Saratoga News

'A Closer Look,' by watercolor artist Wendy Mattson, graces this year's Rotary Art Show poster.

Living Art

Rotary marks 40 years of fine art, crafts for the life of the community

By John Pancharian

There are many who would argue that art is essential for life itself. In Saratoga, the Rotary Club has proven more than once that art is to be valued not only as an end in itself but for how it can improve life in the community.

The service club has proved it over and over again through its contributions to the community of funds raised by its popular art show. On Sunday, May 3, the tradition continues with the 40th annual Rotary Art Show.

The club expects its Rotary Service Fund, used to provide community grants, to go over the $1 million mark this year. It was several years after the first art show that the Rotary Club established the fund as a foundation to handle money raised at the art show. The fund has never helped quite so dramatically as it did back in 1974, when art literally saved a life.

On a Friday afternoon in February 1974, firefighter John Irwin had a brand-new toy--a Hurst tool. It consisted of two-foot titanium jaws, like a huge needle-nosed plier, connected to a hydraulic pump that could exert 10,000 pounds of force, either to spread the jaws or to close them.

The Hurst tool, which would later earn the name "jaws of life," had just arrived at the Saratoga Fire Department, thanks to a donation of $3,800 from the Saratoga Rotary Club's Service Fund. Firefighters eagerly trained with the tool until after dark, unaware they would use it to rescue a man less than 24 hours later.

Irwin had pushed the department to buy a Hurst tool since he first read about them several months earlier, but the $3,800 price tag was more than the department could afford. So Irwin turned to the Saratoga Rotary Club.

The day after the fire department received its Hurst tool, firefighters and their wives gathered for a dinner at which Irwin demonstrated how the new equipment could aid rescuers in removing accident victims from smashed cars. When the dinner was over, the guests had all gone, and firefighters had set about closing the station for the night, an emergency call came in.

The driver of a pickup truck had lost control of his vehicle and crashed into a large oak tree on Saratoga-Sunnyvale Road at Williams Avenue. Irwin and other firefighters rushed to the scene with sirens blaring to find the driver trapped inside his mangled truck with a dislocated hip. Time is a critical factor in treating such injuries: If the joint is not repaired within about 30 minutes, the victim could be crippled for life. Using the Hurst tool, firefighters were able to remove the driver from the wreck and transport him to the hospital within about 20 minutes.

Irwin said that prior to having the Hurst tool, such a rescue would have been very dangerous for victim and rescuer alike. "Before then, we used the Homelight metal-cutting tool, but that generated sparks. When you have a crashed car and gas, you can get the whole works," he said. "You cut them out, but boy, you better have all your forces in gear because you just had to take your chances. Not only is the captain worried about the patient in there, but also about his men."

About a month later the victim returned to the fire station to thank firefighters for saving him. "He was one happy, thankful guy," Irwin, now retired, recalls.

More than 20 years later, the Rotary Art Show is still going strong and has become the largest one-day juried art show in Northern California. The theme for this year's 40th anniversary is "The Tradition Continues."

Planners expect it will attract about 30,000 people and see sales in the neighborhood of $300,000.

Guests this year will stroll on the campus of West Valley College, browsing the work of 175 artists, many of them local. If attendees need a break from the hard work of perusing pottery and artwork, they can also sit back with food and drink to enjoy some of the plentiful entertainment by taiko drummers, an a capella jazz quartet, roaming jugglers and more.

Entertainment Calendar: A listing of the events scheduled to take place at the Art Show.

All Rotary members are required to turn out and work at the show. With help from volunteers from Saratoga and Prospect high schools, they set up the stands and tables on which artists display their work, cook the food and staff the concession stands.

"We work the greater part of the day Saturday to set the show up," art show chairman Wil Houde says. "We put it up Saturday, start tearing down Sunday at 5 p.m., and by Sunday at 7 p.m. you wouldn't know anything had happened."

Art coordinator Mary Fleischli explains that Rotarian Ed Porter even wheels a shopping cart full of complementary food and drink around to the artists working the show. "These courtesies are unheard of at other shows," she said. "We get reports over and over from the artists that they feel treated like royalty. It's worth it; we wouldn't have a show without the artists."

But while the annual show is much anticipted by artists and visitors alike, what fuels the enthusiasm of Rotary members each year is the good they do for the community with the proceeds from the show.

Each year Rotary collects 30 percent of the profits from art sales, pays the show's overhead and sends on the rest to the Rotary Service Fund. This foundation is a separate legal entitity composed of 12 members--some representing Rotary and some representing the community--which meets quarterly to review applications for Service Fund grants. Any registered nonprofit may apply, though the fund ordinarily provides money for specific purposes rather than general operating funds. Allocations tend to go to Santa Clara County organizations rather than those outside the area. Rotarians are currently giving away the last of the $100,000 they raised at the 1997 show.

One recipient of $3,500 from last year's show was the Family Education Foundation, a local nonprofit run by Saratoga resident Rosemary Tisch.

"Their grant let us open up our first business office," Tisch says, explaining that she used the money toward the purchase of a phone system, computers, software and a fax/printer.

The foundation works to prevent teen pregnancy by addressing the issues that both cause and complicate it,including domestic violence, drug abuse and fetal alcohol syndrome.

Tisch says teachers had previously called in outside speakers to cover these issues, but that approach was ineffective because the speakers would arrive and leave too quickly for the students to develop trust. With one teacher trained to lead a support group on a variety of issues, at-risk students feel more inclined to open up and begin addressing their problems.

This flow of support between the art show and the community has historically gone both ways. One manifestation of this is the number of local artists who participate in the show each year, many year after year. "A Closer Look," the painting on the 1998 art show poster--and on our cover page today--came from the easel of former Saratoga artist Wendy Mattson. Mattson first painted for the art show when she won a Rotary poster contest while attending Saratoga High School. She has since become a respected professional--recently earning an invitation to join the National Watercolor Association--but continues to sell her art at the Rotary show, even though she now lives out of the area.

"It's looked upon as a privilege for the artists to be in the show," Fleischli says, "and conversely, we look upon it as a privilege to have them." Privilege indeed--because it is a popular and carefully juried show, more than half the artists who apply to sell their wares each year are turned away. But this also keeps the mark high for those who do participate.

"The key to success is having a juried show," Houde says. "Quality art has kept things going."

This jury consists of three professional artists who select the vendors that Rotary invites to the show each year. Fleischli, a paid consultant, explains that the jury selects vendors to fill preset numbers of spots in the various media.These numbers are set according to how popular any particular medium has been at previous shows.

"The way we work it out is by checking sales," she says. "We have seven categories that work for us. If paintings are up, we have more painters. If ceramics are down, we invite fewer potters." This year the show will include 60 artists in painting and graphics, 18 in ceramics, 19 in fiber arts (paper and cloth), 24 in jewelry, 27 in crafts, 11 in photography and 16 in sculpture.

Pastel artist Theresa Krassowski is one of the lucky ones. In fact, this longtime Saratoga resident does not usually sell her art at shows at all, but was asked by Rotary to participate in the show to help keep the number of local artists up. "I guess it was community spirit," she says. "I just figured I ought to do it."

Krassowski has attended two other Rotary shows, one about 10 years ago, and the second-ever Rotary Art Show back in 1960. "Times were different then," she recalls. "Saratoga didn't have the population that it does now. [The show] was more intimate. Saratoga was surrounded by orchards then."

Warren Heid, the oldest active Rotarian and club historian, remembers the beginning of the show. "In 1959, then-president Frank Davis thought he wanted to do something for the community," Heid says, "so they decided to assist local artists with a one-day show." Heid co-chaired that show, which took place in the Village on Sept. 27 and featured 20 artists. The total sales were $560, of which Rotary donated $119.54 to the Montalvo Association and $100 to the Crippled Children's Day Camp.

The show stayed in the Village until 1981, when it moved to its current location on the campus of West Valley College.

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