Artsy treasure hunt
San Rafael artist highlights beauty of art, Marin with new venture
What do a large, paper-mache bear floating by Loch Lomond Marina Park, sushi monsters and a 16-foot sculpture with a bird’s nest on top have in common? They’re some of ARTx Marin’s installations that have popped up across Marin this week, if you just know where to look.
Started by San Rafael artist and therapeutic workshop leader Mary Estes to highlight Bay Area artists and makers, as well as encourage people to explore different parts of Marin, the volunteer-driven organization’s first exhibit runs through Oct. 17 at different locations in the county.
Since retiring from a long career as an art teacher a few years ago, Estes, whose life crisis in the early 2000s inspired her own therapeutic journey, has transitioned to helping and healing others through her home-based workshops (tenderexplorations.com), such as SoulCollage and painting your past lives.
For more information about ARTx Marin, and to see the installations’ locations and learn more about the featured artists, go to artxmarin.com.
Q
What inspired ARTx Marin?
A
I somehow found out about Desert X in the Coachella Valley. You take a map and go around and visit different installations. I was just smitten with that concept, art in the outdoors and it’s like a treasure hunt. You go find these wonderful pieces in places you’d never explore otherwise. I participated in it and I thought I just had to do it here in Marin.
Q
Did the pandemic play a part in this?
A
I loved the concept even pre-pandemic, but it does make it even more relevant now in the pandemic. Recently, someone did a big spray-painted face by the freeway, and most people were so thrilled and amazed. That was encouraging, like OK, people are really hungry for this. ARTx, it’s going to get people out into other communities, like Loch Lomond, a lot of people probably haven’t been there, even if
they’ve lived here a long time. Artist Tim Ryan did something for Volunteer Park in Mill Valley, and I hadn’t been there.
Q
Why did you chose this format?
A
The art is much more community-oriented. For example, Tim has involved 30 people in Mill Valley to create the work and it’s a timely piece about climate change and drought. Participation is a huge part of what I am interested in, getting people outside of their comfort zone to see and help create work in their
community.
Q
What made you transition to your career now?
A
During the last five or 10 years of teaching, I started to drift more away from skillbased teaching and more of the therapeutic value of the work. I worked at an alternative high school in San Francisco and I just saw the value of being able to express yourself, really without thinking about grades or credit, so I developed that into workshops at my home with adults around using the expressive arts for self-reflection and healing.
Q
When did you realize art has this healing power?
A
Early on with students in the city. And with my own journey after a crisis. There was nothing I wouldn’t try. I have always had art, but art as a therapeutic process, that’s been my last 20-year journey. I took a lot of classes, did SoulCollage in 2015, that’s wonderful. I first came to shamanic practice at Burning Man in the early 2000s and didn’t come back to it until later. I feel like I wouldn’t be a complete person without martializing these expressive forms that come out of me. It’s not always pleasant to look at, but it’s part of the healing process.
Q
Your floating art piece “Sugar Bear” is part of this exhibit. What inspired him?
A
He represents the joys and the sorrows of childhood, but also on the flip side, of what I developed through my imaginative world in my childhood. He represents the behaviors that we learn in childhood that we maybe want to let go of as adults. But, also the good things, like using our imagination, and the way we become resilient as children to survive this world.