OPENING RECEPTION: SATURDAY, DECEMBER 2, 2006, FROM 5 - 7PM
t is tough to think of California before the land developers and PR guys got involved. Before the beach was crowded, before the two-piece bathing suit, before the eucalyptus tree was imported, before macadam made graph paper out of every alluvial plain.
Back when the only palm trees were in the little spring near Palm Springs, when the only roads were well worn paths following the trading routes of California’s natives, when visiting the neighbors meant three days on a buckboard, when a package from home had to come ‘round the Cape.
Our current exhibit recalls these early days of a young State. Most of these paintings were done before the word “subdivision” was coined. They memorialize streams, rivers, trees, glens, glades, flowers, meadows, estuaries, lagoons, outcroppings, and vistas – many of which are gone today.
There are several ways to share this early view of California. When my wife and I walk up on the Sedgwick where the land is still untouched the odor of California scrub sends us back a hundred years. When we visit the Tuolumne Meadow we hear the wind moving like lowing cattle in the confers like the earliest visitors must have heard. When we visit the streams feeding from Mount Shasta we see trout dancing through the eddies as they have for thousands of years.
But there is one more way to see this early view of California. Visit our little village and look at the work of these painters who packed up their colors and brushes and canvases and painted for you and I.
- Frank Goss
