"When you put it all together, there's so much openness here, and every home has a beautiful view of the hills," says Donna Solin, a former Humane Society counselor whose love affair with animals is carried on through her art -- pastel, oil, and acrylic paintings of cows, horses, tigers, and other wildlife.
"I just want to paint the hills so that a person can look at the painting and say, 'Ah, I remember being there,'" says Deni Wetzel, a retired horse stable manager who recently reconnected with her passion for landscape painting.
Five years ago, at the Marin Open Studios event held each May, fellow painter and valley Eichler owner Logan Franklin observed that many of the participating artists, including both Solin and Wetzel, lived in the two nearby Eichler neighborhoods, commonly called Upper and Lower Lucas Valley.
Taking advantage of an opportunity, Franklin, who's spry and gracious with a neatly trimmed silver hair, proposed that locals come together for an open studio of their own. The idea caught on, giving birth to the Lucas Valley Artists group. Each year, they band together and open their doors for the Holiday Open Studios, a Thanksgiving weekend exhibition.
A former publisher of a San Francisco peninsula newspaper, Franklin is a natural maestro, albeit a modest one, who dusted off his organizing skills by uniting this core of 17 Lucas Valley artists, including 14 Eichler owners. "We pride ourselves in being a very loose-knit group," says Franklin. "There are no bylaws or officers."
Like Franklin, the petite and energetic Solin is an original member of the Lucas Valley Artists who shares a passion for Eichlers and a connection to nature. Solin recognizes that she lives in a special place, and reminds us that Eichler architect Claude Oakland, perhaps the valley's most revered artist, once lived in an Eichler home only a few doors away from her.
What Solin's home lacks by not having an atrium, it gains in wall space. Her long hallway that extends from her home's entrance is perfect for showcasing art -- exclusively her own, featuring detailed compositions of animals.
Melissa Woodburn, another member, was once an artist waiting to be set free. Melissa started her career in the arts as a graphic designer in Chicago, but cold winters pushed Woodburn and her husband west to San Francisco nine years ago. While growing frustrated with what she calls "picky clients," Woodburn eventually reappraised her design career and felt it was time to "get her reward" -- which meant doing her own art full time.
Today Woodburn works almost exclusively with what she calls "three-dimensional art" -- intricate basket designs that unite clay and pine needles. She began integrating art mediums shortly after the 911 disaster, when she got the urge to work with clay for the first time. "That was part of my self-healing process," Woodburn says. "I was dropping my younger boy off at a class at the Terra Linda rec center - a kids' clay class - and I thought, 'Oh god, that really looks like fun. I want to be doing that.'"
Entering Woodburn's Eichler home of seven years, one is drawn to her sculpture of a young woman sitting on a park bench, hunched forward, with her knees bent and hands grasping the edge. It's appropriately titled 'Body Language.'
Woodburn's studio, set in the rear yard of her Eichler, is a converted pool house filled with open space and light. "I grew up in a house in Iowa that my father designed, very much like this one," says Woodburn of her Eichler. "We lived out in the country then, so the rhythms and cycles of nature are very important to me. Everything about my present home is tuned to nature -- and that's why this Eichler is so perfect."
Similar to Woodburn, Logan Franklin lives for his art, first bitten by the art bug in 1983. Set back over a cartoon feature he had hoped to syndicate in the early 1980s, Franklin went on a hike shortly afterwards that took him to the College of Marin's campus in Novato. While there, he peeked into an art class and knew at that moment painting was for him. "I knew that's what I wanted to do, whether I made any money at it or not," he says today.
Identifying with the Eichler theme of simplicity and openness, Logan points out that "glass and light make the Eichlers particularly well suited for art. If you put artists in a small room, they tend to paint small."
Since Franklin retired from the publishing business in 1981, art has gotten him all jazzed up. Many of his paintings, which stylishly adorn his Eichler walls, feature vivid jazz musician scenes as well as animals and landscapes. Everything is pulsating with color. "I tend to paint in a contemporary manner using simple, bold lines and primary colors," Franklin says. "There was a time when I was timid about color; but when I finally opened up, I really opened up."
Because of the number of artists that have joined the Lucas Valley Artists, and with its open studio's growing appeal, one gets the sense that an artistic renaissance is brewing in Lucas Valley.
In this easygoing and tranquil neighborhood embellished with hidden cul de sacs, gabled roofs, swimming pools, and that ever-present muse of the hills overlooking the valley below, something unique is indeed on the rise.
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Man in Transition --
Pursuing His Passion
In many ways, Terrell Touchstone is a man in transition. Retired for the past two years after a 20-year run as a research engineer for Chevron, Touchstone, 59, is now in the midst of making a vocational shift from being a carefree retiree to a full-time artist consumed with his work.
Touchstone's Lucas Valley Eichler, his home since 1978, recently became an empty nest when he shuffled off his youngest son, the last of four children, to college.
Touchstone's evolution continues at home. Next, he plans to "revamp the house and simplify things," making more modifications to his atrium, which he recently converted into a work studio. He also wants to transform his interior into a gallery to showcase his paintings, mostly oil on canvas of realistic landscapes and marine scenes.
The alternatives to working at home really weren't appealing for the Lucas Valley Artists member, especially after he visited some of the commercial studio space in Marin available for rent. "They're basically little cubicles, and you're just walled off from everything," Touchstone says. With more space, light, and openness at home in his Eichler, the choice seemed easy. "The outside options never appealed to me, never made sense," he says.
Touchstone presently uses a former bedroom as a mini-gallery to showcase his art -- complete with gallery-style track lights. Love for the outdoors inspires his work, mostly natural scenes from around Marin County. One of his more compelling pieces is 'View from Conservation Garden,' a portrait of Frank Lloyd Wright's palatial Marin Civic Center radiating with vibrant blue, red, and gold colors.
"So, it's kind of like we're in a transition phase here -- converting the house, being self employed," Touchstone says, still seemingly not completely at ease with all of his life's new changes.
But his great passion for art, he says, will get him through it all.
For Solin simplicity is what makes the Eichler design work for her as an artist. "The architecture is simple and plain, so you can put fine art, you can put modern art, you can put ceramics [in an Eichler]," she says. "Other artists that are sculptors have huge statues in their houses. How can you put that inside a 'normal' house without it looking
very odd?"
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