Studio PMC - Rio Grande

Linda Kline
For Linda Kline, there is no more spiritual
place on earth than a rainforest.
“It just has an essence of pureness that I
just don’t feel anywhere else,” she says.
“When you are there, you can just feel that
everything is alive. It’s teeming with energy
and when you look out across the vastness
of this pure creation, you just can’t
help but feel your connection to spirits, to
God, to the Creator.”
Linda has been traveling to rainforests
in Central and South America for nearly
30 years, and through that time, her love of
the forest has become deeply intertwined
with her art. “I discovered the indigenous
people believe the trees have spirits in
them that protect them, that all living
things do,” she says “And I started to see
the spirits in the trees. That sounds a little
wacky, but when you start looking at
trunks and the gnarled edges of the roots,
and the way the bark is formed, or the way
the insects have eaten or nested in tree,
you can begin to see little faces.”
So Linda began creating little PMC faces
inspired by these “tree spirits.” “It’s almost
as though they create themselves,” she confesses.
“When I sit down and begin to
sculpt, I often start laughing. They really
just come to life. I don’t have to work at it
— I just start laughing because suddenly a
little face will start smiling up at me. I
always feel the spirit is moving through me
as I create them.”
Her hope is that “The Boys,” as Linda
calls her tree spirit sculptures, will inspire
others as well. “They’re happy little guys
and I’m hoping their happy energy will
emanate out into the rest of the world,” she
says. “Each one of their faces is unique, but
they all have a serenity about them — that
same serenity I find when I’m in the rainforest.
So I hope whoever The Boys come
in contact with would also pick up a sense
of that peacefulness.”
Linda also hopes the Boys will help her
bring a little of that energy back to the
rainforest, as well. She is working to establish
a foundation that will preserve rainforest
land, and hopes to begin teaching
PMC classes in the rainforest in 2008, first
in Panama and later in Brazil.
She’ll also continue creating her happy
little faces. “I feel like I’m just beginning,”
she says. “I feel like I can’t do it fast
enough. It takes me a little while to make
each of these little guys, and I just feel like
I have this backlog of little guys wanting to
come out into the world.”
10 · Studio PMC