Local Artists’ Work Hangs in White House

It wasn’t exactly Christmas in July for local artists Barbara Evans and George Stuart. Their unexpected present actually arrived in August.

Four months ago, Evans, a Ventura doll maker, and Stuart, best known for his one-quarter scale sculptures of historical figures, were invited by First Lady Hillary Rodham Clinton to provide ornaments to decorate the White House Christmas tree.

“It’s an honor,” said Evans. “It definitely is.”

Stuart, an Ojai-based artist and monologuist known on the local lecture circuit for his acerbic opinions, said he accepted the invitation because he thought creating his ornament “might be fun.”

“When the White House extends an invitation, you oblige,” he said. Since the early 1960s, the first lady has invited American artisans to help decorate the White House Blue Room for the holidays.

This year, Clinton asked hundreds of artists across the country to create Christmas tree ornaments that represent people or scenes from the nation’s history. Thirty-two California artists were selected.

Evans, who created a cloth doll in tribute to the single women who filed homestead claims in the 19th century, said she doesn’t know how she was chosen by Clinton to create the ornament.

“I’m fairly well known, but really only to cloth-doll makers,” she said.

A White House spokeswoman said a Washington, D.C., gallery referred Evans’ and Stuart’s names to White House staff, who then extended the tree-trimming invitations in August.

Evans said she based her design on a photograph of her maternal grandmother who, as a young woman, filed a homestead claim in Oregon in the 1800s.

The ornament, which will remain White House property, features leg o’mutton sleeves, vintage lace and a corset-minimized figure. Evans kept the doll’s face without features, so it could represent all female pioneers.

Stuart’s ornament is a sculpture of racially different heads that expresses “a hoped-for unanimity among humans,” he said. It is made of clay in a light medal frame, and was painted with an airbrush.

Although Evans and Stuart have lived in Ventura County for many years, they do not know each other and move in different circles.

Evans, who has been making cloth dolls for 36 years, writes instructional articles for Craft magazine and teaches doll-making classes at BeadTime, a craft shop in east Ventura.

She said she admires the first lady, but suggested such a public revelation would irk her “staunch Republican friends.”

“I admire her for continuing to be a strong, intelligent person, even though her husband is the president,” Evans said.

Stuart said he respected Clinton as well, but he could not help comparing the current first lady to Eleanor Roosevelt, whom he once met.

“It’s hard not to compare people with such a remarkable person as Mrs. Roosevelt,” said Stuart, who declined to discuss his age or other personal details.

Characterizing himself as politically progressive, Stuart said he was frustrated that the Clintons’ efforts at a national health plan failed.

“Mrs. Clinton and her husband didn’t have the intestinal fortitude to fight the insurance companies and Congress, and so it fell down,” he said.

Accustomed to public attention as a noted artist and public speaker, Stuart downplayed being selected to fashion an ornament for the White House.

“This happens every year to people all over the country,” said Stuart, who often lectures at the Ventura County Museum of History and Art, where a number of his historical figures are part of the museum’s permanent collection.

Still, he said he had fun adding to “the general cacophony of creative exuberance.” The artists who designed ornaments for the first family’s 18-foot Christmas tree were invited to a reception last week to view their handiwork, but neither Evans nor Stuart attended.

Evans said she would have gone, but she had conflicting travel plans. Stuart said he decided to pass.

“It didn’t seem like worth making a lot of noise over,” he said.