Camarillo, Calif., Aug. 13, 2018—CSU Channel Islands (CSUCI) Assistant Professor of Art
Marianne McGrath explores the Ventura County of her memory in an exhibit currently on display at the Santa Paula Art Museum through Nov. 4, 2018.
Called “Local Clay,” the exhibit features work from McGrath and another Ventura County artist, Cheryl Ann Thomas, whose work has been on display in national and international galleries. Executive director of the Santa Paula Art Museum Jennifer Orcutt Heighton paired McGrath and Thomas for the show because, according to the web page: “ultimately, both women are considering concepts of home, memory, and loss.”
“I just love the work from both of them and I thought their work would pair well together,” Heighton said.
Thomas’ work involves thin, serpentine ropes of clay that are allowed to collapse in on themselves in the kiln, giving sheer chance a role in the piece, or as Thomas puts it: “a real and distinct experience of creation and loss.”
McGrath uses clay to explore the contrast between the Ventura County of now and the one in her memory. She combines the earthen medium of clay with industrial materials to create pieces that speak of rural landscapes lost to urban sprawl.
“I understand that people need a place to live and shop,” she said. “My work is my own personal reflection on memories made in a landscape that no longer exists.”
McGrath, who can trace her family’s roots back to 1876 in Ventura County, remembers idyllic sunny days growing up on the family’s ranch in the area now occupied by a large discount store.
“I grew up in Oxnard off Rose Avenue as the oldest of four girls. It was a wonderful childhood. We spent all the time outside, running around in the fields, riding bicycles, fort-building,” McGrath said. “It was strawberry fields, strawberry fields, citrus, citrus, citrus. And now it’s tract housing and strip malls.”
One of her pieces, which depicts a field of roses she created from unfired clay, represents a memory of the Rose Ranch, a ranch owned by her family while she was growing up.
“I have this memory of standing on the porch with my grandfather looking out at a field of alfalfa—I must have been about five years old—and asking him why it was called Rose Ranch. He said ‘These are there because your great-grandma planted hundreds of roses,’” she said. “This work is about the memories I have that are ephemeral and fleeting.”
This show marks the first time McGrath has displayed her art since returning home after 20 years in Austin, Texas, where she was a tenured faculty member at a community college. She returned in 2013 to take over running the family ranch with her sister, Helen McGrath, after the death of their father. She was thrilled to be able to teach again as a tenure track assistant professor at CSUCI.
“It’s just incredible to teach students in the place where I grew up,” she said. “The students of CSUCI are the students of Ventura County. It’s wonderful that there’s a place where citizens and the youth of Ventura County can go to school where they’re from and receive a great education.”