Sonoma County artists’ work shown at de Young Museum

Three years ago, the de Young Museum in San Francisco took a bold step by opening up a major juried exhibition to entries from any Northern California artist who wanted to apply, something the museum had not attempted, even on a smaller scale, since 1935.

The result was the de Young Open exhibition in 2020. Some 6,190 artists from the nine Bay Area counties applied to have their work included. At the least, you could say it was a success. So the museum has decided to stage an open-invitation exhibition every three years. The second one opened last weekend.

This year, 7,766 artists applied. Of those, 883 artists — including 70 from Sonoma County — were chosen to have one work shown in the museum’s largest galleries.

“It’s very exciting,” said Sonoma painter Kathleen Truax, whose entry is an oil painting titled “Mariupol,” named for the Ukrainian city invaded by Russia last year. “When I decided to submit something, it seemed like a long shot.”

When the de Young called this exhibition “open,” it was sincere.

“Anyone in the nine Bay Area counties could apply,” said Tim Burgard, curator in charge of the American art department at Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco, which include the de Young and the Legion of Honor.

“You just have to be 18 or older,” Burgard said. “It doesn’t matter if you have a master of fine arts degree or own gallery or if you’re self-taught.”

That doesn’t mean it was easy to get work accepted into the exhibit. The jury process was a huge endeavor and took place in two rounds over a total of 19 days. In the first round, eight curators from the Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco each reviewed an equal share of the total submissions.

The works they rated the highest progressed to the second round and were then reviewed in equal shares by four Bay Area artists — Clare Rojas, Stephanie Syjuco, Sunny A. Smith and Xiaoze Xie — whose ratings ultimately determined which artworks were included in the exhibition.

All artworks in the de Young Open were evaluated anonymously from digital images without any information identifying the artists.

“It’s a real honor to be one of the artists accepted,” said Alexander Valley sculptor T Barny. “What blows me away is that I am one of just 38 three-dimensional sculptors that the jury selected.”

Barny’s entry in the show is a 22-pound Belgian marble sculpture titled “Opacus,” standing 21 inches tall. “It means dense clouds in Latin,” Barny explained.

Santa Rosan Christyl O’Flaherty’s project was a staged photo shoot reenacting Harriet Tubman’s efforts to help slaves escape the South during the Civil War through the network of routes and safe houses known as the Underground Railroad.

O’Flaherty conceived and directed the project, working with costumed models and two photographers, outdoors near Solano Beach in the fall of 2020.

“I always have admired what Harriet Tubman stood for and the strong leader that she was,” O’Flaherty said. “I was so moved by the movie ‘Harriet’ I said I need to recreate what she did.”

The exhibit will include one photo from the re-enactment. The project was covered in Canada’s History Magazine.

“It’s very valuable just to have all of this work in the museum,” said Burgard of the overall exhibit at the de Young Museum. “This represents a real commitment by the museum. It holds up a mirror to the entire Bay Area.”

Sebastopol artist and architect Ken Berman, whose mixed-media work on canvas, “Temporary Restraining Order,” was accepted for the de Young Open, hopes his inclusion in the exhibition will lead to other possibilities.

“I’m excited,” Berman said. “You’re hopeful that there’ll be some new opportunities in it.”