This post ends with a story of how a good deed turned into an art environment. If you’re impatient to find out how this could be, skip to the end, but you’ll be missing some pretty cool art along the way.
A recent trip to California to visit family and to tour the fabulous new San Francisco Museum of Modern Art turned into a glorious road-trip. In just three days the Bay area and surrounding countryside offered up the most glorious array of artistic diversity.
The undulating SFMOMA is now my favorite renovation of the myriad of museum upgrades that have swept the country in the last decade (shout out to Deputy Director Ruth Berson, for her incredible leadership in this project).
I really loved the little display of idea “sketches” for the museum renovation presented by the architectural firm, Snohetta:
Across the street from the SFMOMA is the wonderful Yerba Buena Art Center which–jackpot!– was showcasing at the time of my visit one of my very favorite artists, Tom Sachs.
Whacking together unbelievably complex and massive sculptures with little more than packing tape, cardboard and soda bottles, Sachs has constructed his visionary “Europa”, as part of his ongoing fixation with NASA’s space program. He has thought of “everything the astronauts will need to successfully complete their mission to Jupiter’s icy moon” including the all important outhouse which bears an uncanny and satisfying resemblance to a jet plane’s lavatory.
Ruth Berson also introduced us to her beloved “Creativity Explored”, a studio workshop and gallery for artists with intellectual disabilities.
We loved it so much we went back for a second visit on Monday and saw the studio buzzing with productivity.
I doubt you’ll find another group of artists anywhere more intent on their work than here.
With the couple extra days I had to tool around in California I headed up to Napa Valley. The drive through Napa Valley vineyards
is a visual feast in and of itself. But we went to drink in a couple other sites. Our first stop: the Di Rosa Museum. A San Francisco friend had brought me there a couple years ago and I wanted to revisit with my son, who has inherited my penchant for all things quirky.
Situated on the shore of Winery Lake, the Di Rosa Museum houses the estate collection of the vineyard owning, art collecting, bon vivants Veronica and Rene Di Rosa.
One has the feeling as one tours the estate (and one can only see the DiRosa collection as part of a museum tour–don’t just show up there unannounced), that collecting art served as a great excuse to the Di Rosas for non-stop partying. It’s a wild ride following the twists and turns of the DiRosa’s art tastes.
Art car master, David Best retooled this Cadillac for Veronica Di Rosa.
And Rene jumped into the act of art making with this one creation of his own:
Well, his hanging car may not be great art, but just about everything else in his collection is top notch–some of my favorite artists and so many great artists new to me, all hailing from northern California.:
These next two are Sandow Birk’s. Though created many years ago, they were apt viewing during our miserable campaign and election season.
And this is Chester Arnold. Where have you been all my life, Chester?
And Mildred Howard’s luminescent Bottle House:
OK, finally! The real destination of this trip through Napa Valley (you will now be rewarded for slogging through this post to get to the bait tangled on the hook of the first sentence). Litto’s Hubcap Ranch!
Located just one hour’s drive north of San Francisco, in Pope Valley, Hubcap Ranch was the retirement home of Emanuele “Litto” Damonte. Litto, came to California from Genoa, Italy in the early 1900’s. His father passed on his stone mason trade to him which provided Litto with lucrative work, including marble carving for the William Randolf Hearst mansion.
A smooth ribbon of a road now passes by the ranch but at the time that Litto settled in Pope Valley the rough and winding dirt road was pitted with potholes which tended to pop the hubcaps off passing automobiles. Litto thought he’d do a good turn by collecting the hubcaps and affixing them to his property fence.
He assumed that folks who had lost them would pick them up the next time they drove by. Apparently nobody came to reclaim their hubcaps and soon the collection grew to the point where passers by thought Litto just LOVED hubcaps, so they started dropping off contributions for his “collection”. These too, he affixed to the front fence til that was full. He then extended the collection to the barbed wired that looped around the ranch.
Before Litto knew it he had become a hubcap connoisseur. He singled out the most select examples for special placement on his out buildings and his home.
No one’s got an exact count, but it’s said there may be as many as 5,000 hubcaps catching the rays on Hubcap Ranch.
Two years after Litto’s death, Hubcap Ranch received the official designation of California Historic Landmark.
Hubcap Ranch is currently the residence of Litto’s grandson, Mike Damonte, who does his best to maintain the property
in all its quirky glory.
Quirk 