California Light

The Laguna Art Museum will hold a free, daylong symposium on its "California Light: 1900-1930" exhibition Oct. 13 at the Forum Theatre on the Festival of Arts grounds, 650 Laguna Canyon Road. Sponsored by the museum's Historical Collection Council, the event will be hosted by guest curator Patricia Trenton.

Holiday boat parades are dazzling, glitzy affairs that remind me of what the Rose Parade might look like if it were held at night and took place on water. Christmas, tiki and even Elvis themes are depicted in strings of colored lights along masts and bows as boats glide along marinas and channels. Parades are free, but do require some advance planning to get a good viewing spot. Check out these upcoming light shows; click on the websites to find details and parade routes. Newport Beach: The 103rd Christmas Boat Parade is one of the oldest and longest in Southern California.

"Exhibit of Ho-Hum" was a mean-spirited and ignorant critique of the Laguna Art Museum's showing of California artists. I suggest the Laguna Art Museum is deserving of our appreciation for consistently representing a lucid artistic culture in our area. PAUL RYCKOFF, Corona del Mar

PHOTOGRAPHS BY BLAKE LITTLE PRODUCED BY BARBARA THORNBURG

In response to the "Exhibit of Ho-Hum"--a review by Cathy Curtis of "California Light, 1900-1930," an exhibition organized by the Laguna Art Museum (Oct. 17): The critique prompted me to call Ms. Curtis to try and understand the basis of her negativity toward the exhibition and the artists themselves. Surprisingly, Ms. Curtis admitted to me that she really doesn't like these pictures. Can a critic who admits a negative prejudgment of the art write a truly objective review?

California's native-born children, whatever our color or tongue, realize very early that California takes every impression. Our parents, on the other hand, are often surprised by how many Californias they find when they get here. Nothing at all like they expected. Nothing like the movie. My early intuition as a native son was that California was dreamed into being elsewhere. I noticed that paradigmatic Californians weren't so by birth. Richard Diebenkorn came from Oregon.

Holiday boat parades are dazzling, glitzy affairs that remind me of what the Rose Parade might look like if it were held at night and took place on water. Christmas, tiki and even Elvis themes are depicted in strings of colored lights along masts and bows as boats glide along marinas and channels. Parades are free, but do require some advance planning to get a good viewing spot. Check out these upcoming light shows; click on the websites to find details and parade routes. Newport Beach: The 103rd Christmas Boat Parade is one of the oldest and longest in Southern California.

Christopher Piotrowski has traveled a rather winding path. He was born in southern Poland and worked as a waiter in Chicago and Los Angeles. Later he spent four years cooking for nuclear inspectors in the Soviet Pacific. A man with such an unconventional resume can be hard to predict. His latest effort is as chef-owner of a Huntington Beach restaurant, California Bistro. If the name doesn't impress you, don't worry. This restaurant is anything but nondescript.

It's after-hours at the San Jose Museum of Art, a renovated library building in the heart of this city's old downtown, and JoAnne Northrup, the museum's senior curator, finds a moment to talk about the exhibition filling the institution's entire gallery space. "Parallels and Intersections: Art/Women/California, 1950-2000" is intended, she says, to be a landmark show of female artists who created landmarks in art history.

California's native-born children, whatever our color or tongue, realize very early that California takes every impression. Our parents, on the other hand, are often surprised by how many Californias they find when they get here. Nothing at all like they expected. Nothing like the movie. My early intuition as a native son was that California was dreamed into being elsewhere. I noticed that paradigmatic Californians weren't so by birth. Richard Diebenkorn came from Oregon.

Christopher Piotrowski has traveled a rather winding path. He was born in southern Poland and worked as a waiter in Chicago and Los Angeles. Later he spent four years cooking for nuclear inspectors in the Soviet Pacific. A man with such an unconventional resume can be hard to predict. His latest effort is as chef-owner of a Huntington Beach restaurant, California Bistro. If the name doesn't impress you, don't worry. This restaurant is anything but nondescript.

To swipe an image from "Oklahoma!," there's a bright, golden haze on stage at the Redondo Beach Performing Arts Center. In only its third year, the Civic Light Opera of South Bay Cities has mounted a supremely mellow, sunny "Oklahoma!," a production that underscores the maturity of the youngest civic light opera company in Southern California.

It's one thing to indulge in political ideology and quite another to make government work. The recent budget battle between the obstinate "cavemen" Republicans of the Legislature and the pragmatic Gov. Pete Wilson illustrated this tension stirring in the soul of the state GOP.

Robert Irwin is widely regarded as the theoretical godfather of California Light and Space art, arguably Los Angeles' most original contribution to the lexicon of contemporary styles. No conversation ranking local artists gets very far before Irwin is nominated for the imaginary "most important artist of his generation" award. He's already received the real and much-coveted MacArthur fellowship, the so-called genius grant.

In response to the "Exhibit of Ho-Hum"--a review by Cathy Curtis of "California Light, 1900-1930," an exhibition organized by the Laguna Art Museum (Oct. 17): The critique prompted me to call Ms. Curtis to try and understand the basis of her negativity toward the exhibition and the artists themselves. Surprisingly, Ms. Curtis admitted to me that she really doesn't like these pictures. Can a critic who admits a negative prejudgment of the art write a truly objective review?

It's a mystery to me why The Times would send such a primly orthodox critic as Cathy Curtis to review the show "California Light, 1900-30" at the Laguna Art Museum ("Exhibit of Ho-Hum," Calendar Oct. 17). When Ms. Curtis studied art history at college she (must have) learned that no art can be a bit significant unless it is avant-garde. As she points out, the California impressionists used "techniques pioneered by artist in France more than a generation earlier." This by itself makes the whole show just dreadful.