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American Dream Machine , 2005, Autry Museum of the American West With his trademark blend of traditional imagery, contemporary experience, and vibrant color and form, Harry Fonseca created a body of work as varied as it is powerful. His works stretch our understanding of indigenous art and show us—if we need reminding—that the news from native California is good. Fonseca, who is of Nisenan Maidu, Hawaiian, and Portuguese heritage, began his art career in the 1960s at Cal St

Coast Highway Culvert , 1960, Laguna Beach Art Museum Stripped of oleanders and other abuse-tolerant plants, the freeways, in their geometry and sleekness, have inspired many visual artists, especially in the Midcentury years. One of my favorites is Roger Kuntz. Kuntz’ eerie, human-less, and in fact car-less images from the early 1960s read as both figuration and abstraction, moving between these two opposite artistic stances just as the then-new freeways allowed a transition

Sentinels , 1917, SFMOMA Imagine the thrill of being called “the most advanced artist in San Francisco,” “a crusader for the modern movement,” and a “masterly” and “virile” painter—all while being a woman! That’s Anne Bremer—socialist, feminist, friend of Jack London, and one of NorCal’s foremost painters at the dawn of the twentieth century. Her travels to New York and Europe inspired her to lead San Francisco out of its Tonalist reverie and into a modern style of landscape

Suburban Nightmare , 1982 , UCI Langson/Orange County Museum of Art For a candy-colored view of the streets of Los Angeles, look no further than Carlos Almaraz. Born in Mexico, Almaraz arrived at age 9 in LA, a place, he said, that seemed like a dream. The feeling stayed with him. Almaraz went to UCLA and earned an MFA from the Otis College of Art and Design in 1974 and was one of the founding members of the influential Chicano art collective Los Four. He spent several years