Photos: Bret Christensen
Story: Sandie Tillery
Art
L ewiston A rtist M ichele de O nate Hollywood in the 1960s proved a creative hothouse for budding young artist Michele de Onate. Her mother worked in fashion design and her father was an occasional actor. She learned to draw and paint at her mother’s feet in a studio filled with art supplies. Often, mother and daughter would escape the studio for a session of plein air painting on the beach or in the hills around their Los Angeles home. Their neighbors included writers, actors and artists. Oh, the stories she can tell of people and their exploits, some whose recognizable names were simply family friends, their children de Onate’s early companions and classmates. De Onate credits her mother for inspiring a bent to create that evolved during a natural apprenticeship, as de Onate watched and learned and applied what her mother modeled. UCLA and Chouinard Art Institute provided further training after high school
until she simply stepped into what she had begun in her teens as a sign painter, sometime set designer and creator of renaissance costumes. Through the years, she did some gallery shows. Her portfolio includes soft art sculpture, quilted murals, papier mache, fine art paintings and assemblage structures. De Onate’s son and daughter grew up sometimes lacking appreciation for their mother’s quirky creativity. Their family car, an old Valiant, was hand-painted from taillights to headlights with brilliant colors and a design that includes ducks on the hood and trunk. The teenagers ducked every time they saw someone they knew when they drove around town with mom. The vehicle earned the name with the double entendre, “Duckmobile.” Today, the eclectic artist has fashioned a place of reverie in Northern California, where she lives with partner Jack Scribner. continued on page 34
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