When leaders at the Mendocino Art Center, got together to brainstorm a fund-raising gimmick to mark the art gallery and school’s 50th anniversary, one of the ideas that came up was a calendar. Naturally. It always does.

Mendocino photographer Larry Wagner wanted to take a different approach. Last October, Wagner started working with his models, artists and arts patrons from the Mendocino Coast.

Loraine Toth, ceramic sculptor and proprietor of an art gallery in Elk, created a plastic breastplate to wear in her colorful portrait.

Jessica Jade Norris, an artist who works in pen and inks, watercolors and block prints, posed as a mermaid.

And Sunshine Taylor, well-known North Coast painter and dancer, and her husband, Glenn Rude, appear in a dramatic dance pose titled “Moonstruck.”

“Remember the ‘Calendar Girls’ movie? That was a beautiful thing, but the pictures were predictable Once you’ve seen one, you’ve practically seen ’em all,” Wagner said.

Hence, the 20-month, 2010-11 Mendocino Art Center 50th Anniversary Exotic Calendar, due for publication Aug. 1 at $25.

“I sent out a note to all the artists and said, ‘The Mendocino Art Center needs the shirts off your backs.’ But my intent was that it be exotic. Some of the pictures would be nudes and some would be all sorts of things,” Wagner said.

Other calendars have themes, where all of the pictures are kind of the same. With this, nothing is the same,” Wagner said.

The artists trusted him, because they knew him. He has a history in the arts community there.

“I published two books, ‘Artists of the Mendocino Coast,” volumes 1 and 2, where I did portraits of 138 different artists,” Wagner said.

To order your copy of Mendocino Art Center 50th Anniversary Exotic Calendar, call 937-5818, ext. 10, or go to http://www.mendocinoartcenter.org/calendar.html.