When Inverness surrealist painter Gordon Onslow Ford met artist and consciousness researcher Fariba Bogzaran in 1989, their disciplines converged in a unified exploration of the relationship between art, consciousness and nature. Twenty-one years later, Lucid Art Foundation, which began as a series of dialogues between the two intellectuals, has grown into a thriving oasis of artists, seminars and global exhibitions. Although closed to the general public, the foundation is looking for new ways to open itself to the West Marin community.

“When I met Gordon I was researching science and consciousness in particular experiences in lucid dreaming,” said Bogzaran, who was studying sleep phenomenology—or descriptions of peoples’ experiences during lucid sleep—at the Stanford Sleep Laboratory. “I saw that within the experiences of deep meditation and lucid dreaming there were certain imageries that were similar to what he was creating in his painting. When we met, we saw there was a correspondence between inner-world experiences and a certain kind of imagery that he—as well as some of his surrealist friends like Roberto Matta—were engaged in.”

After many long dialogues on art and human consciousness, Onslow Ford and Bogzaran decided to create a foundation that supported artists who, through their art, were also inquiring into consciousness.

Onslow Ford had an undeniable talent for attracting artists. “Anywhere he went, anywhere he lived, he created an artist colony,” Bogzaran said. Onslow Ford’s S.S. Vallejo, a ferry boat he bought in Sausalito with poet-painter Jean Varda, attracted brilliant minds like Henry Miller, Alan Watts, Jack Kerouac and Timothy Leary.

It was his natural magnetism that made it easy for Onslow Ford to take the first steps towards the foundation. His close friendships with key Parisian surrealist painters ensured that the foundation would gain patronage and respectability. Onslow Ford and Bogzaran contacted Robert Anthoine, an attorney with friends in the art scene, to handle the organization’s logistics. Anthoine established Lucid Art Foundation as a 501 (C)3 nonprofit organization.

The pair collaborated on several of his books, including Insights, Ecomorphology, and Once Upon a Time. “We decided to publish [Once Upon a Time] to really bring out the idea of the inner world imageries,” Bogzaran said. The books acted not only as Onslow Ford’s art collections, but also as an introduction and mission statement for the foundation itself.

At the time, Bogzaran was a faculty member at John F. Kennedy University, and would bring students to Onslow Ford’s Inverness home for lectures and seminars. Students listened to lectures on the history of surrealism and stories from his time in Paris. “So we started to create a curriculum. We didn’t have any funding—we were basically working as volunteers and trying to do our best,” Bogzaran said.

When Onslow Ford died in 2003, he donated his entire art collection to the Lucid Art Foundation. The cornucopia of artwork he left gave the foundation the funds to blossom. By selectively selling works, the foundation was able to expand its programming. While it formerly hosted one seminar per year, Lucid Art now hosts several seminars annually. Notable artists have hosted the seminars, such as Jeremy Morgan, who teaches at the San Francisco Art Institute. Composed of six to eight people, these seminars are open to professional artists only. “We wanted to make sure we weren’t competing with other organizations or institutions, including the department I teach in at John F. Kennedy,” Bogzaran said. “We wanted to serve post-graduate students.”

Local artist Toni Littlejohn has attended a number of these seminars, her favorite host being Morgan. “I thought Jeremy Morgan was brilliant,” she raved. “He’s very kind and he was able to give feedback that was relevant to each student, despite their skill level.”

Another program that the foundation offers are lectures. Each year someone from the Bay Area art community comes to give a public lecture. Recently Robert McDermott, celebrated philosophy professor at California Institute of Integral Studies, held a lecture at the Dance Palace Community Center.

The foundation has also been sponsoring and co-sponsoring exhibitions of local artists. Because Lucid Art does not have a public facility, it has had to make alliances with other nonprofit spaces to host exhibits. Currently the foundation curates four exhibitions per year for the Institute of Noetic Sciences in Petaluma. 

“We’ve had this relationship with them for one and a half years now,” said Kay Thompson, operations manager for the institute. “We’ve been really benefiting from their expertise in the art world and their ability to curate really beautiful art having to do with transformation and consciousness.”

Since the relationship between the institute and Lucid Art was forged, several artists have had their work displayed at the Petaluma facility, including Fritz Rauh, Chiyomi Longo and Toni Littlejohn. The current exhibit, titled “Arts and Ecology: Three Views on the Natural,” features artwork by Cindy Clearly, Miriam Eagan and Judi Pettite. An artists’ reception will take place on Sunday, August 29.

While the seminars and exhibitions provide a public face for the institution, there is a thriving artist residency program on the land Onslow Ford bought in 1957. Each year, a review committee selects four artists to stay in the home of master sculptor J.B. Blunk for two months at a time. The foundation worked with the Blunk family—particularly with Mariah Nielson, J.B. Blunk’s daughter—to help establish the residency. 

Before Blunk died in 2002, he requested that his home and studio remain an environment of creativity and art. The J.B. Blunk Residency was established to provide a sanctuary for creative growth, exploration and production. The home and studio, which Blunk built in 1959 with salvaged materials, allows residents to create in solitude.

“There’s a lot of work that’s being done, just from being up here and it being quiet, and having minimal contact with the outside world,” said resident artist Jenna Didier. “It’s so stimulating,” added her husband Oliver Hess, also a resident artist.

The residents are given a small stipend and a stunningly beautiful place to create. “They come here to create,” Bogzaran said. “Some are painters, some are sculptors, some are installation artists. They engage in different modalities. But they have come here to work.”

The foundation has been pleased by the program, which seems to be very productive. “The residency program has been very successful, and we’re looking to expand that in the future,” said Mary Mountcastle Eubank, who is on the foundation’s board of directors. “There are a number of other properties up here that we might be able to make use of.”

The foundation’s final function derives from its expansive archives. Onslow Ford was in correspondence with leading artists during the Parisian surrealist movement. His correspondence with many of those artists has been meticulously catalogued for the use of scholars. “So, for instance, if an art historian is interested in writing about Wolfgang Paalan, or they’re interested in writing about Remedios Varo, or they’re interested in writing about César Moro, they were all friends of Gordon,” Bogzaran said.

The future of the foundation seems promising. Lately there has more discussion on how to give the Lucid Art Foundation a public face. “I think the foundation is trying to reach out,” Eubank said. “One of the things we’re talking about is an exhibition space in San Francisco. That would require a certain amount of fundraising, but it’s something we’re all working towards.”