Gallery Route One, Point Reyes Station’s longest-running art gallery, is celebrating four decades of community-powered art on Dec. 9, showing over 60 artists, from founding members to fellows and more.
The space has long been a hub for the local arts, and though it is still powered by many of its founders, bringing in younger and more diverse voices has been an important goal, whether it’s through the Latino Photography Project or the gallery’s Artists in the Schools and fellowship programs. Since it opened, the gallery has been a place for up-and-coming artists to show their work.
“There was nothing like it at the time,” said Bill Chayer, a Petaluma resident and founding member of the gallery. “West Marin was an artist’s space, but it was tough to get shows in town, so a bunch of people got together and worked it out. Everyone who joined was guaranteed a show every year and you had to spend some time manning the gallery. It was an incredible experience.”
In the early 1980s, West Marin’s emerging artists faced limited opportunities for showcasing their work locally. The Lester Gallery in Inverness showed more established artists, like JB Blunk, Jack Wright and Mary Mountcastle Eubank, while the Dance Palace only showed work for short periods.
Ms. Eubank convened a meeting at the Station House Café with fellow artists Toni Littlejohn and Ted Odza, proposing a new gallery in town. When the group later floated the idea during a small gathering at Ms. Eubank’s house, enthusiasm was sparked.
“There was just this mood among all the artists around here that we needed our own space,” she said. “It was like boom! There was suddenly this spontaneous combustion of talent and 25 of us came together to make it happen.”
The group rented a space in the Creamery Building, and work was shown in clusters of three artists at a time. The shows were extravagant, Ms. Littlejohn said. Artists made large displays and put on performances for show announcements and costumes were worn at openings. Members were required to pay dues, gallery sit and help pay rent.
Ms. Eubank had big ambitions and introduced the idea of bringing in artists from outside West Marin to present work in conversation with the area’s cultural landscape.
In 1985, the gallery received nonprofit status. Several years later, it moved to the corner of Highway 1 where it sits today.
In the 1990s, the gallery decided to bring in artists whose work focused on environmental awareness, positioning itself as a trailblazer in addressing climate change through art. Over the years, it expanded its focus to include social justice and immigration issues. In 1993, Ms. Littlejohn initiated the Artists in the Schools program, initially a lunchtime elective that grew to include all grades in Shoreline Unified School District, emphasizing science, poetry and art making. Despite adjustments during the pandemic, the program, now held over Zoom, continues to thrive with support from the Marin Community Foundation.
In hopes of bringing a younger audience to the space, the gallery introduced a fellowship program in 2014 that targets artists aged 21 to 40. The initiative has provided not only a platform for young artists’ work in the main space but also an immersion in a nonprofit art setting, including gallery sitting and exposure to the full cycle of artistic exhibitions.
Before receiving her master’s in fine arts from California College of the Arts, 26-year-old San Francisco-based painter and sculptor Annie Duncan was a Gallery Route One fellow. Her show, “Bodies of Water,” a collection of prints and paintings reflecting the ethereal nature of West Marin’s swimming holes, was the first time she had a solo exhibit. Her work is now shown at galleries across the Bay Area, and next month, it will be in Miami. She learned at Gallery Route One the skills needed to produce a show.
“[From] installation skills and working toward a big deadline, on the whole, it was a very positive experience and was an opportunity to put on this show for myself, which was great,” she said.
Although not all the artworks at the anniversary show will be for sale, at least 45 percent of the sales of all purchased works will go to the gallery.
See our calendar for celebration details.