Artists strike pose for Mendocino arts center

Ever since the movie “Calendar Girls” came out, based on the true story of ordinary women in an English village who posed nude for calendar photos to raise money for charity, the idea has caught on.

Last year, leaders at the Mendocino Art Center got together to brainstorm a fund-raising project to mark the art gallery and school’s 50th anniversary this year.

Naturally, one of the ideas that came up was a calendar.

And indeed, the “Mendocino Art Center 50th Anniversary Exotic 20-Month 2010-2011 Calendar” goes on sale this week at $25 apiece. But this calendar is a bit different.

Mendocino photographer Larry Wagner, who took all of the pictures for the calendar, wanted to take a more inventive approach.

“I sent out a note to all the artists and said, ‘The Mendocino Art Center needs the shirt off your backs,’” Wagner said. “But my intent was that the calendar would be exotic. Some of that would be nude and some would be all sorts of things.”

Last October, Wagner started working with his models, all artists and arts patrons from the Mendocino Coast.

The poses range from nude to fully clothed, and some parody famous works of art. But all are imaginative. The artists trusted him, because they know him.

“I published two books, ‘Artists of the Mendocino Coast,’ volumes 1 and 2, where I did portraits of 138 different artists,” Wagner said.

For the calendar, the models became artistic collaborators. A sample:

Loraine Toth, ceramic sculptor and proprietor of an art gallery in Elk, created a plastic breastplate to wear in her colorful portrait.

Sunshine Taylor, a well-known North Coast painter and dancer, and her husband, Glenn Rude, appear in a dramatic dance pose titled, “Moonstruck.”

Jessica Jade Norris, an artist who works in pen and ink, watercolor and block prints, posed as a mermaid.

“Other calendars have themes, where all of the pictures are kind of the same,” Wagner said. “With this, nothing is the same.”

Wagner and some of his calendar models will meet the public at an unveiling and reception at 4 p.m. Aug. 23 at the Mendocino Art Center, 45200 Little Lake St., Mendocino.

To order your copy of the calendar, call 937-5818, ext. 10, or go online to www.mendocinoartcenter.org/calendar.html.

You can reach Staff Writer Dan Taylor at 521-5243 or dan.taylor@pressdemocrat.com. See his ARTS blog at http://arts.pressdemocrat.com