Paintings Prints and Posters: Selections From the Life of E. Klein
Esmerelda Klein is a pillar of an era of The Bay bygone. In addition to her long tenure as Gatekeeper at The Southern Bay Buddhist Garden Club and co-founder of the San Francisco Weavers Guild of Women Weavers of San Francisco and Marin, in San Francisco, she is an inspiring collector and artist in her own right.
Klein arrived at Osgood Place in North Beach by way of Rochester, New York in the spring of 1958. Immersed in the transmutative personal-political tenor of the neighborhood, she forged deep ties to local cultural institutions, artists, and artisans who helped cultivate the keen eye which has served her well in life and in her life as a collector since that formative period.
In 1971, Klein moved again to be close to MeNak* who had by that time established his permant retreat in the Santa Cruz mountains. In order to do so, Klein narrowed the scope of her curatorial assemblage by deacquisitioning her visionary collection of fused glass works, initiating the market spike in such work and enabling the purchase of her now longtime home, Garden Hill.
In a classic Auntie unload, Gravel & Gold is fortunate to serve as custodians for a group of works on paper dating from the early 1960s onward that constitutes the remainder of her celebrated collection, which includes her own work. This show marks its first public appearance. All works are available, some for as little as $12.