Ryan lely/Sonoma Valley Sun
Linda Fleming’s show at the Sonoma Valley Museum of Art represents three decades of her work.
Linda Fleming’s “Refugium” includes distinct pieces of art representing three decades of her work. Fleming is a prolific artist best known for her large-scale metal and wood sculptures, which appear to have evolved from basic geometric shapes. The installation of more than 20 drawings, marquettes (three-dimensional models) and sculptures continues at the Sonoma Valley Museum of Art through October 21.
Refugium is a noun of Latin origin defined as ‘an area that has escaped ecological changes occurring elsewhere’ and so provides a suitable habitat for surviving species. In these times of heightened awareness of the threat of global warming, refugium has particularly profound meaning, and the exhibit’s creator is more than qualified to explore the themes.
“The works in Refugium were chosen for the ideas behind them, which continue to puzzle me,” Fleming said. “I think of this show as a means of seeing my works as moments of time, all carrying the circumstances of their origins and mapping what I have been thinking about for many years.”
The solo exhibition is divided into six distinct sections that reflect Fleming’s transformative and ethereal works in a wide variety of media. “Accumulations” refers to Fleming’s work with found materials. “Seeds” are the three-dimensional models, which are to become her large sculptures. Some of Fleming’s most recent works, represented in “Vapors,” “Diagrams,” “Repositories” and finally “Quantum,” offer a wide array of steel and glass sculptures, drawings on rag paper and other engaging works.
“The whole of the Sonoma Valley Museum of Art, filled with a generous range of Linda Fleming’s work, is a place transformed into a dreamlike zone,” guest curator Glenn Helfand writes in the show’s program. “It is a gracious and poetic site made possible only by a confluence of space and time.”
Fleming was born in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania in 1945. She showed a keen interest in art in elementary school and by high school graduation was set on a career as an artist. Her portfolio of work earned Fleming a full scholarship to study art and design at what is now Carnegie Mellon University in Pennsylvania. After her first husband accepted a job in San Francisco, the couple moved west and Fleming continued her studies at the San Francisco Art Institute.
After a year in San Francisco, the Big Apple beckoned and Fleming moved to SOHO where she fell in with the group of artists who started the Park Place Gallery. It was there that her work was first publicly shown and she basked in the praise that was bestowed upon her by New York City’s prestigious art world. It is that same year, 1967, that Fleming attended an artist-run summer camp in upstate New York and first worked on outdoor pieces.
The next year, Fleming, along with Tony Magar and Dean Fleming, who would become her second husband, moved to the Rocky Mountains in Colorado. They started an artists’ community that they call Libre, and the newlyweds designed, built and took up residence in a 40-foot geodesic dome. Fleming’s two children were born at Libre.
Fleming continues to make art while embarking on a new vocation as an art teacher, which started at Mills College in Oakland where she was employed as a Visiting Artist. Her moves around the country allowed her stints at the Maryland Institute in Baltimore in 1985, the Minneapolis College of Art and Design in Minnesota and back to the San Francisco Art Institute for five years beginning in 1985. Since 1986, Fleming has been a Full Professor and Sculpture Department Chair at the California College of the Arts in Oakland.
Fleming now splits her time between a home and studio Benicia and two additional studios: one at Libre in southern Colorado and the other in Wall Spring, Nevada. Drawing inspiration from both the mountains and the desert, she creates her contemplative works of art with an astute awareness of nature. “Moving between these places heightens my perceptions, as if looking at shifting reality from many points in space with time unfolding at multiple speeds,” pondered Fleming. “Migrating allows the awareness of parallel, coexisting realities to emerge and that is the real subject of my work.”
“Linda Fleming: Refugium” is at the Sonoma Valley Museum of Art, 551 Broadway, Sonoma, Wed. – Sun. 11 a.m. – 5 p.m. through Oct. 21. Admission is $5 for individuals and $8 for a family. For more information call 707.939.7862.
