PUNCHMAGAZINE.COM 87 common threads lindagass.com at Institute and Museum of California Art, and the Oakland Museum of California. It features in publications like American Craft, Bay Nature and KQED Arts as well as a National Geographic publication on unusual maps. One is even on the cover of an environmental science textbook. One of Linda’s favorite pieces, included in a solo show at the Museum of Craft and Design, is also a very personal piece. The stitched painting, Severely Burned, reveals the crippling damage of the Rim Fire in the Tuolumne River Watershed through an artistically rendered vegetation burn map. Linda has regularly visited and backpacked in Yosemite National Park dating back Although her work wades through some harsh realities, Linda takes a surprisingly gentle approach. “I use the lure of beauty to look at the hard environmental issues we face—rather than make artwork that may be more ugly, like the subject matter that I’m dealing with, that people might not want to look at. Or live with.” Visually pleasing images make unappetizing truths a little more palatable. “Otherwise, they might want to stick their heads in the sand because it’s overwhelming.” It’s an artistic choice that reveals her hopes for the restoration of natural beauty. Catching a bird’s-eye view with Linda reminds us to aim higher and choose to thoughfully steward the planet we all inhabit. to eighth grade, when a week-long class trip taught her to appreciate the area’s ecosystem, from its plants and animals to the glaciers that carved its valley. And she witnessed the fire in person. “There was this cloud—like one I’d never seen before,” Linda says, recalling the unsettling horizon she saw out the bus window. “It was this cauliflower in the sky. It was not a rain cloud. And the underside of it…the whole cloud was gray. There was no white.” The fire burned so hot it had created its own weather, condensing the moisture from the atmosphere into an unnerving pyrocumulus cloud. Linda vividly recollects the flurry of ash later falling like snowflakes, some crusting on her camera’s zoom lens. ART: COURTESY OF LINDA GASS
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