Project Mission.

VISIT SONOMA, FOR A SECOND TIME

Sonoma is an old city with a lot of history. It has been a home to many for years. Its lands have borne the fruit that has driven its economy and feed the cows that make its renowned cheese.  Way before the winemaking industry, regular people lived there and still do. They are farmers, teachers, students, mothers and fathers, policemen and innovators.  While the Visitor’s Bureau of Sonoma feeds the visitors the information about inns, spas and wineries, my project will bring back some of the roots of Sonoma’s native nesting sites.  I see the popular but high-end wine making industry as the encroaching civilization. The farmers are still farmers, this time farming grapes instead of peaches.  I wanted to preserve with my project the idea that Sonoma is still a nesting ground to people, and a place of schools and daily concerns, and fond memories of ranches and fishing is an idea much for the enrichment of visitors and residents alike.

Project Description.

Annually, there is an international migration to California’s wine country between the months of May and September.  During this time period, the city organizes a number of festivals that take place in the historic plaza of Sonoma.  This historic plaza is the site of my installation.  Based on the tourist season, the activity of the site and the curiosity of visitors to get to know this place called Sonoma, I chose this site and within in, the focused site of the Visitor’s Bureau of Sonoma, around which to work. The proposed temporary public artwork titled “Alternate Visitors Center of Sonoma” was meant to give tourists and residents a view of the community that may not be apparent in the confines of the Visitor’s Center brochures and marketing materials.   By interviewing residents, shooting photographs and gathering materials for this project, I designed a project to extend the visions of the city Sonoma for its visitors and for its community. 

The project was installed for three weeks in the historical Plaza, in summer of 2007, directly correlating with the tourist season of wine country. Comprised of 6 “gates” arching sidewalks that lead up to the entrance of the Visitors Bureau (three on each side of the Visitors Bureau), this project was a physical collage of large scale photographs, found objects, selected sculptural media, and stories of individuals and families who live and have lived in Sonoma.  Each of the gates stood 8’ high and was constructed with corrugated metal roof panel on the sides and clear acrylic corrugated for the roof, spanning the width of the sidewalk.  The images on canvas were mounted to the inside of the gates.  The edited text was be integrated with the corrugated metal sides of the structure.

Project Interactivity.

As a visitor, one comes to the center to get one’s bearing of Sonoma.  What is Sonoma about? Where does one go to get to know the true essence of the city?  Sonoma is a place that is created by is residents as well as its visitors.  It is a place much larger than its tangible self.  It is a place that exists beyond its borders.  It is a place that draws people back and here for the first time based on word.  These gates allowed the viewer to investigate the everyday, the stories of its community from present times and past. They raised questions to visitors and residents alike to rethink what Sonoma is to the people who live here and have helped create it.  The site of the installation, The Plaza, was located at the center of downtown Sonoma, bordered by shops, restaurants and the historic Sonoma Mission. City Hall is at the center of the plaza and was surrounded by a park that includes a playground, duck pond and the Sonoma Visitors Bureau. Families and tourists use the site for picnics.  Youth gather in the rose garden and play freezbie in the open spaces and children use the playground. With the six gates being installed on this site, visitors and residents alike will walk through these gates with or without intention. Many directly headed to the Visitors Bureau and could not easily ignore the context of my project.  My intention was to have them rethink this place called Sonoma that they were visiting from a new angle to the one only presented to them in the past.  My project was to offer another layer of exposure of Sonoma.

Collaboration.

 The Sonoma Community Center commissioned me to create this project for the community of Sonoma. The Center established Sonoma Valley’s first temporary public art program in 2005 and is writing a public art policy for the City of Sonoma.  While the temporary public art program was founded to provide emerging public artists the opportunity to make work, and to create situations for Sonoma community members to think about their town, this project addressed both the residents and visitors alike. This project was the first to be commissioned under this new program.  The Community Center was established in 1952 to enrich the lives of the people of Sonoma Valley by fostering a broad range of cultural, educational, recreational and community service activities.  It also strives to preserve and restore its historic building and to provide affordable space for community activities.  Located in the heart of downtown Sonoma, the Community Center produces and presents a wide range of cultural and artistic programming including 200 visual art, dance, theater, writing, and design classes and workshops annually; a performing arts series, and the 4th of July parade. 

Outcome.

The process and discussions resulting from the approval process is crucial to the development and promotion of the City’s first public art policy.  While Sonoma is less than two hours from the cutting-edge art mecca of San Francisco, its art fairs are filled with representational and object based artwork. In the process of getting approval for a City Permit, it was brought to our attention that the City of Sonoma did not have policy for public art in the city.  Without this policy, the City found it difficult to approve my project. After several meetings, we were asked to formerly address the City Council and Mayor, successfully resulting in an approval for the permit.  In this lengthy and challenging approval process, we discovered that it was even more important to bring to this community what it has not yet experienced, artwork whose foundation lay in its interactivity rather that just an object based relationship to an artwork.  “The Alternate Visitors of Sonoma” served as Sonoma’s first social based public artwork.  It will pave the way for future interactive based public artworks with the formation of Sonoma’s first policy on public artwork.

The collaboration was important to me because it provides me with an opportunity to make a temporary public artwork in a challenging situation with the support of the Center and help of their knowledgeable staff. The project gave me the opportunity to reach and affect audiences outside of contemporary art circles, while creating work that was about experience rather than buying and selling. The “Alternate Visitor’s Center of Sonoma” served as a stepping stone for me for future public art opportunities in the San Francisco Bay Area and beyond.

Photographs of Installtion

Samples of Stories used on Roof Panels

When I came to Sonoma in 1967, I joined my father and grandfather.   I was 16 years old and hungry for success.  We were picking fruit during those times, apricots that week.  All three of us were very competitive.  That first day we all competed to pick the most buckets of apricots and disappointingly I did not win.  I was aggressive during those times and enjoyed doing more than others as I still do. And that was what has always pushed me.

That second day we went back to the fields picking buckets of apricots but again I did not succeed in picking more than my father and grandfather. They had picked 105 buckets in a day at their record high. I had to beat that. 

That third day we went back to the fields picking buckets of apricots once again. That day I picked more buckets of apricots than anyone else had before. I picked 170 buckets in one day!  This is a story my father still tells.  

- Reynaldo Robledo

Millerick Road

I used to ride

fishing rod in one hand

handle bars in the other

across the cattle guard

Half an hour from this world

Through the veil

To where starlight

On the water shines eternal

Still! It waits

where my father

before his passing, fished

while I sat watching

the sun fade in his eyes

until we only

at his bedside

spoke about the water

and combinations

to the locked gates,

while I sat listening

to his breath,

an ebbing tide.

I have not been back since.

Though, I still cry

each time I pass the corner,

knowing Heaven

is just a turn away

down Millerick Road.

-Jabez W. Churchhill

During World War II, Mexican men and women left their home land to work the agricultural fields of California.  Invited by the federal authorities and the local growers, their help was essential as the local labor force was sent abroad to defend freedom.  It was in those years when my grandfather, Luis Reynaldo, arrived in California.  The hard work that his generation of “Braceros” put into the wines and grapes of this area made possible the consolidation of the wine industry in Napa and Sonoma Valleys.  The character and spirit of the Mexican agricultural workers has since prevailed in California contributing to its wealth and greatness.  In honor of the “Braceros”, our family has produced this red blend wine that embodies the humbleness and stamina that characterizes past and present generations of Mexican agricultural workers. 

-Reynaldo Robledo

Selected materials were inspired by Sonoma's history of agricultural and wine making.

Samples of Materials used for Frames

The project has gone through four significant design changes since 2005.  Here are some of sketches of how the project began.

Original Plan for Alternate Visitors Center of Sonoma, Spring 2006

Original Sketch for Alternative Visitors Center, 2005