Make Art: Jane MacAdoo, Artist at Home
Jane MacAdoo spoke with board member, Terrie Sternberg, about the influential role creating music and visual arts has played throughout her life. She has found our current time quarantining and social distancing to be an especially creative one.
I am a native of Pulaski, Virginia, who grew up innately liking to create things—art and music—and living among adults who truly valued the visual and performance arts. These internal and external elements in my childhood created a rich environment for me to make art and music. I cannot remember a time when I did not enjoy drawing, begging friends and relatives for an artist’s set so that I could set out on my imaginative adventures. Not only did I thrive on putting pencil, paintbrush, or pen to paper, but I also liked to build things. As a child, I imagined stories that came out in comic books, doodles, and cartoons—often created in collaboration with my elementary school friends. I would keep my watercolors handy so that I could easily dabble in watercolors with my art-loving adults and friends who were always around me. My parents enjoyed the arts and I will always remember our trips to the National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C.
There were the art shows in first grade, basic art classes with my teacher, Mrs. Bowen, who helped me learn perspective, color, etc., and even a few classes with Mrs. Love, a longtime art teacher, gallery owner, and founding FAC board member who served as a mentor to many in the local community and for whom the FAC’s gallery is named. My fourth-grade teacher, Mrs. McNew, really allowed us to explore the world of creativity and artistic expression. So I grew up designing bridge tally book covers for my mother’s bridge club, and would embellish gift wrapping with 3-D designs, much to the delight of the gift recipients. As I got a little older, I experimented with creating designs for crewel embroidery and loved to play with the variety of stitches, colors, textures, and shapes.
Over the years I have not received formal art training, per se, but am what I would call self-taught. Much of my art, such as painting with acrylics, alcohol-based inks, water color, and other media is a result of much experimentation, reading, and watching artists. I am naturally a curious person, so art is enjoyable for me because it is appealing, challenging, rewarding, and a place where I can actually “get lost” and the worries of the world disappear—at least for a while. Because of my love for making art, the words “bored” or “boredom” are not in my vocabulary! This could be true for everyone—all one needs is a sketch pad and pencil, paper, glue, scissors, or other art supplies, imagination, and time. This season of staying indoors for public health safety has been an especially fruitful time for me to create art.
In these examples of my art—paintings, luminary, and jewelry—I have used alcohol-based inks, liquid polymer clay and oil pigments, polymer clay, acrylic and watercolor paints.
I love art because it utilizes many disciplines in which I have worked in my varied careers as a lab and production technician in manufacturing, registered nurse, organist, pianist, and computer-aided design drafter. I also love gardening and cooking which are art forms as well. I believe that science, music, and the visual and culinary arts go hand in hand. They are all my teammates in making for a most enjoyable life—along with my husband, Kenny Cline, of course!
Editor’s Note: Jane MacAdoo Cline is a retired registered nurse and is the Director of Music at Trinity Lutheran Church in Pulaski; this blog is from a recent interview with Jane whose art and music I dearly treasure. - Terrie Sternberg, Pastor of Trinity.