A letter from our Director,
Last weekend I stood amongst forty others on the cliffs of the headlands and watched artist Jas Lin guide the sun down into the sea through a series of movements, sounds and emotional expressions. I stood on the cliff and snapped a picture of the artist, dressed in a red transparent sarong, body-painted from head to toe in white, as they peered out from the lands edge overlooking the Pacific Ocean. Looking down at the photo I’d shot, I was stunned by what I saw.
Having never lived in a landscape with such immense beauty, what took my breath away was the reciprocity in the performance: between the land, the artist, and those mesmerized in the witnessing of their exchange: an artistic co-creation between land and people
On my walk back to the center I asked: How does art give back to a community and place that holds space for it?
Sometimes I feel it is simply enough to pour your heart into something and be vulnerable enough to share it with others, to change oneself and other and place through the exchange of making. But to put your art out into the world is anything but simple or isolated. Art is embedded deep within our bones, and any community that holds space for it knows the power that artistic conversation has to create change: Art as an act of reciprocity is art that cares deeply for the future of our shared humanity as stewards of this earth we inhabit.
At Mendocino Art Center, creativity doesn’t exist apart from community—it grows through exchange. Artists, neighbors, and the natural world are in constant conversation here, each offering something essential to the other.
This Giving Tuesday, December 2nd we’re celebrating that circle of reciprocity. Your support sustains programs like our Greenhouse Residency, where artists live and create in relationship with this land and community—sharing what they make, teaching what they learn, and contributing to a collective practice of care.
You can learn more about all of our current residents on our website here.
When you give to the Art Center, you’re participating in the rhythm of giving and receiving that allows us and the community we are a part of to flourish.
Dav Bell
Executive Director