artists on the ridge

Blair Goodwin Studio | 371 Drakes View Drive | Inverness, CA 94937 | 415 663-1616richardblair.com | kathleengoodwin.net | blairgoodwin.com | pointreyesvisions.com

Artists on the RidgeKathleen Goodwin and Richard Blair’s Newsletter

August 10, 2012

Richard Blair Was Back At SF MOMA

Buckminster Fuller, the visionary inventor, was recently honored and remembered in a show at the Architecture Dept. of the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art. His geodesic domes were embraced by the hippies as an ideal organic shape to live in. It was dif-ferent, it was inclusive, and as people later discovered, somewhat impractical, as furniture didn’t fit the curved walls, sound reflected

everywhere, and they were difficult to seal against rain. But the domes were romantic. When the hippies were young, and

naturally amorous, the idea of screwing in the middle of a dome in the woods, surrounded by a surplus parachute, or paisley draped walls was irresistible.

I had a friend, Jan Du-Bois, who took me to see the domes at Pacific High School, which was an alternative school for troubled kids in the Santa Cruz mountains. The kids all built their own domes, in the

spirit of the times, eschewing rulers as the rumor goes. Leaky yes, but beautiful and individual. Here are some photographs of the domes.

SF MOMA commissioned Sam Green to create a art piece, a multi-projector narrative on the walls of a dome shape, to explain stages of Bucky Fuller’s career. I was contacted by the filmmaker to provide my photographs for the section on

Pacific High. I gave him scans of proof sheets, and he used them in their rough form. The communal kitchen of the school was the scene of kids passing around a huge pipe, kind of a gag pipe, filled with pot. One kid, mugging for the camera stuck the pipe in his ear. Green featured this image in his video instal-lion showing the tenor of the times – as well as the dome images. Tragically the

boy with the pipe, died of a drug overdose many years later. His name was Kelly, I knew his mom, so, what was meant as a light-hearted view of this era of the hippies, became for me, a meditation on the pain life sometimes brings.

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Fine Art NewsKathleen recently sold two painting to two young collectors

in Berkeley, who love her work (and Point Reyes). They saw Kathleen’s paintings in Point Reyes Visions, and went to her

website to see her new work. Kathleen is being very productive lately, and is working with her teacher, Dorallen Davis, at the Marin Art School, so her paint-ings are informed by new methods of color

mixing and the influence of painting with others in a studio setting. We are looking forward to having a full gallery show of her new West Marin images in the fall. We will announce the date soon.

Point Reyes Visions and Point Reyes Guidebook are at the Apple itunes Store, plus on Kindle and Nook!

We just finished digital versions of our popular Point Reyes books. They have a new twist on book design that you might not have considered. If readers are using phones and tablets to read with, in either horizontal or vertical orientation, and picking any font they find legible, it completely changes the form of a book. Everything has to flow, yet still look good in the process. We have always relied on lots of images, and the new books have them too. The writing is 90% Kathleen’s. We suspect that word books will be on readers’ ipads, smart phones, Kindles, and Nooks, while art books-like ours-will be on high resolution flat panel displays for large screen viewing.

Sixties FlashbackRichard just reconnected with an international collector

in South Africa whose interest is the music and culture of the sixties. Previously he bought Richard’s prints of the Jefferson Airplane’s Grace Slick, Carlos Santana, and Jerry Garcia. Now for his daughter, he is getting a 30x40 inch print of the Hip-pie Bus at Altamont Speedway, from 1969. This is the images which is on the cover of California Trip.

An interesting story: Barnes and Noble looked at the two cover choices for the book when it first came out, and the buyer picked the Surfer cover. Sales were not as good as we had hoped. We thought that the new book was the best Cali-

fornia pictorial, breaking a lot of new ground, but the buyer underestimated our audience–the surfer at sunset was the safe tour-ist image–not what the

market wanted.Barnes and Noble got a new buyer, as the company

shifted management, and we gave him California Trip with the bus cover. He reordered the book for 37 stores in Cali-fornia and sales have taken off. Every week we send off a new load to the distribution center.

There is a new group buying in the bookstores now-and they want edgy, challenging work. This is a relief to Rich-ard, who got his start as a street photographer, shooting the bizarre and jarring. During the sixties, as things got weird in Berkeley and SF, even in Yosemite, Richard was recording the craziness, even though he was even more drugged and wilder than most!

So it is great that people, even those who weren’t born until the sixties were long over, are strongly interested in that era.

Nature photography has become more generic, as digital photographers mindlessly recreate the cliches of the past with the new and improved digital cameras. The problem that many nature photographers have is a lack of magic in their work. It’s sharp, the color is good, but for a scene to be evocative, it needs a talented eye–not just a well-managed computer/camera. So it’s great that edgy work is now hot. Natural landscapes are lovely, but boring is never desirable.

Hippie Bus at Altamont Speedway, 1969.

Coast Range from Moutn Tamalpais, 2011

Elephant Mountain from Shell Beach. 2011


Mill Valley Fall Art Festival Sept 15-16

It’s super hard to get into, with expensive entrance fees, the art is seen in a dark redwood grove, and the ground is sloping; but the word is that it’s one the the best art shows one could possibly be in. Maybe it’s the late model Mercedes, Porsches, and Jags circling the square downtown. We are both taking part and worried about the logistics of setting up, avoiding fog drip, creating a level space, and what-to-bring, the artist’s version of what-to-wear.

So if festivals are your cup of tea, this might be worth con-sidering for some weekend fun. Besides arts and crafts, there is live music, food venders, and Mill Valley has great restaurants and people watching. Please say hello if you go to the event.

Visiting the Studio

We are open almost every weekend. We have decided to be open to the public with regular show openings, lectures, classes, house concerts, BBQ parties, even movie showings, projected with a high-def projector on a silver screen. Admis-sion is always free, but contributions of wine and pot luck to share are gratefully appreciated.

Our schedule is in flux, as Richard just had endoscopic nose surgery to fix an infection, a deviated septum, polyp removal,and clearing of a lot of rocks and dead wood. This newsletter is proof of that...

As he recovers, and we catch up on chores, and deal with the Mill Valley show, we will post dates and times on the web-site. We have been hermits up here too long. Inverness needs a little more entertainment which we will soon provide for our friends and the community!

Book Publishing We have sold out of Point Reyes Visions and Visions of

Marin except for a few copies. The Marin book will get re-printed next time we are proofing in China.

Our next title is a collaboration with Richard’s father, Ed Blair. He was a well-known NYC poet. Richard is putting a lot of his late sixties street photos with Ed’s verse in a new book out next spring.

We are slow workers at books. We are too small to put out stinkers-each book has to do well or we are out of business. So, when it is finished our Point Reyes Maritime History book will be a visual stunner.

Bali Village Life is a life-long effort by us. Five month-long trips, working every day–combined with great luck–is going to make this art book on Bali wonderful. Over 50,000 images, mostly film, were compiled to do this. Tieing it together is like herding crazed teenagers–with a stong will and coaxing, we will do it.

Coast Range from Moutn Tamalpais, 2011

Ranch near Drakes Beach, 2012

Muir Beach inlet 2012

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