The Pioneers

Dorr Bothwell

Something as simple as moss-covered, aging fence posts, held together by wire in a field of overgrown grasses, is made into an exemplary illustration of late California summers in Dorr Bothwell's "The Pioneers". This was likely a part of her 1963 "Mendocino Fences" exhibition that took place at the Bay Window Gallery in Mendocino and at the De Young Museum in San Francisco.

Bruce Levene, who conducted and edited his interview of Bothwell for her biography, quotes her: "What struck me about Men?docino were the fences—that wonderful, weathered, bleached wood. So sensitive, so beautiful. I did a whole series of close-ups of the wood, about 30 paint?ings of fences. That show was in San Francisco at the de Young, as well as in Mendocino, and it sold out. Two years later I had another show."

She would also create a variety of screenprints of fence imagery, often featuring cats, wild blackberries, nasturtiums, and other flora and fauna seen regularly throughout the northern California artists' colony.