Oliver Ranch an Outdoor Sculpture and Art Installation in Sonoma County

The Oliver Ranch located in Sonoma just an hour north of San Francisco is an outdoor art museum with 18 installations on a sprawling 100 acres of rolling landscapes with breathtaking  panoramic views of the surrounding wine countryside.  It's fair but diminutive to compare Oliver Ranch to Storm King an hour north of NYC sitting on 5 times the acreage and 10 times the number of installations.  Of course, this is petty and both outdoor art museums are well worth visiting.  Both have large scale installations that can be appreciated in a relaxed and organic environment.  We were met at the property by Steve Oliver.  Steve and his wife Nancy have partnered with the Community Fdtn Sonoma County to offer tours to organizations benefitting the local community.  Oliver greeted us in jeans & t-shirt & gave a rehearsed, self-deprecating history of his initial interest in contemporary arts which were honed into a driving passion by his wife.  Oliver's background is in engineering & business.  He built & owns the massively successful Oliver Construction Co.  The only restriction placed on the artists' works by Oliver were to be site specific.  The art installations are majestic feats of architectural engineering and complex configurations.  There are 3 derivations from this generalized description.  Two sound installations and the dual figurative sculptures by Terry Allen.  I took exception to the curators' shallow summation of Allen's works as whimsical.  I thought Allen's sculptures of a girl with her head buried in the ground and the headless male torso braced against a tree a powerful political comment on racial injustice with its history of lynching and the continual failure to acknowledge and affirm civil by burying one's head or turning a deaf ear.  The 2 structures I was most taken with were Roger Barry's "Darwin" a large steel cor-ten arch for its graceful form melding into the earth as well as its ingenious functioning as a seasonal sun-dial by its casting shadows.  Robert Stackhouse's "Russian River Bones" is an all white oblong structure resembling a board walk.  The upper boards are braced upon tall saw horses.  As you move alongside the structure the shape undulates and creates the sensation of water ebbing and flowing.  I'm disappointed our tour was limited to 8 artists.  I very much wanted to experience Andy Goldsworthy's  "6 untitled installations."  I hope to have another opportunity to immerse myself into Oliver Ranch.  There are performances held inside Ann Hamilton's gargantuan concrete tower with helix staircases which I'd be thrilled to attend.