Point Reyes artist looks to nature for mandalas
Point Reyes Station artist creates botanical mandalas during pandemic
Carol Whitman never expected to find her calling as an artist at age 69, let alone during a pandemic. Inspired by the beauty of the natural world, she found her path last June by making colorful botanical mandalas at home, using natural materials she finds on walks or in her garden and propagating room, where she grows flowers from seed.
After arranging a mix of everything from fruit to flowers to bark, she photographs the works and shares them on social media as well as her website, mandalasbotanical.com.
Her daily practice has been a source of comfort over the past year. It’s helped keep her mind off things while hunkered at home in the pandemic, calmed some of the anxieties she had leading up to November’s presidential election and distracted her from the unknowns during the Woodward Fire, which forced her and her husband, Bob Kubik, to evacuate their Point Reyes Station home and temporarily stay in Oakland in their old friends’ empty oneroom apartment.
Since she started her new artistic endeavor, she’s released a coffee table book of 55 of her mandalas, “Flowers for a Pandemic,” and has been featured in an online solo exhibit through the Dance Palace. Her work can also be seen in “ReCentering,” a group show with her son Max Lesser, and Laurie
Curtis, from April 2 through 28 at the gallery in Toby’s Feed Barn in Point Reyes Station. A table will be set up with materials for people to make their own botanical mandalas. Q You had a career in health care. Did you ever think about pursuing art?
AI did a lot of craft things. I was an apprentice to the local jeweler, did embroidery and knitting. I am still a knitter. It felt like I could do the technique but they didn’t have the generative spark. When I did jewelry, I had a really hard time thinking of ideas, and when I knit, I use a pattern generally, but this is so different. I always wanted to be an artist, and my son is an artist and I married an artist, but I was more of a craftsperson until now.
Q How’d this all start?
A I came home one day from a walk with some small puffball mushrooms and iris seed heads, put them on a little table on our patio and arranged them into a design. I took a picture of it and put it on Facebook and Instagram and thought it was fun. And then the next day, I did it again. I have been growing flowers for a long time and a few years ago I started growing them from seed, so I started incorporating them. After about a week, I thought, this is it. The mandalas were satisfying as art, but they were also calming. And then to be able to show them to other people and to have them have that same reaction, they got this same centeredness and calmness that I was getting. That was really cool.
Q
Has this practice strengthened your connection to nature?
AYes. Everywhere I go, I go with that eye. In fact, I am looking out my window now and I see buckeye leaves and I think, wonder how those would be in a piece? The other thing I really like is being able to combine different pieces of plants to make the mandalas, that they combine together to make a unique plant life, even though they are temporary. That’s the art of it. I have always been into nature, even as a little girl. My mom grew lily of the valley and pansies, and I just adored both. This year is the first I’ve grown pansies from seed.
Q
What are some of your favorite materials to use?
AA lot of it depends on the time of year. But, yearround, probably hydrangea; they are so versatile. A friend has a hydrangea bush, mauve pink ones that dry to a lavender color, that are really useful with other colors, especially shades of greens. I am also in love with hellebores. Seed heads make great material for mandalas.
Q
What do you want people to get from this?
AA lot of joy and a love of nature. That they feel not so anxious and down with the world, because that’s what it has done for me. It’s really cool that it has nurtured me so much and turned me into an artist. The bonus is that it has given joy to other people as well.