There Is Always Something Happening At The Mendocino Art Center

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is one of their own creation. • Just as film producer/director Alfred Hitchcock always managed a low-key cameo appearance in his own movies, so Larry Wagner puts in a very subtle appearance in the Garden of Eden, with his lovely wife Marilyn as Eve. There are other models, other images, and other stories, but we don’t want to spoil the surprise completely! Once you actually have this calendar in hand, you will feel oddly compelled to pick out your favorite month and image and fervently argue your choice against all comers. So once you have the calendar, be prepared for some friendly bickering, whether you know the models or not. My personal favorite is graphic designer Dale Moyer as “The Art Critic” a la a Norman Rockwell painting by that name. Get your copy of this limited edition calendar now so that you can stake out your favorite pages! Calendars are available for $25 at the Mendocino Art Center and at several retail stores, or can be ordered on line at www.MendocinoArtCenter. com. Calendars can be mailed for an extra $5. The production costs for the calendar were covered by individual and business sponsors for each month, so that all proceeds directly benefit the programs of the Mendocino Art Center. 23
24 by Pete Halstad Of the many reasons which drive an artist or craftsperson to create, none is more complex, or, arguably, more admirable, than the preservation of his or her culture. Christine Hamilton, a soft-spoken sixtythree year old native Pomo basket weaver, began making baskets as a teenager largely for that reason. As she told Sojourn Magazine in the late 1990’s: “When I was nineteen years old, I began to study basket making with Elsie Allen. That was thirty-three years ago. I studied with her for several years – starting with a basket class and then at her house. I also learned by sitting and talking with her and with Annie Lake. I used to attach myself to the elder women of the tribes around the valley – where I felt the knowledge was. Later I became wild and didn’t study with them again for a long time. I have been doing baby baskets from the beginning. Every one is different. When I started, I used to think about them all the time. I fell in love with them, and then I had to let them go. It was like pulling them out of my arms.” Christine is a member of the Yokaia band of Pomos, whose ancestors have lived in Mendocino County for more generations than anyone can count. Her great-grandfather, Captain Charlie Pinto, was one of the four tribal leaders in whose name the Yokayo Rancheria lands on the east side of Ukiah Valley were purchased, in October, 1881, as a permanent and, they hoped, inviolable home for their families. Despite innumerable threats to its security, the Yokayo Rancheria is, today, “the longest-held communallyowned Indian property in California” – if not the entire United States. Christine’s grandfather, Tom Mitchell, was a friend and ethnographic consultant to the artist Grace CHRISTINE HAMILTON POMO BASKET MAKER and CULTURAL MENTOR Carpenter Hudson and her husband, Dr. John Hudson. Grace Hudson often used Mitchell or his family members as subjects in her widely admired oil paintings. “The Seed Conjurer,” a portrait of Tom Mitchell in Pomo ceremonial attire, is an especially beautiful example. Christine told me that looking at The Painter Lady, Searles Boyton’s richly illustrated 1978 book about Grace Hudson and her work, “is like looking at my family album.” The afternoon I met Christine, at Todd Grove Park in Ukiah, she brought with her, in addition to an assortment of her beautiful handmade baskets, a scrapbook of photographs, newspaper articles and honoraria which helped me understand and appreciate her strong identification with her native culture, and her commitment to helping it flourish. Included in her scrapbook were letters from museums in Marin and Merced counties, and from the Smithsonian Museum of Natural Science, attesting to those institutions having acquired her baskets for their permanent collections. Christine figures prominently in Native American art expert Brian Bibby’s book Precious Cargo: California Indian Baskets and Childbirth Traditions, a companion book to the Marin Museum of the American Indian’s exhibition tour of the same name. The Smithsonian collection includes two of Christine’s baby baskets, as well as a pair of her miniature baby cradle earrings, a photo of which adorns the webpage for “The Language of Native American Baskets – From the Weaver’s View,” published by the Smithsonian National Museum of the American Indian. As Grace Hudson Museum Director Sherrie Smith- Ferrie explained to me recently, Native American basket making has gone through several transitions.
Page 1 and 2: 18 There Is Always Something Happen
Page 3 and 4: 20 MAC’S 20-MONTH CALENDAR By Peg
Page 5: 22 mermaid’s tail photoshopped on
Page 9 and 10: 26 “MORE USED BOOKS, PLEASE” MA
Page 11 and 12: 28 Mendocino County Gallery Guide F
Page 13 and 14: 30 dyecolour painting on silk by S
Page 15 and 16: 32 choosing a palette of 21 mixing

There Is Always Something Happening At The Mendocino Art Center

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