Golis: The Running Fence at 40 — still joyful after all these years

Forty years ago this summer, the Running Fence came to Sonoma County. Thousands of people came to see it because it was like nothing that came before. The artists Christo and Jeanne-Claude called it “the ultimate art project.”

In a 2010 film dedicated to her memory, Jeanne-Claude would say, “You could think and dream that it was going on and on.”

And so it has. Almost four decades later, people came together last week to share their recollections in a session organized by the Museums of Sonoma County. The Running Fence, it turns out, continues to inspire awe and affection among those who experienced it - and a wistfulness among those left to imagine what it was like.

How to describe the Running Fence? Start by envisioning a curtain of white, translucent fabric, 18-feet high, serpentining across the golden hills of late summer in Sonoma and Marin counties.

“Like a white dress on a tan blonde,” Christo would say.

The fence disappears over the hilltop, only to reappear on the next ridge and the next ridge after that, stretching to the horizon. From Mecham Hill, near Cotati, the curtain extends to the Pacific Ocean, a distance of 24.5 miles.

It remains for just two weeks, and then it is gone.

In engineering terms, the Running Fence could be described as 240,000 square yards of fabric, 90 miles of steel cable, 2,050 steel poles and 13,000 earth anchors.

But it was so much more. From the beginning, Christo and Jeanne-Claude said the art involved all of it - the sketches and the engineering, the supporters and the critics, the engineers and the lawyers and politicians, the parade of government hearings (that would foreshadow environmental controversies to come), photos and news stories, documentary films and books, the friendships that grew out of the artists’ connection to local ranchers and maybe even a museum program four decades removed. All of it.

At last week’s panel discussion, Valley Ford rancher Joe Pozzi remembered when Christo made his first visit to the family ranch. It was 1974, and as they did with 58 other property owners, the artists came seeking permission to build their fence across the Pozzis’ ranch.

Joe Pozzi’s late father, Ed, met his visitors in the driveway. After an extended conversation, he returned to the house and told his family, “Oh, it’s some hippies who want to build a fence for us. I told them, ‘We build our own fences.’?”

Ed Pozzi would become one of Christo and Jean-Claude’s most enthusiastic supporters, championing their project through a gantlet of public hearings. (In all, 15 local, state and federal agencies claimed some jurisdiction, a presence that became its own commentary on government.)

Not many would have predicted the loyal friendships that developed between these matter-of-fact ranching families and Christo and Jeanne-Claude. He was born in Bulgaria, she in Casablanca. They met in Paris; they lived in New York. Their English was imperfect. ?But their courage, imagination and enthusiasm would win them friends for a lifetime.

The late Les Bruhn, a Valley Ford sheep rancher, would tell the Sonoma County Board of Supervisors: “I don’t know anything about art, but I like these folks.”

“We’ve been life-long friends, and that was true of most of the ranchers,” Joe Pozzi recalled. He still marvels that those 59 ranchers agreed to welcome the project. “Today,” he said, “you can’t get three people to agree on anything in Sonoma County.”

Trudy Elkins and Jan Sofie worked on the crew that installed the fence.

Elkins remembered a moonlit night when the breeze ruffled the fabric and the clips clanged gently against the poles. “I’ll never forget it,” she said, “… it was such a privilege to be that close to the fence.”

Sofie remembered a sunrise, where the fence touched the Pacific Ocean. “It makes me cry,” she said. “It was so beautiful.”

But they also recalled the portable toilet that tumbled off a truck on a bumpy hillside, a disagreement with Christo himself about the best way to attach the panels of nylon, the helicopter delivering lunch (“Meat or vegetarian?”) and the blistering heat. Life isn’t alway easy when you’re building a world-famous work of art.

Lucy Kortum, the widow of environmental champion Bill Kortum, talked about her husband’s reasons for opposing the project, an opposition based on his respect for the land.

Chuck Quibell and Tom Anderson were young Sonoma State University science professors who became part of the team that wrote what would be the first environmental impact report ever drafted for an art project.

Anderson, a geologist, recalled that critics said “we were going to permanently mar the landscape. That was furthest from the truth.”

In 1975, Christo made his first visit to The Press Democrat newsroom. He arrived clutching an armload of drawings, blueprints, sketches and legal documents. Word of his fantastic intentions preceded him, leaving people both skeptical and curious.

“I believe art is beyond aesthetic premises,” Christo told his interviewer that day. “I believe art is incredible social, political and economic consciousness. We are more and more responsive to our neighbors.”

“I root my work under our big society of today,” he went on. “That makes many artists uncomfortable, artists with 19th century feelings who like to put art on walls, ivory tower artists. I try to teach young students that art is not a make-believe situation.”

Christo showed the reporter a photograph of an old motorcycle wrapped in polyethylene and rope - an artwork that he sold to a New York museum for $10,000.

“But I could have done that,” said the young (and ill-mannered) reporter.

“Yes,” Christo smiled, “but you didn’t.”

Thus began my instruction in conceptual art.

Forty years later, some of the folks involved in the story of the Running Fence have passed on. Jeanne-Claude died in 2009.

Still, the Running Fence remains part of our history and lore, a moment ?in time not easily forgotten.

Pete Golis is a columnist for The Press Democrat. Email him at golispd@gmail.com.