Image: Bolinas Museum, Bolinas
Bolinas Museum will present ‘All This Every Day: Bolinas Community Publishing in the Seventies,’ an archival exhibition examining the literary, ecological, political, artistic and communal networks that shaped the California coastal town during the 1970s. Curated by Noelle Hiam and Kirston Lightowler, the exhibition will be on view from August 22 through September 27, 2026, at the museum in Bolinas.
The exhibition brings together newsletters, poetry magazines, posters, pamphlets, books, photographs and other forms of community publishing. Most of the material is drawn from Bolinas Museum’s history archives, reflecting decades of collecting by the local community. The works document a period in which independent publishing operated alongside environmental activism, civic organizing, artistic production and everyday life.
Among the publications featured are ‘Big Sky,’ Bill Berkson’s nationally distributed poetry magazine; ‘Local Energy,’ a 52-page newspaper published by Lloyd Kahn as the spring equinox issue of the ‘Bolinas Hearsay News’ in 1975; and ‘The Bolinas Hit,’ described by the museum as eight pages of “pure anarchy.” The selection also includes a Swedish folk tale illustrated with 25 linocuts and a phone book that began as handwritten, stapled pages and continues to be published today.
The exhibition includes Philip Guston’s original pen-and-ink drawing for ‘Big Sky 4’ and photographs by Ilka Hartmann depicting Paradise Valley during the 1970s. Kahn’s publishing work is also represented through material connected to ‘Shelter.’ The museum’s account of the period notes that Kahn, then the shelter editor for the ‘Whole Earth Catalog,’ built and lived in geodesic domes before publishing ‘Shelter’ as a response to his conclusions about their suitability as homes.
The exhibition’s title comes from Joanne Kyger’s 1975 collection, published by her neighbor Berkson on the Bolinas Mesa. Its source material presents the town’s publishing culture not as a unified aesthetic or political movement, but as an overlapping set of activities and relationships. The ‘Hearsay News,’ founded by Michael Rafferty, carried the phrase “Everyone is a Reporter,” while pamphlets associated with Shelter Publications stated, “If we don’t become agricultural, they’ll make us recreational.”
A free opening celebration will take place at Bolinas Museum on Saturday, August 22, from 2 to 4 p.m. A related free public panel is scheduled for Saturday, September 12, at 2 p.m. at the Borg Barn, 8 Horseshoe Hill Road, Bolinas. Moderated by Jeff Gunderson, archivist and librarian at the San Francisco Art Institute, the discussion will include Lloyd Kahn, Michael Wolfe, Dotty LeMieux, Genie McNaughton and Michael Rafferty. Bolinas Museum admission is free; gallery hours are Friday from 1 to 5 p.m., Saturday and Sunday from noon to 5 p.m., and by appointment.
