Al and Barbara Garvey
Al and Barbara Garvey are an American artist and tango dancing couple known for catalyzing hot tub culture in California in 1966.
While living in Fairfax in Marin County, California, the Garveys built their own hot tub in which they could soak with friends.
Returning to the US, the two drove from Chicago to California in their 1953 Chevrolet and rebuilt a houseboat in Sausalito in Marin County north of San Francisco where they lived in a community of bohemian artists.
In the mountain village of Fornalutx, they rebuilt a ruined stone mill into a multi-level home and occupied it from 1963 to 1965, making a living by odd jobs and selling Al's paintings.
Seeing little future raising a family in Franco's Spain, the Garveys moved back to Sausalito in 1965, but the houseboat arrangement was growing more commercial so they shifted in July 1966 to a house on Scenic Road in Fairfax, California, where they lived for almost 40 years.
[2] Al said that thriving as artists in Marin County in the 1960s and 1970s was very productive: "we lived a truly elegant life with our own home and practically no money.
In April 1963, the first cover of the alternative weekly newspaper Pacific Sun was Al's work: the head of a rooster rendered as a serigraph.
Curator Francesco Spagnolo wrote that "Garvey's eye seized Israel's diversity through the lenses of a then popular form of Pop Art (screen printing), distant from the tropes that had until then marked its representation in America and elsewhere.
Rather than glorifying military might, agricultural advancements, and archeological treasures, these images offer a direct appreciation for the daily life of a developing country in which multiple cultures continually negotiated their forms of coexistence".
Al fashioned a Dutch door made of stained glass and a combination of Acacia koa and cedar driftwood; this was later shown at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art in the 1999–2000 retrospective exhibit titled Far Out: Bay Area Design 1967–73, alongside other hippie-era artworks such as Janis Joplin's psychedelic Porsche 356.
[2][13] Al built himself an art studio at his house in Fairfax by reclaiming the old-growth redwood planks from a very large wine barrel that had been discarded next to a road in Sonoma.
Inside the home, he built a fireplace of Mexican river stone with a relief sculpture above it that he made from fallen branches of Pacific madrone wood.
The Garveys were influenced by Jean Varda, their Sausalito houseboat neighbor, who advocated an organic style of art that revealed "the hand of man.
"[13] Al was a founding member of Arthur Carpenter's Bolinas Craft Guild in 1972, formed to connect apprentices with master craftsmen.
He showed 16 of his tango-inspired oil paintings in a solo exhibition titled "Come Dance With Me" at Galería Uno in Puerto Vallarta in December 2018.
As of 2017, Molly Hamilton owned the company, and began digitizing the catalog and expanded the operation to include retail clothing sales.
[16][17] In 1966 while they were living in Sausalito, the Garveys were invited by mutual friends to the home of Charlotte and Charles "Tad" Irvine in Stinson Beach.
Before moving in, Al commissioned a custom redwood tub with submerged benches built to be four feet in diameter and deep enough for an adult to stand up in the center.
"[3] Among the bathers were jazz musician John Handy, architect Roger Somers (known for Druid Heights) and sex worker/feminist Margo St.
Throughout the 1970s, the Garveys hosted Greek folk dancing parties at their home on Friday evenings, with many of the dancers staying to enjoy the hot tub.
Barbara began to keep track of social tango events happening around the San Francisco Bay Area, and she organized a mailing list of milongas to distribute among aficionados.
