Imagery—Art for Wine

“Subliminally, the label raises one's expectations of the wine: the uniqueness of the art anticipates the uniqueness of the wine…a rhetoric of display that enhances the value of what is already regarded as inherently valuable. Indeed, it is about the synergistic value-effect the convergence of things of intrinsic value—art and wine—can have.” --Donald Kuspit, Wine And Art: The Grand Alliance Challenging, provocative, strikingly beautiful, Art for Wine catalogs the Benziger wine family's collection of original contemporary art, commissioned with one specific goal in mind: To grace a special bottle of their Imagery Series wine. Each variety and vintage of Imagery wine is specially selected and nurtured, each labeled with the works of such modern art icons as Sol le Witt, Terry Allen, Robert Stackhouse, Judy Pfaff, Yuriko Yamaguchi, and John Baldessari. Each piece is presented with a biographical profile of the artist as well as his or her individual philosophies, methods and approaches.These works are evocations of wine's multi-faceted ability to inspire us.

Bob Nugent was born in Santa Monica, California in 1947. He attended the University of California, Santa Barbara’s College of Creative Studies where he received his BA in Painting in 1969. In 1971 he received his MFA in Painting and Drawing from the University of California at Santa Barbara. Over the past thirty-four years he has taught painting and drawing at a number of institutions, most recently Sonoma State University, where he was a Professor and Chair of the Art and Art History Department.He has had over eighty, one-person exhibitions, including: Quadragonarte, Treviso, Italy; Gallerie Cammille, Brussels, Belgium; Tucson Museum of Art, Tucson, Arizona; Museu de Arte de Sao Paulo, Sao Paulo, Brazil; Documenta, Sao Paulo, Brazil; Fresno Museum of Art, Fresno, California; and Galleria Futura, Stockholm, Sweden. In addition, he has been included in over 450 group shows, in the United States, Europe, Asia and South America. He has received numerous awards including a National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship, California Arts Council Artist Fellowship, a Fulbright Travel Grant to Brazil, U.S. State Department Cultural Exchange Grant, Sao Paulo, Brazil and a Tiffany Foundation Fellowship. His work can be found in many major private and museum collections both here and abroad. He has been the curator for over twenty exhibitions of Contemporary and Primitive Art both in the United States and Brazil.He lives and works in Santa Rosa, California