Paul's Picks for the Weekend: Dragons and Disco Globes + Meet Ivan McLean, Featured Artist for Yountville's Art, Sip and Stroll by Rosemarie Kempton
By Paul Franson & Rosemarie Kempton
The annual Yountville Art, Sip & Stroll takes place on Saturday, May 20, from 11 a.m. to 5 p.m. More than 60 artists will have booths at two sites, Veterans Memorial Park at 6465 Washington St. and the Yountville Community Center at 6516 Washington St.
Guests can enjoy the art and music at no charge or purchase an "Art, Sip & Stroll" tasting package for $40 per person. The package includes a wine glass with four wine tasting tokens, which can be used at any of the 15 participating wineries, as well as a signed Ivan McLean Art, Sip & Stroll 2023 poster.
McLean, the featured artist for this year’s Yountville Art, Sip & Stroll, is a sculptor who works with a variety of materials and styles, including wood and metal.
More of his work can be seen in the Steve Rogers Gallery at the Yountville Community Center in Outside/In through Aug. 4. This show brings his art, which is typically outside, into the gallery for a deeper look into his process and the opportunity to see scaled-down versions of his many popular sculptures.
McLean’s sculptures are in numerous private and public collections throughout the world. Over the last 30 years he has made thousands of pieces that can be found in more than half of the states in this country as well as Italy, Japan, Mexico and Riyadh, Saudi Arabia.
In his younger days McLean never thought he’d be a sculptor. He earned a B.S. degree in farm management at Cal Poly University in 1983 because he was planning to be a rancher.
Without intentionally following a path that would lead him to become a sought-after sculptor he unwittingly laid the groundwork for his artistic success through the agricultural work he did in his youth.
Growing up in Point Reyes, California, as the middle child of a Danish father and a Swedish mother, McLean developed a love for art, building things, nature and for the far-away places he read about in National Geographic magazines.
“My parents were immigrants,” McLean said. “They were talented in the arts, but back then art was kind of associated with hippies and my dad was a conservative guy.”
His mother was a photographer who also worked as a secretary. His father was a contractor who was also the constable of West Marin.
As a contractor, his father built Carmelite convents in San Rafael with onion domes that required “tens of thousands of shingles.” McLean and his older sister went along on some of the jobs to carry plywood and nail floors down.
In addition to working as a contractor, his dad raised bloodhounds and was “famous for search and rescue missions all over the Northwest,” McLean said. “He found bank robbers, missing children and more. There are many newspaper clippings about him doing this. He never went to school for law enforcement, he just learned how to do it on his own.”
McLean loved to care for his family’s chickens and pigs.
“In the late 1960s and ’70s my mother worked as the Farm Bureau secretary, and she hooked me up with every rancher in the area,” he said, laughing.
In high school, while working on nearby ranches, he figured out how to make quick fixes on broken machinery. He became a “decent” mechanic and picked up welding, a skill he continues to use to this day.
“Anyone who works in agriculture gets good at things through necessity,” he said.
After graduating from college, McLean enlisted in the Peace Corps and served two-years in Mindanao in the Philippines as an agricultural extension agent. While he was there, a fellow Peace Corps volunteer suggested that he build furniture for Michelle Bressler, who was also a Peace Corp volunteer.
“It was love at first sight,” McLean said of the meeting with his future wife. “The Peace Corp is like the perfect dating agency because you meet people who are very much alike in good ways.”
Following the Philippines stint, Bressler went to Tibet and China. McLean went to Australia, where, among other things, he built windmills. One aspect of building windmills that he never wants to repeat is being lowered 6 to 8 feet down a 5-foot-square hand-dug well and trying to work while dangling above the water below.
“It was so hard working down there,” he said. “I have an extreme fear of snakes, occasionally snakes would go down there.”
Leaving the Peace Corps, McLean moved back to Point Reyes but wasn’t sure what he should do to earn a living. His brother, Jason, encouraged him to start building gates, fences and furniture to sell at Bay Area flea markets, and the brothers set up shop.
He convinced Bressler to join him, and much to his surprise, people began buying what he made. His menorahs, wine racks, candlesticks, coat hangers, tables, coffee tables and bookcases were his best sellers.
McLean likes to joke that his Scandinavian heritage nearly guaranteed that he’d “end up making furniture, no matter what.”
Later, the couple moved to North Carolina so that Bressler could get her master’s degree in public health at the University of North Carolina. McLean discovered that he loved working with the native marble in North Carolina, and he started carving and creating both representational and abstract works.
The brothers’ furniture business thrived and, along with another partner, they formed Delia, a wholesale company that sold to 500 stores throughout the country. Some well-known people own McLean’s “functional” creations.
“Bill Clinton had my little coat rack with a dog on it made out of steel when he was in the White House,” McLean said. “Michael Jordan had three of my wine racks in his office.”
The postal service bought McLean’s menorah design for their 42-cent stamp for Hanukkah but then rejected it as being “too whimsical.”
Fast forward to 1996 and the couple moved to Bressler’s hometown of Portland, Oregon. Though the furniture business was good, McLean was becoming more interested in sculpture and phased out of furniture-making.
“When I made a piece without any practical value – an art piece– and a guy bought it, it was life-changing,” he recalled.
Since then he has been using wood, stone, glass and all kinds of metals for his sculptures. An important aspect of his work is creating large-form pieces.
“It’s all about the human scale,” he said, noting that he could make a basketball-size sphere work, but it would not have the same impact as a piece twice the size of an NBA player.
“It’s your relationship to the piece,” he said. “It’s fun to walk under things and to interact.”
Although he is best known for his spheres, as a sculptor he “never wants to say no” to any request, which has led him into some unusual projects.
For example, Glen Boyd, who was doing music festivals in Oregon, talked McLean into making an 80-foot-long dragon with a pagodalike DJ booth riding atop the creature’s back. It was rigged with a propane tank so that the DJ could make the dragon spit out an 8-foot flame for the What the Festival.
“I never made money on the dragon, but I learned a lot and every year I did something crazy for this festival,” he said. “That dragon is now in eastern Oregon.”
McLean also created a smaller fire-breathing dragon that is in Saudi Arabia, where he spent 10 days installing it, along with a 10-foot disco ball. He installs 90 percent of his creations, which can be challenging since many are heavy and often destined for far away from where he works.
Pushed to select a favorite piece out of the thousands he has done, McLean chose the sphere in front of the Performing Art Center at Cal Poly for sentimental reasons.
“It was fun that they chose it because when they did, they didn’t know I was an alumnus,” he said with a chuckle.
So far, McLean’s best-selling sculptures have been his spheres and the Reinvention series.
“I like the way sculptures work in nature and how a good-looking landscape design enhances a good sculpture and can make a landscape jump out and vice versa.” McLean said. “A sculpture is going to last a lot longer than I am – you know, thousands of years.”
Now that their three children are adults, McLean and his wife are thinking about living in Portugal three months out of the year to make it easier to install his work throughout Europe.
“I am eternally grateful that people like what I do,” McLean said, adding that he thinks people who buy sculptures are the most interesting people on earth.
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Rosemarie Kempton got her start in journalism as a regional correspondent for the Oregonian. In 1987, she moved to Napa with her contractor husband, Jim, and their four children. She began working at the Napa Valley Register but then took a break from newspapers to become a teacher. After she retired, Rosie returned to the newsroom, becoming a valued contributor specializing in writing profiles of artists of the valley.
We are delighted that Rosemarie now contributes to Napa Valley Features.
Paul’s Picks for the Weekend
By Paul Franson
Experience sound healing, massage, astrology, tarot, palmistry, reiki, and more at the Calistoga Healing Arts Festival on Saturday, May 20, from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. at Pioneer Park.
Makers Market open air artisan fair returns to First Street Napa on Saturday, May 20, from 11 a.m. to 6 p.m. The same day is First Street’s Napa Locals Day from 4 to 6 p.m. featuring local sips, happy hours and live entertainment.
The Napa Valley Museum has a whole weekend of events. Saturday are the openings of three exhibits including Tiki Dreams: From Far-Away Fantasy to Pop-Culture Phenomenon, The Great California Road Trip 1962 and Napa Valley Museum Mini-Masterpieces with original works for sale benefit the Top Drink contest. Then Sunday is the popular Top Drink contest from 2 to 4:30 p.m.
Ronny Chieng tests out material with Irene Tu at the Uptown Theatre in Napa on Saturday, May 20, at 8 p.m. Chieng often appears on late night TV and starred in Crazy Rich Asians. He often spoofs racial issues that most people are afraid to touch.
The Moonshine Theater at the historic Mount View Hotel & Spa in Calistoga features local band Jealous Zelig Friday evening.
Pete Fitzpatrick & Anna Johansson perform at Calistoga’ Moonshine Theater - Tim Carl Photo For something different, Be Bubbly in Napa welcomes a drag show on Friday evening: Ava LaShay with Queera Nightly and Avery Night: A Blush & Bubbly Evening of Drag, Drinks & Dancing, 8 to 11 p.m.
Two of the top picks are at Blue Note’s Summer Sessions at the Meritage Resort. Country singing star Dwight Yoakam appears Saturday, May 20, at 7 p.m.
Merryvale in St. Helena has live music, food trucks and wines on its tasting terrace the first and third Fridays of the month from 5 to 7 p.m. Zak Fennie appears on Friday with the Burgerdog food truck ready to feed you.
Every time pianist Mike Greensill schedules a show at the Cameo Cinema in St. Helena, it sells out, but just in case there might be tickets, he celebrates ballads, blues and Broadway standards with Mike Greensill with Joe Cohen on sax, Doug Miller on bass and Jack Dorsey on drums, on Sunday, May 21, at 2 p.m. Vocalist Gale Terminello will be a special guest.
You know that an old folkie like me would pick Emmy Lou Harris at the Blue Note Summer Sessions at the Meritage Resort on Sunday, May 21, at 7 p.m. She’s beyond a legend.
Join the Napa Open Space District's Third Saturday Hike on May 20, exploring the Napa River Eco Reserve in Yountville. It’s a short walk, but a big river! The hike begins at 10 a.m. and is suitable for ages 8 and older. Reserve your spot.
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If you’d like to find out more about these events and many, many more of Paul Franson’s picks, subscribe to “NapaLife,” a twice-weekly newsletter that focuses on news and events about food, wine and the arts – visual, literary and performing.
In my opinion the Napa Valley Features team is already consistently hitting home runs. Great content by great writers. Glad you have undertaken providing Napa with timely local coverage.
No only homeruns but grand slammers