Art in the yard

With so many Chico sculptors, ceramicists, mosaic artists and glass-, metal- and wood-workers making art that lends itself to being displayed outside, it’s surprising that there aren’t more shows geared toward outdoor art. This weekend, Magnolia Gift & Garden is hosting a two-day exhibit featuring nothing but outdoor artists. Curated by Trish Howard, one of Magnolia’s nursery assistants, The Great Garden Art Weekend (Sept. 6 and 7) will feature the work of 15 artists, and in anticipation of the show, the CN&R went on a little garden-art tour, visiting the homes and the work of three of those taking part.

Don Bravo insists that he’s not an artist. He just “makes stuff.” Regardless of his claim, when you look around his neatly landscaped backyard and see the examples of the “stuff” he’s made—most strikingly the bells fashioned from old oxygen tanks or fire extinguishers and hung from gorgeous rustic archways made out of scrap metal and weathered wood—it’s obvious Bravo is indeed an artist.

But the retired metal worker and contractor is not being falsely modest when he talks about what he makes. His art is just a continuation of the work he and his father did constructing prototypes at Stanford University. Now, instead of creating something out of the ideas generated by engineering professors, he’s creating sculptures from his own inspiration, which he gets from recycled materials. Sometimes it’s straightforward: 3-foot-long sections of rebar are capped with metal architectural salvage—stars, swirls and hand-formed birds—to make garden stakes. Other times it’s a piece that requires more engineering: fashioning the rusted steel beams of a washed out bridge and a fallen sycamore branch that he found in the creek into the frame of “The Bridge,” his largest bell.

“I spend lots of time in scrap yards,” he said. “Ninety-five percent of everything I do has a former life.”

The bells are his favorite, though. “I love to get lost in the bells. It’s a spiritual thing for me,” he said.

Robin Indar’s house is like a mosaic amusement park. Next to the front porch (which is covered beautifully in tiles), unpainted handmade tiles were drying in sun. On the back patio was a 2-foot-high yellow-eyed panther covered in black tiles, and a mosaic self-portrait with bright yellow background hanging on the wall behind it. In one planter rested a multihorned Darth Maul-looking head. And that’s just a fraction of what’s on the outside. Inside the home, there was just as much to take in.

Most of the time, Indar is in some stage of tile-making or mosaic-creating. She runs her own specialty tile company (Rebel Tiles, www.rebeltiles.com) and is an in-demand public artist who has mosaic-ed everything from the big dragon in the Caper Acres playground to a giant gecko on the side of a three-story building in Sacramento.

In preparation for the garden-art show, she laid out several round stepping stones on her living room floor, each decorated with an outer ring of glow-in-the-dark tiles surrounding varied mosaic patterns and an inner glow-in-the-dark ring around different central images—a hummingbird, etched floral patterns, etc.

She said she was still pulling together stuff to take to the show, but in addition to the stepping stones she’ll have fun little garden accents like flying bumble bee-stamped tiles and realistic eyeballs, some with spikes perfect for poking into Halloween pumpkins.

From outside Bernie Vigallon’s home on the east side of Chico, the sound of screaming power tools emanated from the garage/shop where the retired public-school administrator was busy putting together some new versions of his popular rustic birdhouses made from recycled materials.

The former Fair View High School principal and director of Alternative Education at Chico Unified School District looked every bit the relaxed retiree tinkering in his shop. At least 100 of his birdhouses, each one different from the other, literally hung from the rafters. But he’s actually still on the job—working part time, teaching shop in a skills-building program called Youth Build Chico for kids with probation backgrounds. And he’s still helping by way of the birdhouses he builds. All the money he makes goes to students in need. In the last year, Vigallon said he gave out $2,500 in gifts—including a $1,000 scholarship to a young artist heading to Seattle Art Institute this school year. He’s also used the money to buy tools for students, pay for tuition at Butte College, and even purchase set of tires for one young woman who needed a car to get to work.

“A lot of kids get a lot out of it,” he said.