On January 29 of this year, we lost Fred ‘Lee’ Berensmeier, one of the most respected artists in the San Geronimo Valley art community in Marin County. I found Fred to be a soft-spoken gentleman who was always supportive of artists and their creative endeavors (not surprisingly he was a life-long teacher). He was 91 years old.
Fred was part of the San Geronimo Valley Community Center’s annual Spring Art Show from its beginnings (which pre-dates are ‘official” counting of 34 years) and the co-founder of the environmental education center, Wilderness Way, with his wife Jean who died on March 15, 2023.
Fred was a master printmaker and served as head of the printmaking department at City College of San Francisco from 1968 to 1993. He was equally adept at linocuts, serigraphs and collographs often combining the different printmaking approaches and bending a lot of ostensible ‘rules’ along the way.
He not only participated in our annual Spring Art Shows, our annual printmaking shows and numerous solos exhibits but exhibited nationally and internationally at venues such as the Tokyo Metropolitan Museum, the Brandts Klaedefabrik Museum, Denmark, the DeYoung and the Smithsonian.
To honor his life and work the Center will host a memorial exhibit of Fred’s work in the first week of May, just preceding the Spring Art Show. This brief exhibit will conclude with a memorial service that weekend on Saturday, May 4that the Center.
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