The Ongoing Art Scene in Arivaca
May 1, 2009
If the roots of art began in the Arivaca area back in the 1940s, it has continued over the years. Lifestyle changes brought about by a move to this isolated haven sometimes trigger the artistic need to create a new inner world. Arivaca viewscapes attract both artists and those with an appreciation for art in their home and yard. Besides the lovely homes that have been on the Home Tour, there are the amazing ones never-to-be-revealed. (Don’t call me.) While meditating on this subject I began to realize just how many artists there are or have been, who ought to be remembered for the beauty or thought-provoking scenes they created.
The late Jim Oyler retired to Arivaca in the 1980s and took up woodworking, working with mesquite and imported exotic woods creating lamps, jewelry, plaques, and whatever you might want, his latent talent spilling out in an array of items.
We can’t forget the late Randall Hill, whose pastels of Baboquivari (mostly) were generously given to his friends. One might call them primitives, but they sprang out of a yearning artistic spirit.
Jean Buchanan’s watercolors can be seen hanging on walls all over town, produced through two short stays in Arivaca. Jean was originally from Texas, with college degrees in fine arts. She moved to New Mexico a couple of years ago. Many of the paintings she did here featured landscapes of the mountains surrounding Arivaca. Her paintings also feature Native American figures, Mother Earth and her favorite subject, buffalo. See her work at this website: http://ostyn-newman.com/Buchanan_Home_Page_of_Paintings.html
Even if Arivaca has not been considered an artists’ colony in the past, perhaps we need to rethink this. Serious artists are working away in their studios all over the area. Some of them exhibit in the Arivaca Artists’ Coop on Main Street, but many do not. All kinds of art and crafts are being produced, including painting, sculpture, ceramics, photography, quilting, woodworking, pottery, gourd decoration, tie dye, barbed wire art, candle-making, as well as the traditional art mediums of drawing, oil, acrylic, pastels and watercolor. Some of these are professional artists with extensive education and experience in the field of art and illustration. Here are the stories of a few:
C Hues has been in this area for many years, in Ruby and the surrounding hills, and in her house in Arivaca since 1996. However, she was raised on the shore of Lake Superior on the Upper Peninsula of Michigan. Educated in the Art Institute of Chicago, she has a M. A. in Sculpture. C has practiced all forms of art, from drawing with prisma color pencils, pen & ink, acrylics, which include murals all over town, tiles, water color, bronze, porcelain, gourd art and pottery. Although no longer selling her art, she is an artist because that is what she is. “I consider myself a mystic realist,” she says. Her themes are directly from the Source, revealing cosmic forces. This she has come to, over the years. Surprisingly, she started as a fashion illustrator at the Chicago Academy of Fine Arts. After working on a PhD at the California Institute of the Arts, the Walt Disney Foundation School, where she worked on an animated film she came to the realization that a PhD didn’t mean anything to her. She started walking around the country and down into Mexico as far as Guatemala, for four years back in the 70s, sleeping in a different place every night, paying her way with drawings, until she finally came to Arivaca where she stayed. “I see artists as healers,” she says, “Everything is a lesson.” A conversation with C is healing. Her house is an amazing tribute to her ability to make something from nothing, and to create beauty and order from a concrete box. She lives on one townsite lot, which is 25 X 175 feet. To get the house where it was inhabitable (of course it is still a work in progress) she traded, over the years, 32 paintings, 180 pots and maybe the same number of drawings to workmen who could build for her in exchange for her art. Everywhere in the house you see evidence of her experience with the Mayan artistic tradition and her belief in the revelation of cosmic forces. Robert Fricchione’s mesquite countertops adorn the bath and kitchen, but everything else is pure C. Tiled window ledges, murals, sculpted and painted walls, all are works of ordered design. No surface is exempt from meaning.
Ari Ellis has lived in Arivaca for the last few years, in the townsite, where she is active in the Water Coop. Ari has a BA of Fine Art in Painting from the University of Illinois, and a M. A. of Arts in Expressive Arts Therapy. From Massachusetts to California and New Mexico, she has exhibited and worked continuously since she finished her Masters degree. Ari says, “I feel into the world through my visual sense. Images arise while adventuring at the frontier of consciousness. Painting is always journeying into the unknown and finding myself, and the whole world, there.” Ari’s paintings express a commentary on life. She works in oils, using rich bright colors with abstract line and form. She has an exhibit at the Red Rooster Restaurant at the moment, but is also developing an extensive web site, linked to the Arivaca.net web page. She also has a line of note cards, which can be found on the web as well. Totems are another art form that Ari is doing, using the medium of wood, carved and painted. Ari creates “representations of the powers and mysteries of the world around us.” Each is one-of-a kind, reminding us of the “elements, creatures and nurturing gifts of earth and spirit.”
Christina Baklanoff comes from a family with several generations of women artists. Born in Michigan, she has a BA from Ohio State in Fine Arts and an MA in fine Arts from Louisiana State University. She spent years doing stained glass and had a studio where she taught classes. She has lived in many different places, including Chile and San Francisco. Only after family members moved to Arizona did she and her husband decide to look for a place here. She has lived in Arivaca for the last 12 years. She has come back into painting in the last few years, landscapes and figures, and includes painting on old boots and gourds as ornaments and art objects, as well as masks. It took her awhile to become familiar with the light in this new country. One of her more striking subjects is brightly colored horses or ravens on a red background, which she uses almost as a neutral color. She noticed that the desert with its perfectly neutral buff color seemed to require a reaction from her own art to the extreme, hyped up deep, rich colors. Horses are part of the culture of the west and her own life– her husband’s paint horse finds itself a subject in many of her paintings. Christina describes her art as almost stylized realism, taken out of context with colors that do not exist in nature. Christina exhibits at Tohono Chul in Tucson, Tubac Center of the Arts, Cristopher’s in Amado as well as the Arivaca Artists’ Coop.
Alison Deming, a resident here of four years, is a watercolorist who favors landscapes and portrait painting. She came into her own as an artist after a career in psychology and counseling. She loves to share her joy of art and teaches classes in her home studio. Alison has such a pleasant way of presenting the techniques of watercolor, that even wannabe artists can be successful!
More on the artists of Arivaca, past and present, in no particular order, in next month’s column.
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