Quick Take
On the heels of the release of his new book of poems, Santa Cruz's Gary Young draws new interest in the art and life of his mentor, the painter and illustrator Gene Holtan. An exhibition is on now at downtown's M.K. Contemporary Art, with a pop-up this weekend at the Santa Cruz Museum of Art & History.
If you were a habitué of the late great Capitola Book Cafe — I know, the grief still feels fresh, but it has been almost 11 years — you may remember the caricature-like portraits of long-dead famous writers, high on the walls, overseeing all of the literary ferment. There was Evelyn Waugh, spilling his tea, next to his aphorism “We are all American at puberty, we die French.” And Virginia Woolf: “One gains a certain hold on sausage and haddock by writing them down.”
Those charming, slightly cockeyed portraits (now on display at the Capitola branch library) were the work of Santa Cruz illustrator and artist Gene Holtan. Short of the Book Cafe reopening, this weekend marks a dramatic moment in the spotlight for Holtan, who died in 2016 at the age of 86. On Friday, a new exhibition of Holtan’s abstract paintings opens at M.K. Contemporary Art in Santa Cruz in a show called “Feasting On the World,” while right next door at the Museum of Art & History, a pop-up exhibit of Holtan’s drawings from the 1970s debuts.
The double shot of attention to one of Santa Cruz’s busiest but most overlooked artists comes largely by way of Holtan’s longtime friend, the local poet/printer Gary Young, who has also released a new book of poems titled “American Analects.”
“He was a skinny beanstalk of a guy,” said Young of his late friend, “with a white beard and penetrating blue eyes.” Canadian by birth and Norwegian by family heritage, Holtan was a successful illustrator and graphic designer who turned away from what paid the bills to embrace what fed the soul.
“In the last 15 years of his life, he worked entirely in abstract forms and painting,” Young said. “After a lifetime of doing all this other stuff, he finally got to do what he’d always wanted to do.”
The big, busy, mesmerizing abstracts at M.K., said Young, mark the first major showing of Holtan’s later work. As an illustrator, Holtan worked for a variety of entities, including Ramparts magazine, Rolling Stone, the NFL, Neiman Marcus and the 1960s TV series “F Troop.” He moved in 1974 to Santa Cruz, where he was known to often be in the company of his artistically gifted wife, Elizabeth Sanchez.
As Holtan’s junior by 20 years, Young considered their relationship much like a mentor/student relationship. “I learned everything about being an artist from him,” said Young. The “Feasting On the World” show features Holtan’s big — some as big as 5-by-6 feet — paintings paired with passages from Young’s new book of prose poems. Young will in fact be on hand for a reception on Sunday at M.K.
To Young, Holtan was a kind of Confucius figure, a major motif in Young’s new book of poems: “Gene was always thinking, and he thought out loud. So he was always talking, and it was delightful. Some people it drove crazy, but me, I could listen to him all day, because he was so damn interesting. He was a true intellectual and a true artist, so he set a high bar.”
“Feasting on the World,” paintings by Gene Holtan and poems by Gary Young, is now on display at M.K. Contemporary Art, 703 Front St., Santa Cruz, through Feb. 2. First Friday reception on Friday, Dec. 6, from 6 to 8 p.m. Book launch and poetry reading by Gary Young, Sunday, Dec. 8, from 3 to 5 p.m.
Pop-up exhibition of Gene Holtan’s art, Museum of Art & History’s atrium, Friday, noon to 9 p.m., Saturday and Sunday, noon to 6 p.m.
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