In Her Words … Lani wrote these “comments” after the Benicia Magazine featured a photo of her artwork in an article about the upcoming Art of a Community exhibition at Arts Benicia in January 2015.
Ode to David Best — Lani’s entry in Art of a Community, 2015
I started life in the East coast. I majored in art and theater in college. I went to New York and studied in a theater school there and later with a New York design school. I spent several years in theatre and summer stock. Then I ended up with a top Interior design company “Yale Burge Interiors.” I worked for another design company in Washington D.C.
When I moved to San Francisco I joined Val Arnold Design Associates; later I had my own design business. I had an art gallery on Union Street in San Francisco in the 70’s and an art gallery in Emeryville in 1989. Thank goodness for the Earthquake. I was losing money on a gallery showing “unknown artists” and the earthquake gave me an excuse to close. Then I went into the Corporate Event Planning business.
I started the first Ecology Center in San Francisco in 1979. I was on the board of the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art for over 25 years and the board at the San Francisco Art Institute for over 15 years.
I was the cover editor for a San Francisco Magazine, “The Nob Hill Gazette” which was a monthly magazine. And we featured Northern California Artists on the Cover.
San Francisco in the 70’s and 80’s was all about volunteering for some amazing fund raising events like the “Black and White Ball” for the Symphony, the “Elegant Celebration of Christmas” for ACT which was wonderful table settings staged all over the SF Design Center.
The most exciting event was the Artist Soap Box Derby put on by SFMA. All the artists created ‘cars’ (cars with no motors) that rolled down a big hill in a major park. These artist designed soapboxes were wildly unique. There was a 12 foot pencil, a 10’ tennis shoe, edible cars made of Bread; one that looked like a rolling Polaroid camera that spat out pictures as it rolled. The San Francisco Museum’s soap box derby was the wildest art event I have ever known.
David Best had the most outrageous soapbox of all. It was the body of a real car from the fifties, the kind with giant fins, and almost twice the length of cars today. It was covered with all sorts of crazy things including his mother’s living room lamps just over the rear fins, a moose head on the front, china plates, tennis shoes, you name it. That started “the Gluers Museum” in San Rafael, and the car was much copied. I studied ceramics with David early in 1970. He was a teacher at SFAI and he started “Burning Man, in the 80’s. My pink car is my Ode to David Best.
I have always done 3 dimensional collages. Recently I have started a series of “ODE TO” Odes to artists that have thrilled me, taught me, inspired me, engaged me, amused me, or made me think!
Jim Dine is an east coast artist from the mid 60’s. His art was about finding art in everyday things. At the same time Andy Warhol was doing Campbell Soup prints, Dine was doing tools, Bathrobes, Hearts. Back then, hearts were more unusual subjects than they are these days. Not as off the wall as soup cans, but unusual.
I want to continue this series ‘honoring’ artists I admire. Next will be Robert Hudson, who in my mind is the most amazing colorist, to be followed (somehow) by Benicia’s own Robert Arneson, who is my idea of the most amazing portrait artist in every medium in this world. And if I have the nerve I might finish with Edward Kienholz.
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Lani Mein