Copia has been quiet these last few months as it undergoes extensive changes under the leadership of its new director, Garry McGuire. Some rumors had it that the arts component of the American Center for Food, Wine and the Arts had been deleted.

Not so.

A collaboration between the brilliant and prolific American artist Ira Yeager and McGuire — who met while McGuire was mowing his lawn in Calistoga not far from where Yeager has a studio — has resulted in a show that’s just possibly the best Copia has ever mounted, a magnificent dazzler that signals not only that the arts will continue to be part of the evolving vision for Copia, but may be better, freer and more important than ever before.

There couldn’t be a better choice to bring art roaring back into focus at Copia than Yeager. He’s a certifiable genius and also a wonderful character — kind of a maniac, and yet a man who sees the art in everything around him, be it a shoe or a teapot, a peasant woman in Greece or the stark, poignant face of a Native American, and then manages, magically, to share what he perceives.

“Ira Yeager: Process and Progression, Exhibition of Pivotal and Transitional Works, 1958 – 2008,” manages, astonishingly, to capture something of the depth, range and sweep of Yeager’s powerful talent, eclectic interests, and the unrelenting panorama that unfolds before an artist’s eyes.

The upstairs gallery at Copia, which had been turned into a storage area, had red-painted walls from a previous exhibition and the lights had been sold on eBay, when McGuire and Yeager, a staunch supporter of Copia, decided to go forward with a show. In a month, Yeager’s long-time assistant Brian Fuller and Copia’s director of exhibitions, Neil Harvey, had not only managed to turn the room back into a gallery, but assembled an exhibition drawn from Yeager’s personal collection. With the exception of two paintings, one that usually hangs at the entrance to the Cal Pacific Medical Center in San Francisco, and another that belongs to the Reserve at Meadowood in St. Helena, these works have not been seen by the public.

“These have been hidden away in vaults. Many have been buried for 40 to 50 years,” Yeager said when he arrived at Copia last week to conduct a tour of the new show for the Register. Wearing his cowboy hat and Bermuda shorts and carrying a pillow to sit on, owing to a recent Pilates class, the artist discussed the varied and vibrant collection displayed on the walls — and the paintings that didn’t “make the cut.”

If one had not been told this was a Yeager retrospective, it might be easy to believe that a dozen artists had contributed works to the show, which begins with the first works of the young artist from Bellingham, Wash., who came to San Francisco to study art in 1957, and went on to the Academy of Fine Arts in Italy.  

“I started out as an abstract artist, and then went into realism, and then back and forth,” Yeager said. “Why do I have so many styles? I paint every day and one goes back and forth between series. There will be a painting I do and then put away, and then, 10 or 15 years later go back to it and start a series.”

The worst thing that an artist can do — one of the terrible things about becoming famous early,” he said, “is to become caught in one style. I will always be moving on.”

The show includes works from his world travels, studies in Greece and Mexico, as well as his extensive, intriguing works inspired by 18th century France. “I love to create history,” Yeager said.

Among the most moving are his paintings of Native Americans, a series first created in 1974. “I was so upset by the American Indian being exploited in the art world,” he said. “I was so tired of the commercialization of Indian art.” The result of his efforts to paint “totally undecorative” images is both bold and haunting.

Although he doesn’t consider himself a “plein air” artist, the show includes several striking landscapes, including the mesmerizing Cal Pacific “cityscape” and a sunset painted from his Sea Ranch home.

“When I moved to Sea Ranch, I never thought I’d do a water painting,” he said, “but every night I’d never miss the sunset. It shows what happens when one doesn’t expect to do something.”

One of the most fascinating elements of the show is not paintings at all but assemblages from Yeager’s studios — his extraordinary chair collection, each holding unpredictable items — a stuffed bird, spilt tea, a gilt shoe. “The chairs have always been a hobby,” Yeager said. “There’s something about chairs I love. In my studio, I always throw stuff on chairs.” It’s the artist eye again — all of a sudden, random items dropped on a chair becomes an unrepeatable arrangement, an experiment in artistry.

The grand finale of the show, along with a strange collection of heads on driftwood, is another scene from Yeager’s studio, which Fuller described as “the curiosity cupboard” — everything from a Buddha to a crocodile head that serve as subjects for Yeager’s still life studies. “I see it,” Harvey said, “as a snapshot of Ira’s brain.”

As is the entire, marvelous show, right down to the totem pole created from old paint lids. “I never throw anything away,” Yeager said.

“The older one gets, the more one does what one wants,” he concluded. “When you get to a certain point in your career, you just do what you want and don’t have to question it — you’ve earned it.”

Yeager’s support for Copia at a critical time is yet another master stroke from a dauntless artist. And this is a show not to miss.

“Ira Yeager: Process and Progression, Exhibition of Pivotal and Transitional Works, 1958 – 2008” is at Copia through  Nov. 11.