Storytelling through Images-pt. 2 Teaching Art to Children / Country Life

Teaching art to children was my other calling, as a way to give them what I missed in my own childhood and for me to work directly with the raw creativity that is a child's natural state. As I was discovering my own artist self in Berkeley, I attended a lecture at the San Francisco Art institute by Rhoda Kellogg, a Jungian psychologist and early childhood educator. This presentation of her international research on the universal quality of children's creative development, confirmed my commitment to work with children through art. Which I did following graduation and on into forty years of my life. My teaching expanded to reach students of all ages, at first in clay and later drawing, then designing and directing large community mural projects.

In 1971, I moved from the city to the country. I fell in love with Charles Illgen and the land with which he had such a strong connection. I moved from Berkeley, to join him, at a three hundred acre ranch in the hills of Napa and then a few years later, to Sonoma Valley. In an agrarian setting, surrounded by nature, growing gardens, grapes, and then children, I developed a strong relationship with Charles and with nature. This appears in my artwork and in his surreal, photographic portraits, which reflect a propensity for the spiritual and a dialogue between us. His portraits of me and my work have recorded my work paralleling my life.

photo by L. Simmel Marsha and Turu creating with clay. 1980

Photo by Charles Illgen Marsha Klein with her painting, “Cocoon Triptych” 1995

Storytelling through Images-pt.1 Early Inspirations

Since I was a child, my earliest memories are of my grandfather, and our strong connection. Meaning and understanding were always very important to me. Ancient traditions attracted me. Mystery, worlds we could only imagine, filled my mind. My Russian Jewish grandfather’s storytelling captivated and sustained me in 1950s’ dreary Williamsburg, Brooklyn. He instilled in me a belief in myself and my will, to do anything I set my mind to.

My passion for art began in my teens, when I discovered the art museums of my native New York City. Collections of Ancient Greek Sculpture and European Paintings at the Metropolitan Museum drew me in and Francis Bacon's intensely expressive work at the Guggenheim jarred my vision into the present. I began studying art at Brooklyn College, but did the major part of my undergraduate work at the University of California, Berkeley, in the 1960s, at the peak of the Bay Area Figurative movement.

My own artmaking was generated within this figurative tradition during a very exciting time, psychologically, spiritually and artistically, in the San Francisco Bay Area. In my early sculpture I responded literally to the Figurative emphasis on bodies in connection with nature. Surrealistically, my torsos, heads, arms, and feet, sprouted wings, flowers, cacti and roots. Ceramic sculpture was my main medium from 1969-1989. That year my father passed away and the Berlin Wall came down. The times signaled a switch in focus for me, from sculpture to painting.

photos by CM Illgen

Hardened Heart, 1979, ceramics, 16 x 13 x 7"

Gold Winged Receptive Bodyscape, 1981, ceramics, 13 x 21 x 5"

Re-Membering - Mother Nature

This oil painting, “Re-Membering-Mother Nature,” completed in autumn of 2019, followed the expressive, intense series, “Extreme Weather. “ It may seem to be something of an antidote, in its calm, colorful presence. However, it is not exactly that. It follows the dramatic weather paintings with a transparent figure, Mother Nature, the ultimate artist, gesturing to her audience, actually to humanity, with an offering and a rebuke, as if to say “ Here, I have given you all of this and what have you done with it? ”

I based this figure on a composite of two earlier works, “Surrogate Mother” 2007, from “Our Lady of the Roses Series” and “Re-Membering” 1999, which consists of two painted drawings of two figures on two overlapping scrolls. “Re-Membering,” in both pieces of that name, refers to putting the pieces back together. Globally, it appears that we have definitely reached a major crossroads of things coming apart, and we have this stunning moment’s opportunity to put the pieces back together or to allow the degradation of our environment and our civilization to continue beyond recognition!

photos by CM ILLGEN.

Re-Membering - Mother Nature 2019 oils/canvas 68 x 54”

Re-Membering 1999 two overlapping scrolls - mixed media on vellum 84 x 96”

Surrogate Mother - Our Lady of the Roses Series 2007 oils/canvas 68 x 54”