"San Francisco Safari" was a solo exhibition of Merikay MacKenna's work and received a favorable review in the San Francisco Chronicle and "Animals Aloud",
a KQED funded radio show. Her working motto is "How to get a Head without Hunting"
and has involved the creation of the most exquisitely detailed fake fur animal head sculptures
for many years. The results are wildly endearing, humorous and inspiring and truly a hip
alternative to those questionable taxidermy treasures.
As a young child the Milwaukee Public Museum was a big
influence on MacKenna. Its dramatic dioramas of natural
and human history made her dream of helping build such
exhibits as her career. She attended the University of
Wisconsin at Milwaukee to pursue a course in Art Education
and one day learnt how to crochet, providing the inspiration for her future artistic career.
The early Seventies were an avant-garde time
and receptive to new forms. MacKenna 's creatures quickly
grew into a small business at art and craft shows. With
the onset of the Eighties, fake fur became more available
and the artist soon began to incorporate it more liberally
into her work.
MacKenna with her family ultimately relocated to California in 1983. The artist has since published
several books and won numerous awards. While she has built a successful trade in fabricating
likenesses of animals, no one head is the same and each carries the unique hand crafted stamp
of the artist. Her creations are a celebration of the visual wonder of the animal world,
and because only man-made furs and synthetic materials are employed, these sculptures are
both a humane and highly skilled artistic offering.
A primary objective of the gallery has been to unite both the crafter and the artist and to demonstrate that in today's art world, the traditional limitations of what constitute fine art no longer apply.
MacKenna's work succeeds in bridging the fine line between what constitutes art and craft in our society today.
For more information please contact us at (415) 420 7296
| 
