Artist of the Sea

All of us follow our unique paths. Or, as Antonio Machado said:

Wanderer, your footsteps are the road,
and nothing more.
Wanderer, there is no road,
the road is made by walking.

When a Big Sur kid grows up, after a magical childhood including education in the arts and natural history, he may very likely become an artist of some kind. For Jonathan Newell, one finds that, like his favorite creature the octopus, his life incorporates the mysteries of science and art.

Jonathan began his journey at the Newell Ranch in Big Sur in 1969. On this sprawling ranch and redwood forest, Jonathan's grandparents Ralph and Teva Newell built a Spanish style home in handmade adobe brick. The fountain in their courtyard is set with ancient Esselen Indian mortars and mosaics of astrological figures.

Ralph Newell's peers were some of the titans of Big Sur's homesteading past: rancher Billy Post, and builders Walt and Frank Trotter. But he also was friends with the artist and inventor Harry Dick Ross, a more bohemian type of fellow who lived on Partington Ridge, and eventually married Henry Miller's ex-wife Eve.

As a boy, Jonathan was inspired by all of these men, but especially by Harry Dick Ross, who in addition to building large aerial spirographs from butcher paper, boxes and wire, collected feathers, arrowheads and rare plants. In this way, Jonathan developed an open mind, and is passionate about diverse fields of study today.

His parents, Roger and Beverly Newell, are artists as well, and fostered a sense of wonder in their children, with everything from music and dance lessons to landscape design projects at the Ranch. With his brother and sister he began learning of the mysteries of the deep at the Monterey Bay Area Research Institute's Lyceum school during the summers. (This is now the Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute, MBARI.)

One of Jonathan's earliest memories is of dissecting a giant kelp bulb's root system to find a baby octopus inside. He was certified as a scuba diver at 13 years old, and began diving for Big Sur Jade soon afterwards. One dream was to become a marine biologist, and while he pursued these studies he also traveled and led diving expeditions in Indonesia and the Caribbean.

There is a place where scuba diving and the art world converge: diving for treasures lost at sea. Gold coins from the 17th century Spanish shipwreck, the Atocha, sparked Jonathan's imagination. He'd begun learning jewelry and metal design in college, and mixed this with his love of marine creatures by creating golden octopi holding these treasure coins in their tentacles.


Over the past decade, Jonathan has created a huge body of work with his solar and wind powered metalworking studio, JN Design. He provides elegant design solutions and one-of-a-kind artwork in bronze, steel, glass and stone for homes and businesses up and down the Central Coast. With architect Mickey Muennig, he created the steel railings at the Esalen Institute baths. He's also an inventor, building a wind-turbine generator and tweaking designs for a hydrogen powered car. His dream nowadays is to raise awareness of our marine environment through art and to develop technology that helps the planet. It's all going on in the sorcerer's workshop at JN Design.

In 1999 he married Paula, also an artist, and they have two beautiful children. JN Design is in many ways a family endeavor. Paula contributes design concepts, helps with the finish work, and keeps everything working smoothly, while Kyler and Micaela play in the studio with paints, paper and clay. "With Paula," Jonathan says, "I'm ambidextrous. Together we can be both spontaneous and meticulous, and manifest so much more, on all levels."


Artistic progeny: Kyler's first sculpture at age 6 was an oriental fish kite cut out of paper, complete with moving parts. Micaela's a painter, and that means coloring outside the lines, sometimes with indelible markers on a new leather couch, but hey, she's so adorable, who cares?




You can see Jonathan's work in Big Sur at the Del Campo Gallery. He recently installed some of his latest works in bronze there, including a chair suitable for Neptune, made from the cast forms of giant kelp leaves and bulbs, and a beautiful sea orchid lamp that lights up at your touch.

His fulfillment as an artist is deeply connected with his ideals. "Success began to come to me when my kids arrived on the scene," he says. "I stopped trying to be this persona and began working on doing the best job I could do. It was putting my authentic self out there that made the difference. Challenges became exciting. I now learn more from my mistakes, and feel I'm closer to my dream of helping create a better world."


To complete the Machado poem, with a fitting reference to the ocean:

By walking one makes the road,
and upon glancing behind
one sees the path
that never will be trod again.
Wanderer, there is no road--
Only your wake upon the sea.

Photos: Newell Family collection
Trumpet flower and leaves by Paula Newell

Nature Junkies

You’d think, living in Big Sur, we’d have our fill of Nature. But nooooo, we while away our evening hours watching the BBC’s Planet Earth documentaries. We watch them over and over, enjoying them more each time. They’re an exercise in how many ways we can say “WOW.” We spice up our commentary with “Oh, my god,” “Unbelievable,” and “No way!”

If you’re living on Planet Earth, you’ve probably heard of this expansive series, created by the BBC over a 5-year period, with a budget of $25 million. The film-making is wildly innovative, the scale immense, from spores to outer space, the sound amazing. The Diaries, explaining the most challenging aspect of making each episode, are as insightful as the episodes themselves, in their way. There’s just never been a nature documentary this good. It’s clearly a labor of love, an artistic masterpiece and well, WOW.

Of course, since this is the Rowland-Jones household, a bit of irreverent humor creeps into our awe-filled viewing time. It doesn’t help that the narrator, David Attenborough, has a plummy upper class Brit accent, with dramatic timing that recalls Monty Python, to everybody. With all due respect, there’s something about his voice that simply demands ridicule.

He makes a perfect babysitter for the under 8 set when they visit and parents want to sneak away to watch the sunset and drink a glass of wine. “I feel so good that my kid is being educated by David Attenborough,” one Dad said recently. And while it’s not snide, exactly, the impersonations are rife with plays on the educational commentary—“Ahem, and then the tiny desert animals urinated on themselves to cool down and survive the terrible noon-day heat.” Only mad dogs and Englishmen…

Probably the single most impressive feature of this series is the aerial filming of migrations of all kinds of creatures. Next would be mating rituals never before filmed, such as the flying leaf tree frog, who jumps from leaf to leaf, then on top of the nearest female. “The male frogs have dry toes, which enable them to keep a viselike grip on their moist partners.” Yes, Attenborough actually says this.

The complete lack of inhibition in the mating department is delightful. The males make the extravagant displays, and the females, for the most part, get to do the choosing. The Bird of Paradise from New Guinea with 6 individual antennae-type feathers popping out of his head has a mating dance that is a wonder to behold. He becomes another creature entirely, with bright blue dots in his crown, his feathers expanding around him into a saucer shape as he hops energetically from side to side. Another favorite is the Gobi desert camel, who spanks his own behind and squeals to attract a mate. Makes humans look kind of tame.

If you sat through an afternoon movie in grade school, you expect the nitty gritty of watching the small, old and weak get predated. But in Planet Earth the sense of you-are-there is enhanced by the high definition filming — dying critters’ last gasps and body spasms. Lions jumping on a baby elephant’s back at night, spiders ingesting ants trapped in the bottom of tropical pitcher plants, great white sharks engulfing seals, ducklings gobbled by foxes and on and on. Not recommended viewing with your TV dinner.

Then there’s the Rorschach test of who likes what. What one person can’t stand to watch, say, hunting eels swimming in a pack underwater, another person thinks is cool. We almost lost it with the cave-dwelling cockroaches, along with our neighbor, whose enormous screen made watching them cavort en masse pretty nauseating.

Everyone, however, likes babies. And all babies of all species, plant, animal, some insects, even fungi, are cute. What is that? Something deeply programmed into our reptilian brains. I wonder though, are baby sharks cute?

Planet Earth deliberately focuses on the world’s wonders, and not on the many threats to Nature, in order to foster a sense of joy instead of despair. Creating the feeling of relating to the natural world is of course a pre-requisite for generating a burning passion to save it from destruction.

Since so much of Planet Earth is footage most humans never see in person, I can’t help remembering the key scene in the ’73 film Soylent Green, starring the recently departed Charlton Heston in a very unusual role for him. New York City, 2022, and the planet has been destroyed by the Greenhouse Effect (imagine that.) Nature is dead and food is mass- produced in unappetizing biscuits, rationed to rioting urbanites. One character chooses to be euthanized. As he takes his lethal pills the mortuary staff shows him film of the world as it used to be, i.e. Nature: mountain meadows filled with flowers, waterfalls cascading down cliffs, beaches, plains, wildlife. This man had talked of this world he remembered, yet no one believed him. The joy on his face (the actor Edward G. Robinson, in his last film) made me weep.

Planet Earth may also make you weep, and not just with laughter (Toby's favorite quote so far: “Female asses are mysterious creatures. They come and go as they please, and much of their behavior seems unfathomable to an outsider.”) It will make you amazed and proud to be a citizen of this planet, happy to be alive, and determined to savor as much of our wonderful world as you can.
Photos: Thanks BBC!

Stefan joins the Coast Guard

In 1995, Stefan Edmondson Magnusson Toren sailed with his parents from Darwin, Australia to the Caribbean Islands, a journey of 21,000 miles, when he was just 5 years old. Now, at 18, he’s joining the US Coast Guard for a 6 year tour of duty.

When Stefan was completing his secondary school studies he decided that being a “Coastie” was something he wanted to do. He just graduated from his 8 week basic training in Cape May, New Jersey, and joins the crew of the USCGC Buckthorne as a seaman in Sault Sainte Marie, Michigan (pronounced “soo saint marie”) next week.

Magnus and Mary Lu Toren, Stefan’s parents, invited us to join them in celebratory dinner for him this past week. Their cabin glowed in the candlelight as we drank French champagne in small etched glasses, and ate delicious Pasta Bolognese while reminiscing about Toren family adventures past and present.

What Stefan remembers from that first, epic journey across the South Atlantic is Table Mountain while sailing around the Cape of Good Hope in South Africa, seeing his first crocodile, and getting a thorn in his hand on Devil’s Island in French Guiana. He recalls sudden squalls on the open seas, schools of dolphin, and the ubiquitous flying fish, fleeing their pursuers like skipping stones across the waves.

As they passed one particularly beautiful island, Stefan asked to go onshore. “Sorry, Stefan, we don’t have enough time to do that,” said Magnus sympathetically. “But Dad,” Stefan said, “I have enough time. I’ll loan you some!”

On the Scott Free, the 65’ sloop they traveled on, Stefan got his first taste of the seafaring life. Now he wants to be a boatswain’s mate and more, moving up through the ranks of the Coast Guard. He eventually wants to drive a 47’ motor lifeboat in 20’ waves! His Dad has a great-grandfather, grandfather, great-uncle and father who all served in the Swedish military. Father and son wear matching Coast Guard hoodies. “It’s good to know that there’s a Toren serving in the United States’ armed services, “ Magnus says proudly.

As you might expect from such a self-aware young man, Stefan came up with the “wild idea” as he put it, to join the Coast Guard all by himself. It seems the Coasties are like a big fraternity ready to spring into action to help others when the call comes. Stefan wants to do his best to make a difference, he says modestly. His preparation, he said, was sailing with his parents, traveling by himself, and living in a boarding school community. He thoroughly explored the Big Sur wilderness as a kid, and, as a competitive gymnast since he was 9 years old, he brings a high level of physical fitness to the job.

Self-sufficiency in the natural elements seems to be a practice and a goal. When I ask what he liked best about growing up in Big Sur, his eyes sparkle and he says, immediately, “The woods. Being able to run out into the woods, fend for myself, and come back and say hey, I did this. The freedom of it.” By himself or with a friend, Stefan spent a lot of time in the forest growing up on Partington. The time of year he likes best there? “Winter, when it’s down pouring rain, that was the most fun.”

The downside to being a kid in Big Sur, he says, is “being so far from everything. Like, I want to go do this, but we can’t because it takes too much time to get there.” Yes, we can relate to that one. It’s a matter of taking the good with the bad, but it does seem to be harder on younger folks.

Stefan will be learning navigational skills working on the Buckthorne, a buoy tender on the Great Lakes. Buoy tenders are the Coast Guard’s unsung heroes: it’s tough as nails work, and ensures the safety of ships throughout the region. Sailors rely on buoys the way airline pilots rely on landing lights, says the Coast Guard literature. Fortunately he’s beginning his service in the Springtime of this notoriously cold part of the country.

The Great Lakes were formed during the last Ice Age, about 14,000 years ago, and the temperature there today was 46 degrees, dropping to 30 degrees (in other words, they’re expecting snow on this early April evening.) Considering Stefan’s least favorite memory of basic training was a midnight fire drill that left him outside in very cold weather in his skivvies, we imagine he’ll be dressing warmly.

Right now it seems Stefan’s biggest problem is listening to his Mom rave about his accomplishments, and about the first-class treatment they received at the Admiral’s Club in the airport. “Hey, give her a break,” we say, “she’s a Mom, after all!” And, fitting for any discussion involving sailors, we debate the pros and cons of different tattoos, what the Coast Guard allows and what it doesn’t (no graphics above the collar of your shirt, for example.)

That evening, all the adults are moved by the potency of Stefan’s fresh start in a new world, where he’ll be following his dream and helping others along the way. Youth, strength, integrity, awareness, Stefan embodies all of these qualities profoundly.

As we start to give him advice for his future though, a neighbor who’s a veteran laughs at us. He’s more interested in pay and benefits (Stefan will make about 7 times what he made per month in the Marines in the 60’s.) The idea of sending Mom pictures of his apartment elicits a snort: “I would never have shocked my mother that way,” he says to me, discreetly.

Soft buzz cut hair with v-like pattern on top of his head, slate blue eyes, old soul smile. Hood pulled over one side of his face, napping after dinner with his head resting on his dog’s belly…we wonder where the world will take Stefan on this next adventure, what challenges he will face, what dreams he will fulfill. It's comforting to know though, that where ever he goes, he will be piloting his own ship.
Photos: Mary Lu Toren, Dick Sonnen, Linda Sonrisa, USCG

Sacred Work

“Know thyself.” These two little words (originally posted at the temple of the Oracle at Delphi in ancient Greece) form the basis of all psychology, said renowned psychoanalyst Erich Fromm. And so, my husband and I trundled 6 miles down the road to Esalen Institute last week, for six days of guided exploration on this endlessly fascinating topic.

The workshop, The Intimate Couple, was led by modern-day seers Jack Rosenberg and Beverly Kitaen-Morse, PhD’s with decades of experience in helping souls know themselves better. The goal: to feel more joy and fulfillment during our brief time on the planet with each other.

Yes, I confess there's a vision of Bob and Carol and Ted and Alice in the back of my mind, especially since we're in the Fritz (Perls) meeting room, where Fritz himself lived, the founder of Gestalt therapy and leader of the original encounter groups in the 60's.

The name for Jack and Beverly’s system is Integrative Body Pyschotherapy. Healing and honoring ourselves, v. repeating old patterns that perpetuate our wounds, is the key. Only when I am fully present (the work of consciousness) can I truly give, to myself and to my loved ones.

It’s all in the breath. This is where we dip into our core sense of Self, the “I am” that guides us through our journey. This awakens our sense of “authenticity and aliveness in the body." After our week of practice, we have a big fat book that explains it all, with diagrams and breath exercises, some yummy memories, and a fresh perspective on our internal landscapes.

It seems that it’s not just “know thyself”, but also “share thyself.” One of the most extraordinary phenomena of a workshop of this sort, where mature people come together in the spirit of discovery with compassionate experts, is the electrifying realization that as much we are different, we are also the same, underneath. Even gender differences recede, becoming merely a facet of core self, when we consider the basics: how much love did you receive as a child, and how much love can you give and receive today?

I "show up" by being powerfully vulnerable. Someone who I didn't see fully comes into focus, beautifully. Or someone who intimidated me becomes simply human, more like me than I could ever have realized. We weave a common thread of humanity between us and grow closer, despite our superficial variations. Imagine applying this dynamic cocktail of vulnerability and understanding to your beloved, expressed in the body, and you get the picture: the potential for communion.

By the end of the week we'd shared profound truths, and belly laughs usually reserved for old-timers sitting on the porch together. We took ancient skeletons out of our closets, then Jack and Beverly wrapped them up tenderly in soft, exotic fabrics. We danced with them gently around the room and out under the stars, and found they weren't so bad after all.

Photo by Linda Sonrisa. Skeletal couple courtesy of http://www.diadelosmuertos.us/

Parting Thoughts

Who was this guy? Bob Nash in Big Sur, 1958
An early morning phone call occasions this response from Toby, “That’ll be Bob,” and we sigh together. Yes, he’s calling for a propane tank change or needs my “pale purple eyes” to interpret a bill. Where he is he’s warm, has no bills to pay, is young and strong again, laughing with all his loves, playing with his cats in the garden. We don’t need to worry about him any more.

One night last week I spent an hour in Bob’s cabin, which we have re-christened the “Nash Temple.” The house is still filled with flowers from Bob’s memorial, gifts from loving neighbors. Imagine the décor developed by a blind, elderly person, and the changes we’ve wrought: organizing books, the ceramic pieces Bob and his wife Rosa made in the 70’s and 80’s, re-hanging some of his framed drawings. An altar to Bob is behind the wood-burning stove, complete with a bright orange candle, ceramic casts of hands, and photos from decades ago.

The Nash Temple is currently a social / meditation space, where we can go to be alone or with others to commune with Bob’s spirit. Now that our lives have been interrupted by his death, we are more willing to pay attention to his life, a sad irony. In reviewing Bob’s photos, stored in a rusted metal box neither he nor I had opened in the past ten years, I got another shock. Why didn’t I open this, and talk to him about these images, hear his stories?

Bob lived in the moment, and never asked for this kind of attention. But standing in front of the altar, as a mezzo-soprano voice on the CD player fills the temple with luscious sound, I look at Bob standing amid the geraniums of his garden, or with an unidentified smiling woman, and it hits me. The real sin of how we treat our elderly: We’re not interested. Enough. Or not until it’s too late.

Perhaps part of the reason we farm out our old people to strangers for care in their final days is to disconnect from the possibility of error, of doing or not doing something (out of the ignorance of those of us caught up in the storms of life) that makes all the difference to a frail, dying person, The guilt of that, piled on to whatever family dynamics are in place, could be too much.

Bob and Rosa, newly in love, in 1969

Rosa and Bob met on Partingon Ridge, where Rosa was on retreat with another nun from her teaching order. Yes, Rosa was a nun, of the Immaculate Heart community, who had to write to the Vatican for permission to marry Bob! Interviewed for a lovely book, Big Sur Women (once available at the Phoenix Shop, now available from the Big Sur Historical Society) Rosa talks about meeting Bob in 1965:

"One day that week he asked us up to see where he lived, so the two of us hitched up our navy blue skirts and followed him up the dirt pathway. In front of the shelter was a slab of redwood and on it was a vase with a single daffodil, a book of poetry and a copy of the daily New York Times. The absolute simplicity of his life was a revelation to me."

They courted for a few years, via correspondence, and on long walks and talks on the Ridge. Our monk found his lady in Rosa.

Hands, like faces, become more beautiful as we age, because they tell a deeper story. Eventually, like Dorian Gray, we get the faces we deserve. Looking carefully, so much can be seen behind our masks: happiness and ease, grief and struggle. Most of all, what has triumphed—joy or pain. Open face, open book. Think of all the loving and working that hands do, touching the world outside of us at all phases of life. Hands too, by both look and feel, reveal our truest natures.

I'm so glad I held Bob’s hand often, hugged him every time I saw him, and told him I loved him every day for at least the past year! Worrying that I hadn't done "enough" early one morning just waking up, my palm remembered the cool softness and strength of Bob’s hand squeezing mine and saying "I love you." With the accent on the you. And this morning I hear him saying softly to me, "Don't be sad, all is well."

Bon voyage, dear Bob...

Bob and Rosa, 1984

Adopting Teddy

It's "Where's Teddy?"
A few days after Bob passed away,
I went looking for his sweet cat, Teddy.
but didn't look carefully enough!

I'm on a quest to adopt Bob's big grey tabby cat, Teddy. Teddy is really the Cheshire cat, with wise green eyes and a big, gentle head. When he turns to look at you, you can just see a hint of his smile. He was under Bob’s covers with him when he died.

During the first seven days after Bob’s death, the first “Bardo,” when the mind becomes fully liberated from the body, Teddy was missing in action, though the food in his bowl slowly disappeared over the week. I did see him once, running from Bob’s garden gate to the cabin, his white boots scooting across the path. We think he’s still in mourning. Perhaps grief counseling is in order...

A few days ago Toby brought him over, wrapped in a blanket and stuffed into the cat carrier. He was not happy, and fled out our own cat door (hey, how did he know where it was?) as soon as he was out of the box.

At the moment a confused and sad Teddy is tucked under the wood burning stove at the foot of my bed. I carried him over this evening at sunset, and have three long scratches above my heart to prove it. Now he is in our bedroom, mewing and moaning, looking nothing like the sweet Buddha cat I’ve known so far, who was always drunk with the love of Bob’s caresses.

This is how much we love you, Bob. My bedroom smells of tuna fish and we just improvised a litter box for your bloody cat! But you loved him so very much, so we’re taking turns talking to him about how much we love him and about how he can’t stay over at your house all by himself.

It’s 4 am, and we’re awakened by the saddest meowing you’ve ever heard. I turn on the light and plop Teddy into the litter box (our two other critters are banned from the bedroom for the evening.) We try talking him down, but that only increases the mewing.

He’s always been completely free to come and go at Bob’s so we’re not surprised when he begins rattling the screen door, and banging the food dishes around. I start thinking about how all cat behavior, from tabby to saber tooth tiger, is the same. If Teddy were a tiger, maybe he’d slash us to ribbons for confining him.

Next, the unmistakable smell of cat poop fills the room. O God, did he use the litterbox? Or are our bare feet in for an unpleasant experience? Suddenly the mewing becomes this low, gurgling growl that comes from the depths of feline hell. Think Stephen King’s Pet Sematary. The sound reminds me of a fairy tale about temple cats battling goblins in rural Japan.

Then my saintly husband takes charge. On go the lights, he lifts Teddy up onto our bed and they have a serious talk. When I join in, Teddy is purring, loudly. This must be some kind of Leo magic. We pet him and soothe him and he looks at us, mystified, but calmer.

About an hour later though, the whole cycle begins again. So out Teddy goes, meows for a bit, then most likely wanders back to Bob’s. Hopefully he’ll think kindly of his wannabe adoptive parents, and someday soon will join our menagerie!

Will we end up with Teddy as part of our family? What do you think? More importantly, what do you suggest?

Del Campo Gallery

About 20 years ago (gulp!) I visited Big Sur and stopped at Loma Vista, which was then only a lonely outpost. There was a gas station, a garden offering begonias and cactus and a dimly lit building with a reefer in the back, filled with coke and beer. The sign on the highway was just like the ones outside churches, plastic lettering stating “Gas Cactus Beer.” So folks were always asking for the cactus beer.

Those days are gone (big sigh.) Now we have an establishment that bursts with energy: a lovely restaurant, a garden filled with exotic statuary, a community event space, gift shop, art gallery and yes, gas, cacti and beer.

Today, petite and smiling Lorena del Campo greets me at the door of her pint-sized gallery, which you can find in a corner of the Loma Vista Gardens, in a building that once-upon-a-time was a greenhouse. With Lorena as mistress of this tiny art space it sparkles with artistic fulfillment, much like Lorena herself.

The Del Campo Gallery, which like Lorena’s surname, means “of the country” is perfectly suited to showcase a variety of paintings and sculpture. These creations by local artists reflect Big Sur, in her many forms: dramatic to gentle views of ocean, land and sky, plus the whimsical creatures and fantasy visions that her majestic presence inspires.

Granddaughter to a gifted jeweler, from the time when jewelers were tradespeople who could make anything from earrings to watches, Lorena grew up in Villa Hermosa, Tabasco, Mexico. She studied Psychology at Universidad de las Americas in Puebla, and met her husband, sculptor Hans Apelqvist of Sweden, in 1984, in Playa del Carmen.

Hans introduced Lorena to Big Sur shortly afterwards. They spent 5 days together in a fierce rainstorm on Partington Ridge, enjoying the hospitality of friends. When the sun came out, the magic happened, and they’ve been here creating art here ever since. Hans sculpts in bronze, while Lorena paints and creates beautiful jewelry.

"Big Sur Portrait" in oil by Lorena, "Catching Up" by Hans

What makes Big Sur artists different? They are inspired, Lorena says, as that old scoundrel Henry Miller so aptly explained, by the magnificence of the landscape. Since Mother Nature has outdone herself, other artists want to powerfully express themselves, too.

She adds that Big Sur artists are also motivated by loneliness. They are more isolated than the average artist, who benefits from high-speed internet, the creative cross-pollination of a larger artistic community, or even just a few cafés to hang out in down the street.



"Looking for Shade", Acrylic, by Celia Sanborn

The mission of the Del Campo Gallery is to provide a successful sales space for reclusive and talented Big Sur artists to share their art and their inspiration, with each other, the community and the world. The gallery is a collective: members pay a monthly fee to use the space, and receive a generous share of the profit from their works.

"Ocean Succulent" , Oil, by Julia Ingersoll, Bronze goats by Lygia Chappellet

Like all successful businesspeople, Lorena keeps a few cards held close to her chest, keeping me guessing, and wanting more... Support for the arts in Big Sur is on a major upswing, good news for all of us. Each of these amazing artists has a story to tell, and I hope to share them here, with you!

Lorena holds "Old Coast North" , Mixed Media, by Sarah Healey