If you were inclined to make crass commercial comparisons, you might say that this weekend, the ICB Arts Center in Sausalito is like a shopping mall for arts and crafts lovers. That is to say, the 80-some artists who share space in this four-decade-old artists’ colony are opening their studios for browsing and buying. The ICB Artists Winter Open Studios features visual, digital, and fiber art, sculpture, prints, photography, fashion, and jewelry. I like open studios because you can see the surroundings in which the art or craftwork was created and talk to the person who created it.
One such is landscape artist Kay Carlson, who lives in Greenbrae and has had a studio in the ICB waterfront complex for more than 25 years. Carlson calls herself a “California Colorist,” striving to depict the way light changes the hues and moods of a setting, especially along the Sausalito coast and in the fields of Napa and Sonoma. Working en plein air — outside with her easel and paints — she’ll labor “often for entire days to capture the effects of light and shadow.”
Another ICB artist who happens to be a neighbor of mine is Larkspur’s Claudia Cohen, who’s worked in her Sausalito studio for 28 years. Cohen creates sculpture that blends realism and fantasy — one observer dubbed her style “comic Surrealism” — in ceramic or bronze. “Just Plane Screwy” (ceramic) was created for a Wisconsin museum show of that name. “The theme of tools inspired a Gulliver’s Traveler piece with a small army controlling my screwy creation,” explains Cohen, who says that being able to see her “dreams and fantasies in tangible form is for me what creativity is all about!”
Her more subdued “Cassandra” (bronze), the head of a beautiful woman in a beautifully draped headdress, illustrates Cohen’s interest in mythology, as well as her skill in transmuting metal into flowing fabric.
It’s interesting to consider that the Industrial Center Building — now known redundantly as the ICB Building, or simply the ICB — started life in another creative capacity: for shipbuilding during World War II. That’s why this part of Sausalito is called Marinship. Almost 100 cargo ships and tankers were built here between December 1942 and October 1945.
Now artists such as Carlson and Cohen have their studios here.
Dec. 3 and 4, ICB Artists Winter Open Studios, ICB Art Center, 480 Gate Five Rd., Sausalito, 415.331.2222; www.icbartists.com.
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