Art, Chocolate, and Pixie Dust
How Lisa Casoni and Heather Stobo captivated Ojai
How Lisa Casoni and Heather Stobo captivated Ojai
Written by L.D. Porter | Photographs by Victoria Pearson
We moved here without knowing one person,” says Lisa Casoni about her 2009 move from L.A. to Ojai with wife Heather Stobo. Eleven years later, it’s hard to imagine there’s anyone in Ojai the two don’t know. Joint owners of the Porch Gallery, located in a historic home in downtown Ojai, Casoni and Stobo literally have the most famous (and beloved) front porch in town. “All roads in Ojai lead to the Porch Gallery,” confirms Frederick Janka, executive director of Ojai’s Carolyn Glasoe Bailey Foundation.
Built in the early 1870s by John Montgomery, theirs is the third oldest building in Ojai and has experienced numerous permutations. The Baker family, who raised seven daughters in the house, added several rooms; later on the residence served as the town’s funeral home. By the time the couple discovered it, it already had an art gallery in the front room and offices in the back. At first they simply took over running the art gallery, which took off immediately. “People started gathering here on Sunday mornings, we started selling a lot, we started getting really great artists, and it almost literally went from zero to sixty in a few months,” Stobo says. They quit their day jobs and ended up buying the house, carefully renovating the private areas to include their living quarters.
“People came to us and said, ‘You know you have one of the most important and interesting buildings in Ojai, and you should fully take advantage of that and be good stewards of it,’” Casoni says, “And we took that to heart from day one.” The two use the house for nonprofit meetings and fund-raisers for organizations they support, including the Ojai Valley Defense Fund (Casoni’s on the board), the Ojai Women’s Fund, the Ojai Music Festival, the Carolyn Glasoe Bailey Foundation, and more. “The community is very important to us,” notes Stobo. “Our business is nothing without the community.”
The easygoing nature of Ojai’s residents contributed to their success. Early on, the late photographer Guy Webster—who shot album covers for The Rolling Stones, The Doors, The Beach Boys, and more—was instrumental in introducing the couple to interesting people, from visual artists to musicians. “Guy was seminal,” admits Casoni. “He cross-pollinated us with a bunch of different people.” It snowballed from there. Ultimately they followed Webster’s example, becoming “connectors” themselves. “We started introducing people to each other. It wasn’t ever about selling art, it was about connecting with people,” Casoni says.
But there’s more to the story, centering on the dynamic combination of the couple’s specific talents: Stobo has two art-related undergraduate degrees, in art history and photography (from Ohio’s Denison University and the San Francisco Art Institute, respectively) as well as a Master’s Degree in photography from California Institute of the Arts. Casoni’s background is steeped in sales and marketing. (She worked for Giorgio Armani and Prada, among others.) Casoni manages the “front of the house,” meeting and greeting visitors, while Stobo deals with technical issues, including website maintenance. It’s the perfect combo for running an art gallery.
Except that’s not all they do. Inspired by the life of flamboyant Ojai ceramicist Beatrice “Beato” Wood—who claimed she owed everything to chocolate, art books, and young men—they launched Beato Chocolates, using Wood’s original pottery molds and tapping local farmers for ingredients. During the COVID shutdown, Stobo and Casoni even managed to unveil a Beato Bar celebrating Ojai’s annual Pixie Month. It’s sprinkled with pixie dust from dehydrated pixie tangerines. (Pandemic frontliners receive Beato Bars for free.) And they’ve just unveiled an Artspeak line of candles that humorously riffs on art world tropes—the “Surreal” candle’s scent is “This is not a pipe.”
On any given day you’ll find several people happily lounging in the yellow butterfly chairs dotting Porch Gallery’s veranda; it’s clearly the town’s heartbeat. Casoni sums it up: “I always thought of Ojai as a small town but not small-minded.”