2 Best Sights in Napa and Sonoma, California

Local multimedia artist Gordon Huether has made a name for himself at home and internationally with his large-scale sculptures and installations. His Napa 9/11 Memorial anchors a section of Main Street downtown, across the street his music-inspired wall installations pep up the Blue Note Napa jazz club, and his sculpture of the late vintner Robert Mondavi and his wife, Margrit, sits atop the CIA at Copia building in the Oxbow District. To view scale models of his latest projects and glimpse his staff (and sometimes the artist himself) at work, make a weekday appointment to visit his studio, 3 miles north of downtown.

The whimsical sculptures of local junk artist Patrick Amiot and his wife, Brigitte Laurent (he creates them, she paints them), can be seen all over Sonoma County, but you can see many works on Florence Avenue three blocks west of Main Street. Amiot reclaims old car parts, abandoned appliances, and the like, refashioning them into everything from pigs, dogs, and people to mermaids and Godzilla.