For Tony Thacher, ranching exhibit is the real deal

The following article first appeared in the Wednesday, Jan. 1, 2014 edition of the “OJAI VALLEY NEWS” on page B1. It is reprinted here with their permission.

Original organizers of Ojai Pixie Growers Association (from left): Bob Davis, Tony Thacher, Mike Shore and Jim Churchill. (Photo courtesy of Thacher Family Archive)
“Historic Ranching Families of the Ojai Valley” at the Ojai Valley Museum exhibits heirloom furnishing, family photos, ranch equipment and more. (Photo by Roger Conrad)


For Tony Thacher, ranching exhibit is the real deal
by
Leticia Grimes
OVN contributor

The Ojai Valley Museum is continuing its popular exhibit, “Historic Ranching Families of the Ojai Valley,” for an additional two weeks. The groundbreaking exhibit will now be open through Jan. 12, giving visitors a rare look at six of the pioneering ranching families who created the iconic landscape of the Ojai Valley.

This exhibit began, appropriately with a member of one of Ojai’s oldest ranching families, Tony Thacher, who is on the museum board. Like a true farmer, he started with a seed of an idea for the exhibit and grew it carefully. Planted in the rich soil of the Ojai Valley Museum’s resources, it flourished under the curating expertise of Ojai Valley Museum Director Michele Ellis Pracy.

During visits to each ranch, she selected heirloom furnishings, family photographs and historic ranch equipment for the exhibition. In the museum, she designed a space for each family, where these treasures could speak in visual language about the realities of ranch life.

Growing beyond the museum walls, the exhibit branched out into sold-out events at the ranches, involving the community in a celebration of Ojai’s agricultural heritage.

Thacher brought the idea for the events to the museum, and with the individual ranch owners, organized picnics, barbecues, wine tasting, as well as a 100-year anniversary party at the Haley Ranch. Finally, thanks to Thacher’s suggestion and to the pro bono work of local videographer Chris Ritke, there is now a feature-length documentary of interviews with the ranching families playing in the gallery for visitors.

Taking a break before unloading a truck at his ranch, Thacher sat down in the library of the Ojai Valley Musuem and talked about how the exhibit came into being.

With a heritage from a family that defined Ojai’s unique combination of education and ranching, Thacher is well qualified both to speak about the past and the dynamic changes of the present.

Edward Thacher, his great-uncle, came to Ojai in 1887 and worked as a manager for the Topa Topa Ranch. Sherman Day Thacher, his grandfather, followed soon after and eventually founded Thacher School. His wife, Anne, is the daughter of another pioneering Ojai family, and with husband Tony, rebuilt the family citrus business after the disastrous flood of 1969.

Tony and Anne Thacher and family members at Friends Packing House on Maricopa Highway. (Photo courtesy of Thacher Family Archive)
Oliver Ayala and grandfather, Tony Thacher, at the Pixie Growers Picnic in 2009. (Photo courtesy of Thacher Family Archive)

Leticia Grimes: How did you get the idea for the exhibit?

Tony Thacher: I think the reason I wanted to have a rancher exhibit was that, as a member of the Chamber of Commerce, I’ve tried to instill in them that it’s not all just about tourism, and that there are really three main industrial engines in this valley, the oldest being agriculture. Tourism was started way back in the 1870s, 1880s, when people came out here for their health; and the other leg of the three-legged stool is education. Those three industries make Ojai what I think it is. So I wanted to emphasize agriculture, coming from an agricultural background, both my wife’s family and my own.

I want people to realize how tough it is to be in this business. It’s a seven-day-a-week job. We do hope it rains someday, so we can take a day off — although what we usually do is fix things indoors when it rains. I wanted to emphasize to the valley the value, the history. It’s not a static thing; it’s changed during my lifetime. This is a multimillion dollar business. If I had to guess, counting the cattle guys, it’s probably in the range of 10 to 15 million. This money comes in from actual manufacturing of something, so the money really does come into the valley.

So in talking with Michele, I said that since ranching is family-based, we have to pick some historic families. She said that we could have only six, maximum, because of the limitations of space. So I thought about that, and gathered some ranchers together, which isn’t easy to do, because they rarely agree on anything except water and citrus prices. We came up with a list of about 40 who’ve been around for more than a generation, then narrowed it down to six: the Clark family, who’ve been here forever countywide; the Haley/Hoffman family, they’re also an old Ventura County family; the Lucking family — sadly, Bill Lucking passed away, but his daughter, Carly Ford, is running that ranch; Bob Davis I grew up with, so it was easy for me to twist his arm; another one that’s near and dear to my heart is Dewayne Boccali; then there’s the Munzig/Anderson family — their ranch is where my grandfather first arrived in 1887.

LG: What are some of the challenges of ranching here?

TT: Farmers are scrambling to figure out what they can grow with the high prices of inputs in Ojai. Land’s ridiculous; we couldn’t possibly expand. The cost of water has accelerated so much that, as a part of your budget, it’s getting desperate. People have adapted. If you watch the video, you can see that Roger Haley has tried a dozen different kinds of domestic livestock to make a living. He also makes saddles. We could grow raspberries, but they need hoop houses like they have in Camarillo and Oxnard, I think people would be very upset. People do understand — we are their viewshed; we are what they see.

LG: Would you say that ranching here is in jeopardy or just passing through another challenge?

TT: You know, farmers are great complainers — it’s not raining, it’s raining too much! There’s a reason for that. We have almost no control over our inputs, like water, and very little control over what we can sell our products for. I worry for my kids and grandkids. When they came back from college, both our daughter and our son wanted to continue the tradition, so we’ll keep fighting. But you do worry about Ojai turning into San Fernando.

After the interview, Thacher returned to his seven-day-a-week job, with no day off in sight yet because of the long dry spell. But despite all the challenges and hardships, he and the six ranching families gathered a rich harvest this fall for the community, opening their histories, their homes and their hearts, giving us nourishment to last a lifetime.

The exhibit has been made possible by a grant received from the Heritage Fund through the Ventura County Community Foundation, as well as general donations and income from the companion special events.

The Ojai Valley Museum, established in 1967, is supported in part by museum members, private donors, business sponsors and underwriters, the Smith-Hobson Foundation, Wood-Claeyssens Foundation, the city of Ojai, Ojai Community Bank, Rotary Club of Ojai and Ojai Civic Association.

The museum is at 130 W. Ojai Ave. Admission is free for current 2013 members; non-member adults are $5, children 6 to 18 are admitted for $1 and children 5 and under are admitted free. Gallery hours are Tuesdays to Saturdays, 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. Tours are available by appointment. Free parking is available off Blanche Street at the back of the museum.

For more information, call 640-1390, ext. 203, visit www.ojaivalleymuseum.org or e-mail ojaimuseum@sbcglobal.net. The museum also has a Facebook page.

Dennis Shives His Way

This article appeared in the Fall 2017 issue of The Ojai Quarterly, and is posted here with permission. “The Art of Dennis Shives” exhibit is on view at the Ojai Valley Museum from Oct. 14, 2017 through February 25, 2018.

Dennis Shives His Way

by

Mark Lewis

 

For the better part of seven decades, self-taught Ojai artist Dennis Shives has followed his own path, often while going barefoot. Now, that long and winding road has led this notable free spirit to the Ojai Valley Museum, which this fall is honoring him with a career-retrospective exhibit. After forging a career on his own terms, far from the art-world limelight, Shives finally is ready for his close-up.

Shives banner 2

THE BUILDING was nondescript, an unassuming stucco affair fronting on El Roblar Drive west of Padre Juan Street in Meiners Oaks. But its display window was lit up at night, and something in it caught the eye of the artist Gayel Childress as she passed by one evening in the early 1980s.

“There was this wonderful wooden Gatling gun in the window,” she says. “I said I had to meet whoever made that.”

The creator turned out to be Dennis Shives, an artist and woodworker who used the building as his studio and the window as his gallery. Childress discovered to her delight that Shives’s hand-cranked Gatling gun actually worked, except that it fired rubber bands rather than bullets. He had crafted it a few years earlier using wood left over from another project – oak, ash, a bit of walnut – and part of a bronze light fixture he had salvaged from the Smith-Hobson House while it was being converted into Ojai’s City Hall. Childress was charmed by this whimsical, one-of-a-kind creation, and by the man who made it.

“I’ve been a fan ever since,” she says. “He really is a wonderful artist.”

That’s high praise coming from Childress, a co-founder of the Ojai Studio Artists group. Nor is she the only one who thinks so.

“A really incredible talent,” says Khaled Al-Awar, who in years past has featured the Gatling gun and other Shives pieces in his Primavera Gallery in the Arcade.

“He’s brilliant,” agrees Danna Tartaglia, who sells Shives prints, and framed photographs of his “Making Faces” rock art, in her Tartaglia Fine Arts gallery. “He’s an original – maybe the original Ojai artist.”

But Tartaglia and Al-Awar agree that Shives is not the easiest artist to represent, because of his unconventional attitude toward his career. He insists on asking dauntingly major-league prices for his major pieces, in part because of all the work he puts into making them, and in part because he seems too attached to his creations to let them go.

Partly as a result, Shives has struggled all his life to make a decent living, and to win wide recognition in the art world. Nevertheless, he has remained true to his chosen vocation. And now, on the eve of his 70th birthday, the spotlight finally has found him, in the form of a career-retrospective exhibit opening Oct. 14 at the Ojai Valley Museum. Which prompts the question: After a lifetime of wandering in the wilderness, is Dennis Shives ready for the red carpet?

"The Art of Dennis Shives" at the Ojai Valley Museum.
“The Art of Dennis Shives” at the Ojai Valley Museum.

BORN in Santa Paula in 1947, Shives mostly grew up in Ojai’s Upper Valley, where he attended the Summit School. Later he attended Matilija Junior High and Santa Paula High, from which he graduated in 1965. As a child he was drawn to art, due in part to encouragement from his maternal grandmother, a talented amateur painter.

“I always knew I would be an artist,” he says.

But he hated the art classes he took in high school and at Ventura College. There were too many rules about how to make art, and too much emphasis on how to make a living from it.

“I really didn’t learn anything in school,” he says. “So actually I’m self taught.”

The point of art classes, as Dennis saw it, was to tame the wildly creative urges that welled up within him, and channel them in approved directions. He declined to submit. He was a classic case of the child who refuses to color inside the lines.

“They are trying as hard as they can to kill that thing within you,” he says. “You’re supposed to be who you are. People need to do what they need to do, instead of sitting and copying other people.”

Despite his interest in the visual arts, the first career he pursued that of a musician. A true child of the ‘60s, Shives grew his hair long and tried his hand at rock ‘n’ roll, playing harmonica and singing with the Ojai All Stars, the house band at a rowdy, rough-and-tumble dive called the Ojai Club (located where Ojai Pizza is today). This was a fraught period when the local flower children and the local rednecks were frequently at odds.

“We were the hippies and they were the alcoholics,” Shives says. “This was a drunk cowboy town. There was a brawl every Saturday night.”

The All Stars’ lineup also included local guitar legend John Orvis, along with the brothers Norman and Curtis Lowe and others.

“We had a great time,” Shives says. “But then I switched into the arts.”

He took up woodworking, sculpture, painting, and whatever else intrigued him. He was a craftsman too, creating gold and silver jewelry, custom-carved rifles, exoticlooking furniture, even a house in Alaska for his Ojai friend Jack Estil. He never worried about not being formally trained. He just plunged in, and figured it out for himself.

“What the process is all about is learning not to be afraid,” he says. “Fear is the biggest killer of creativity.”

His longtime friend Sergio Aragones, the famous Mad Magazine artist, admires Shives’s extraordinary versatility.

“He’s the true Renaissance man,” Aragones says. “He’s a man who can do everything – and well! He has spent his life perfecting every craft.”

And to what end? To amuse himself, and other people, by telling stories that make everyone smile. There is an implied narrative embedded in most Shives pieces, whether it’s a painting of snails in a garden eating a flower, or a carved-wood door featuring a charging rhinoceros, or a soapstone sculpture of an octopus going for a walk.

“It was the storytelling process that I was interested in,” he says. “You’re playing with the story. It’s a way of entertaining people.”

When Shives turned his hand to creating parade floats, he entertained the entire town. People in Ojai still talk about the one he and his friend Rick DeRamus came up with in 1984, the year the Los Angeles Summer Olympics held rowing events at Lake Casitas. Shives’s float for that year’s Fourth of July parade was inspired by the legend of Old Hoover, the monster-sized largemouth bass said to lurk in the Casitas depths, too wily for any angler to hook.

“All the local kids dressed up as minnows and frogs,” he says, “and we chased ‘em down the street with the fish.”

The first Old Hoover float in Ojai's 1984 Independence Day Parade.
The first Old Hoover float in Ojai’s 1984 Independence Day Parade.

For the 1986 parade, Shives and DeRamus constructed an even more elaborate version of Old Hoover. This second mechanized fish float was 40 feet long, 10 feet wide and 14 feet high, with a tail that wagged, gills that emitted air bubbles, and a huge mouth that swung open and shut as the bass pursued a man in a frog costume riding a bicycle along Ojai Avenue.

This was classic Shives: He put in seven months, uncompensated, to create Old Hoover II, then spent his last $5 on gas so he could drive it in the parade. People loved the float, of course, but they didn’t pay anything to see it.

“I never did anything that made me money,” he says. “I just barely scraped by.”

That period in the early ‘80s when he had the building on West El Roblar Drive was an anomaly. Generally, Shives has made his art in borrowed spaces, or at home. These days his studio is the house on Willow Street he shares with his life partner, the acupuncture provider Laurie Edgcomb. Here, Shives is surrounded by his sculptures, paintings, carved masks, bubble-blowing devices and fanciful furniture pieces. Many have attracted the attention of collectors, but Shives seems reluctant to part with them.

“Making art is completely different from making money,” he says. “I’m not doing this to sell stuff. I’m doing this because it makes me want to get up in the morning.”

On the other hand, he concedes, “You need to make a living.”

Indeed, and making a living as a working artist poses enormous challenges. Those who succeed usually find that they must put as much time and energy into marketing their art as they do into creating it.

“I guess you have to go out and seek it and chase it down,” Shives says, with a noticeable lack of enthusiasm. He’d much rather drive his ancient Volkswagen van out to the East End, take off his shoes, and go for a walk in Horn Canyon.

Shives is not averse to making a buck or two, if he can do it his way. He sells hand-carved wooden walking sticks, baby spoons and magic wands (a Shives specialty). He also sells copies of his charming 2014 book, “True Stories To Be Read Aloud,” a collection of autobiographical stories. (A follow-up collection is due out this fall.) And, while he seems reluctant to sell his paintings, he happily sells prints of them at Danna Tartaglia’s gallery. She says they are popular choices with visitors looking for something Ojai-esque to take home with them – such as “Smudgepot Bears,” featuring merry ursine revelers cavorting in an orchard on a cold winter’s night, with Chief Peak providing the backdrop.

The Smudging Bears by Dennis Shives.
The Smudging Bears by Dennis Shives.

“I’m not sure what success is,” Shives says. “I do what I do, and feel pretty successful in my own little realm.”

Case in point: Shives is spectacularly successful at sand sculpture. He has a shelf full of first-place trophies won at contests held at Cayucos Beach and elsewhere. This probably is the art form for which he is best known outside of Ojai, but these are things he cannot sell – and that’s partly what attracted him to sand sculpting in the first place. He creates a large-scale piece in a few hours, takes a photograph, and walks away.

“If these things last the afternoon, they’re lucky,” he says. “Nothing lasts forever.

Dennis Shives and MAD Magazine cartoonist Sergio Aragones in a sand sculpture car by Shives.
Dennis Shives and MAD Magazine cartoonist Sergio Aragones in a sand sculpture car by Shives.

SHIVES is a familiar sight in Ojai: tall and tanned with long white hair, a flowing beard and a gentle smile, he favors khaki work shirts and cargo shorts, and gives the impression that he has never owned a pair of socks. If you want to walk a mile in his moccasins, you’ll have to do it barefoot, for when Shives hits the trail in the Los Padres National Forest he does it sans shoes.

“For two years, I took every Wednesday off and walked with him,” Khaled Al-Awar says. “This man has an incredible knowledge about nature.”

Roger Conrad of the Ojai Valley Museum says that Shives’s art is powerfully informed by his strongly felt connection with the natural world.

“His vision is derived from nature with childlike enthusiasm to see, touch, and create vivid experiences for himself and those that interact with his art,” Conrad says. “Whimsy is his language to find the spiritual in all living things. His message is that the lives of all creatures matter.”

“Whimsical” is a word often applied to Shives, and it’s not one that connotes serious artistic purpose in today’s high-powered art world. Untutored artists like Shives who lack academic credentials often are pigeonholed as outsider artists or folk artists. But Gayel Childress says Shives falls into none of these categories.

“I love outsider art, but his is quite sophisticated,” she says. “He has that outsider spirit, but his art is certainly not naïve. I don’t think there’s a term for Dennis. He’s one of a kind – part inventor, part engineer, part dreamer, part carpenter, part painter. Little touches of everything.”

Conrad, who is helping to organize the museum’s upcoming Shives exhibit, is similarly unwilling to hang a label on this unique artist.

“His art defies categorization,” Conrad says. “Some of his work seems primitive but other works display the hand of a seasoned artist. He pleases himself and dismisses being labeled. Above all else his art is enchanting and fun.”

The museum exhibit is a big deal for Shives, and his friends and supporters are thrilled for him.

“It’s his time,” Childress says. “I really want everyone to see this show. I want everybody in Ojai to know about him. I just want to see him honored because he surely deserves it.”

“It’s about time,” Aragones says. “He deserves it because of the variety of his art.”

To be clear, Shives had not exactly spent the past few decades hiding his light under a bushel. He creates his strikingly original artworks and steampunkish devices, and puts them out there. He writes and publishes his stories and reads them aloud to audiences. He paints frogs and other fanciful figures on classroom walls at the Monica Ros School. He shapes his sand sculptures for all the beach-going world to enjoy, if only for an afternoon. And everyone who drives along Ojai Avenue through the center of town has seen his work – he crafted the replacement lion’s face for the Pergola water fountain, after the original deteriorated.

Shives also provided facelifts for the stone lions at the entrance to Foster Park, and he designed the life-size sleeping bear that reposes near the front door of the Ojai Valley Museum (one of his “Specialty Monuments” for Rodger Embury’s Rock & Water Creations).

Bear sculpture in the museum's front courtyard.
Bear sculpture in the museum’s front courtyard.

“The most important part of the whole thing is to stay an artist,” he says. “Most of the people I know who went to art school don’t do art anymore.”

Remaining an artist allows Shives to wake up in the morning knowing that he will spend the day doing what he wants to do, and being who he is. “Then I feel as good as I can feel.”

Shives is pleased about the upcoming exhibit in part because he hopes to inspire other would-be artists to follow their own paths, as he did.

“What you’re doing is inventing your life,” he says. “Anyone can do this if they really wanted to. You sit down and figure out how to do it. But most people are too smart for that. They go for the money.”

Not Dennis Shives. He chose freedom instead. He’s happy with the way things have worked out for him, and he thinks more people should make the same choice, so that they “can have a great life too.”

“I had a wonderful time,” he says. “I really did.”

Effie Skelton

This story was written by Cricket Twichell.  It is based on a piece she wrote for the Ojai Valley News in the 1980’s.  

Effie Skelton

effiemayskeltonThis lady knew about small beginnings. Born in Oklahoma around the turn of the century, Effie Skelton weighed in at 1 1/2 pounds. Told there was no way this child could survive, the Cherokee Indian auntie assisting at Effie’s birth ignored the doctor’s grim prognosis, wrapped Effie in soft cotton, tucked her into a shoe box which she placed in the warming oven of the wood stove and then every hour fed her a drop or two of blackberry brandy. Effie kicked into high gear and eventually became a driving force in the Ojai.

After graduating from business college, Effie saved her hard-earned money and in 1927 bought a brand new Pontiac. She had an agenda— to immediately head out west—by herself— to California. “I didn’t know how to drive backwards” said Effie” but that didn’t matter. I was only going forward.”

Ending up in Ventura, Effie married a young man who worked for Shell Oil Company. They moved to Ojai where she raised 3 children and became a realtor, specializing in Meiners Oaks properties. Her weekly column in the Ojai Valley News— “What’s Doin’ in Meiners Oaks”—- had a devoted , down-home following.

Over the years Effie became concerned because so many artifacts connected with the pioneer days of the Ojai were leaving the valley. If only we had a museum which would house these papers, tools, and etc of a bygone era! The more she thought about this, the more zealous she became in her determination to stop the hemorrhaging of the Ojai’s historical items.

Other community leaders jumped on Effie’s band wagon. Bob Browne, a local anthropologist, history buff and handyman, shared her enthusiasm for creating a museum and historical society in the Ojai. He had bought a house in the highlands above Miramonte and to his delight discovered it had been the site of a Chumash Indian village. After UCLA conducted a full-blown archaeological dig on his property, Bob wanted to house the relics which had surfaced in a place where they could be enjoyed and appreciated by.the community at large. He and Effie joined forces; and soon Lynn Rains, Arthur Waite, Bill Bowie, Lois Powers and Elizabeth Thacher hopped on board.

The founding members of the museum began working the room, asking members of Ojai pioneer families to donate articles to their worthy cause. The Forest Service offered space to store the memorabilia which came pouring in. When they needed more room, Walter Gamulski offered storage space where the American Legion Hall is today if the museum group would pay the taxes and the insurance. You betcha’!

Effie and her friends put donation cans in banks, stores, motels and public buildings. She wrote articles in the Ojai Valley News to keep the community appraised of the progress of her venture and to remind readers to donate antiques etc to add to the ever-growing collections.

In 1966, 50 years ago, the Museum opened up for business in the Arcade where the realtors office is today. At the opening reception punch was served in attractive bowls the early Chinese settlers had used for washing their hair. That day Effie got to raise two flags over the new Museum, one which had flown over the capitol in Sacramento and one which had flown over the White House in Washington. Ojai had itself a bona fide Museum!

As the collections continued to grow, in 1979 a new home was found for the fledgling Museum— on Montgomery Street at the former firehouse which had been built in 1937 with WPA funds. Bud Bower donated the services of Ojai Van Lines to transport the possessions to the new location; Bob Browne and his crew built dioramas depicting animals in the Sespe back country; eye-catching displays were concocted. People came. In one year Effie, who manned the guest book every day for over 20 years, counted 7,000 visitors from 31 countries.

What started as an idea in Effie’s noggin, grew into an institution which is thriving today. Like her old Pontiac, the Museum only goes forward!