- Elizabeth Larson
- Posted On
Resilience project arrives in Lakeport; Friday reception planned
LAKEPORT, Calif. – The Resilience project has arrived in Lakeport and is being celebrated with a Friday event.
The project now has exhibits at several locations in Lakeport: Lakeport City Hall, 225 Park St.; the Lake County Arts Council’s Main Street Gallery, 325 N. Main St.; and the Lake County Courthouse, 255 N. Forbes St.
The city of Lakeport held a reception for the exhibition before the May 15 city council meeting.
Resilience is a project of the Middletown Art Center, or MAC, with support from a grant from the California Arts Council, as well as assistance from Adventist Health, Lake County Arts Council and other local partners, agencies and businesses.
The project arose as a response to the wildland fire devastation the county experienced.
Executive Director Lisa Kaplan told the Lakeport City Council that 28 MAC members lost their homes in the Valley fire. She was one of them.
“Losing your house is a big deal. Losing your artwork is devastating,” said Kaplan, who knows the full extent of that personal tragedy, having lost 40 years of her own work, documentation and sketches. “That’s pretty intense.”
In the fire’s aftermath, as she set about getting back to everyday life, she said she was noticing nature coming back, and seeing what remained. There was new green growth set against red earth.
“This is how I survived all of this time of recovery is by finding beauty in the change that was happening around us, and seeing it as an opportunity to reframe tragedy,” she said.
She said nature can be a mirror for the community’s recovery. “When we look at the resilience of nature we can find the resilience inside of us.”
The environment didn’t just change in response to the fire; the economy and the county at large also were altered, she said.
“All of my work has been about the fire,” Kaplan said. “I don’t even mean for it to be. It just works out that way.”
Kaplan said MAC is “an incredible little flower that keeps on growing.”
The Resilience project has provided low-cost classes in a variety of mediums – painting, photography, written word and printmaking – since June 2017. MAC said more than 220 people – from age 12 to 85 – have participated in the classes as part of reframing their experience of the wildland fires.
Last week MAC opened its latest exhibit, “Resilience: Art In Dialogue with Nature,” at its Middletown headquarters, 21456 Highway 175 at the junction of Highway 29. The exhibit is open Thursdays, 11 a.m. to 4 p.m.; Fridays, 11 a.m. to 6 p.m.; Saturdays, 10 a.m. to 6 p.m.; and Sundays, 11 a.m. to 4 p.m.
This Friday, the Lake County Arts Council’s First Friday Fling will include an opening reception for the Resilience project at the Main Street Gallery. The event takes place from 5:30 to 7 p.m. Featured artwork comes from the project’s Soul Painting and Drawing the Inside Out classes, exhibited in half of the main gallery.
Another Resilience exhibit will be featured from 4:30 to 6:30 p.m. Saturday, June 9, at the Fore Family Vineyards tasting room in Kelseyville, 3920 Main St.
MAC said additional upcoming exhibits are planned at Clearlake City Hall and Adventist Health Clear Lake’s Mountain View Café.
Visit http://middletownartcenter.com/ for more information.
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