Ventura County Star
By Kathleen Wilson

Backers are poised to open a downtown art museum for Santa Paula’s multimillion-dollar collection of paintings, ending five years of attempts.

The collection of more than 300 works includes those by Jessie Arms Botke, whose oil and gold-leaf paintings of birds have sold for more than $100,000 each.

Donna Granata, an expert on Ventura County art, said the paintings have tremendous significance.

“Many of the artists have really secured a very important place in not only the history of California art, but American art,” said Granata, founder of Focus on the Masters, an education program documenting artists who live and work in Ventura County.

Directors of the Santa Paula Art Museum have struggled to find a suitable space to display the cache of paintings now hung from walls of public buildings and tucked away in storage rooms and closets.

They abandoned a plan to put the museum in an old bank building after negotiations fell through in fall 2003. Then they found the $7 million cost of building a museum too high.

But now managers of the Limoneira Co. have agreed to lease their historic, downtown office building to the museum’s board of directors at a discounted rate of $2,000 a month. Assuming the museum’s directors can raise $150,000 to $200,000 in coming months for renovations, they expect to open the museum in November.

To seal the deal they are holding a fundraising reception from 2-5 p.m. May 17 inside the future museum, 117 N. 10th St.

Called “Paint Me Santa Paula,” the public event will offer dessert, musical entertainment, a silent auction and a drawing for a painting by artist Gail Pidduck.

“This is a bare walls party where people can come, see the location and hopefully write some checks,” said John Blanchard, a member of the board who heads the local Chamber of Commerce.

The museum has amassed about $250,000 in pledges, but those gifts will come in over time and some are tied to the museum’s opening, directors said.

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