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Friday, Jul. 10, 2009

Yosemite Alive

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Two Stanislaus County artists are featured in the Artists-in-Residence Art Show at the Yosemite National Park Museum.

Bruce Klein, a Modesto painter, and John Barnett, a Turlock sculptor and retired art professor from California State University, Stanislaus, are among seven artists invited to participate in the show.

On display are about 50 pieces of art, including prints, drawings and fabric art. The show is sponsored by Yosemite Renaissance, a nonprofit group that promotes the arts in Yosemite.

Klein, 66, a full-time painter, has contributed bold paintings of El Capitan and other landmarks of the park.

"I'm particularly interested in the structure and form of some of the rock formations," he said.

He was an artist-in-residence about 10 years ago, splitting it up to paint two weeks in the winter and two weeks in the summer. He has been systematically painting the valley and the high country in different lighting and weather conditions over the past two decades.

He works in plein air, painting on the landscape. He said his paintings tend to evolve while he is working on them. Once when he was painting a collection of rocks between Yosemite Falls and the Royal Arches, the lighting changed and he saw in a new way how the rocks receded and overlapped one another. Suddenly, he was painting a different scene from the one that he had started, he said.

"I'm not painting nostalgia, I'm not painting stereotypical images," Klein said about his style. "I want to do strong, original paintings that encourage the viewers to explore their cognitive, emotional responses."

Barnett, 65, was an artist-in-residence twice at Yosemite -- once in 1990 and once in 2000. He also has participated in more than a dozen artist retreats at the park, where artists go out for four or five days in the wilderness.

Raised in the Seattle area, he grew up going on hiking trips with his family and always has had a great appreciation for the outdoors.

"Before I got in Yosemite, I was already deeply involved with the theme of ecological forms -- forms from nature have always inspired me greatly," Barnett said.

His art in the show includes a piece that looks like the stump of a tree and a sculpture that looks like tree bark.

"What people make out of it is really up to their experiences and what they see in it," he said, adding that he hopes it will inspire viewers to get in the outdoors themselves. He said that today, too many people are separated from nature and unfamiliar with its wonders.

"I wish for that appreciation of nature and our natural environment," he said.