Rick Oginz’s house sits on a steep hill on the lowest slopes of the Mayacamas Mountains, rising from and overlooking the Valley of the Moon. It sits just high enough to attain a modest yet clear view of Sonoma Mountain on the other side. Over there, to the north, is Jack London State Historic Park and the ruins of Wolf House, the famed author’s ill-fated dream home that captured Oginz’s imagination and became the subject of more than 20 of his paintings over the course of five years. They recently exhibited inside the park’s House of Happy Walls Museum.
The House of Happy Walls, incidentally, was where London’s widow, Charmian, lived from 1935 until her death in 1952. She might’ve been living in Wolf House during that period after the author’s death in 1916 at the age of 40, except that their forever home — which was to include a sizable workshop and library — burned one night in 1913 just before it was completed, leaving behind only its massive stone walls.
Somewhat like London’s home was intended to, Oginz’s abode — which he moved to in 2020 after living and working in Los Angeles, Oakland, Toronto, and London — serves as a workshop, studio, and gallery.
If Oginz squints in the right direction he might imagine peering all the way across the valley, through the redwood canopy, and into what’s left of Wolf House. He didn’t move here just for an almost-view of an incinerated mansion. “I looked around for a house that would be close enough to San Francisco, and I found this,” he says, but there’s no denying his reverence for the site. “It was the high point of civilization but returned to nature immediately on completion. Its walls and arches reveal ambition that was denied.”…