Marin Open Studios director to retire
A Marin painter who co-founded and spearheaded an iconic annual art showcase for more than three decades is stepping down from the post.
Kay Carlson, the executive director of the nonprofit Marin Open Studios, said she will step down from the job she’s held for 32 years in October.
Carlson, a Marinwood resident whose art studio is at the Industrial Center Building in Sausalito, will stay on as an emeritus board member of Marin Open Studios, as well as a member of the Sausalito Center for the Arts board.
“Eventually it will be time for someone else to do it,” Carlson, now in her 70s, said this week of the executive director job that has provided a public forum and a launch pad for hundreds of Marin artists over the years. “Why not step down now, when I’m able to mentor the new person?”
Carlson also expects to have more time for her own work — oil paintings, which are inspired by the Bay Area, Northern California, the Sausalito waterfront and the Napa-Sonoma wine country. She is what is called a “plein air colorist,” meaning that she does her drawings and paintings outdoors in nature, focusing on “visual drama when light transforms color,” she said in a video.
Plein air is from the French “en plein air,” or outdoors.
“I find my inspiration in color within the shadows,” Carlson said. “I find the intimacy with nature provides my own life with a great sense of wonderment and awe.”
She has had more than 40 solo shows all over the world and participated in dozens of group exhibitions.
Jonah Burlingame, board chairman of Marin Open Studios, praised Carlson’s ability to network and build relationships, pulling together the once-separated members of the Marin art community.
“Kay has been the driving force behind our success, fostering opportunities for artists and building strong partnerships throughout the community for more than three decades,” Burlingame, a Kentfield resident, said.
“While her departure marks the end of an era, we are excited to build upon the strong foundation she’s established, and welcome her continued invaluable counsel,” Burlingame added.
He said MOS has launched a search for Carlson’s successor and urged interested parties to inquire at info@marinopenstudios.org for information on the application process.
Carlson founded Marin Open Studios in 1993 with sculptor Tim Rose, then transferred it three years later to the Marin Arts Council, which was then the official Marin County art organization. When the Marin Arts Council dissolved in 2012, Carlson spearheaded a revival of Marin Open Studios as its executive director.
“I firmly believe the world needs art,” Carlson said this week. “I am so honored to have led MOS in making that happen, supporting hundreds of artists in the county.”
Carlson has been “particularly gratified by helping emerging artists develop and grow,” she said. “Today, the annual open studios tour is a must-see every year.”
Marin Open Studios, which takes place for two weekends in May, is an annual self-guided tour of artists’ studios. The tour is anchored by a central launch point, a “pop-up” gallery that now takes place at the 18-month-old Sausalito Center for the Arts in the former Bank of America building.
“They are wonderful hosts,” Carlson said of the relatively new Sausalito facility. “They love having all the Marin artists at their location.”
The event publishes a 40-page tour booklet with all 260 participating artists and their studios in it, so that visitors may travel from studio to studio at their own pace.
Each studio sports the whimsical MOS “hand” logo, which was designed by Carlson’s husband, graphic artist Don McCartney. As Carlson tells it, she met McCartney in 2011 when he came into her Sausalito studio on the last day of an MOS weekend.
McCartney “whipped out the logo from his pocket,” saying that he had “‘designed it for me,”‘ she said.
“He said, ‘You’re going to need this,'” referring to her big task ahead of reviving the Marin Open Studios in 2012, she said. They have been together ever since.
Carlson, the eldest of three children from a small town in central Wisconsin, got an early inspiration in art. When she was 14, she saw a photo of a painting by the late Pennsylvania artist Andrew Wyeth in Life Magazine and had an epiphany.
“I thought, ‘That’s what I want to do,'” she said. Later, on a trip to Paris that she won in her senior year in college, Carlson visited a museum of impressionist art.
“‘That’s what I am,'” she said she thought at the time. “‘An impressionist.'”
After graduating from the University of Wisconsin in 1971, she moved to San Francisco to attend the San Francisco Art Institute. She went on to work for local galleries, learning the business side of art for several years.
In 1990, while living in Woodacre, she moved her studio to the Industrial Center Building in Sausalito. During that time, she met Rose, who also had a studio there. In 1993, the two artists had the idea for Marin Open Studios and decided to “just do it,” Carlson said.
“We said to each other, ‘yeah, you’re crazy,'” Carlson recalled. “And then we planned it out.”
Carlson and Rose thought that artists in Marin were too isolated and separate in many cases. They passionately wanted to change that.
“The Marin art community needed to work together,” Carlson said. “Marin County has more artists per capita than all of Los Angeles.”
During the early stages of her executive directorship, Carlson met Bay Area philanthropist Peggy Haas, who became an “angel” funder of Marin Open Studios and continues to help out to this day, Carlson said.
“She loves it,” Carlson said.
She also met painter Bob Amos, who became Marin Open Studios’ first board president.
“He helped set up the first budget, showed me how to run a nonprofit, fiscally,” Carlson said. She credits Amos with overseeing the business side so that she could concentrate on networking with fellow artists.
Carlson said she is most proud of her recent diversity initiatives to expand MOS to artists in Marin’s underserved communities such as the Canal area in San Rafael and Marin City. She has tried to help those artists, sometimes offering scholarships to cover the $300 participation fee that artists pay to join the Marin Open Studios tour.
She recruited about 10 Latino artists, some from the Canal area, to paint a 6-foot mural for the lobby of Canal Alliance, a nonprofit that provides a range of services to that community. The mural was installed in 2019.
“It’s just incredible,” Carlson said. Another mural was installed later at the Bon Air Center in Greenbrae, she said. “I’m so proud that those artists are now thriving.”
Marin resident Eustorgia Sol Navarrete was one of the Latino artists to participate in the mural projects. She and Carlson bonded early on — a mentor-mentee relationship that Navarrete attributes to her success as an artist.
“Since 2011, I have been participating In Marin Open Studios, giving me the opportunity to exhibit in galleries and with the Canal Alliance artists,” Navarrete said in an email. “Their support promoted the mural we painted for the Canal Alliance lobby and then to launch other murals.”
MOS also helped Navarette to continue painting and to connect with collectors who liked her art, she said.
“I want to thank Kay, who has worked with me personally every year, to secure our exhibit space, publicity and success,” Navarette said.
In Marin City, Carlson helped an artist group write and secure a grant to the Harbor Point Charitable Foundation to help with operating a gallery there.
“I have learned to operate in different cultures and make it work for them,” Carlson said. “I hope that they succeed.”
Former MOS board member Phil Leddel called Carlson a “galvanizer.”
“She brings artists, patrons and the community together in a way that has become so uniquely hers and so very organic and comfortable,” he said.
Her impact has been vast, he added.
“Kay Carlson is a genius in terms of understanding the scope, beauty and impact of art upon us all,” Leddel said.
“It’s not commercial,” he said. “It’s deeply spiritual and necessary for the mental health of our culture.”