EXTENDING THE ARTISTIC LINEAGE
Marie-Clare Treseder Gorham has spent long days and early evenings painting her new mural across the expansive northwestern-facing wall overlooking the pool deck of Hofsas House Hotel. Regardless of the weather, she wears a long cotton dress, whose fabric, which she designed herself, is as feminine as the elements of her mural, both of which portray a sense of who she is and what she represents.
While the mural, which also symbolizes the heart of Hofsas House, was unveiled last week, much more remains to be revealed about the artist.
Well before she left for college at University of the Pacific, Marie-Clare Treseder Gorham knew she was an artist, having packed the legacy of an artistic tradition in her duffle bags. Her identity had dripped off the brush of her great-grandfather, legendary painter in the California Arts & Crafts movement, William S. Rice, and onto the hands of her grandmother, ceramicist Roberta Rice Treseder, now 99, then spreading out across the family and, most definitely, getting all over her.
Treseder Gorham had no intention of majoring in art at UOP. She already knew what to do with a brush. Instead, she sought an education that would focus on things she couldn’t self-teach, what she
couldn’t learn at her grandmother’s pottery wheel. She graduated with a dual degree in analytical psychology and curation, with a minor in music.
Straight out of college, Treseder Gorham curated an exhibition of her greatgrandfather’s work at The Crocker Art Museum in Sacramento, which she had arranged via email. Titled “The Nature of William S. Rice: Arts and Crafts Painter and Printmaker,” the exhibition, of more than 50 pieces, opened at the Crocker in 2015, and, a year later, at the Pasadena Museum of California Art.
“I started curating the California Arts and Crafts movement independently, with private clients,” she said, “focusing on the 1920s into the 1930s. I realized I could start creating and selling my own work at the same time, which was glorious. It took a little confidence to take that plunge, but it’s been worthwhile.”
Embracing the culture of Carmel
Although Treseder Gorham’s family has roots in Oakland, and she grew up in Davis, where her mother trained and taught at the university, her “inspired place” has always been Carmel, where William S. Rice often came to paint and commune with the art community.
“My great-grandfather also painted in Asilomar,” she said, “and the rest of us would join him, aspirationally. But I found in Carmel, in this pre-existing art community, a reflection of the values I had manifested. It’s like a primeval forest with a distinct interest in the aesthetics. Pair that with great food and coffee, and it’s home.”
Treseder Gorham lives with her husband, military contractor Drew Gorham, and their two tiny children, in an artist’s cottage near Sunset Center, not far from Hofsas House, the family-owned, Bavarianstyle boutique inn, where she serves as artist-in-residence.
“Our artist-in-residence program is building a life of its own,” said General Manager and Coowner Carrie Theis. “Marie-Clare is so talented and easy to work with, and she is so positive. COVID hasn’t been easy on the hotel business, so to work with someone doing something fun and meaningful and uplifting is a breath of fresh air. I really look forward to seeing her completed mural, designed around the crest my grandmother’s husband, Fred Hofsas created.”
The main theme of the mural, the original Hofsas Housecoat of arms, remains on the front façade of the main building. The bottom of the crest bears the Latin phrase, “otium cum dignitate” or “leisure with dignity.”
“For the mural, I did an illustration of the crest with beautiful blue blazonry, the ribbon-work around traditional emblems in Europe,” Treseder Gorham said. “In keeping with the distinctly Bavarian theme of the hotel, I did a lot of research into the German technique of bauernmalerei, a beautiful decorative folk art that uses highlights and lowlights, which I used to create a focal point, such as a petal or the wing of a bird.”
Treseder Gorham believes her interest and ability in creating handpainted artistry descend from her great-great-great grandfather, a German carriage painter.
The theme of her grand mural, with its flowers and birds lifting the ribbons around the classic crest, is a feminine complement to the late Maxine Albro’s artistry throughout the rest of Hofsas House. In 1957, Donna and Fred Hofsas commissioned the established artist to step outside her modernist sensibility and paint a Bavarian-themed welcome mural plus window treatments, along with three framed paintings still exhibited in the hotel lobby.
“In contributing to the hotel, I wanted my work to complement the existing artistry, to lovingly embrace the history and distinctly feminine imagery,” Treseder Gorham said. “Maxine left a real legacy, not just in her public art, but by the whole of her portfolio. I studied her style when I was doing the restoration work at the front of Hofsas House. Where the paint had faded away, her sketches remained, so I got to learn directly from her hand.”
In keeping with her ethos of the Arts and Crafts movement, Treseder Gorham continues to design her own fabrics and custom-make the clothing she and her children wear. Her family eats from the ceramic bowls her grandmother made, and fill their home with her artistry and her great-grandfather’s. She recently picked up carpentry tools, so she can build and scallop the headboards she paints for Hofsas House and for her children.
“I am not a jack-of-alltrades,” she said, “but I continue to add the trades I need to craft this beautiful life in Carmel.”