pilot as a feature film. Released by Universal, it made a star of Naomi Watts and earned Lynch a best-director Oscar nomination (his third). But he remained interested in exploring the long-form possibilities unique to television. It took another decade, but TV culture finally caught up with “Twin Peaks.”

“David and I always stayed in touch,” Frost says. “We suddenly looked up and realized that it’s back in the zeitgeist.”

They devoted two years to writing one long script, which Lynch is now filming, with himself and Frost as co-executive producers (and with Naomi Watts reportedly among the new cast members, although Frost would not confirm this). When this epic movie is in the can, it will be carved up into multiple episodes, the exact number of which has not yet been determined.

This process represents the culmination of a career-long progression for Frost, from the single-episode story arcs of “The Six Million Dollar Man,” to the multi-episode arcs of “Hill Street Blues,” to the season-long arcs of the original “Twin Peaks,” to the series-long arc of the sequel, which Showtime is billing as a “new limited series.”

“It’s not a reboot,” Frost says. “It’s the story in continuity.”

Currently, Frost is writing a companion novel, “The Secret History of Twin Peaks.”

“I’ve just finished the first draft,” he says. “It goes back to the 18th century and weaves the tangled, mysterious history of the town, its people and the region, up through and including the events of the old series.”

He expects to publish the novel this fall, ahead of the new series premiere early in 2017.

Given that Frost was living here while he was writing the “Twin Peaks” sequel, will local residents who watch the show be able to detect some echoes of life in Ojai? Frost says that he did not consciously draw upon Ojai while recreating Twin Peaks. But he concedes that he might have done so unconsciously, because writers tend to be inspired by their surroundings, and he finds Ojai inspirational on many levels.

“It can’t help but show up in the new series,” he says. “I’ll leave it to others to figure out how that manifests itself. But that’s probably inevitable.”

THE POWER OF MYTH

Novels, nonfiction narratives, feature films, epic TV extravaganzas: As a storyteller, Frost is associated with just about every long-form format except the one he started out to hoping to master. Will he ever go back to writing plays?

“It’s on my bucket list, I’ll put it that way,” he says. “But if you’re a born storyteller, the format shouldn’t matter. You’ll be drawn to the process of storytelling, the way we’re all drawn to water.”

Frost will stick with the book format to tell his next story, that of Krishnamurti. He has not yet decided whether to write it as a novel or as a nonfiction book, although he’s leaning toward the hybrid approach, also known as the nonfiction novel, which Truman Capote pioneered with “In Cold Blood:”

“I’m not far enough into the work yet to say definitely which approach I’ll end up using,” Frost says, “but such a remarkable human story will dictate the style and form of the storytelling, and a hybrid approach feels now like the most appropriate.”

Frost’s narrative will follow Krishnamurti from his childhood in India, where Theosophists identified him as their future World Teacher, through his early years in Ojai, where he found a lifelong home, to the pivotal year 1929, when he rejected the messiah role and choose the philosopher’s path instead.

Along the way, Krishnamurti encountered and befriended Joseph Campbell, who will figure prominently in Frost’ book. Meeting K turned out to be a milestone on Campbell’s path to the mastery of comparative mythology.

“For me, Campbell is one of the century’s most influential thinkers, and having an opportunity to depict the way in which their paths crossed with such lasting impact is tremendously appealing,“ Frost says.

In his 1949 book “The Hero With a Thousand Faces,” Campbell identified what he called the monomyth, common to all cultures: “A hero ventures forth from the world of common day into a region of supernatural wonder: fabulous forces are there encountered and a decisive victory is won: the hero comes back from this mysterious adventure with the power to bestow boons on his fellow man.”

If that sounds like a description of Agent Cooper venturing into the supernatural precincts of Twin Peaks, it’s not a coincidence. (To find out whether Cooper wins a decisive victory, we’ll have to wait for the sequel.)

Campbell’s explication of the monomyth, also known as “the hero’s journey,” is an idea that has launched a thousand plots, including the one George Lucas devised for “Star Wars.” Frost embraces Campbell’s concept with enthusiasm, on both a personal and a professional level.

“Look, at a certain point you can realize that all of life is both literal and metaphorical, and that approaching or perceiving your own journey through the lens of myth and narrative brings enormous benefit, insight and enrichment to the experience of being alive,” he says. “We need to feel connected to myth. And that’s the job of the storyteller. We’re the intermediaries.”

It’s a job Frost takes very seriously. “It’s a sacred role,” he says. And there’s no better place to perform it than here in Ojai:

“The idea of the single myth appeals to me far more than any sectarian or mediated truth,” he says. “That’s also a central tenet of K’s message, as well as Campbell’s, and that’s also in some way an essential part of Ojai’s appeal as a place.

“All these myths are free to live and thrive here, in equal measure, with none trying to crowd or drown out another. It’s a model of tolerance, civic responsibility and self-reliance that offers something like a way forward at what feels like a decisive moment for our troubled and quarrelsome species. I think truth, as K famously said, really is a pathless land. You won’t find it on a map, but you just might find it here.”

 

 

Jeff Mann is among the Ojai Studio Artists participating in this year’s OSA group exhibit at the Ojai Valley Museum. In conjunction with the exhibit, we present Ojai Quarterly arts columnist Anca Colbert’s piece on Mann, which ran in the OQ’s Spring 2015 issue: Drawn to Drawing(s): Anca Colbert on Jeff Mann

The San Antonio School

By David Mason

“Amid much rejoicing, San Antonio’s new school building was formally presented to the district last Friday night. The whole community has been watching with interest the erection of this attractive structure, which makes of the San Antonio corner another beauty spot for our valley.”

– The Ojai, April 8, 1927

The year was 1887, and President Grover Cleveland, in his first of two terms as president, was still enjoying his honeymoon with the former Frances Folsom. The White House was a hub of social activities, while in a little valley in California, a new school was being formed. The importance of this rather small school may not have made the national news, as the White House wedding had, but to the people of Ojai, it was another step in the development of the valley.

The San Antonio School was established in 1887 and was formed as an independent school district. An even smaller school, The Sagebrush Academy at the foot of the grade road, had closed down because most of the students lived in the upper valley and they wanted a school closer to home, so they had created the Summit.

The few children living in the East End of the valley were then left without a school to attend, except for some small private schools that were scattered around the area.

At first, the students gathered and held their classes under a large oak tree. Then an old granary that was no longer in use on a nearby ranch was put into operation as a classroom. Finally, three acres on the southeast corner of Grand Avenue and Carne Road were purchased from the Beers family for $25, and the first San Antonio schoolhouse was built. The schoolhouse was a lovely Victorian structure, put up in record time using volunteer carpenters, and when completed it was an impressive building, especially for such a small, rural community. It had a fancy bell tower and a flagpole with the American flag flying high in the sky.

Fred Udall Jr., an early student, wrote about his years in attendance at San Antonio School:

“Even the Pledge of Allegiance was simpler in those days, but we put a great deal of sincerity into saying it. As I recall, it went something like this: ‘I pledge allegiance to the flag, and to the republic for which it stands. One nation, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all.’ Our teachers asked us to think about the words we were reciting as we faced the flag before starting the school day. We didn’t need to name the country in the pledge, we knew we were Americans.”

By the late 1920s, classes had outgrown the stately Victorian schoolhouse, so the school board commenced to make plans for building a new and larger school. The school board, wanting a special type of building, hired Roy Wilson, a Santa Paula architect.

Wilson came with his family to Los Angeles in 1902 and settled near the Arroyo Seco, in an area known today as Highland Park. Roy left school after the seventh grade and took various jobs to supplement the family’s income. One of those jobs was as a draftsman for local architect, Edwin Thorne, who inspired him to learn more about architecture, and Roy was persuaded to move to Berkeley to study at the university.

Upon his arrival in 1906, the great San Francisco Earthquake hit and destroyed much of the city. His formal education was abruptly cut short and through his help in the re-building of the city, practical experiences became his teacher.

In 1914, Wilson discovered the small town of Santa Paula, purchased 40 acres of land and planted a citrus orchard. He opened a small architectural office in Santa Paula, and in 1924 became the first licensed architect in the county of Ventura. Many of the outstanding buildings that add to the beauty of The Ojai are the creations of this talented man.

Among his structures are the Ojai Elementary School building; the Nordhoff High School campus, now Matilija Junior High School; Bill Baker’s Bakery; various buildings at Krotona; and the science building at The Thacher School. Many of our 1920s-style Spanish mansions are also the work of this great architect.

One of the San Antonio School trustees was originally from England, and he was in favor of the new building being built in the English Tudor style, because the style would then remind him of his homeland. The school board voted in favor of that style, so Wilson was instructed to design a building that would have the look of being English, in contrast to the more familiar Spanish style that was being used in
Ojai Valley.

When completed in 1927, the architecture was indeed unique, yet harmonizing with the surroundings, and would symbolize a school district within the community whose choice it was to preserve its own individuality, but whose earnest desire it was to work with the other buildings for the good of all. The interior of the building was roomy and pleasant and adequately equipped. The two classrooms, separated by a large folding divider, could be opened up to make an auditorium. The stage area was the largest in the valley at that time. The overall effect was delightful, and it served the East End of the valley well.

The school year of 1929 opened with an enrollment of 28 students in the entire school. When I went to school there, from 1949 to 1951, my class consisted of five students, two boys and three girls. My class, however, was not as small as my mother’s class. She attended San Antonio when it was still in the Victorian building, and she had two students in her class.

The little English Tudor school finally gave up its independence in 1965 and joined the Ojai Unified School District. The school building continues to bring a lot of joy to people in the Ojai Valley. The Ventura County Cultural Heritage Board wanted to declare this building a county landmark, but was turned down by the school board. Perhaps someday, this worthy building will have the honors bestowed upon it that it so rightfully deserves.

 

 

The above column originally appeared in The Ojai Valley News in 1999. Republished with permission.

Ojai’s Cartoonist in Residence

By Jerry Camarillo Dunn, Jr.

To look at him, you might think he’s just another guy loafing around an Ojai coffee shop, staring into space. But if you could peer inside his head, you’d see that he’s hard at work.

Sergio Aragones is a cartoonist.

That chortling you hear as he doodles on his napkin? It means Sergio just thought of another gag for MAD Magazine, where he’s been a creative force of nature for more than 50 years.

It all began in 1962, when the fledgling cartoonist left his home in Mexico to try his luck in America. He arrived in New York with twenty dollars in his pocket and a portfolio of funny drawings under his arm. After learning that cartoonists visited the city’s magazines on Wednesdays to sell their work, he started making the rounds. “Your cartoons are crazy!” everyone said. “You have to take them to MAD. That’s where they belong.”

MAD was the nation’s top market for silly pictures, but the 24-year-old cartoonist screwed up his courage and appeared at the magazine’s office. The editors took his samples into a little room . . . and there was a deafening silence. But at last Sergio heard guffaws of laughter echoing off the walls. His cartoons were a hit, and they’ve been off the wall ever since.

The editors assembled some of Sergio’s wordless gags into a two-page story about the U.S. space effort. One drawing showed a space capsule in orbit with a dismayed astronaut in the window, watching a paper airplane sail past.

“I wanted to sell MAD more drawings,” Sergio recalls, “and I saw all the empty areas around the borders of the pages.” So began the legendary “Marginals,” gags that Sergio tucks into the white spaces throughout the magazine. The only thing not marginal is the humor.

Sergio characterizes himself as a “writer who draws,” and each Marginal is a short story in itself — like the drawing of a bearded psychiatrist so absorbed in taking notes that he doesn’t notice his patient leap off the couch and out the window.

MAD’s editors thought the Marginals were a cute idea but couldn’t last long. They told Sergio, “Well, we’ll publish them until you run out of ideas.” Since then his work has appeared in every issue except one. (“The post office screwed up.”) Over nearly five decades, he has drawn thousands upon thousands of his trademark wordless gags.

In fact, Sergio is reputed to be the world’s fastest cartoonist. He is definitely the most honored, having won every major award including the National Cartoonists Society’s Reuben, which is the Oscar of the field.

Even as a schoolboy in Mexico, where his father eventually relocated the family after leaving Spain for France during the Spanish Civil War, he was always drawing funny pictures in class, which entertained his pals and exasperated the teachers. (“Sergio, pay attention!”)

He also developed his imagination by playing make-believe, but in a way most kids could only dream about. His father was a movie producer at Mexico City’s Estudios Churubusco. “Whatever movie they were shooting, that’s what I played. If it was cowboys and Indians, I’d go to the prop department and get myself a big hat and a set of guns,” Sergio says. “The western town was my favorite. In front of the cantina was a railing for the cowboy actors to tie up their horses. When there wasn’t a movie being made, I loved to go there and challenge invisible bad guys. I’d come banging out through the cantina doors, get shot, flip over the railing with my legs in the air, and land in the dusty street. Then I’d do it again and again — because I was a kid!

“Your imagination really goes wild on a movie set. I think it helped my cartooning later on, in thinking up ideas.” His formal schooling continued at the University of Mexico, where Sergio studied architecture. “But my friends were actors, artists, and directors,” he says. “I learned pantomime from Alexandro Jodorowsky,” the avant-garde filmmaker. “I wanted to study pantomime so I could apply it to my cartoons. I love cartoons without words! They’re like silent movies.”

When Sergio announced his intention to be a cartoonist, his father was terrified because cartoonists don’t always make a great living. At age seventeen, though, Sergio started selling his work professionally when an art teacher sent his drawings to the Mexican humor magazine Ja-Ja. “I realized that cartoons have to be published for people to enjoy them,” he says. He also realized that America offered a much larger market than Mexico for his drawings.

Soon after his arrival in the U.S., Sergio began writing scripts for comic books — ranging from House of Horrors to Young Romance — for the top publisher in the field, DC Comics. By the early 1980s, he decided to launch his own comic book.

Groo, the Wanderer is a takeoff on the “sword and sorcery” genre, particularly Marvel’s Conan the Barbarian. Sergio’s writing partner, Mark Evanier, describes the main character as “an ugly, large-nosed buffoon of surpassing ignorance who constantly misunderstands his surroundings. Possessed of superlative skills in swordsmanship (the only task in which he’s remotely competent), he delights in combat but . . . unfortunately he is also indiscriminate and incredibly accident-prone, and despite generally good intentions causes mass destruction wherever he goes.”

With Groo, Sergio took up a new artistic challenge. He explains the differences between his two chosen formats: “Comic books are a mix of storytelling and drawing — sequential art, panel after panel. A cartoon is a compressed idea; you simplify it to the maximum. You can tell a story in a whole comic book, or take panels off until you have just one. Then take the dialogue off, and in one panel, without words, you have a whole story! That’s why I think pantomime is very impressive.

“A comic book, on the other hand, is like a mini-movie. You write, direct, act it out, tell the characters what to do, design the scenery and the costumes. I feel fortunate to have my own little universe.”

Sergio’s artwork in Groo may start with a “splash page” depicting a medieval village, hundreds of people in different kinds of garb, animals, wagons, tools, and weapons. All the details are painstakingly researched for accuracy in National Geographic and the cartoonist’s library of visual reference books.

Sergio also sneaks in his own feelings about issues of the day. “A comic is a great vehicle for helping: pollution, deforestation, women making less money than men, and other social problems. You realize you have a good platform for making a comment, and you use it.

“I wanted to criticize television in an issue of Groo, and it took me forever to figure out how to do it. There was no television back in barbarian days, so I finally used puppetry, a Punch and Judy show. Groo, with his violent tendencies, invents violence on television, not to mention TV dinners and commercials.”

The whole town gets hooked on puppet shows. In one scene a kid tries to get his parents to look at the beautiful sunset. Shhh! they hiss. We’re watching! “Kids love the silliness of the whole thing,” says Sergio, “but they also see how damaging television can be. I hope they ask questions of their parents.”

These days Sergio also works as a guest artist for The Simpsons comic books, writing and drawing whole issues by himself. And he’s writing a series of tales from his own life, a sort of comic-book memoir called Sergio Aragones Funnies. “I’m fortunate that I’ve met a lot of remarkable people,” he says. The stories depict his encounters with everyone from Richard Nixon to a high lama in Tibet. One story tells about meeting the famous cellist Pablo Casals in Acapulco.

Always curious, Sergio has traveled broadly and radiates the sophistication of a citizen of the world. Spanish and French were his first two languages. (His old friend Mark Evanier jokes that Sergio “does to English, his third language, what Picasso did to faces.”)

For many years he visited far-flung places such as Kenya, Paris, Hong Kong, Tahiti, and Venice with the staff of MAD. The publisher, Bill Gaines, organized a free trip every year for the magazine’s regular contributors — the cartoonists, writers, and editors listed on the masthead as “The Usual Gang of Idiots.” Once, when they traveled to Haiti, Gaines had the whole group driven directly to the house of the magazine’s one and only Haitian subscriber, where he formally presented the baffled man with a renewal card.

But Sergio’s heart belongs to Ojai. “I had always lived in a big city,” he says, “Mexico City, New York, Los Angeles. When my daughter, Christen, was very young and we came from L.A. to Ojai in 1982 for her to attend Oak Grove School, I never thought I could live here. But it took me no time to realize how comfortable, how conducive to thinking, it was. I loved it almost immediately.”

Sergio donates his time all over town, generously speaking to school kids and drawing cartoons for posters, the Ojai Library wall, and just about any group that asks. “You feel so much a part of the town,” he says. “It’s fun belonging.”

Sergio is a familiar figure around Ojai, usually dressed in shorts, his guayabera shirt untucked and pockets bulging with pens, his gray hair in a ponytail, his familiar moustache as wide as his smile. Greetings follow him down Ojai Avenue, and everyone feels they know him.

His warm feelings for the town led him to mount a retrospective exhibition of his work at the Ojai Valley Museum in 2009. “My art doesn’t really fit in a museum,” he points out. “I felt people might not understand the drawing of a cartoon, so I was always reluctant to exhibit. But Ojai is like showing my work to friends and family.”

The museum’s exhibit hall looked as if there had been an explosion in a comic book factory. An astonishing variety of Sergio’s work was on display, starting with his boyhood sketchbooks and continuing through his nearly 50 years at MAD, as well as his stint as a performer on television’s classic comedy show Laugh-In, illustrations for national advertisements, and cases displaying his hundreds of comics and books. (His recent anthology, MAD’s Greatest Artists: Sergio Aragones: Five Decades of His Finest Works, is already in its third printing.)

The cartoonist did one thing that museums definitely frown on: He drew all over the walls. “One of the basic ideas for a MAD Marginal is the corner cartoon, where the borders of the magazine connect,” he explains. “Something is coming from one way, something is coming from the other way, and you know what’s going to occur if they meet: A criminal is trying to hold somebody up on the corner, and a bunch of policemen are coming from the other corner. Your imagination fills it in.

“Well, there were a lot of corners at the museum. I could draw on a physical corner, putting a cartoon on each side, and visitors could see what was going to happen. It was perfect!”

On a narrow wall Sergio arranged three of his framed awards in a vertical line. But he hung the fourth one cockeyed and halfway down to the floor. Then he took a black marker and drew cartoon “speed lines” down the wall to show that the frame was falling. Below that, he drew a guy getting whacked on the head with a corner of the frame.

Sergio often subtly incorporates Ojai in his MAD cartoons: the Arcade, Starr Market, a kid on the street wearing an Ojai T-shirt. “Every chance I get!” he says, chortling.

If you see Sergio Aragones around town, say hello — that is, unless he’s sipping coffee and doodling on a napkin. Then you know he’s at work. “Well, it’s not really work,” he says. “Cartooning is a state of mind . . .”

 

(This story originally appeared in the Fall 2011 issue of The Ojai Quarterly. Republished here with permission.)

By Mark Lewis

(A somewhat shorter version of this essay originally appeared in “OSA: 3 Decades,” a book published in 2013 by the Ojai Studio Artists. Republished with permission.)

Ojai has always prided itself on being a mecca for artists. But up until 1984, the truth was far less impressive. People who came to town expecting to see artworks often were disappointed, because the works were inaccessible, hidden away in the artists’ studios. The Ojai Valley was filled with art, but for all intents and purposes it was invisible.

“It was like the best-kept secret in Southern California,” says longtime Ojai gallerist Hallie Katz, co-owner of Human Arts.

That began to change when a group of local artists banded together to launch an open-studio tour, which became an annual event. Three decades and 31 tours later, Ojai has come of age as a haven for artists and a travel destination for art lovers — and the Ojai Studio Artists have been instrumental in turning the perception into reality.

The OSA story begins in 1983, when the painter Gayel Childress took charge of the moribund Fine Arts Branch at the Ojai Art Center. The venerable building on South Montgomery Street housed California’s oldest continually operating non-profit community art center, but its dilapidated gallery space offered an uninspiring venue for art shows. At the time, there were relatively few galleries in town, and the Ojai Valley Museum did not concern itself with contemporary art. Apart from the Art Center, artists who wanted to show their work generally had only one option: The parking lot of the Security Pacific Bank (now the Bank of America), which on Sundays hosted an outdoor art market.

Childress’s first priority was to raise money to fix up the Art Center’s dowdy-looking lobby and decrepit gallery, to give local artists a better showcase. Two Arts Branch members, painters Bert Collins and Marta Nelson, had an idea. They recently had taken a tour of private homes in Los Angeles as part of a fundraising event for the L.A. Philharmonic.

“We thought, ‘Hey, what if we did that here with our studios?’ It was kind of like, ‘Hey, let’s put on a show,’ “Nelson says.

Childress, Collins and Nelson organized the first “Ojai Artist Studio Tour,” which took place on Nov. 3, 1984. Eighteen local artists opened their studios to visitors, who paid $5 to take the self-guided tour. The organizers billed it as “A Day In Art Country.”

“It was supposed to be a one-time thing,” Nelson says. “But it was so successful that we thought we’d do it again.”

The second and third annual tours were even more successful. Now known as “The Artists Of The Ojai Studio Tour,” the event attracted the attention of Sunset Magazine, which praised it for providing visitors with ready access to celebrated artists like Bert Collins, George Stuart and Beatrice Wood. (A list of other prominent artists associated with OSA at one time or another during its history would include the potters Otto and Vivika Heino and the photographer Horace Bristol.) After only three years, the studio tour was already well on its way to becoming an Ojai institution.

“It was the work of naive enthusiasm,” Childress says. “We had no idea what we were doing. But we were so passionate about it that we made it work.”

By 1986, putting on the tour had become almost a full-time job for Childress, Collins and Nelson, leaving them little time to paint. They had accomplished their initial goal, which was to refurbish the Art Center. After the third tour, they handed the event over to a local impresario, John Hazen Perry, who had big plans to take it to the next level.

Under Perry’s guidance, the 1987 tour featured an impressive, expensively produced brochure that was almost akin to an exhibit catalog.

“Everything he did was kind of epic,” recalls his daughter, Rain Perry. “That was his style.”

Perry aimed to turn the event into a full-fledged arts festival by adding music and dance. So he produced a multimedia extravaganza at Matilija Auditorium to coincide with the tour. Thirty-five artists opened their studios to the public that year, but Perry’s new features cost a lot more than they brought in, and the tour lost money.

“The vision was beautiful and breathtaking,” Rain Perry says, “but his ability to stay within a budget was not.”

Exit Perry, after only one year at the helm.

The tour then passed to Ojai Events Ltd., which consisted of several local business owners (including Les Gardner of the Attitude Adjustment Shoppe) who tried to operate the tour for a profit. But this group had little experience managing artists.

“We were out of our element,” Gardner says. “And it was a very difficult group to work with.”

In what turned out to be a controversial move, the new producers brought in an outside art expert to jury the tour and thus raise its artistic standards. Unsurprisingly, this created ill will among those artists who did not make the cut. Things did not go smoothly for Ojai Events Ltd., and in 1988 the tour lost money for a second consecutive year.

Meanwhile, some of the artists were beginning to take matters into their own hands. One day in 1988, the printmaker Linda Taylor and the potter Vivika Heino were lamenting the tour’s decline, and wondering how it could be restored to its original purpose: to showcase art and benefit the community.

“We could do this ourselves,” Heino told Taylor.

That conversation planted the seed. About 20 artists, including the tour’s three co-founders, convened on the back deck of Taylor’s Drown Street home to form a new artists’ cooperative. They decided to adopt standards for membership, to ensure that everyone in the group would be a professional artist whose work had been recognized for its quality. And they decided that they would operate the group on a nonprofit basis, using the proceeds to support the arts in Ojai.

At this point, Ojai Events Ltd.was still operating the annual studio tour. But Gardner and his partners bowed out after the 1989 event. “It became a lot more hassle than it was worth,” he says.

But the fledgling artists’ cooperative was not yet in a position to take over the tour. So in 1990 there was only an informal mini-tour, featuring four artists with studios in the East End or the Upper Valley — Gayel Childress, Audrey Saunders, Nancy Whitman and Beatrice Wood. Meanwhile the artists’ cooperative struck an alliance with the Ojai Valley Chamber of Commerce, which agreed to act as the tour’s financial receiver in return for a cut of the proceeds. And so the event was reborn in 1991 as the Ojai Studio Artists Tour – the 11^th annual tour but the first under the OSA name, which it has proudly carried ever since.

In 1993, OSA began awarding scholarships to promising local students to help them further their arts education. (By 2013, the total amount awarded would reach surpass $100,000.) The group also began its outreach program, under which OSA members welcome budding artists into their studios for instruction and inspiration. Other regular beneficiaries of OSA’s largesse include the Ojai Library, which has reaped a bounty of donated art books over the years; and the Art Center, which continues to benefit from its historic connection with the art tour. (OSA also organizes a group show in the Art Center gallery each October in conjunction with the tour, and mounts another group show each spring at the Ojai Valley Museum.)

“We don’t do the tour just to show our artwork and to have people come; it’s because we have a purpose,” Bert Collins says. “We’re doing it to raise money to support arts in the community.”

Khaled Al-Awar, who owns Ojai’s Primavera Gallery, credits the OSA tour with boosting the community’s reputation as a destination for art lovers.

“People love to say that they’ve met the artist,” he said. “It personalizes the art.”

In 1994, OSA acquired a copycat competitor, the Ojai Art Detour, which holds its own studio tour each October on the same weekend. (Unlike OSA, whose members must be voted in, the Detour is open to any artist who lives in the valley and wants to participate.)

In 2006, OSA acquired its 501(c) 3 designation as a non-profit organization, severed its connection with the Chamber of Commerce, and began operating the tour entirely on its own. The Great Recession that began in 2008 posed a daunting challenge, yet OSA has endured. Each year, more than 50 members open their studios to visitors as part of the annual tour. Taking the Detour participants into account, more than 100 art studios in the Ojai Valley typically are open to the public each year during the second weekend in October, reflecting the enormous growth of Ojai as an arts mecca since the original 1984 tour first put the town on the map.

The OSA story reveals how a group of talented, temperamental artists have managed to work together to create an enduring legacy: Ojai as a special place where school-age artists are nurtured, emerging artists are supported, and mature artists are celebrated.

“We established Ojai as an art town,” Linda Taylor says. “It’s been a lot of work, but we showed the community that Ojai is an art town.”

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Ojai Was The “Journey’s End” For The Gorham Family

By David Mason

“Plans are completed and the contract let to A. Pefley for the construction of a unique and attractive foothills residence. H.M. Gorham, a banker of Santa Monica, will occupy the new villa, to be constructed entirely of cobble stones and moss-be-whiskered rocks, with tile and slate roof.”

-The Ojai, April 21, 1916

In a large formation of rocks piled high overlooking the East End of the Ojai Valley lies a silent giant.

Emerging from the earth and dominating the serene landscaping is a life-size stone whale. Its features are so detailed that it is hard to imagine that it is a sculpture done by Mother Nature during one of her more playful moods.

The area is a shady retreat with a freshwater stream that runs nearby. The early Indian population of this valley must have felt the reverence that prevailed in this area, for they would spend much time in the shadow of this great wonder.

Harry M. Gorham also must have felt the serenity when he first arrived in the Ojai. He was a man who could very well have afforded any other location in the world to build his home, but he chose the Ojai Valley.

Gorham was born in Cleveland, Ojai in 1859. He attended school there and was preparing to attend Harvard, but his plan did not materialize. Gorham’s uncle, John P. Jones, was a U.S. senator from Nevada, and he persuaded young Gorham to go to Virginia City to take a job in the Comstock silver mines, which Jones owned. The year was 1877.

The Comstock Lode would hold Gorham’s interest for 26 years, during which time he progressed up the ladder of success to superintendent of mines. He assumed a great deal of company responsibility because of the absence of his uncle, who was busy with the senatorial affairs and his vast real estate holdings in Santa Monica, Calif.

After a brief illness, Gorham left the mines and went to Southern California to join his uncle in his business ventures there. Gorham eventually became president of the Bank of Santa Monica.

Senator Jones’ daughter Marian developed great skills in tennis, winning the National Women’s Championship for two years. Gorham’s son Hal shared his cousin’s interest in the sport and in 1905 they both came to Ojai to compete in the interscholastic singles division of the Ojai Tennis Tournament. Harry Gorham, a widower, always attended the matches in which his son participated, and he became interested in the Ojai Valley during the tournament here.

Gorham met Mrs. Florence Rogers during one of his trips to the Ojai Valley. She was born in Cairo, Ill., and as a young lady, she had also been very active in the game of tennis. She attended Vassar at the age of 12 and achieved an outstanding scholastic record. She had met her first husband, Emery Rogers, a Harvard man, in Chicago, and after they were married they lived in Boston. Two children were born to them, a boy named Emery and a girl named Constance and called Connie. They were a very happy and proper family until Mr. Rogers died at a very young age of tuberculosis.

After the loss of her husband, Mrs. Rogers took an extensive trip to Europe. Her thoughts were that they would live in a different country each year and perhaps never come home.

As the children grew older, Mrs. Rogers became concerned that her son was falling under corruptive influences. She had this notion that he was going to get himself a mistress and steal off to live “la vie boheme” in some Paris garret. So she set about hunting down a stern, rigorous prep school to pack him off to.

Rogers cabled her mother and asked her to check into a school she had heard about that was in the small town of Nordhoff (now Ojai), called The Thacher School. After receiving the word back that the school was held in high regard, the Rogers family left Europe in 1907 on the first boat home.

Arriving in the Ojai Valley, the family found a small village with a post office and a few stories clustered together. The houses were scattered about the sagebrush-covered valley.

The family stayed at the Pierpont Cottages while waiting to get young Emery into Thacher. The school had a waiting list, but Mrs. Rogers was determined that her son would go there.

Since most of the people of the valley depended upon horses for transportation, she ordered an elaborate cart from Ireland for the family to use.

Shortly after she settled in the valley, she met Harry Gorham and they fell madly in love. They married a short time after their first meeting.

In 1908, the newlyweds built Casa de Paz on McAndrew Road, but when young Emery finished his schooling at Thacher, the Gorhams sold the house and moved to Santa Monica.

By 1916, with the purchase of the Whale Rock Ranch in the Ojai Valley, the Gorhams had decided to build a small stone cottage for a weekend retreat. They named it Journey’s End.

The house was built entirely of rock, hand-selected from the property. When finished, it commanded a view of the entire valley. It had one large room, with a fireplace that doubled as a source of heat and a means of cooking.

The beams for the house were put into place with the use of donkeys and ropes, under the supervision of Mrs. Gorham.

The extensive use of tile manufactured by the Gladding McBean Co. added color and character to the strong appearance of the stone. To quote the front-page headline of The Ojai: “New Modern Home to Beautify Valley.” That, indeed, was a true statement.

Young Emery Rogers joined the Army during World War I, and from his description of Major Carlyle H. Wash, his commanding officer, Mrs. Gorham decided that since the major was also a graduate of West Point, he might be the perfect gentleman for her daughter Connie. They were married in 1919.

The newlyweds moved with the military from base to base until 1921, when Wash was assigned as air attache to the American embassy in Paris, where they lived for three years. Carlyle Wash would continue his success in the Army, eventually becoming a general.

In 1932, when Mr. and Mrs. Gorham left Santa Monica to live at Journey’s End permanently, they added a small kitchen, bath and bedroom.

During World War II, General Wash was killed, along with his staff, in a plane crash during a storm. Connie and her young daughter Patsy returned to the Ojai Valley and to Journey’s End.

A second home was built on the property for Connie in 1948 by Ojai designer Austen Pierpont. It was built on the hillside with a balcony. The single-story home had a red tile roof and a sweeping view of the valley.

Connie Wash became quite active in events that were taking place in and around the valley. During the war, she was the tri-counties chairwoman of the Camp and Hospital Committee of the American Red Cross. She was also a hardworking member of the Ojai Chamber of Commerce and the East Ojai Valley Association. She spearheaded the movement to replace the street signs with the wooden signs that we now enjoy.

The Ojai Garden Club elected her president, and she helped to get the other members more involved in the city. She was a strong supporter of the Ojai Music Festival.

In 1969, another wing was added to the original Gorham house to make it larger. Through it all, the house retained its charm.

Today, the beautiful Journey’s End is an estate that has withstood all the elements, having been featured on the television show “20/20″ with the 1985 fire sweeping around it. The home has continued to be protected and loved by the same family.

In 1986, the county’s Cultural Heritage Board declared this property Ventura County Landmark No. 103, with the hope and desire that the Whale Rock and the romantic Journey’s End will remain for many future generations to come and enjoy.

As for the large whale, it still looms over the countryside and is now shaded by the many live oaks that cover the area. To all of the Ojai Valley, it remains a place held in high regard, deep respect, love and awe.

 

The above column originally appeared in the Ojai Valley News on Dec. 3, 1999. Republished with permission.

In conjunction with the museum’s current exhibit, “Fine Portraits, Fine People,” we present Anca Colbert’s recent Ojai Quarterly essay on the art of photographic portraits, which focuses on Ojai’s own Guy Webster.

A portrait! What could be more simple and more complex, more obvious and more profound.

– Charles Baudelaire, 1859

 

By Anca Colbert

The celebrated Paris Photo Show came to Los Angeles for the second year last April. The event, held at Paramount Studios in the heart of Hollywood, attracted the interest of the press, celebrities and a public eager to look, get informed and collect new artworks. “Portraits of Our Time,” a monumental limited-edition book of Annie Leibovitz’s work just released by Taschen Books, was drawing crowds and creating a sensation at their booth.On the heels of the two previous fairs held in January, the Photo L.A. show and the Classic Photo show, the huge success of this international event confirms the strength of the photographic art market, and the growing importance of Los Angeles as a city that supports this young and popular art form.

In the Spring 2014 Issue of the Ojai Quarterly we considered the accelerated evolution of photography as a technique and as an art, and the difference between a snapshot and a photograph. We continue our series on photography by taking a closer look at photographic portraits.

Painted portraits were part of art culture for centuries. To this day, Da Vinci’s “Mona Lisa” remains the most celebrated and mysterious of all paintings. But ever since the birth of photography around 1850, portraits in the most accessible and democratic of all art forms have captivated a wider audience, always hungry for more images, and in recent times with an ever-increasing appetite for personalities. From Nadar and Stieglitz to Gertrude Kasebier, Man Ray, August Sander, Cartier-Bresson, Henri Lartigue, Brassai, Diane Arbus, Mapplethorpe, Cindy Sherman, Irving Penn and Richard Avedon, we all have our favorites.

So, what’s the fascination with portraits? And what exactly are they? Are portraits able to capture the psychological character of the sitter? How “personal” is that image of a person? Portraiture is commonly regarded as a window into the soul of the sitter. But is it? Could it be a window into the soul of the photographer?

Photographic portraits, which fast surpassed the popularity of traditional painted portraits once the technology was available, are perceived as a way to capture reality. But how much do they, really? Whether in studio settings or in photojournalism circumstances, a psychological layer adds a twist to the situation, as Richard Avedon plainly put it: “A photographic portrait is a picture of someone who knows he is being photographed.” As we look at a portrait, we look at the dynamic interaction between an artist and a sitter, and at the energy in that space between them.

Photographic portraits are an interpretation of the reality of the person being photographed, as imagined by the photographer, and as perceived by the viewer. It’s all illusion, played by a trio.

Ojai is famous for being home to artists and creatives. Among the distinguished photographers who have lived and worked here are Horace Bristol (renowned for his photos of Dust Bowl migrants), and more recently Cindy Pitou Burton, Donna Granata and Guy Webster.

Guy Webster moved to Ojai 34 years ago. While he still commutes to his studio in Venice for weekly shoots of celebrities, he loves his family life in this heavenly valley, where he rides one of his many motorcycles every day. Guy loves speed, and motorcycles are his lifelong passion.

One of the early innovators of rock ‘n’ roll photography, Guy started by shooting album covers and billboards in the 1960s for groups that included the Rolling Stones, the Mamas and the Papas and the Beach Boys among numerous others.

As the primary celebrity photographer for hundreds of worldwide magazines, Webster has captured a vast range of talent in the world of music and film, from Igor Stravinsky to Truman Capote, Alan Ginsberg, Zubin Mehta, Alan Watts, Sean Connery, Mick Jagger, Jack Nicholson and Michelle Pfeiffer to his longtime Ojai friends Malcolm McDowell, Mary Steenburgen and Ted Danson.

Born and raised in Beverly Hills, Guy became a photographer by accident. It was 1961; he had just graduated from Yale and gotten into the Army. While stationed in Carmel, he volunteered to be a photography instructor without knowing anything about photography. He spent the night reading up on the subject, and the next day started teaching it! Later, back in Los Angeles, he had connections with some rock ‘n’ roll groups and record companies. The photograph that made him famous was the 1965 record cover of the album California Dreamin’ for The Mamas and The Papas: he shot them in a bathtub. After that, Guy says everybody in Hollywood wanted him to photograph them; it was the beginning of his stellar 50-year career.

The essence of photography is light and shadow. Guy Webster’s portraits speak that language fluently. I brought up my keen interest in the light quality of his portraits, particularly in his black and white work; he was pleased to tell me about his love for Italian painters, Caravaggio in particular. Caravaggio’s illumination of his subjects, known as Tenebrism, is a technique similar to chiaroscuro by which strong contrasts of light and dark are used to add emotion and drama to an image as if seen through a spotlight effect or illuminated by a candle. Other Baroque painters used that technique with memorable results, notably Rembrandt, Rubens, La Tour and Vermeer.

 

Guy Webster’s portrait of his friend John Nava offers an interesting reflection: double take on the painter living in Ojai, world renowned for his portrait work. Webster catptured the interplay of light and shadow in his old farm house in Spain, every subtle transition in the fabric of the shirt and on the wood of the chair, and the profile of the painter gazing intensely at what we cannot see.

In his early portraits of Barbara Streisand and Bob Dylan, it’s interesting to note the light glowing around their throat area, a subtle indication of their golden voices.

Columbia Records sent Guy on an assignment to photograph Igor Stravinsky at his home: he captured the composer, whom he immensely admired, in a very close-up frontal shot and at an angle focusing the light on the composer’s large forehead, clearly intending to give a hint of his genius.

A savvy storyteller, Guy exudes intelligence and calm. There is kindness, even sweetness, to his portrait work with celebrities — no doubt a reflection of his own temperament projected onto his sitters.

 

 

“A portrait is not a likeness. The moment an emotion or fact is transformed into a photograph it is no longer a fact but an opinion. There is no such thing as inaccuracy in a photograph. All photographs are accurate. None of them is the truth.”

— Richard Avedon

 

 

The Peter Fetterman Gallery in Santa Monica has been one of the finest galleries to exhibit classic and modern photography in the Los Angeles area since opening their space at Bergamot Station twenty years ago. Fetterman has a penchant for portrait photography, and his recent show “Portraits of the 20th Century” focused precisely on this theme. I asked Peter to share some thoughts about one portrait in the show that particularly moved me, the one of Martin Luther King Jr. by Dan Budnik:

“I have always had a great personal interest in civil rights photography. In my research for images for MLK for a civil rights exhibition, I came across this one. It was 1994. I had never heard of the photographer. He had fallen through the cracks. I found him, met him and discovered an untapped great archive. This is the greatest King portrait ever, taken moments after he had finished his greatest speech, ‘I have a Dream.’ Tears come to my eyes as I write this now, so many years later.”

In my book of art life, to be moved to tears by an image is always a good sign. Art has that power to touch us deeply. As the fascination with portraits retains its appeal with art lovers and remains an essential form of expression for professional photographers, photography continues its irresistible ascension as the visual art form of our times.

 

Anca Colbert is an Ojai-based art consultant and curator; the editor and publisher of Arts About Town, a guide to the arts life and activities in Ojai; and the arts columnist for the Ojai Quarterly. This column first appeared in the Quarterly’s Summer 2014 issue. Republished with permission.