The spring of 1962 marked the time when a group of widely divergent, but professional artists joined forces, envisioning a non-commercial art gallery where their work could be shown on a continuing basis without institutional restrictions.  Co-founders Eva Abou-Ghorra and Patricia Packard Moore, who served as the gallery’s first president, approached other ‘outsiders to the Fresno art scene of the day’ who they considered ‘forward-looking artists’ proposing the concept of a cooperative gallery that was to be Fresno’s first avant-garde gallery.

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In the early 1960s, the Fresno Arts Center (now the Fresno Art Museum) was in a loft above a store on Fulton Street while the Tuesday Group, consisting of water-colorists painting together out in the surrounding landscape, were Fresno’s two existing formal on-going art venues.  Ultimately, the nine responding artist representing a wide range of disciplines, who endorsed Abou-Ghorra and Moore’s original concept, recognized the need for another space where art-work could be shown.  The Fig Tree Gallery Charter members were Abou-Ghorra, Jerry Dahlinger, Dean Dallin, Amy Kasai, Moore, Robert Ogata, Varaz Samuelian, Howard Statham and Marion Young.  Both Moore and Statham have resigned as members while Ogata remains an active member–all three credit their years as Fig Tree members important to their personal development as creative, productive artists.

Following the first group showing of work by Fig Tree Gallery members in the Fresno Community Theater (no longer in existence) located on the old Fresno State College campus near McKinley Street, the gallery was commissioned by the Bullard High School Class of 1962 to design and implement a 17 by 11 foot mosaic mural of a fig tree symbolizing growth and maturation for the Bullard High School Senior Court.  The inscription on the mosaic reads, in part, “No great thing is created suddenly, any more than a bunch of grapes, or a fig.” The fig tree was chosen to represent life’s ripening cycle because the school served the community when it was built on ground where fig orchards had been replaced by homes.  In its earliest inception, the Fig Tree Gallery accomplished one of its major goals listed within its working constitution–“To facilitate contact between artists and those who wish to commission art works and those seeking information on art.” Other aims of the gallery as stated in its constitution were: “To provide a gallery for the exhibition and sales of works, not only by members, but by other local artists, the high caliber of which it believes the public is insufficiently aware. To provide classroom space for teachers-members,” and fourthly, “To create an informal place for artist and laymen, novice and connoisseur, to meet, browse and converse.”

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​By December of 1962, the gallery opened its doors at 144 North Van Ness Avenue for an exhibition in celebration of the first space where the gallery would make its home until its second move to 1459 North Van Ness Avenue in July of 1971.  That first December opening exhibition included the work of all nine Charter Members, augmented by that of three new members, Wayne Armstrong, Dave Barber, and Mary Maughelli. Demonstrations of pottery and print making methods by several artists along with an extensive display of paintings, drawings, photography, sculpture, prints, pottery, textiles, and stitchery created an exciting environment for Fig Tree Gallery’s beginning and the years that would follow.  Of note, Robert Ogata would celebrate his first solo exhibition of recent paintings in February of 1963 and Varaz Samuelian, a painter, would create his first sculpture constructed of iron, nails, spark plugs, pipe and mosaic in the September of 1963.  Art classes commenced in late September, the first, “Materials of the Artist” taught by Moore, followed by a painting class offered by Samuelian, a ceramic and mosaic class taught by Abou-Ghorra, and a print workshop headed by Young. Dave Barber would offer an eight-session course, “Expression Through Photography” while Joan O’Brien would teach a class, “Motion and Music for Pre-Schoolers.” Charter officers of the cooperative gallery were: Moore, president; Dallin, vice-president; Young, secretary; Abou-Ghorra, treasurer; and Samuelian, director-at-large.