Carol MacDonald

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Carol MacDonald is a printmaker, teacher and community arts organizer living and working in Vermont. Her monoprint work uses knitting imagery as an evocative visual vocabulary to investigate “the threads of our shared humanity” and address issues of community, life, transition, process, communication and the interconnected web of life. MacDonald has taken interest in contemporary repair culture. Organizations like Oakland, California’s Culture of Repair Project offers educational workshops and community events that promote the value of repair and to teach lost skills like darning.

As an artist, teacher and community arts organizer, Carol MacDonald is well poised to engage with historic sites. Her capacity for delving into a subject is well documented in her work with birds and crows, knitting and healing. In 2011, she partnered with Eric Rehman to create the installation Transcendence: Mooring the Storm. This project addressed issues of sexual violence. In collaboration with HopeWorks, they interviewed survivors of sexual violence and made 2-D and 3-D imagery related to their experiences. Then, over the course of a month, the work was installed in the window of the Frog Hollow Gallery in downtown Burlington. These intimate pieces evolved in this most public setting, inviting viewers to come back and see the progression. They then traveled the show to three other sites in Vermont, changing it each time to fit into the changing spaces.

MacDonald has been exhibiting her work in Vermont and nationally since 1980. She was a founder of the Art’s Alive Festival of Fine Art in Burlington, served on the board of directors of the local and national Women’s Caucus for Art and the Frog Hollow Craft Association. She was awarded the 2008 Barbara Smail Award by Burlington City Arts and the 1999 Susan B. Anthony Award for leadership in the Arts by the YWCA. She has been an artist fellow at the Virginia Center for Creative Arts and the Vermont Studio Center. Her work is in many private and corporate collections around the world.

AT ROKEBY MUSEUM

Mending Fences & Darning Socks

Note: MacDonald’s proposal is currently being realized for the 2020 season at Rokeby Museum. WEBSITE

MacDonald proposed a multifaceted exhibition of objects, monotype prints, and site-specific installations that promote a culture of repair. She writes, “Society today is struggling with an economy of planned obsolescence where it is easier to replace something than to repair it. We are losing our ability to fix things and I believe that the act of repairing is a way to reclaim a piece of our personal and collective history.” She saw a direct connection between this work and life at Rokeby. “’In an 1839 letter from Rachel G. Robinson to Rowland, when away in Philadelphia, she writes ‘say to my precious sister that if R. Evans needs another suit of summer clothes before I reach home, they might be made out of the Pongee in the drawer of the chest in the bedroom and Ann’s little silk shawl is in my box in the upper part of the bedroom closet.’ Anna Stevens Robinson writes in her 1873 diary about making shirts for father over the course of a few weeks in April. She also references mending dresses and finishing a chemise. The farm and homestead relied heavily on not only the making of tools, fences, clothing and household goods, but also the ability to repair them when they were broken, torn or worn out. Since Rokeby has been preserved and not restored, this is a perfect place to stage this installation as there are things currently on exhibit that are in need of repair.”

MacDonald proposed the creation of a series of artworks that incorporate the act of repairing. “Actual objects, scattered throughout the house, will be temporarily mended or repaired using red thread, cord, rope etc. to distinguish what has been added. At the end of the exhibit these pieces will be returned to their original state.” She writes, “A selection of objects from the Robinson collection that have been handmade or sewn will be displayed. Some of these may have evidence of having been repaired or be in need of repair. I will also create a series of monotypes of textiles and laces that are I will repair with chine colle and stitching with red thread.”

Potential objects for the exhibition in the Jane Williamson Gallery include Thomas R. Robinson’s wooden spoons and the two that have been repaired with fiber; darned socks and mended fabrics and clothing; the sketch by Rachel Robinson of a young girl mending the rug; and repaired tools and farming equipment. Outside the Main House, MacDonald proposed a large canvas sewn banner suspended between two trees. She also proposed mending the wooden fence with red nylon cord–a reference to mending fences.

For inside the Main House, MacDonald wrote, “Upon entering the house the viewer will see an old net hanging on the wall that has been repaired with red thread. The snowshoes will have the missing straps filled in with red raw hide. The rug on the floor by the bed in the downstairs bedroom will be repaired by red cord. The bedspread in Rachel’s room will be patched and sewn with red thread. A rocking chair (from the top floor of the shed) will have a woven shaker tape seat and back. Broken china (from up in the attic) will be repaired with red in the cracks.”

MacDonald sees “fixing or repairing is inherent to abolitionism, farming and homesteading as well as addressing contemporary issues of repair in today’s society.” The artwork references the Japanese art of Kintsugi which uses gold dust mixed into lacquer to repair broken pottery. “In the spirit of this practice I will mend, repair and weave together a series of ‘broken’ or damaged objects with the distinguishing color of red. My intention is to bring attention to the value of repairing as opposed to throwing away and replacing.”

The exhibition will be animated with an artist talk, an interactive piece, and Repair Fair in partnership with Addison County Solid Waste Management District where visitors learn various repair techniques. MacDonald sees a connection between the practice of repair on the farm and Quaker’s spiritual drive towards restorative justice. “I believe that the act of abolition was essentially a way to repair the societal wrong of slavery,” she writes. To that end, she proposes a workshop or speakers who can create “a diverse cultural dialogue or a roundtable discussion around the issue of reparations.”