This month, the February featured artist at the Wrightwood Community Arts Center & Gallery is talented local artist Carol Mailander. Mailander has lived in Wrightwood since 2011, after moving from the Los Angeles area when she retired from her 45-year career in nursing.
As a young girl growing up in New Jersey, Mailander wanted to be an artist. As a high school student, she excelled in her art classes. Her teachers recognized her immense talent and encouraged her to attend art school after graduation, but her parents forbade it, insisting she pursue a medical career and study nursing instead.
Although she obeyed her parents’ wishes, Mailander never lost her artistic drive and created art throughout her life. In fact, a 60-year-old sketch she drew while sitting in Central Park in New York, looking out to the buildings on Fifth Avenue, will be one of 25 pieces included in her first-ever art gallery show in Wrightwood. Now that she’s retired, she spends much of her time making art when she’s not out on her daily walks around Wrightwood or in her kitchen cooking gluten-free meals.
Like her artistic hero Grandma Moses, the 1940s American painter and impressionist, Mailander also found success as an artist later in life. Grandma Moses didn’t start painting until her late 70s and was renowned for her nostalgic charm, painting picturesque settings of the rural community where she grew up. Similarly, Mailander is deeply inspired by her community and the natural beauty surrounding Wrightwood. Her drawings of the Wrightwood Country Club and Inspiration Point (before the Bridge Fire) will also be on display and available for purchase at the gallery this February.
Mailander is extremely grateful to the Wrightwood Arts Center for believing in her and giving her the opportunity to showcase her work. “I’m really happy about it,” she said. “I was just so surprised when they asked me to have an art opening. I just thought I left that [dream] behind a long time ago.”
The free art exhibit opening for Mailander was held on Saturday, Feb. 1st at the Wrightwood Community Arts Center & Gallery, 6045 Park Drive in Wrightwood but her work will remain on display and available for purchase through Feb. 23. The arts center is open Friday through Sunday from noon to 5 p.m.
