Shape and Bake

Maggie Kildee shocked just about everyone when she abruptly announced her retirement from the Board of Supervisors after 16 years.

She wanted to spend more time with her husband, she said, and, oh yes, something about taking a sculpting class.

Fast forward a year and a half.

The stress and long hours of politics are long gone, replaced by the kind of peace that only art for art’s sake can bring.

Spending several hours a day in a bright, airy studio off the back patio, Kildee, 65, said her decision to shape clay and stone instead of public policy has helped her rediscover a passion she was forced to leave behind nearly two decades ago.

“I’m sculpting,” said Kildee, her Camarillo Estates ranch home now decorated in the relaxed earthen tones of her clay and stone artworks. “And I’m having a ball.”

Her first show--aptly titled “My Life After Politics”--opens this weekend at Camarillo Community Bank and runs through May 22. A reception is set for Sunday afternoon.

Throwing clay pottery on a wheel had been a growing interest of hers in the 1970s while she was still teaching elementary school.

But her election to the Board of Supervisors in 1980 left her without the luxuries of time and personal space. The potting wheel and kiln found a new home: the garage.

Though still active in the effort to create Ventura County’s first four-year public university, today Kildee pays only passing attention to the workings of county government, preferring to spend several hours a day in her small home studio that overlooks a backyard garden of fruit trees, flowers and singing birds.

“I told Maggie right after she retired that there is life after politics, and quite a life as it turned out to be,” said former Supervisor Madge Schaefer, who last year uprooted herself from the unsettled air of Ventura County’s politics for the gentle trade winds of Maui. “Clay has given her a new outlet.”

The idea for several of Kildee’s works was born in mental images inspired by works of acclaimed Mexican artist Francisco Zuniga, whose sculptures she saw on a vacation.

Others, however, keep Kildee tied to the events of the day, creations gleaned from newspaper photographs she clips and stores in the top left drawer of her studio workbench.

Almost all of the clay figures depict strong women from around the world who, despite their obvious pain or poverty, have not been defeated, she explains.

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There is the young teenage girl with the jacket pulled up to shield her face, crying over the death of a boyfriend; the young nun with hopeful eyes praying at the funeral of Mother Theresa; or the elderly North Korean woman gathering cabbage leaves.

The challenge, Kildee said, lies in trying to capture the emotions that drew her to the photographs in the first place--the resigned facial expression of one, the certainty and power she saw in another.

“I’ve tried drawing, and I don’t care if I ever pick up a pencil again,” Kildee said. “But the clay is fascinating to me. It’s being able to shape a form. It has something to do with the touch and feel of it. There’s something about clay that just draws me to it.”

Ventura County Supervisor Kathy Long, who before being elected to Kildee’s former 3rd District seat was her top aide since 1991, said her mentor’s sculpting shows her state of mind.

“Look at her face,” said Long, who has a Kildee vase titled “Fingertips” in her office. “She’s 10 years younger. She’s very relaxed and focused about her art. I think it’s wonderful.”

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Longtime friend and Oxnard attorney Laura McAvoy, who has served on a number of boards and commissions with Kildee over the years, said she had only a vague understanding of Kildee’s love for art before her retirement from politics.

“It was interesting to see as she got closer to her [retirement], she started talking more about her interest in art,” McAvoy said. “She seems to really be enjoying herself.”

It is unusual, Kildee admits, for an artist with so little experience to have a show of her own, noting that it usually takes artists years to get to this point.

But this isn’t just about art, Kildee said. It’s about life after politics for Maggie Kildee.

And it clearly has her happy and relaxed.

“Who couldn’t be?” she said with a giggle, “doing what I’m doing.”

FYI

Fifteen of Kildee’s sculptures will be on display all next week at Camarillo Community Bank, 1150 Paseo Camarillo. Sunday’s reception is from 2 to 4 p.m. The bank is open from 9 a.m. to 4 p.m. Monday through Thursday, and 9 a.m. to 6 p.m. Friday.