Dave Spanbock has been both an artist and gallerist in his extensive career, mostly as an abstract artist, drawing geometrical shapes, mostly squares, freehand and experimenting with colors and the moods and emotion they evoke.

On a walk along Ojai Avenue, going past the derelict hulk of what was once the flourishing community that was the bowling alley, he had an inspiration that Ojai, for all its incredible natural beauty, lacks an inside perspective equal to its exterior. We talk about how it might look to have a museum and arts center in Ojai, one more aligned with modern art movements and artists, residency programs, internships, master classes, visiting scholars and much more. Spending decades in Los Angeles, he's seen how a museum or exhibit space can transform a neighborhood. In Ojai, such a place could potentially transform the region.

Spanbock has lived in and amid art most of his life, growing up in New Jersey, moving to Santa Barbara for college, where he moved from fine arts photography and writing into abstract painting. He was mentored by several prominent artists and teachers in college, influenced by the Black Mountain College model, in which all disciplines of art are integrated into a fluid whole (listen to Episode 103 with the American Modern Opera Company for more insight on Black Mountain College's outsize influence on modern culture).

Spanbock is known for his "365 Day Project" in which he painted a self portrait every day for a year. At first it was a discipline, but it revealed greater connections between the brain, identity and how they flow through the brush.

We talked about various arts movements, personalities like Warhol and gallerist Larry Gagosian and Ojai's potential as a modern-day Athens. Dave's fascinating development of an artist, his influences and the history of paints and pigments. We did not talk about the Såmi people of Finland, the McCloud River strain of rainbow trout or the provenance of the mud which umpires use to treat baseballs.