Mollyblog

The Evolution of an Artist

(published in Ventana Magazine September 2006)

Elisse Pogofsky-Harris’ paintings reflect the inner workings and education of a lifelong creative spirit

Looking at Elisse Pogofsky-Harris’ paintings is almost like cracking open her mind and gazing into her dreams. There are paintings about her mother’s death, her former husband Paul Suttmann, her dog. Her personal spirit guide shows up. She retells stories from her Jewish heritage and depicts scenes of great loneliness and isolation that can only be personal. Her emotions and passions and fears and beliefs spill onto the canvas without restraint. They are so vulnerable and open that looking at them can bring you to tears involuntarily.

And yet the woman behind these works is almost exactly the opposite of what you’d expect. Pogofsky-Harris is neither flamboyant nor chatty. She doesn’t reveal much about what she’s thinking or feeling. She’s reserved, soft-spoken, quiet and elegant. Her friends describe her as private and complex. It seems one reason her emotions live so vividly on the canvas is that they hardly seep out of her personality at all. And the energy and vivaciousness required to ingest and process these ideas and emotions so thoroughl and beautifully? That seems better characterized by her tiny, long-haired dog Bravo, who jumps and runs and wags and pants with excitement in direct proportion to Pogofsky-Harris’ stillness and containment.

The day I visit her at her modest-but-nice Ojai home, she waits for me outside her studio. She wears a brown linen long-sleeved shirt, matching pants and brown leather shoes that loop around her toe. She holds her hand out almost timidly and leads me inside the large, utilitarian space. There’s a stick wedged between her foot and the sandal, but she doesn’t seem to notice. Her skin is very smooth and her eyes are unblinking, almost hidden by a fringe of thick brown bangs streaked with silver. She seems very serious, even when she’s joking, and is almost impossible to read.

Inside her studio, however, her work speaks volumes. Leaning against one wall are stacks of aquatint prints depicting shadowy figures standing in doorways or sitting in chairs, waiting for something. Hanging across the room is a large painting of a lone figure in a dark boat stranded in an even darker ocean. Next to that are two paintings of cloudscapes, the skies bright blue and the clouds soft, cottony and seemingly in lazy motion. On her easel is one of her newest series: four terra cotta squares with skies, suns and oceans only hinted at by large, sweeping brushstrokes and lots of empty space.

Though these different series of paintings initially seem so unique they could almost be painted by four separate people, they all have one thing in common: a strong, visceral emotional quality as personal and evocative as reading someone’s private journal. As such, they tell the story not only of Pogofsky-Harris’ past (one haunting painting contains figures of people and pets she’s lost, all waiting for a boat, while another shows her mother’s spirit leaving her kimono-clad body), but of her education and evolution as an artist.

In the beginning

Pogofsky-Harris’ art career started with illness. At age 10, she spent an entire month debilitated by mononucleosis. To help pass the time, a friend gave her a paint-by-numbers set. It wasn’t long before Pogofsky-Harris was turning the pages over, preferring to create her own pictures rather than color in someone else’s. She took art classes in junior high school and high school, including a special tutorial at a local museum. She hated the class itself — where she sat in a large auditorium and sketched a model far, far away — but loved her afternoons at the museum, where she admired the empty spaces in Cezanne’s work and was especially struck by Piet Mondrian. She didn’t know why, exactly, she liked Mondrian, she just knew that it appealed to her. “It made me feel something,” she said.

Knowing she wanted to pursue art but not having much guidance about how to do it, she took a friend’s advice and attended University of Michigan. She wasn’t impressed by the art program, but she was by several of her teachers, including award-winning painter Frede Vidar and experimental artist Milton Cohen, who introduced her to John Cage and Alan Capro. “I learned a lot about the art world from [Cohen],” she said.

Pogofsky-Harris’ real education began, though, when she moved to Italy to attend the American Academy in Rome. It was there that she blossomed. Not only was she constantly surrounded by some of the world’s greatest historical artworks, but she was immersed in a culture of serious, well-trained artists who taught her what it means to be a creative professional. She counted pop artist Red Grooms, abstract expressionist Willem DeKooning, and magic realist painter Gregory Gillespie as friends. She met and married (and modeled for) great American sculptor Peter Suttmann. Pogosky-Harris was in one of the world’s most artistically rich cities, and at the center of the most interesting, innovative and technically virtuosic art scene at the time.

The result of this remarkable education is that Pogofsky-Harris managed to learn art history, perfect artistic technique, understand the lifestyle of the artist, and value the importance of having her own artistic voice, all at the same time — a feat that few artists ever master. All are apparent in her works. Her pieces always reference art history — from Renaissance and baroque Christian paintings to elements of French painters like Eugene Delacroix. Her attention to detail, whether in etchings or oil paintings, betrays her years of classical training. The depth and breadth of each series comes from the seriousness and commitment she learned from other artists in Italy. And her strong, personal, unique identity comes from an innate confidence that was nurtured and encouraged by her community of artist friends.

“She has a very unique approach that’s non-indigenous in the United States,” said Donna Granata, founder of the Ventura-based arts foundation, Focus on the Masters, and also Pogofsky-Harris’s friend. “She’s an anomaly.”

A personal perspective

Pogofsky Harris’ works now are in private collections from Beverly Hills to London, including those of Jack Lemmon and Lynn Redgrave, and in public collections from the Carnegie Museum in Oxnard to Rice University in Texas. Her pieces have been shown in galleries across the country, as well as in Italy, Israel, Nairobi, Australia and Nepal. She’s won several awards and is well-respected in the art community.

But like many serious artists, her daily life seems far away from fame and acclaim. She lives at the end of a series of winding streets in Ojai with her husband, actor Robert Brown (of Star Trek and All in the Family fame). The house is full of antiques and art both she and Brown have collected over the years. She drinks coffee from a delicate china cup while sitting on a velvet cushioned bench, looking out the window toward the lawn and a small but gleaming swimming pool.

This is where she started her series of seascapes, after studying and trying to depict the drowning death of 19th century feminist Margaret Fuller. It’s where she moved on to cloudscapes, having spent so much time on the clouds and skies in the seascape paintings. After doing nearly 40 cloudscapes, she noticed “they just started coming apart.” That’s when she started her newest series — the vivacious, almost abstract suns and seas and horizons against a bold terra cotta background — while working nights in her studio.

This is where she opens her soul onto her canvas. And as a diary of Pogofsky-Harris’ inner life, these new paintings, with their celebratory colors and free, loose strokes, seem to suggest that the artist has recently found new happiness and joy. When asked about it, she seemed slightly bewildered though not disbelieving. “I don’t feel any different,” she said. But she doesn’t deny that her paintings are anything other than personal. “It always comes out of my feelings and who I am,” she said.
And that, said Granata, is what makes Pogofsky-Harris’ work so powerful and so unique.

“Elisse is so genuine … having courage to put this kind of soul searching in the public eye,” said Granata. “We need more people like that in the art world.”

The Story of Buildings

(published in Ventana Monthly Magazine November 2006)

Cynthia Thompson, President of the San Buenaventura Conservancy, on history, homes and a community identity

You might expect the President of San Buenaventura Conservancy, the organization responsible for identifying and protecting landmarks and historical buildings across the county, to live in some beautiful, historic home with ground-breaking architecture and a high-profile first owner.

But Cynthia Thompson isn’t exactly what you expect. The L.A. native lives in a duplex in Oak View — “All we could afford,” she says. And she wasn’t saying as a little girl, “When I grow up I want to be a historic preservationist.”

In fact, Thompson started out in the movie industry, as a buyer for set decoration and props. She might have stayed in L.A., and in this line of work, if life hadn’t intervened.

After the riots in 1992, she moved to Ventura County to give her kids (two sons and a daughter) a safer place to grow up. However, she was still working in L.A. and fully planned to return to the city when her kids were grown.

“For the first six years I lived here, I really didn’t live here,” she says. “I slept here.”

But in 1998, her stepfather died. It was clear she needed to move her mother to Ventura, and that she’d have to stay in town to take care of her. That’s when she applied for a job at the Pierpont Inn, hoping her experience doing historical research for the movies could lead to a job as a historian and period-specific interior designer. It did, thanks to new owner Spencer Garrett. And that’s when her life changed.

“I was totally fascinated,” she says. She spent increasing amounts of time doing research at the Ventura County Museum of History and Art, learning about the historical buildings all over Ventura, about the importance of cultural tourism, and about financial incentives for properties that are officially designated. Riveted by this new field of research, she enrolled in a course on historic preservation at USC. “It just sort of grew from there.”

Another shift came in 2000, as she was helping plan a celebration for the Pierpont’s 90th anniversary. In conjunction with the museum, she helped organize the 1910 Ventura County Exposition, an event which brought together historical societies from across the county to present booths reflecting their community’s culture at the turn of the century. “It was just fabulous,” she says. Around the same time, the Downtown and Midtown Community Councils wanted to plan an event to celebrate their architecture, producing the first Ventura Architecture Tour.

The final catalyst in the birth of the Conservancy, and the new direction of Thompson’s career, came in 2004, when it was clear the Mayfair Theater would be lost. This building wasn’t only a magical window into another time, but was the only building in Ventura designed by star architect S. Charles Way (known for his Art Moderne and free-line modern style).

With so many people in the community coming to appreciate Ventura’s unique architecture, and faced with the heartbreak of losing one of its best examples, a group of concerned citizens came together to keep such a thing from happening again. Thus, the Conservancy was born. Soon after, Thompson’s life took shape around historic preservation: She’s not only president of the Conservancy’s board, but an historic preservation consultant and period-inspired and period-correct interior designer.

Why does she do it? Why is preserving a sense of Ventura’s history important?

On a very basic level, says Thompson, “your identity is in your built environment.” It isn’t only Ventura’s unique position sandwiched between the ocean and the mountains or its quirky agricultural history that makes it, well, Ventura. It’s the mission, the old bank building, the Bellamaggiore, the charming midtown houses. These are what define Ventura, says Thompson, and what makes it both worth living in and worth visiting.

And if it’s worth visiting, that means it’s bringing in tourist revenue: from people staying at our hotels, eating in our restaurants, shopping in our malls and paying for our goods and services. “Tourism is extremely important to the lifeblood of a city,” explains Thompson, “and particularly to a seaside community such as Ventura.”

On another level, historic preservation is a movement that runs parallel to the sustainability movement, both trying to conserve resources in an environment that threatens to use them into extinction.

“It’s about, ‘How do you find environmentally resourceful ways to maintain what we have, without this slash-and-burn mentality?,” she says. “There’s nothing greener than a historic building.”

Beyond philosophical and financial reasons for preserving Ventura’s landmarks, Thompson has a personal reason to be so involved in this process.

“I think it has to do with mortality,” she explains. “When you’re gone, you’re gone. So what is there to say that you were here?”

She points to the Pierponts and the families who have maintained the historic hotel over its nearly century-long life, or to Eugene Preston Foster, whose family donated the city’s library, Seaside Park and Community Memorial Hospital, and who was instrumental in forming the city’s school and park systems. These people left a tangible legacy behind, she says. But not being wealthy, Thompson’s contribution has to be something different.
“I think all of us would like to leave behind something that lasts — that makes a lasting impression. I can’t build buildings,” she says, but she can work with the conservancy to protect the ones that are already here — and make sure new buildings are worthy future landmarks. “It’s a way of perpetuating the culture for the future, to leave something behind that may make a difference by affecting policy and attitude in Ventura.”

So what, exactly, does a conservancy do? It raises awareness about historic preservation through events like the Architecture Weekend, for one. It works with government bodies to protect specific properties. It prepares national register, landmark and historic district norminations. Specifically, the conservancy is currently working on saving elements of the Mayfair Theater and saving buildings like the Top Hat, the Elks Lodge and the Masonic Temple building from destruction or reconstruction.
Though the Conservancy wasn’t formed in time to save the Mayfair, Thompson hopes it will be able to keep other Mayfairs from disappearing off Ventura’s map. When asked about some of her favorite projects, though, she says (in true diplomat form) that she loves them all equally. But she does point to several buildings she’s had a particular connection to: the Foster House at 2717 Ventura Avenue, and the Gould family home, added to the Architecture Weekend in 2004.

The Foster House, said Thompson, is “the single most socially significant residence in the city of Ventura.” It’s also severely neglected, often broken into and used as a squat for the homeless. The Conservancy is trying to work out a partnership with the school district, which currently owns the home, to restore it. If they don’t, she worries, “Frankly, it’s in danger of being burnt to the ground.”

The Gould House is the only Greene & Greene designed house in Ventura County. When the grandchildren inherited the house, it had no historical protection whatsoever. They could have sold it. Instead, they worked with Cynthia for four years to help get its official designation.

“And of course I love and will always deeply love the Pierpont Inn because I was so intrinsically involved in it,” she added.

She’s also excited about the way two newer projects have blended into the historical landscape. The best example of compatible infill, she said, is directly across from Memorial Park. On either side are bungalows built in the 1920s. Though the new building is larger than surrounding buildings, it blends well without being jarring. Another is the proposed WAV (Working Artists Ventura) project, a state-of-the-art community designed to provide live/work space for artists. “It can be an extremely contemporary statement,” she says.

“It’s important that 50 years from now that we have some statements in the built environment that shows we were here, that we’re creating landmarks for the future … not that we’re replicating the past.”

A perfect example of this outside Ventura, she says, is Frank O. Gehry’s Walt Disney Concert Hall in Los Angeles. “I’m not always crazy about his style, but you can’t deny genius,” she said. And there’s no question that the building is an automatic landmark, placing you at the beginning of the 21st century.”

And now, with cultural tourism at an all-time high after September 11, these issues are more important than ever.

“Buildings last a long time, but people don’t,” she says. “In the story of our buildings, there is the story of our existence.”

For more information about the San Buenaventura Conservancy, call 800-701-7237 or visit www.sbconservancy.org.

(Photo by Brenda Manookin)

Musical Vision

(published in Ventana Monthly Magazine in June 2006)

The Ojai Music Festival turns 60 and celebrates with a dizzyingly diverse program

There’s no place like Ojai: the idyllic landscape, the eclectic culture, the urban sensibility combined with rural lifestyle, and the spectrum of residents from low-income farm workers to millionaire filmmakers.

Which is why it makes sense that the city’s namesake music festival is also one of a kind. For 60 years, it’s been known in music circles as one of the most innovative, creative festivals around, thanks to multi-dimensional programming that encompasses composers from Bach to Boulez, genres from Baroque to Balinese gamelan, and guest artists from Aaron Copland and Igor Stravinsky to Peter Sellars (who staged Stravinksy’s Histoire du soldat with a cast of inner-city actors in 1992).

In fact, the history of the festival’s offerings reads like a Who’s Who and What’s What of contemporary music: quite a reputation for this year’s 60th anniversary festival to live up to when it returns June 8 through June 11.

(Music director Robert Spano brings the Atlantic. Photo by Andrew Eccles.)

But artistic director Tom Morris and music director Robert Spano aren’t balking at the challenge. In fact, they’ve relished it as an opportunity to experiment with programming. And the result is a line-up that’s dizzying in its depth, breadth and bravery, covering ground from the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra and Atlanta Symphony Orchestra Chamber Chorus doing Bach’s Dona Nobis Pacem from B Minor Mass, to one of Brazil’s leading singers presenting folk tunes with a solo guitarist.

The daring nature of the schedule is due in large part to the vision of both Morris, who was the executive director at the Cleveland orchestra before taking over at the Ojai Music Festival in 2004, and Spano, who Morris chose as this year’s musical director.

“He has wide and eclectic taste. He’s got energy,” said Morris, who has known Spano for years. “I thought that this would be somebody perfect for Ojai.”

Morris also knew Spano could handle the challenge of taking on such a feat. Not only has Spano been musical director for the Grammy award-winning Atlanta Symphony Orchestra for five years, but he also directed the prestigious Festival of Contemporary Music at Tanglewood in 2003 and 2004, with great results.

“He has a real natural brain for what a festival is,” said Morris. “He thinks about the entity of the festival … he has some sense of organic cohesion.”

Of course, Spano would bring the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra and Chamber Chorus with him. And Osvaldo Golijov, the innovative Argentinian artist Musical America named 2006 Composer of the Year and whose work Spano has long supported, seemed an obvious choice for the festival’s focus.

“He’s a very versatile composer in terms of musical language,” said Spano, pointing out that Golijov’s work engages world, folk and indigenous music from Spanish, Latin American and Jewish traditions, among others — a fact due in no small part to Golijov’s eclectic heritage as the Argentinian son of Jewish immigrants from Eastern Europe. “There’s African drumming, there’s Cuban drumming, there’s klezmer in his world.”

Spano wanted to include Golijov’s one-act opera Ainadamar, to be performed on Friday, June 9, which meant inviting worldclass soprano Dawn Upshaw, who sang the role of Margarita Xirgu when the show opened in 2003. And of course, it made sense to have Dawn sing Golijov’s Grammy-nominated song cycle Ayre, to be performed on Sunday, June 11. It only seemed natural, then, to invite eighth blackbird, the sextet known as one of the premier music groups in the world , “because of their capacity to do the Ayre series better than anyone else,” said Spano.

The festival’s programming continued to unfold in this organic, but untraditional way. With eighth blackbird already in Ojai, Spano figured he’d have them perform in the Opera in Concert performance on Friday too. And once he’d decided to present Golijov’s cantata Oceana and bring star Brazilian singer Luciana Souza to do it, it seemed natural to have Souza, known as a jazz singer but renowned for her flexibility, perform Brazilian folk songs with guitarist Romero Lubabmbo on Saturday and, on Sunday, El Amor Brujo in a flamenco style that’s unusual for the traditionally operatic piece.

The rest of the line-up is just as dizzying: The Atlanta Symphony Orchestra Chamber Chorus will sing an a cappella program on Saturday. On Friday night, sound sculptor and MacArthur “Genius” award-winner Trimpin will play a Nancarrow piano piece on an instrument he invented. There is a symposium about the search for distinction in music festivals and another about Golijov’s music.

Meanwhile, the Ojai Valley Museum will host a concurrent art exhibit featuring artifacts of festivals past and more of Trimpin’s work, and the Ojai Playhouse will screen a documentary about Betty Freeman, one of the most influential patrons of contemporary music.

The final line-up is largely the result of a meeting Spano and Morris had two years ago. Though Spano knew of the festival’s reputation and had already agreed to direct the 2006 season, he’d never set foot in Ventura County’s Shangri-La. When he finally visited, he was so blown away that the city itself became a major inspiration for the programming.

“I was flipped out, it’s so beautiful … It’s a very magical place,” said Spano, who sat down with Morris almost immediately to start planning. Though they’ve made changes in the program as recently as six months ago, about 80 percent of the final schedule was decided during that meeting. “When we got seated in Ojai and were drinking in the air … ideas started going crazy because of the location,” he said.

Morris is especially pleased with the results, saying the festival adheres to Ojai’s fundamental belief in “a sense of adventure, a sense of journey, and a sense of wide contrasts,” perfectly exemplified in the contrast on Saturday night between the nightclub feel of Souza and Lubambo’s folk songs with the following “unbelievable harpsichord concerto.”

“It’s going to be a very exciting ride,” said Morris.


(The music of Ozvaldo Golijov
will be the focus of the 2006 festival. Photo by Sara Evans.)

Of course, this may all sound like gibberish to classical music’s newcomers. Some might even wonder if a festival like this has anything to offer someone who’s never heard of the Brooklyn Philharmonic, which Spano led to critical acclaim, or the Seattle Opera, where Spano conducted three cycles of Wagner’s Der Ring des Niebelungen last year.

Spano’s answer is a resounding “absolutely.” Though the festival program will surely get the hearts of classical music veterans racing, Spano says newcomers shouldn’t be intimidated to show up too.

“I think often people get an idea in their heads that they need to know something, some piece of information, [to enjoy or understand music], and I just don’t believe that,” he said. Sure, knowing a lot about a particular piece of music or a particular conductor may enhance your experience of the festival. But not knowing doesn’t mean you won’t enjoy it. All you have to do, he said, is “be open, interested and unafraid.”

Which, again, is nothing new for progressive, experimental Ojai. It’s part of what makes the city — and this festival — so great, said Morris and Spano.

“I was very proud of Tanglewood … but you wouldn’t find this range of music there,” said Spano. “I have not seen any other festival like this. Ever.”

The 60th Annual Ojai Music Festival runs June 8 through June 11. For more information call 646-2094 or visit www.ojaifestival.org.
06-01-2006