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Articles
"Linda
MacDonald: The Evolution of an Artist's Imagery"
by Candace Crockett
Surface Design Journal,Vol. 20, No. 3, Spring 1996
During the summer of 1995 the Mendocino County Museum in Willits, CA presented a retrospective showing of the quilts made by Linda MacDonald as well as some of her recent paintings. I went to see this show because I am interested in quilts and because I have great respect for the work of MacDonald. I knew she had worked, hard and successfully, as an artist in this small community for several years. Coming away from this exhibition, I was struck by the marked differences in imagery her typically strong work had assumed over these years. I asked myself: How did she do it? On what did she draw to form her art? Looking for answers led me to look at where, when, how and with whom she had spent the last 25 years.
Three hours north of San Francisco Iies the town of Willits (pop. 5,100)
in Mendocino County. Willits is a small rail head and logging town which
has survived on its relationship with the timber industry, and today
is struggling to stay alive. MacDonald, born in Berkeley, CA, has lived
in or near Willits for the past 25 years.
In 1970, after a suburban upbringing and still twelve units short of
an undergraduate degree in art, MacDonald left the San Francisco Bay
Area seeking isolation and quiet. She and her husband bought 14 acres
and an abandoned log cabin with no amenities in the very rural Mendocino
County. Artists both , they settled into trying to scratch out a living
while continuing to practice their art. It was during this seven year
period (1970-1977) of semi-isolation (which included a number of different
part-time jobs, the creation of a livable dwelling, and the birth of
their first child), that MacDonald made the transition from doing a
little of everything in art to focusing on quilt making. She had her
background in art, but no vision, no commitment, and no idea as to how
art was to be part of her life-only that it was a part. She thought
of herself as a painter who loved textiles, primarily weaving, but neither
painting nor weaving really seemed to seize her imagination.
Familiar with family quilts from Ohio, MacDonald viewed them, and quilts generally, as fabrics embedded in the past. She did not consider quilting as a modern art medium until after 1973, when she involved herself in a crazy quilt program which grew out of a weekly women's "rap group" which she attended regularly. She says it was "like turning on a light bulb." Quite suddenly she saw quilts as a connection to women and to family and as an emotional concept that spoke in her. She saw, past that project and its limitations, that a quilt could be her canvas. She was intrigued by the size of quilts, and by the idea of their being larger-than-life paintings. The cutting, stitching, and matching of colored fabric pieces and the resewing of them, answered to her interest in fabric use.
Now focused clearly on the quilt, MacDonald made certain decisions that
determined her future: to work with cotton cloth, to use no commercially
printed patterns, and - foregoing the decorator's market - to treat
the quilt solely as an art form, a wall piece, a painting while working
within the tradition of the stitched top, bottom, and middle layer.
Her goal was to transform personally each piece, to speak through the
fabric.
In 1977 the family, now with two children, had moved from the cabin
to a house in town, and by 1983 MacDonald was working full time and
had completed her undergraduate degree. By the time that I will call
Phase 1 (1984-1988) was under way, the basic form of her quilts and
their construction were fully determined. Her technical skills, honed
over a ten-year period, were highly developed. These pieces are beautifully
hand stitched, the piecing is precise and effortless, and the borders
are perfect. MacDonald was completely comfortable with the technique,
and had a strong sense of awareness of it, and this technical perfection
brought her images into clear focus.
The dominant images of Phase 1, exemplified by Titus Canyon, are landscapes
- large scale geometrical, abstract, landscapes that give the feeling
of great open spaces with thrusting, dimensional shapes seen in perspective.
These
images are constructed from pieced fabric with subtle color shadings
from one fabric piece to the next, creating a sense of physical space.
There is a real joy in playing with a two dimensional surface to create
the sensation of three dimensions, and MacDonald became a master at
doing so. However, as this phase came to a close, she found herself
missing the act of painting. Desiring more detail and particularly the
feel of a brush in her hand, she began to change her fabric surfaces
with the direct application of painted lines and pattern. A detail of
Titus Canyon actually shows the beginnings of this new direction. An
exceptionally large commission based on her previous work, Titus Canyon,
which took over a year to complete, gave MacDonald time to think about
and evaluate her work. And so it was that this piece marked the end
of Phase I.
In 1988 MacDonald was teaching art, English, and American history at
an alternative high school. With the strong support of her family and
her school administration, she decided to return to the university for
an MFA in art. During this period her images again changed. The large,
physical landscapes carefully transferred from drawings to fabric gave
way to a more inner vision. As she started to paint the fabric surface,
the complex piecing disappeared and the large scale physical landscape
was replaced by a psychological, emotional landscape. From being a remote
view upon a distant landscape, the view was now close, and the interaction
personal and intimate. Even the format was scaled down, so that the
quilts became life size rather than larger then life. Seeking change
and chance in her processing, she began airbrushing white fabric (almost
always using black dye) in a loose, free way, using stencils such as
oven racks, plastic grids, or just plain junk. She created rhythms and
designs by crumpling, twisting, and manipulating the fabric in the dyebath.
Using her brush and white and black paint on these fabrics, she searched
for and defined patterns, pulling images out of chaos, creating psychological,
emotional spaces that come forward, recede, fade, and then re-emerge.
Searching for Pattern, is typical of Phase II (1989-1991). 
The
shapes are inventive, rendered in a kind of wonderful doodling that
literally fills all the space available. She was willing simply to let
the images develop, to work without foreknowledge of the end result.
In contrast to Phase I, the color has disappeared. The piecing of gradation-dyed
fabrics has been replaced with the overall application of one airbrushed
color over large sections, with a variation coming from stencils and
the direct application of black and white paint. I have always felt
that the word "decorative" cannot be applied to MacDonald's
work, and I think this feeling primarily has to do with her use of color.
For her, color is primarily a backdrop, a beginning, but is almost ignored
in the development or definition of the image.
In Phase II MacDonald moved from the grand to the immediate; her grids
and objects, which gave shape to her air brushed shadows, were found
in the back yard, the garage, and the kitchen. She moved from the drawn,
premeditated design to experimentation and play. There is also a strong
relation to textiles from other cultures in these pieces, a sense that
the artist was drawing on textile traditions other than the quilt -
for example, those of ancient Peru, Polynesia, and Africa. It is as
though the artist was processing information from her graduate work
through her art. During this phase, the combinations of cloth, image,
paint, and stitching are especially rich and satisfying and are fully
integrated. Her surfaces are magical, both from a distance and up close.
I felt as though the artist had gone into her work, wandering, searching
and developing her images with all the confidence and skill of a true
hunter or heroic warrior.
Phase II ended and Phase III began when MacDonald started working with
recognizable live i mages. In 1992, she figuratively moved out of her
backyard playground and into the serious issues of her immediate community,
engaging the viewer in contemporary political dialogue. The physical
landscape of Phase I and the psychological landscape of Phase II are
gone. Doodles turn into imaginary beings, actual people, or animated
objects. She uses the airbrush and dye pot to delineate broad shapes,
and then by painting the fabric surface, she creates and defines a known
image, sometimes playing with the patterns that the concrete image suggests.
She recreates chaos and rhythm within these images to enrich their shapes
visually.
The Spotted Owl vs. Chain Saw, a group of three works, each 65"
high and 51" wide, is typical of Phase III (1992-1995). For these
pieces she reached into her local community for symbols that represent
an ongoing confrontational situation. The complicated, painful situation
is presented (surprisingly, sometimes almost humorously) by symbolic
juxtaposition.
Wild & Tasty, the middle piece in the series, shows the potentially
destructive confrontation of owl and chain saw within their shared environment.
The owl is a mummified ghost rising from a can of spotted owl meat surrounded
by buzzing chain saws. In Mendocino County, the existence of the spotted
owl as a species and logging as a livelihood are mutually threatening.
Linda's panels visually address and document this dilemna. These two
symbols, owl and saw, worked within the textile tradition, became powerful
sources for patterning. The owl's feathers offer an opportunity to develop
repeated patterns with infinite variation and natural organic flow,
while saw chains offer a similar opportunity of repetition, only now
with mechanical, industrial precision.
Each image has its strength, its weaknesses, and its beauty. Color in these pieces is a mere pastel shadow; the central image is created on one large fabric and piecing is nonexistent. Quilting is minimal and no longer reinforces or shadows all the minute lines. The back of the quilt is plain and without interest. The pieces are carried entirely by the black and white painted lines on the surface. Although the textile tradition remains very much alive in the nature of the patterning, the concept of quilt is found only in the fact that there is a top, bottom, and inner layer. The power of the image, and of the narrative, overrides the piece itself and is that which seduces and excites.
I came away from this exhibition feeling that for MacDonald cloth has
been freeing, that it represents the soft, the feminine, and the approachable-that
it has given her images life. Using fabric, she gives herself permission
to play and to develop, and the assorted processes she works on the
cloth surface have forced her to struggle productively. The quilted
structure gave vitality to her lines and textured her surface, while
the use of patterning in the textile tradition gave her images visual
integrity and richness.
The recent paintings fall outside the textile tradition and are difficult
to place in the context of this essay. The paintings in the exhibition
were quite small, 7" x I I", highly detailed (much as her
Phase II quilts were) and, for the most part, very realistic. Their
surfaces are hard and slick, with little or no texture. Although there
is much color, the color is consistently of the same tonal quality,
giving a sense of flatness. Her images are arbitrary, strong impressions
apparently rising from her life of intense experience. It is too soon
to tell where this latest turn in MacDonald's professional road will
take her. As a textile artist myself, I hope it will not take her away
from textiles. But simply as an observer of her as an artist in growth
and action, I await the next stage in her evolution with wonder and
expectation.
Candace Crockett, weaver and author,
is a Professor of Art
at San Francisco State University, where she heads the textile area.
Reprinted with permission from Surface Design Association • sda@metro.net
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