For those who haven’t seen yet, the annual 2016 sculpture trail went up on May 7, and will remain on display through May 4, 2017.
Each year, the city of Cloverdale collaborates with the community of Geyserville to install new sculpture along the roads and highway.
The sculpture trail website describes them as “varied, from fanciful to statuesque with some defined by the material used.”
The producers for the sculpture trail are the Cloverdale Arts Alliance and the Geyserville Community Foundation. The trail is planned and executed entirely by volunteers. There are nine new pieces in Cloverdale this year and 11 in Geyserville.
A “People’s Choice” award went to Diego Harris for his piece “Fire Tree” in Geyserville.
In Cloverdale, this year’s “Best in Show” award went to Arizona-based sculptor Hector Ortega, for his sculpture “Blind Faith”; “Honorable Mention” went to Pierre Riche for his piece “Into the Wind,” and the “Judges’ Merit” awards went to Susan Leibovitz Steinman for “Cartwheels” and to Beth Hartmann and Allegra Burke for “Hung Up.”
Bear Republic gave the $1,000 award for the Best in Show piece, and Jane and Ron Pavelka of Pacific Union Real Estate gave $250 toward the honorable mention.
Victoria Heiges of the Geyserville Community Foundation works with Joyce Mann of Cloverdale to organize the trail each year.
“I’ve been doing it five years,” Heiges said. “I lived in Marin and had a summer home up here. And about seven years ago, we moved up full time. And I had done this for the city of San Rafael Public Art Works sculpture program. So when I moved to Geyserville, I wanted to do this as sort of a thank you to the city.”
She joined forces with Mann after finding out about Cloverdale’s longterm sculpture program, and they decided to pool funding. “Joyce and I merged and picked up the best parts of both programs,” she said.
Heiges says that personal motivation has helped her keep the project going.
“What’s really nice for me is, I do ask for donations, and people are very willing to donate, and my friends support it,” she said. She cites positive reactions from passers-by as another reason to keep the sculpture trail going. “(I’ve received many) comments, saying how much they like it. And of course, not everybody does, but my feeling is that when you look at art, you should decide if you like it, and why. If you don’t like it, why? The ‘why’ is important.”
To her, the importance lies in the dialog that ensues. “I’m not saying any of this is good art or bad art, I’m just saying you should think about it,” she said.
“And maybe talk to somebody about it. I like that conversation that art gets people started, strangers talking to each other. And I love the fact that people are driving along, and they stop and get out of their cars and see my wonderful little town.”
To Heiges, this is the best year yet. “I think it’s the best ever. The program just keeps getting stronger and stronger.”
Hector Ortega’s piece “Blind Faith,” located in Geyserville, won “Best In Show.” Last year, he had a piece called “Intention” in Cloverdale.
He’s been making sculptures for 12 years, and started creating things as a child. He studied architectural drafting and design to learn how to draw sculptures.
Ortega’s motivation is ongoing. “Throughout the year, I tell myself I’m going to make so many pieces,” he said. “And this one, I decided I wanted to do a really large vertical piece, and I wasn’t sure where I was going with it, so I had to make a little model,” he said. “Usually I have stuff locked in, I don’t have to make models. This one I just played with geometry and had a bunch of pieces that I cut out of wood and I thought those would look cool and then I started stacking them, and then it eventually just kind of built itself. Every time I make a piece or a sculpture, everything’s changing. It’s never the same.”
Blind Faith took him two months to finish. “I think during that process of building that, I had a lot of doubt of it actually going together, and even though there were drawings and there was a maquette, I just kept buying materials like ‘Just make it, just make it,’” he said.
“So at one point I remember, I was like ‘Dude, you just have to have blind faith and all this will work.’ I put it together, and everything came together awesome.”
His favorite part of the sculpture trail is the community surrounding it, which he describes as a symbiotic relationship.
“Everybody associated with the organization – everybody’s just great,” he said. “The support that (the Cloverdale Arts Alliance and the Geyserville Community Foundation) are bringing to the artists, the opportunity they’re bringing; I really like that they’re exposing a lot of people to large-scale art…people that are maybe normally in a setting (where they wouldn’t see sculptures). I think that’s important, for the community and people to see that it’s a big world, there’s different ideas, there’s uniqueness to everybody. It’s cool to see all the different variations of sculpture in one realm, but they’re all different media.”
The call for entry of the next round of sculptures begins in January 2017, for sculptures that will be displayed May 5, 2017 to May 3, 2018. There is no entry fee.
For more information about the art, visit www.101sculpturetrail.com.
