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Mammoth Lakes, CA
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Thursday, July 29, 2010
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Van Nattan reflects on 40 years of art life in Mammoth |
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Friday, 04 September 2009 |
By Catherine Billey
Mammoth Times Staff Writer
 Mammoth Times Photo/Catherine Billey Van Nattan’s oil painting of T.J. Lake will be on display at the 40th Annual Labor Day Festival of the Arts, among other works done with palette knife. “The knife lends itself very nicely to the Eastern Sierra,” the artist said.
“It was a wonderful lesson for me to realize how much you can damage a kid by some words,” said Van Nattan, a retired educator.
“So I was very careful to encourage and not discourage my own students.” Those students included all his children, who went to Mammoth’s public schools.
Now 77, Van Nattan said he felt punched in the gut by his former teacher’s words, but he determined to become self-taught. He started with pastels, charcoal, pen and ink, and moved on to acrylics. By 1960, he got serious about oil painting.
“I still play around in acrylics, but the oils are my main stead,” he explained.
He also discovered a preference for painting with steel or palette knives.
“I finally found that brushes were too aloof for me, and the knife was a little more exciting and kinetic. The knife lends itself very nicely to the Eastern Sierra.”
By 1969, Van Nattan was among the first artists to display in Mammoth’s inaugural Labor Day Festival of the Arts, put on by the Mammoth Art Guild at the Motel 6 site.
He hasn’t missed a festival since.
And this, the 40th anniversary year, will be his last.
Mammoth is his first love
Mammoth was his first and most enduring love, he said. He first visited in the summer of 1947 for a two-week vacation from Southern California, where he grew up, with his grandparents.
“I was interested in a girl who happened to be the daughter of people who owned Woods Lodge,” he said.
“When it was time to leave, I said I was staying.” For the remainder of that summer, he did fill-in work at Tamarack Lodge.
During the following three summers, he worked at Woods Lodge. By that time, he said, he knew he would spend the rest of his life in Mammoth.
“I fell in love with the country more than the girl. I really did.”
He bought his first piece of property on Minaret and Berner from Clyde Miller in 1950.
“It’s still vacant,” he noted. “It’s never been built on, though it’s changed hands several times.”
He then joined the Navy for four years, during the Korean War, followed by four years trying to pay off his lot. In 1962, he received his bachelor’s degree in psychology from Los Angeles State College.
In the same year, he believed he had all his ducks in a row for a loan from the Bank of America in Bishop to develop his lot, so he went to see Joe Thomas. But Van Nattan recalls that Thomas said, “I’m not going to loan another damned penny in that town – it’s overbuilt!”
Forced to rethink his plans, Van Nattan decided to buy a lodge that already existed.
“So I bought the Edelweiss Lodge from Bob Schotz. I used my lot as a down payment,” he said.
He started teaching at the Mammoth Academy in about 1965, and was later asked to join the Elementary School staff down by the fish hatchery. He also taught junior high and enjoyed various management positions before completing his career at Mammoth Elementary School teaching third grade and as assistant principal.
Along the way, he earned a master’s degree in Educational Administration from U.S.C., primarily from correspondence in order to spend minimal time away from Mammoth Lakes.
These days, Van Nattan does some of his painting in the small Lake Mary cabin he has shared with his wife, Caren, for 31 summers. But his full studio is in Cayucas, Calif., just south of Hearst Castle, where the couple resides in the winter.
“It is a garden spot. I have two of the loveliest places in the world to live,” he said of the two residences. “We got tired of the snow. So when the snow’s gone, we’re here. When it comes, we go to the beach.”
The Van Nattans, both previously married, met in Mammoth in the 1970s while they were involved in 4-H.
“It centered a great deal around animal husbandry, but it branched out into other things,” he said.
“We were specifically involved in the raising of sheep, because it’s one of the few animals we could have here in Mammoth for the duration of time it took to market. The other animals took longer and required different space.”
Origins: Labor Day Arts Festival
Art is often what opens people’s eyes to what is around them.
Several years ago, Van Nattan recalls, a woman stopped by his art booth at the Labor Day arts festival and said the sky is never the color as he had painted it.
“Where do you come from?” he asked her.
“Los Angeles,” she replied.
He told her to look up at the sky.
“I’ll be damned,” she said.
He laughed as he recalled the incident and remembered that the first festival was organized by the Mammoth Art Guild in either 1969 or 1970.
“There’s some discussion of whether we started it in 1969 or 1970, but the first location we had ... was right down the street at what’s now Motel 6, right next door to the old post office,” he said. “We moved it around many locations over the years.”
Eventually it moved to its current site in Sam’s Woods.
“The new location is actually a much better site. It’s larger, it’s more level, and the parking works out better for the customers.”
Because it is his last year with the festival, a sign at his booth will indicate why: “After 40 years, we’re no longer doing this show. We’ve been diagnosed with that horrible disease called A.G.E.”
That doesn’t mean he’ll stop painting and displaying in select galleries, such as the Twin Lakes Art Gallery on Lake Mary Road, the oldest continuing business in Mammoth Lakes. A representative there said Van Nattan’s work sells more than any other artist because the prices are reasonable.
Van Nattan will be among the 100 artists at the 40th Annual Mammoth Lakes Labor Day Festival of the Arts from Sept. 5-7. Although he does not have a Web site, he can be reached the old-fashioned way: the local phone book.
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Last Updated ( Friday, 11 September 2009 )
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