The Herald’s artist of the month Jillian Mardin offers her vision of ‘a community that rocks art’

By DOUG BATES/Editor/The Herald — The creative colony of the Upper Willamette is blessed with a surprising wealth of diverse talent, and artist Jillian Mardin of Oakridge would like to bring it all together.

She looks at the bevy of musicians, sculptors, photographers, painters, quilters, wood crafters, actors, writers and other artists who populate her town and yearns “to see how we can cross-germinate all of this and turn Oakridge into a community that rocks art.”

Mardin, a widely respected painter, designer and mixed-media virtuoso, is the second Oakridge-Westfir resident to be profiled as artist of the month in a new arrangement between The Herald and the Oakridge Art Council. The group selected her in a drawing of names among its 20-plus members, and the process is to be repeated each month as a means of recognizing the community’s robust arts scene.

A dominant figure in that scene for nearly 15 years, Mardin is organizing a June 23 community meeting aimed at “bringing together all of us involved both now and in the past”  for a brainstorming exercise. The goal, she said, will be to encourage a critical mass of local talent to help Oakridge reach its potential as a welcoming home for artists — all across the spectrum.

Mardin, whose friends call her Jill, is perhaps the quintessential example of how the cultural vibe in Oakridge-Westfir can attract people from across the land. She’s an East Coast product who moved to Lane County from Boston in 2006 after her husband died.

After finding housing prices in Eugene a bit too outlandish, she visited Oakridge at the suggestion of friends.

“As soon as I stepped out of the car, I knew this is where I had to be,” she recalls.

The brisk mountain air, the natural beauty and creative spirit she found here told her this is where she needed to pursue her art.

And that she has done. Art she has created in her Oakridge home studio can be found in private collections in London, Paris, Tokyo and New York, not to mention in many such collections in Oregon.

Her work has been frequently featured in Eugene news media over the years, and she has emerged as a popular and prominent figure among gallery owners, collectors, critics, fellow artists and patrons of the Lane Arts Council. Prior to the COVID-19 outbreak she was among the region’s most visible exhibitors in shows throughout the county.

Mardin has received awards twice in the juried Eugene Mayor’s Art Show, and she was one of the founders of the Eugene Storefront Art Project.

At 74, Mardin remains prolific. She lost 30 pieces in the 2015 Lion Mountain Bakery fire “and had to start over,” but today has a large ongoing exhibit at the new bakery building, another at the new Oakridge Art Council gallery and many pieces being sold through various outlets globally. Her illustrations will appear in two books scheduled for publication soon, and you can even find her art on the labels of spirits produced in Oakridge at Deep Woods Distillery.

You can also see her work at the Facebook page for Old Crow Art and Design.

Or in her utterly charming home in the historic Uptown district of Oakridge, where she lives with a 25-pound black cat named Ditto. Her compact cottage is a delightful showcase of an artist’s sensibility — not just in the art on display in every room, but also in the little touches of tasteful decorating worthy of glossy-magazine attention.

Her studio is a room on the sunny southwest corner of the vintage house. “I usually work in here in the afternoons, because I like the afternoon light,” she says.

Mardin paints and illustrates with acrylics, watercolors, pencil, charcoal — just about everything except oils, which she has abandoned for health-related reasons. She is also deeply experienced in photography and in digital illustrating, using the software programs Picasa and Coral Paint Shop Pro.

Her forte, she agrees, is the mixed-media art form called assemblage, which is essentially the creation of three-dimensional art using found objects and other materials. Even if you’re not an art expert, you can’t help gazing at Mardin’s assemblage art and realizing you’re looking at brilliance.

It’s all wildly creative, evoking emotions ranging from bemusement and delight to surprise and even shock. Her fascination with feathers and birds is obvious (it’s “Old Crow Art and Design,” remember), and she confesses to having dabbled in the erotic.

If the overall sensation of a Jillian Mardin exhibit is powerfully counterculture, it’s surely because she was at the very forefront of the movement that changed America during the Vietnam War era. Mardin is proud to say she was among the original flower children who lived in San Francisco’s Haight-Ashbury hippie district during the 1967 “Summer of Love.”

Her story begins where she grew up in the Vermont town of Burlington. She was the eldest of seven children in an Irish-Catholic family dominated by a patriarch who was an aeronautics engineer, NASA contractor,  staunch conservative and overbearing father who would eventually drive her away.

As a girl, she was heavily influenced by a wealthy grandmother who hosted arty soirees for artistic acquaintances.

“From the time I was old enough to hold something in my hand, I was busy drawing and painting,” Mardin says. “My aesthetic was born at a very early age.”

She won a scholarship to attend the University of Pennsylvania in 1966.  The swirl of current events, as well as her father’s abusive treatment, led her to drop out the following year and hitchhike to San Francisco with three friends. And yes, she says with a laugh, they did put flowers in their hair.

Mardin lived throughout most of the 1970s in the Eugene area, which was famous then, as now, as a welcoming community for alternative lifestyles.

She attended the University of Oregon, earning bachelor’s and master’s degrees in fine arts. She hung out with Ken Kesey’s Merry Pranksters. She worked in the crew on the movie set of “One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest.”

Mardin went an entire decade without seeing her family back east but finally returned to Vermont in 1979 in an attempt at family reconciliation. Her father, an affluent scientist/executive for General Electric, had lured her home with the promise of financial help and a fresh start at their relationship.

A month after her return, he died unexpectedly and family reconciliation never occurred.

Mardin then became active in the Vermont art scene. In her first-ever show as an artist, she exhibited black and white photography in Burlington in 1980.

Later that year her life took a completely different turn. She moved to Boston, fell in love with professional musician Bud Marshall, married him and went to work in an office job, helping to support his career as a respected jazz performer on the double bass.

“I made a ton of money during those years, but working for Blue Cross/Blue Shield wasn’t me,” she says. “I wasn’t doing my art anymore. I can’t say I was happy.”

Perhaps one of the better things that ever happened to her was the elimination of her job.

“They let me go,” she says. “So I went back to our condo in Boston and began painting.”

In 2005, lung cancer claimed Bud’s life. Alone in their condo with no job, just her art, Mardin made a fateful decision.

“I decided to return to Oregon.”

So she did, in 2006. After discovering that Eugene was no longer particularly affordable for her, she found her way to her “little hippie home,” all 625 square feet of it, in cozy Oakridge.

“It’s beautiful here,” she says. “It’s a pretty cool place — a vortex that attracts people in a way I haven’t seen anywhere else.”

That’s why she’s setting up that community meeting for 6:30 p.m. on June 23 at the Oakridge Art Council gallery. She says she senses that a lot of creative energy in Oakridge-Westfir is waiting to be harnessed in ways that improve the lives of everyone.

“When I became a member of this beloved community I wanted to give back and have a little in various ways but lately really feel compelled to do so,” Mardin wrote in her meeting announcement. “I have always loved the art scene here and not just visual but (also) performing, musical, spoken word and the people who allow use of various venues to showcase these things.”

Those interested in learning more can reach Mardin online through her Old Crow Art and Design website.

Herald Editor Doug Bates is a retired newspaper journalist who lives in Oakridge.