20/20
Our First Exhibition:

**Torbert, Doyle and Di Novi**

As part of our year-long celebration of 20 years of showing fine art, we look back at our very first exhibition.

Right: Meg Torbert, “Shannon,” acrylic, 36x48 in.

My husband Dave and I bought the gallery building to live in while waiting for him to retire. We had recently purchased a country place and sold our Santa Barbara home. Swell, I thought, a literal studio apartment right downtown within walking distance of everything.

My dear marvelous artist friend Meg Torbert had just lost the Cambria gallery where she showed for many years. And my dear painter friend Pat Doyle had nowhere to show her work. And my stepson David knew this wonderful furniture-maker whose work really deserved to be seen.

I planned to give just one show before dirtying up the beautiful oak floors and turning the big room into my studio.

It was a lot of work. To give authenticity to the exhibition, I designed gallery letterhead, installed skylights, put potted plants out front, fixed the lighting, sent out press releases, established a new computer database, and hosted a big reception. Once that was over I thought, “Well, all the work is done. Now it’ll be easy to just keep it going.”

Twenty years later and the work hasn’t let up.

Press Release

A NEW ART GALLERY has opened in the soon-to-be-famous SoCo district—that part of Santa Barbara south of Cota which is a medley of shops, homes and light industry. LACUNA GALLERY, at 517 Laguna between Cota and Haley, currently features the paintings of Meg Torbert and Patricia Doyle and the sculptural furniture of Victor Di Novi, through March 12.

Lacuna Gallery is the brainchild of local painter Marcia Burtt. Searching for a downtown art studio, she and her husband found a small-town version of a New York loft created by the previous owner, a collector of early California Impressionist paintings. The potential of so much wall space soon led to the idea of showing the work of others.

Lacuna Gallery will present work by contemporary local artists. The first exhibit features Meg Torbert, who is actively working at 87 and was a curator at the Walker Art Center in Minneapolis before moving to Santa Barbara; Patricia Doyle, who trained with Corita Kent and at Otis Art Institute and who has exhibited at the Barnsdall Art Center in Los Angeles; and Victor Di Novi, who has shown his furniture in a number of American Craft Council shows as well as at the Smithsonian Craft Show in Washington, D. C.

Regular hours are Wednesday through Sunday, 1:00 to 5:00.

Santa Barbara News-Press Scene Magazine, Feb. 4, 2000

VICTOR DI NOVI was born in Brooklyn and moved to Santa Barbara in 1978. He is a maker of functional art—useful, practical objects that mimic the creative tension of nature. He first builds up a rough sculptural form with many inlaid blocks of wood, then gradually carves and sands the excess away.
He has exhibited widely, at American Craft Council shows--in Baltimore, San Francisco and Philadelphia--and at the Smithsonian Craft Show in 1998, among other venues.

His work is in the permanent collection of the White House and numerous private collections.