Longtime Marin resident and jazz vocalist Jackie Ryan is set to perform an afternoon concert at the Community Church of Mill Valley on Sunday, Oct. 15, accompanied by famed jazz pianist Larry Vuckovich.

Christopher Louden of Jazz Times called Ryan “one of the outstanding jazz vocalists of her generation and, quite possibly, of all time...rivaling the dexterous sass of Sarah Vaughan, the instinctive smarts of Carmen McRae and the scintillating verve of Diana Krall, while DownBeat Magazine and Boston Globe jazz critic Andrew Gilbert described Ryan as “extravagantly gifted" with "astonishing range — both emotionally and stylistically. A true jazz original."

The 411: Jackie Ryan performs with pianist Larry Vuckovich on Sunday, Oct. 15 from 4:30pm at the Community Church of Mill Valley, 8 Olive Street. MORE INFO & TIX.

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A portion of the proceeds from the six-hour event will go to Drawbridge, an arts program for homeless children.

Six years ago, Kentfield native Jennie Dito was working in the renewable energy industry and taking continuing education ceramics classes at Tam High when she got a call from her friend Will Hutchinson.

That call galvanized Dito to create the Mill Valley Potter’s Studio (MVPS) in the heart of Tam Junction, a facility for which there was so much pent-up demand that it has grown nearly every year since its inception, and now also includes Wheelhouse, an artistic hub adjacent to the Dipsea Cafe in which 15 ceramic artists rent space to create pottery.

Dito’s MVPS is hosting its twice-annual End of Summer Student Sale, a showcase of the work from the studio’s students, both adults and children, on Saturday, October 21, from 10am-4pm in the Proof Lab parking lot at 244 Shoreline Hwy., with an open house at MVPS (254 Shoreline Hwy.) to follow from 4:30-6:30pm. A portion of the proceeds from the event go to Drawbridge, an arts program for homeless children.

So about that call: Hutchinson, the co-owner of the then-7-year-old Proof Lab in Tam Junction, was pondering the idea of taking over an adjacent 10,000-square-foot warehouse that had previously been occupied by Webster Gears, thus giving Proof Lab’s surf and skate shop and outdoor apparel shop more space. But with all that new square footage, it also triggered the possibility of completely reimagining the hub of Tam Junction.

“Will had this great vision and shared interest to activate the area and really give back to the community,” Dito says. “He was willing to invest in the site to turn it into something central to the community.”

In that moment, Dito was ready to contribute the artistic component to the equation, launching the Mill Valley Potter’s Studio in a small indoor space surrounded by a pumpkin patch around Halloween 2011 within a venture that was then known as the GROW Art & Garden Center. That venture eventually grew into a collective of subtenants that includes MVPS, the CNL Native Plant Nursery, Studio 4 Art, a hands-on art studio for children and Alexi Glickman’s Magic West music school.

The six years since Dito made that initial leap with the Mill Valley Potter’s Studio has been quite a ride. She first got into ceramics at Redwood High School, and later, as an art history and environmental studies major at UC Santa Cruz, she joined a studio nearby.

“It was really great – I could go in go in and work at my own time and pace, and it’s really where the love of the hobby and the love of its therapeutic properties emerged,” Dito says. “It just has this great ability to slow you down. You get lost in the material and it completely takes you out of your busy schedule.”

After college, Dito got into the solar energy industry, working for a couple of different companies, first as a consultant and eventually in business development. She continued to take ceramics classes while doing so.

Dito was determined to make MVPS a sustainable business, knowing that it was extremely low-margin.

“My slogan was, ‘If you build it, they will come,’ like in Field of Dreams,” she says. On one hand, I thought, ‘what the hell am I doing?’ But I had a full-time job so I didn’t really care. I just wanted it to be sustainable.”

“The bigger focus was that I just knew there was a demand for this sort of space,” she adds. Marin County used to be the home of the artists! Move over, bankers.”

In 2015, Dito left the solar industry to work at an interior architecture design firm in San Francisco, and then in December 2016, she left that firm to have a baby with her husband, John.

Over the years, Dito says she’s relied on a stalwart team, including operations manager Sarah Wright, programs manager and instructor Nadia Tarzi Saccardi and an array of adult and youth instructors.

“It’s just evolved into this great community right in the heart of Tam Junction,” Dito says.  “We’re excited to showcase the latest batch of amazing pottery created here!”

​The 411: ​The Mill Valley Potter’s Studio (MVPS) hosts its twice-annual End of Summer Student Sale, a showcase of the work from the studio’s students, both adults and children, on Saturday, October 21, from 10am-4pm in the Proof Lab parking lot at 244 Shoreline Hwy., with an open house at MVPS (254 Shoreline Hwy.) to follow from 4:30-6:30pm. A portion of the proceeds from the event go to Drawbridge, an arts program for homeless children. MORE INFO.

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For Sausalito-based Terri Froelich, her painting and her lifelong love for photography are deeply intertwined. With the knowledge and passion gained from a degree in photography from the Art Institute in Florida, Froelich’s contemporary abstract paintings draw heavily on photography, particularly in terms of balance and composition.

“My work is molded by an awareness of my surroundings.  I enjoy discovering and then replicating rustic details,” she says. My challenge is to reconcile diverse and sometimes conflicting experiences into a balanced piece of art that exposes strong personal meaning.”

Working out of her studio at the Industrial Center Building (ICB) in Sausalito, Froelich has exhibited her paintings in galleries, juried art exhibitions and as part of several museum and private collections. Now she’s set to showcase “Moving Forward,” her mixed media work on wood panels, at the Mill Valley Chamber of Commerce & Visitor Center (85 Throckmorton Ave.), throughout October, with a wine reception set for the Mill Valley Arts Commission’s First Tuesday Artwalk on October 3, 5:30-7:30pm.

Froelich finds inspiration for her work in details discovered during exploration and travel – nature, beach, water, architecture, rust and topography, among others. “The balance and composition I see through the camera lens easily translates to my paintings,” she says.

​The 411: Terri Froelich showcases “Moving Forward,” her mixed media work on wood panels, at the Mill Valley Chamber of Commerce & Visitor Center (85 Throckmorton Ave.), throughout October, with a wine reception set for the Mill Valley Arts Commission’s First Tuesday Artwalk on October 3, 5:30-7:30pm. MORE INFO.

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For 20 years, the prolific and talented BayWood Artists have been plying their paint brushes for an art show to raise funds and bring awareness to Bay Area nonprofit environmental organizations, from the Golden Gate National Parks Conservancy and the Point Reyes National Seashore Association to the Marin Conservation League.

For the second consecutive year, the organization is using its annual show, set for October 6-8 at the Marin Art & Garden Center, to support One Tam, a community campaign of the Tamalpais Lands Collaborative to "raise awareness about the need to maintain the long-term health of Mt. Tam, engage more volunteers in caring for its treasured resources, and renew the spirit of philanthropy that has been so fundamental to the preservation of Mt. Tam over the past century." The Tamalpais Lands Collaborative includes California State Parks, Marin County Parks, Marin Municipal Water District, and the National Park Service along with the nonprofit Golden Gate National Parks Conservancy.

The show, dubbed “One Mountain - One Tam: BayWood Artists Celebrate 20 Years,” features more than 100 new watercolor and oil paintings of views, trails, and the natural environment in and around Mount Tamalpais. Fifty percent of all sales will be donated to One Tam.

A group of 10 artists created BayWood Artists in 1997, drawing inspiration a year earlier, when San Anselmo artists Zeneida Mott, Lissa Nicolaus and Sherrill Miller were approached by Mary Welch, then-director of MarinScapes, an art show that benefits Buckelew Programs. It was suggested that since they all painted landscapes, the artists could do something to also preserve the land they loved to paint. BayWood Artists has remained small in size with about 10-12 members with guest artists added every year.

Funds raised at this event go directly to One Tam programs and programs (MORE INFO). One of those programs is the upcoming "Tam's Wild Side: 2017 Mt. Tam Wildlife Symposium" on Oct. 26 at the Marin Art & Garden Center, where One Tam researchers will unveil results from the Wildlife Picture Index Project’s first three years’ of data collection on Mt. Tam, give updates on other wildlife studies (such as bats and pollinators) coming out of last years’ Health of Mt. Tam report, and share upcoming projects to support the mountain's wildlife. The event serves as a follow-up to the 2016 Mt. Tam Science Summit.
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The 411: The “One Mountain - One Tam: BayWood Artists Celebrate 20 Years” exhibit by BayWood Artists to benefit One Tam is set for Oct. 6-8, with an Opening Reception on Friday, October (5-8pm), with works available to purchase on  Saturday, October 7 and Sunday October 8th. All events are free and open to the public. MORE INFO.

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​they received thanks to funds raised by Kiddo!. We are thrilled to be able to support the Kiddo! Endowment, and help ensure that all of the children of Mill Valley have the same benefits for years to come.”

VIP donors funded and enjoyed a pre-show dinner in El Paseo’s Sunnyside room featuring inspired cuisine from new Chef Todd Shoberg.

“What an incredible night!,” says Kiddo! Executive Director Bill Lampl. “Not only was this an exciting event for the community, but I’m thrilled that the Hagars, El Paseo, and all of the folks who came out for the show tonight, are helping us grow the endowment.”

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When longtime Mill Valley resident Janet Miller and her son Tyler Barbee started the Challenger League in 2009, their goal was quite simple: give kids with special needs like Tyler’s brother Conor the same chance as other kids to participate in organized baseball by pairing them with “buddies” – primarily high school and middle school athletes – to assist them.

Fast forward eight years and the scope of their efforts has expanded dramatically in the form of a collaboration between Mill Valley Recreation and Project Awareness and Special Sports (PAASS), the Challenger League outgrowth that Tyler Barbee started in 2014. The adaptive needs partnership now includes swim lessons and summer camps for children with special needs, a wide array of classes that spans cooking, martial arts, strength and conditioning, dance and golf, as well as an innovative “work training experience” program.

​The collaboration’s adaptive needs program was honored with the Helen Putnam Award for Excellence last week at the 2017 League of California Cities Conference in Sacramento.

“This absolutely is a community effort,” Miller says. “With the support of the City, our participants and families are being included and afforded opportunities that just have not been available in Marin. Our volunteers are also gaining so much and everyone is standing side by side – grateful to be helping one another.”

The collaboration originated in April 2013, when then-new Mill Valley Recreation Director Jenny Rogers met Miller at a City Council meeting, where PAASS was being honored as part of national Autism Awareness Month. Miller spoke at the meeting about the importance of employment opportunities for young people with disabilities, and for Rogers, a light bulb went off.

She knew that the Mill Valley Community Center had been struggling to recruit good employees, and ended up hiring Connor Barbee, who has autism, through its “Work Training Experience” program run by local nonprofit Integrated Community Services (ICS). Rogers and PAASS also combined forces to create the City’s first Adaptive Swim Lesson Program in February 2015.

Both the work training and adaptive swim lesson programs were so successful, and incited enough additional demand, that MV Recreation and PAASS expanded the partnership in 2016 by offering a unique summer camp experience, Camp PAASS Without Boundaries. Unlike past efforts to adapt camps to include those with special needs, the camp was tailored to the specific needs of a wide cross-section of those with special needs.  

“They were looking for that traditional summer camp experience for their kids in a camp all their own,” Rogers says. “This format helped to foster community, camaraderie, and inspiration among the kids.”

The program “filled the Community Center with participants engaged in a wide variety of fun and enriching summer activities including swimming, martial arts, cooking, dance, arts and crafts, natural science activities, sports and recreational games,” Rogers says, noting that the highlight was "Furs, Scales, and Tales," a special animal show featuring a camp favorite, 8-foot-long albino boa constrictor.  

For summer 2017, Camp PAASS expanded from one to three week-long sessions, and now it’s being held up as an example for others cities throughout California to follow. "It’s our goal to use this summer's success to help educate other cities about how best to offer adaptive needs programs," says Recreation Supervisor Kathryn Reisinger. "It was absolutely heartwarming and reminded me of why I wanted to work in recreation in the first place."

With ever-growing community support and a statewide award to show for its efforts, City staff have been asked to create training events specifically for recreation agencies throughout California. The Community Center has already hosted the Adaptive Needs Training Seminar (ANTS), which provided Aquatics staff with training on how best to offer Adaptive Needs Swim Lessons and inclusive Aquatics programming. City staffers have also presented at several professional conferences and workshops on the City’s Adaptive Needs Program.

In collaboration with its nonprofit partners, Mill Valley Recreation has provided more than 348 hours of Adaptive Needs Swim Lessons across more than 600 classes over the past three-plus years.

“It’s always our goal to help prepare participants to be more independent later in life, and each of these programs is going a long way to helping to make that happen,” Tyler Barbee says. “Our partnership with Mill Valley Recreation has been incredibly helpful.”

Rogers says her department has expanded these offerings into the fall session after-school program and camp sessions throughout the school year.

“The City’s Adaptive Needs Program is a perfect example of the thoughtful, inclusive, community-based programing that Mill Valley Recreation staff consistently execute and deliver,” says City Manager Jim McCann. “I’m proud to have this particular program honored, because it provides such a beneficial, and much needed service to special needs children. Jenny Rogers’ energy and enthusiasm for public service shine through in this and many other state-of-the-art programs she, and her staff, have developed for the community.”

The 411: Mill Valley Recreation and Project Awareness and Special Sports (PAASS) have partnered on swim lessons and summer camps for children with special needs as well as an innovative “work training experience” program. ​FULL PROGRAM SCHEDULE.

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“Some tortures are physical And some are mental, But the one that is both Is dental.”

That quote, attributed to the late American poet Ogden Nash, speaks to the anxiety – real or imagined –  induced by dental visits for many people.

With that in mind, longtime Marin dentist Dr. Gila (JEE-la) Dorostkar’s new pediatric dental office at 650 East Blithedale Ave. in Mill Valley is determined to reduce that anxiety for both their kiddo patients AND their parents.

“We’re all about patients and families first,” says John Millar, the practice’s project manager. “We do everything we can to accommodate the child and the family.”

That includes Aspen, Dorostkar’s brown-eyed golden retriever who completed a pet therapy program and is regularly called upon to calm young patients as they sit in the dental chair.

“Kids love her and it really helps them get over some of the trepidation,” Millar says of Aspen, who is featured on the practice’s “Brushing is PAWsome” t-shirts.

The office also boasts a toy-tower sculpture that gives out bouncy balls after an appointment. “It helps if kids can see their ‘reward’ while going back to the dental chairs and really makes the office seem like a fun place to be – kids love it,” Millar says.

Televisions are positioned above each dental chair for kids that want to watch a show during the appointment –”anything to ease their nerves,” Millar says.

Dorostkar opened her family dentistry practice in Greenbrae in 1997, and 10 years later launched a practice focused solely on pediatric dentistry.

“Gila had learned so much about what really works for kids that she decided to create a practice completely designed around kids,” Millar says.

In 2016, Dorostkar decided to open an office in Mill Valley, allowing her longtime patients there to avoid the after-school and Hwy. 101 traffic to Greenbrae. They spent 18 months on building out the space. “We needed to build something that was centered 100 percent around taking care of kids,” Millar says.

The Mill Valley office is now open four days a week, with Dorostkar joined by Dr. Megan Golinveaux and Dr. Cicely Smith, both of whom have been part of Dorostkar’s practice for several years.

“One of the things we wanted to do was to make sure that Mill Valley patients had a chance to see their favorite dentists,” Millar says. “We completely recognize that while the child is the patient, the family plays a critical role. If the parent is stressed and anxious, the kids will be stressed and anxious.”

The 411: Dr. Gila Dorostkar’s pediatric dental office is at 650 East Blithedale Ave., Suite C. MORE INFO.

Nearly three years after she opened the Zener Schon Contemporary Art with Tara Schon at 23 Sunnyside Ave., and eight months after they decided to go "beyond the walls" and close the gallery to focus on other facets of their business, Zener is opening her own Julie Zener Gallery in the space.

“I’m extremely excited to open my own gallery,” Zener says. “I’ve always dreamed of having my own gallery and space and I’m really excited to be able to showcase some fantastic artists here in Mill Valley.”

Zener, who has been in the art industry since 1997 as a gallery owner, dealer, curator and manager and co-founder Zener Art Group, met Schon when she started working with the Red Bull Canvas Cooler Project, curating emerging artists. The pair had a great two-plus-year run with their gallery and with their “beyond the walls” approach. When Schon decided she wanted to focus less on the retail side of the business, Zener decided to re-open in the coveted space where she still held a lease.

Zener is hosting a kick-off event as part of the Mill Valley Arts Commission’s First Tuesday Artwalk (5:30-7:30pm) on Oct. 3, showcasing the work of Ukrainian artist Valentin Popov, “a postmodernist par excellence, combining classical and modernist traditions in a style distinctly his own, at once poetic, technically dazzling, and wryly ironic.”

Popov, who’s shown at the Modernism Gallery in San Francisco at the De Saisset Museum at University of Santa Clara, will be signing copies of his latest book. Zener says she’s continuing to build her roster of artists. She’ll be hosting a group show later in October and another solo show in November.

In a serendipitous twist, Julie Zener Gallery is also hosting a “special exhibition” for the fall season from Nadine Curtis’ popular 7 on Locust boutique laden with unique home decor, art, rock 'n roll photography, clothing and jewelry. Curtis relocated to 23 Sunnyside for the special exhibition.

“It’s an incredibly exciting time at the gallery,” Zener says.

The 411: Julie Zener Gallery is hosting a reception as part of the Mill Valley Arts Commission’s First Tuesday Artwalk (5:30-7:30pm) on Oct. 3, showcasing the work of Ukrainian artist Valentin Popov. MORE INFO. Here's a sample of Valentin Popov's work:

Series from the Mill Valley Chamber, Mill Valley Recreation and the California Film Institute concludes for 2017 with a FREE screening in Old Mill Park.

Hundreds of movie lovers have turned out for FREE Movies in the Park screenings of the classic The Princess Bride and Pixar's Academy Award-winning Inside Out and the biggest blockbuster of 2017: Disney's live-action Beauty and the Beast.

Movies in the Park closes its 2017 season on October 6 with Disney's “Moana,” the tale of a strong-willed Polynesian girl chosen by the ocean to reunite a mystical relic with a goddess. She seeks out the legendary demigod Maui. The Moana screening is part of the 40th Mill Valley Film Festival, which runs Oct. 5-15.

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Growing up in the largely middle-class Italian and Jewish neighborhood of Carnarsie in Brooklyn, N.Y. in the 1960s and 70s, Bob Minkin was mesmerized, from some 3,000 miles away, by the explosion of music coming from the Bay Area: Jefferson Airplane, John Cipollina and Quicksilver Messenger Service, Janis Joplin, Santana, the New Riders of the Purple Sage, and of course, Jerry Garcia and the Grateful Dead.

Like many teens and twenty-somethings of that era, he did something about it. Forty years later, Minkin is regarded as one of the Bay Area’s preeminent music photographers, and on. Oct. 1 at the Sweetwater Music Hall, he’s holding a book signing for “The Music Never Stopped,” his latest photography book, this one entirely focused on Marin County’s music scene, particularly the unrelenting live music at Bob Weir’s Sweetwater and Phil Lesh’s Terrapin Crossroads in San Rafael.  

It all started in the summer of 1977, right after high school graduation, when Minkin found a “Summer of Love” 10-year anniversary pull-out map of San Francisco within Rolling Stone magazine, complete with locations where the Grateful Dead and Jefferson Airplane had lived in the Haight-Ashbury area. Minkin was geeked to see it all in person, and he somehow convinced his father to book him a cheap round-trip flight to San Francisco.

“I just said to myself, ‘That’s it, I can’t take it anymore, I gotta get out there,” Minkin says.

He did just that, without any place to stay or a hotel reservation. Upon his arrival, a patient cab driver took him to a few hotels until he found one in the Marina district. He set off for Haight Street, found the Dead’s house on Ashbury, walked around Golden Gate Park and eventually spotted a flyer on a pole promoting the Jerry Garcia Band’s upcoming show on the Embarcadero, featuring Mill Valley’s Maria Muldaur.

Minkin had long been taking his camera with him to shows in New York and elsewhere, mostly to populate his personal scrapbooks. He did so at the Embarcadero concert as well, and was stunned at the results. “Those pictures I took that day were a monumental moment in my life,” he says.

Minkin reached out to a friend whose boyfriend was the publisher of Relix magazine, which published the photos and continues to publish Minkin’s work 40 years later. Minkin came back to San Francisco for the Grateful Dead’s New Year’s Eve shows at Winterland a few months later, this time with a better camera. Those shots convinced him that his concert photography could be more than just a hobby. Those shots occupy 10 pages of his first photography book, “Live Dead,” which came out in 2014.

Minkin didn’t immediately move to the Bay Area back then, as he attended the School of Visual Arts in Manhattan, where he met his eventual wife, Anne Minkin, a wine ambassador for the Boissett Collection. They moved to the Bay Area in 1990, and the couple lives in Novato. Minkin has been as rooted in the Marin and Bay Area-wide music scene as any photographer over the past 40 years.

“I have thousands and thousands of photos going back more than 40 years now,” Minkin says. “It’s pretty overwhelming and you need to frame it to put it into context.”

In searching for a way to do so, Minkin kept coming back to those years after Garcia died in 1995, how the other members of the Grateful Dead moved onto other iterations and also spawned a legion of other bands that “didn’t necessarily play exactly like them but played with their same mentality and vibe,” Minkin says.

Minkin also thought hard about the fact that two Grateful Dead legends, Bob Weir and phil Lesh, opened their own music venues in Marin, the Sweetwater Music Hall and Terrapin Crossroads, respectively, around the same time five years ago. Along with an array of other venues, and the post-Garcia bloom of bands inspired by the Dead, Minkin kept coming back to the Grateful Dead song “The Music Never Stopped,” from their 1975 album Blues for Allah.

“The music really never stopped after Jerry’s death, and especially here in Marin,” Minkin says. “So I framed it around geography, and all of the venues in Marin that have hosted so many great concerts over the years.”

Marin is the thread, and the medium is the onslaught of great concerts from both Bay Area bands and those from all over the country.

It’s been a fantastic experience going through these thousands of photos – there have just been so many amazing shows here in Marin over the past 40 years,” Minkin says. “It’s just incredible.”

The 411: Bob Minkin hosts a book signing for “The Music Never Stopped,” his latest photography book, on Oct. 1 at 3pm at the Sweetwater Music Hall. The signing will be followed at 5pm by an all-ages performance from Sweetwater faves Moonalice. Coupled with Larry “the Hat” Lautzker’s 20th Annual Community Block Party that day featuring  Jason Crosby, Jackie Greene and members of the Mother Hips, among others, it’s sure to be a blockbuster day of music in Mill Valley.