for Ukiah Daily Journal
"Hoo hoo. Who is the trespasser here? Is it the logger, the environmentalist? Is it I? Is it you?" asks the bewildered spotted owl shedding its feathers in anxiety on the wall-sized quilt created by Linda MacDonald.
Paula Gray, full-time faculty member, visual arts, and gallery curator, is thrilled to be presenting a mini-retrospective of MacDonald's work at the Mendocino College Art Gallery from Feb. 14 through March 14.
"From my point of view, one of the foci of this gallery is as a venue for students and community members to acquaint themselves with high quality art. MacDonald epitomizes just that; her creations are incredible," says Gray.
MacDonald is a prominent Mendocino artist who has been actively involved in creating art focused on strong ecological themes in a whimsical and poignant manner. The show highlights not only her quilts but her paintings and drawings as well.
"I was a painter when my husband, Bob Comings, a multi-media artist, and I moved north of Willits to an abandoned cabin on the Covelo Road in the '60s," she says. "It was pretty wild up there at the time; nobody was living there and one day you could look out the window and see a herd of misplaced wild horses and on another day a group of wild pigs. You never knew what was going to happen.
"Women were quilting, participating in conscious raising groups, canning food, planting vegetable
gardens, raising goats doing country things."I realized I could do my own type of quilts and I first started by piecing my own designs together; I didn't work with traditional pieces. Then I started getting into themes -- the environment, logging, the threatened spotted owl," she says.
She first began drawing and painting in high school; it was always something she could do. In college, she seriously started to study painting and drawing and taking art history classes. She attended the College of Marin and San Francisco State, where she also took weaving classes and received an MFA in art with an emphasis in textiles.
In 1978, she moved to town with her husband and two children and became involved in the Willits community. She was part of the nascent, women quilter's groups and began making her own designs.
She continues, "I did not give up painting and drawing; I used these skills to figure out my designs. I started working on three-dimensional quilts and got into painting on fabric and developed airbrush techniques while I taught at San Hedrin, the continuation high school in Willits.
"I was doing quilts and showing them nationally; it was the beginning of the contemporary quilt shows and I was fortunate to be there making those pieces when it was still in the early stages."
When she retired from teaching in 2000 she returned to painting and wanted to do more with imagery. She realized that airbrush techniques could only take her so far and it would be easier to paint and draw using traditional techniques. So she combined them with fiber.
"What has always been important to me, what I really wanted to do with my art, concerns the land and nature and how people interact with it. We live in this beautiful county, Mendocino, in Northern California, and so much of it is changing before our eyes. With the vineyards developing there are fewer and fewer areas of wilderness for the animals; with logging we are losing the redwood trees and wildlife. As an artist it is essential to portray what is important to me, to reflect the world from a personal viewpoint; for me that is about what is happening to our environment.
"I started to integrate whimsy and humor into my art because it is difficult for people to look at negativity in artwork and not be put off. If you have a sense of levity it is easier for people to entertain it in their minds; the artist lightens it up and makes it more approachable. Using humor has been a good thing, however, I don't use it in everything," she explains.
In the past decade she has become interested in local lore, stories that are specific to Northern California, local physical attributes that are of interest, that which makes our area different from the rest of California.
"Redwood trees are especially symbolic, from Big Sur to Southern Oregon. What can we do to protect them? I drive around to national and state parks to see their beauty and then I see the old examples of what is left over from logging and how they have been turned into tourist attractions. I have visited all our drive through trees. Why do people cut holes in them? I have been doing paintings of trees cut down and what is left of the stumps, whimsical pieces with climbers, ropes, fantasy animals, diamondbacked rattle snakes, pileated woodpeckers, personified tree stumps."
A recent painting, inspired by her hikes into the wild, is one of the 46 pieces in this retrospective. The background is filled with the image of a stump, resembling a large foot, reminiscent of Tolkien'sents, and in front, superimposed, is a large upside down burnt-out tree trunk with hues of greens and orange-rusts; the burnt parts are blues and shimmery grays with lots of green, mossy green, all depicting what is out there that is so magical about nature.
The intricately designed spotted owl quilt began as a piece of cotton fabric, approximately 5 1 2 by 4 feet, hand dyed to a pale blue. She explains the process in its most simplistic terms. "I iron freezer paper onto the fabric and create my designs on the paper. I cut out shapes from the paper and airbrush onto the vacant spots, directly onto the fabric. Then I stick the freezer paper back on, cut out other areas and continue to airbrush. When that part is complete I hand paint the fabric with brushes cross hatching, using dots, filling in where necessary. I dye the cotton backing and create a fabric sandwich using cotton batting in the middle, basting them together, all hand sewn, and integrate running stitches throughout to enhance the design."
With the word trespasser imprinted on the bottom of this compelling work of art, it certainly begs the larger question.
Jessica Owens is gallery assistant and Gail Rushmore helped hang the show. The opening reception is on Thursday, Feb. 14 from 4-6 p.m. and refreshments will be served. Prints will be available for sale.
Regular gallery hours are Tuesday through Thursday, 12:30-3:30 p.m. and for special appointments call 707-468-3207. The gallery's website is gallery@mendocino.edu.
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