Category: outsider art

Allow Nothing to Worry You

The recent exhibition at Gallery 16 in SF of work by Inez Storer and her late husband Andrew Romanoff presented a touching and bittersweet journey through time and place. Titled Allow Nothing to Worry You, the show pairs Storer’s unique brand of Magic Realism with Romanoff’s quirky and whimsical works.

A larger-than-life photograph of the pair greets viewers upon arrival, a mural-sized enlargement of a scene at the couple’s bucolic home in Inverness. Romanoff, a dashing figure in a striped shirt and ascot, is on the right, while Storer, an intense and vibrant figure on the left crackles with energy. But the punctuation point is where their hands are gently joined in a tender clasp.

Storer is the more sophisticated artist of the pair. Her formal art education included studies at Art Center Los Angeles, San Francisco Art Institute, UC Berkeley, Dominican University, and SF State, where she obtained her master’s degree. She taught art at SFAI for many years, as well as at Sonoma State, SF State, College of Marin, and numerous other colleges and art schools. She also ran the Lester Gallery in Inverness, while teaching and raising a blended family of six kids.

Storer’s work pairs an unerring eye for color and composition with a wicked sense of humor, filtered through a lens of social and political conscience. Drawing strongly on narratives inspired by found objects, iconic subject matter often includes romantic female imagery, Matisse-inspired flowers and still life objects, references to world politics, and environmental issues. With such a busy life and household, the fluidity of the collage medium enabled Storer to create her art when the opportunity presented itself.

Romanoff’s personal history has a strong intersection with that of modern civilization, as great nephew of Tsar Nicholas II, deposed and executed by Bolsheviks in the Russian Revolution, one might say in his case “the personal is political” is proven true in spades. He grew up in Great Britain, on the grounds of Windsor Castle, in a place with the beguiling name of “Frogmore.” While not allowed to consort with the royals, they did occasionally bump into each other in the garden. After serving in the British Navy in WWII, as a young man, Romanoff moved to the States at the encouragement of his cousin, he subsequently had to learn to fend for himself using his wits and his strength to get by.

Inez and Andrew met and fell in love, introduced by the cousin, Igor, who lived in West Marin, and the rest is history. They raised a large blended family in Inverness. Andrew discovered his own artistic talents, and became focused on the medium of Shrinky Dinks®, a children’s craft material that reduces in size when baked in the toaster oven, one which seemed somehow well-suited to convey his unique memories and impressions of the world around him. The company provided him with a lifetime supply. (More information on Andrew’s life and work is found on this site at Remembering Andrew Romanoff.)

Storer had grown up in Los Angeles, with her father, who worked in the film industry, offering her a look at the backlot and underbelly of the glittering fantasies of the silver screen. Forties era films, with their glamorous women, suave men, and convoluted plots, inflect much of the aesthetic of the work. Her multi-faceted dad was also a pilot, and his international adventures add another layer of complexity to the work. Even more significant was Storer’s discovery, as an adult, that she was not, in fact, Catholic, as she had been led to believe. During a time when it was dangerous to admit, her family had hidden its Jewish faith from even its own members.

The Ordinary Life of Natalia Ortiz (2010) makes a statement about the lives of all women, how behind the calm facade of a “normal” woman’s life there are always buried secrets, hidden intrigues, loves lost or found. A box of letters, purloined from her neighbor’s garage, set the stage for a narrative about one of these clandestine affairs, their flowing script sets up a lovely collage element on the lower edge of the canvas. A beautiful, mysterious woman stands in for Natalia, while her elusive suitor emerges from the upper edge of the canvas. A bit of detective work yields the result that a woman named Natalia Ortiz was, in fact, a 40s-era film star from Mexico.

A Day at the Races (2004) suggests one of Romanoff’s iconic scenes from childhood. Here, a young lad in a stroller implores his father to push him faster, echoing the racetrack scene behind him. Scenes from Andrew’s own childhood, many included in the book The Boy Who Would be Tsar, published by Gallery 16 in 2006, have a particular poignancy that is well-suited to his chosen medium of Shrinky Dinks®. In other images, like 9 Second Limit No-Ogling Law (1995), the childlike drawing in juxtaposition with a mature theme feels more loaded; as Storer remarked, “Andrew had no filters.”

The mingling of romance, intrigue, royalty, Hollywood movies, Pop art, and naive art blend and intermix to create a fantastic world of illusion firmly grounded in reality and personal narrative. Like many great celebrity pairs, say Ginger Rogers and Fred Astaire, the duo brought out the best in each other; obviously Storer, a strong-minded woman, is no femme fatale, and Romanoff, who worked as a laborer and craftsperson much of his life, had a nuanced presentation. But, yes, he exuded a royal presence, and the pair together created a gestalt of grit and grace that was unstoppable. It seems as if their symbiosis shifted back and forth as needed, with one providing a rudder of stability when the other began to veer off course.

While Romanoff’s work remained largely a hidden talent outside of the Bay Area, Storer’s work has been widely acclaimed. They enjoyed traveling, in particular making several memorable trips to Russia, where Andrew was greeted by many as the sole surviving heir to the monarchy traveling incognito. Storer completed a remarkable series after one trip, conflating experiences of the thin veneer of normalcy and elegance being at the time displayed in certain settings—the Russian palaces they toured—and her early assimilation of the concept that the glamour of Hollywood was really all just paste.

Gallery 16’s presentation is a welcome tribute to the amazing lives and work of these two remarkable individuals. Romanoff passed away in 2021 at the age of 98, but Storer remains vibrant and active to this day. At Storer’s talk with Griff Williams near the end of the exhibition’s run, she commented that it was good Andrew had not lived to see Putin’s brutal invasion of Ukraine, while the pair both feared such an eventual outcome, it would have made it no easier to take. With dry humor and unfailing deftness, each in their own way has made an indelible mark on the Bay Area art scene.

Barbara Morris

Allow Nothing to Worry You closed in May at Gallery 16, SF.

https://gallery16.com/