Creative Juices Keep Flowing

Over the years, Karen Langer Baker has worked at a number of jobs. The Fallbrook resident was a teacher, award-winning artist, real estate agent, child birth educator and hypnotherapist. Although the jobs were all very different they were connected by a common theme -- in each, Langer Baker drew from her reservoir of creativity to make a difference. She used her creativity to help market properties while a real estate agent and reach out to gifted children as well as those with learning disabilities as a teacher. “I don’t spend 100 percent of my time in art,” she explained. “I’m a born teacher.” Although traditional art – drawing, painting and sculpture -- is her first love, this active 72-year-old also dabbles in the healing arts. Born into a medical family, she believes she was put on this earth to help people heal themselves. She is a former director of the Brandon Gallery and an active member of the only artists’ co-op in Southern California. Every month she oversees exhibits in Brandon’s Et Cetera Gallery. Langer Baker also is president of the Fallbrook Art Association, whose 300 members help support the arts with scholarships to deserving students and bring arts to elementary school students at military bases. Examples of her work can be seen at Brandon Gallery, Brothers Bistro, the Professional Office Building in Fallbrook and the Fallbrook Area Visitors Bureau where she is featured artist of the month. A self-portrait taken from her driver’s license photo hangs in the bureau office that she put together with scraps and bits of paper from magazines. “I’m smiling because I got 100 percent on my driver’s test,” she says.

Self-Taught Painter Enjoys Success in Fallbrook

Kay Kalar has never had a problem finding things to paint. If anything there’s too much inspiration around her. “The challenge has been finding the time to do it,” says the Fallbrook resident. “Every day I see something beautiful that I want to paint.” Since moving to Fallbrook from the Fresno area two years ago, Kalar has been forced to choose from a growing list of potential subjects and scenes for her watercolor, oil and pastel compositions. “Since coming to Southern California I’m doing more Plein Air (outdoor) paintings of local scenery in the style of the California impressionists,” she explains. Previously much of her work centered on “bold” floral and garden paintings. Kalar will also “personalize” a commissioned painting by including some of your favorite things in the final piece. She takes a digital photo of a favorite plate that grandmother gave you, for example, and incorporates the image in a commissioned work. Her prices range from $350 to $2,000. If anything, the move to Fallbrook has elevated her passion for the art. “It’s such a great art town,” Kalar said. “We like it down here.” A teacher by training, Kalar taught herself much of the craft over the last 20 years. “We moved around a lot and I got involved with adult education, lots of workshops and classes, self study and experimentation,” said Kalar, who is an exhibitor at and a member of the Brandon Gallery, one the oldest co-op galleries in Southern California. “By the time I got done, I guess I had the equivalent of a masters degree in fine arts.” As May’s featured artist, a sample of Kalar’s work is displayed in the Fallbrook Area Visitors Bureau office.

Artist Spotlight… Elizabeth Tolley 

Elizabeth "Libby" Tolley, an acclaimed artist who records the disappearing rural landscapes of the
Central Coast, often shares her love of natural California and her artistic talents at special lectures
and workshops sponsored by the Art Campus at Fallbrook – School of the Arts & Foundry. The
public is invited to listen to Libby at the Art Campus at Fallbrook at 310 East Alvarado St several times a year.. Her Plein Air Oil Workshop includes instructor demonstrations, daily painting on location in and around Fallbrook, and group critique with private instruction at the easel. The focus of her workshop workshop is understanding the land and designing the composition. Tolley believes that “compelling landscape paintings result when the artist knows
how to capture both the sense of place and their feelings about the subject.” In the workshops students work on the elements that let them translate that vision. For more information call (760) 728 6383 or go to www.artcampusatfallbrook.com

Elizabeth Tolley grew up in Fresno in a family of journalists and artists. For
Tolley, an award-winning naturalist or representational artist whose work is in galleries
from Balboa Island to Bar Harbor, Maine, it is all about shapes and interpreting light. “My goal in
painting is to capture the light and my feelings about it,” the Los Oso resident explains. Morning is her
favorite time to work. “I love to be out there before the sun is up to catch the first rays of the day,” she
says. Working in oils and watercolors, she has benefited from working with others and hope those
attending her 5-day Plein Air workshop reap the same rewards. “Everyone has something they want 
to work on,” she says. “I want to help artists on their path – not paint as I paint—but to develop their own
style.” She will teach techniques from her recently published Oil Painter's Solution Book: Landscapes.
She only teaches a couple of workshops each year but looks forward to returning to Fallbrook. “It’s an
up and coming art town.”

Artist Spotlight… Kelly and Trent Berning... Making a Difference With Clay

Kelly and Trent Berning are among the dozen or so Fallbrook artisans taking part in the Art of Holiday show at the Art Center of Fallbrook. The ceramicist couple moved to Fallbrook three years ago after graduating with Masters of Fine Art degrees from the University of Tennessee, Knoxville. The pair creates functional pottery and contemporary ceramics and sculpture at their studio on Olive Hill Road. Their work can be found at the American Museum of Ceramic Art in Pomona, at the Brandon Gallery in Fallbrook, Hands on Cedros in Solana Beach and at their gallery on Olive Hill Road. They create both functional daily pottery thrown on the wheel, whimsical sculptures and jewelry. Although both are in their early 30s, they have a combined 31 years creating pieces of art from clay. Although Trent was from Kansas and Kelly from San Clemente, the couple got married at the Los Willows in Fallbrook and decided to stay. “We love it here,” says Kelly, who teaches at Mount San Jacinto College and Mira Costa College. “We are not moving.” For more on their work and classes go: www.berningclaygallery.com

Artist Spotlight… Jim Helms... Dentist Turned Sculptor Finds a New Outlet

By day Jim Helms takes care of people’s teeth. At night and on weekends, the Fallbrook dentist is a contemporary sculptor, giving new meaning to scraps and the remains of the recent wildfires that devastated Fallbrook. He says the two pursuits are not mutually exclusive. There’s not such a large leap from the “miniature sculpting” of dentistry he does daily to the cast-bronze and paper-and-glue pieces he now creates. You can find a couple of his representational bronze pieces at the Brandon Gallery on Main Street. Or you can go down to the entrance of the burned out Valley Oaks Mobile Home Park and see an evocative angel he created from bits and pieces of former homes in the park. “I don’t know how an angel popped into my head,” he said. But Park Angel, as he calls it, is about 7 feet tall and made up of aluminum siding, a lighting fixture and a metal trash can that he picked up after the October Rice Canyon Fire. He was worried initially that some of the fire victims might take exception to the piece, but said they “loved it.”

Jim recently cast a smaller version of the angel in resin, which he plans to sell and use the proceeds for a scholarship to the Art Campus of Fallbrook. The Park Angel bas relief was suggested by wife Victoria and Martha Minkler, Fallbrook Center for the Arts, Chief Executive Officer. . They felt that others might like to have their own angel. Created in clay first, then formed in a mold. From this he cast it in a bronze/resin mix." I am working with the Art Campus to provide scholarships for fire victims. I am donating my time and material for the project. The only expense will be the cost of the framing material. Jennifer from the Pinnell gallery is donating her time also," explains Jim.

This bas relief will sell for $150. The proceeds will go to the fund. Jim is looking for business' that would be interested in displaying the bas relief and helping sell them.They would have a sign up sheet. They would not have to deal with the payment side of the program. Or, if someone knows of the Angel they can buy one direct. The Art Campus will be handling both of these types of orders. They are located at 310 E Alvarado and can be reached at 760 728 6383.

Artist Spotlight… Pardell Adds a New Dimension to Sculpting

Sculpting is Christopher Pardell’s life. He began creating figures in clay at the age of four. By 20, he was earning a living as a sculptor. Along the way he learned his craft as an apprentice to old world sculptors in Chicago. They taught him Renaissance era techniques that have evolved over the last 500 years. It was at a commercial statuary company in Chicago that he received what he considers his "real education in art." Like the Renaissance masters, he has given his work and other pieces new life by using cutting edge techniques, in this case high tech tools of the 21st century. Rather than create a scaled down prototype the old fashioned way – by hand --, he creates it with the help of a computer and cutting edge milling equipment that can shape a three dimensional model out of a variety of materials. “It’s more cost effective than if I build it myself,” he explains. He tested the computer assisted design system in the 1980s and perfected it in the 1990s. Today he teaches classes -- Introduction to Digital Sculptural Design -- on creating 3D sculptural models on the computer at the Foundry at the Fallbrook Art Campus. For Pardell, it’s about giving back to his craft and helping others. “I am trying to build a facility in Fallbrook that helps other artists learn the craft,” said the 50-year Fallbrook resident. His artwork can be found in public and private collections throughout the world, including the “Letters Home” Veterans Memorial in Temecula’s Duck Pond. He travels worldwide as a consultant and has trained sculptors as far away as China.

Loan Program Expands Public Art Project

Barrett DeBusk is a Texas-based sculptor whose whimsical work is probably unknown by Fallbrook residents and the thousands of visitors who descend on the village each week. Thanks to a new, innovative art-borrowing program established by Fallbrook’s Art in Public Place committee, that won’t be the case anymore. On May 16 DeBusk’s “Fat Happies” sculpture will be officially installed outside the Mike Choate Early Education Center at the northwest corner of Fallbrook Street and Mission Road. The piece is the first installation in the public art committee's Art On Loan program, which was launched to display various pieces of art ---- mostly sculptures ---- in high-traffic parts of Fallbrook for limited periods of time. Committee chair, Larry Miller, said the group will pay about $4,000, including a small artist's fee and insurance costs, to display the piece for a year and a half. "The artist benefits because he'll get a modest honorarium, but the work is also for sale, so he'll be able to get that publicity for his work," he said. "And the school benefits because they have this attractive sculpture on their property. It's a win-win situation." The brightly colored steel sculpture depicts two people dancing, and appears wellsuited for an early education center where preschool classes are held, Miller said. The art in public places group has helped install various sculptures throughout Fallbrook, as well as a mural at Alvarado Street and Main Avenue that was completed last year by local artist Jim Fahnestock.