GUEST ESSAY III

GUEST ESSAY BY JOAN AGAJANIAN QUINN

I met Scott Colglazier when I was a trustee on the board of Pilgrim School, a college preparatory school and a division of First Congregational Church of Los Angeles, where Scott was the CEO and Senior Minister.

More importantly, he was my spiritual leader and personal friend to my family.

Scott and I shared a mutual respect and love for art and artists. It didn't take long, with the help of Scott, before I was curating exhibitions with him in the smaller Shatto Chapel of First Church.

He used our art exhibits in his sermons and lectures, often inviting small groups to interact with the installations. He also used these art exhibitions to reach out to the larger community of Los Angeles.

Looking back on these experiences, we were in essence creating an art laboratory, setting new goals for artists and finding novel ways of transforming the world of art.

As Scott became more involved with various California artists, so did his personal love for painting. His eye for color developed, as well as his love for textural dimensions in his painting. He left his position as Senior Minister of the church several years ago to paint full-time in his Bloomington, Indiana studio. His artistic creativity has soared as an abstract expressionist painter, and although an “outsider artist,” he continues to produce remarkable work and is thriving in his second career.

Joan Agajanian Quinn is one of the nation's leading art collectors. For years she was the West Coast editor of Andy Warhol's Interview magazine and has had a long-running television show featuring some of the most important artists working in California. She has been the subject of many portraits from the likes of David Hockney, Jean-Michel Basquiet and Robert Mapplethorpe to name only a few.