Remembering Sonya Magill, from Karen of Little Red Wagon blog

Monday, August 8, 2011

Sonja Ann Magill~

Studio Menagerie "Unicorn" Ceramic Wall Hanging

Little Red Wagon wrote:



I found this recently at an estate that was being prepared for sale by a friend that is a general contractor. I rummaged through the house to find anything that was collectible or most unusual to rescue from the fate of "Let's not talk about it."

The artist of this amazing ceramic sculpture is the late Sonja Ann Magill of Studio Menagerie'[d. July 23, 2009], Santa Cruz, California. It has an incised mark that reads: copyright symbol 1980, STUDIO MENAGERIE'. I found another posting online of a similar piece by a lady who purchased it at Macy's during a 'Clearance Sale'.

Her life was short and will be missed by collectors of her work and anyone that collects mythological creatures, such as unicorns. I hope by posting this here on my blog that it will root out others that can add a story or two to her legacy as an artist, because there was not much information about her life that I could find online.

Thanks for stopping by and happy treasure hunting!

Posted by Karen Scott at 6:35 PM

Hi Karen, and Little Red Wagon,

Linda's Hearth note: I'm finally replying to your note to my blog regarding Sonya's work. I really LOVE this Unicorn, so glad to read of your 'rescue'. Well, I dig all her work, but this especially has a story in my life. One of Sonya's neighbors along the Pacific Coast was Chris Matthews. Chris was a local politician and successful playwright, who also created an "Irish" bar/pub called The Poet and The Patriot which proved successful. When I first met him, he was involved with cooperatively building housing in Santa Cruz County, a place with ridiculously overpriced homes, rationally and comparatively speaking. Mythic and generous personality. Sonya and I went to Chris' memorial service together not so long before she passed on ~ with a few thousands of others.

Anyway, so Sonya Magill/Studio Menagerie gifted Matthews with one of her unicorns when his pub opened. I've never been much of a drinker, "oversensitive", yet THIS pub became my "neighborhood" bar in downtown Santa Cruz because it was poet-friendly and politically enticing. Christened my youngest child there. Chris hung the lovely porcelain (sp?)Unicorn front and center above his wrap-around, redwood bar.

Well, it was a bar, right? More than once, the unicorn got hurt in the late nite action there. Sonya diligently created a new Unicorn for the Poet and Patriot at least twice, maybe oftener. the last time I looked in there, tho' both artists have passed on within a year of each other, there was still a Unicorn above the bar, centered over the long mirror, complimenting many signs of Eire and solidarity.

I am SO glad you saved this piece! I like your website. thank you for the note, I hope people see it a lot.

Sonya Ann Magill -- Artist, Mentor, Businesswoman, Friend

A great artist and personal friend, Sonya Magill, died in her home due to lung cancer on July 23, 2009. She had a very short while of knowing about the cancer.

She was still working in her ceramics studio, and getting settled into her country place on Last Chance Road, Santa Cruz County, California, when she learned the cause of her constant coughing and throat irritation would soon be lethal.

Her ceramics studio had begun, she told me, right here on Last Chance Road over thirty years earlier. She said of her new place, “It feels like coming home.” She had lived many creative, artistic lives between her birth in Texas over five and a half decade ago, and The Studio where so many different ceramic delights were conceived and created and marketed.

I met Sonya over thirty years ago, when suddenly her early line: a honey-bear honey jar and her famous piggie with personality blossomed into a whole Studio Menagerie line of critters. In practically no time and much work, these ceramic sculptures were being sold in both cutie retail shops and marketing giants like Macy’s and Bloomingdale's. It seemed like everyone loved her work. For me, they were charming and elegant and yet accessible.

She engaged me to help her establish accounting systems to handle the growing workload, and then to file her first Federal Income Taxes as a sole proprietor business – this, after years of smaller scale distribution as individual. (Yes folks, long ago I “did numbers”.)

I got to peek into Sonya the Creative Dynamo and to watch Studio Menagerie’s growth. Other friends worked with her in production. It was inspiring as a business alone, yet was much more than a business. I will skip those adventures for now, except to share that Sonya was a “Warrior in service to the Queen.” Another time, so many stories! She's my favorite personally known feminist.

One time many years between then and now, Sonya called me in to help draft a short biography for sales work, about her artistic background. It was fun to learn her stories: of Vashon Island and silk screening; of much Beat Era San Francisco glory and mornings-after; of rooming with Janis; of working with developmentally disabled youth; of her glamorous modeling days; of her many roles in Hip consciousness, including the Diggers; and so much more.

Sonya’s ability to stagecraft and to create fashion trends in the ‘60s -'70s is legend. From a look at her scarf and hat collection, I have to believe she never quit those forms of artistic creativity, carrying this gift from stage and street theater troupes and through her personal style.

Sonya was very serious about her work -- both as artist and as a woman who became a success. She spoke of the losses in knowledge as crafts and artisan skills from her generation will be lost in death.

Sonya also left a body of commissioned works, mostly intricate sculpture, and many more popular ceramic pieces than I’ve described above. I heard her describing her three foot tall garden angels to her grand-niece with pride, just a week before she passed on. A friend has one of her “Three Faces of Woman” hanging garden figures. My daughter and I each have one of her round-belly pitchers from the early ‘80’s she made – I love it.

She inspires others more than she

probably could know while alive. But this is merely one old gal’s point of view. I can hardly wait to see who shares the stories about Sonya’s “political” art, as if anything in her universe wasn’t.

Sonya’s nephew, Alec Tsongas, is collecting stories about her, talking memoir. I’m launching this blog “early”, in hopes of helping him find those stories, because we who care about aesthetics may want to keep Sonya’s memories alive. For the brightening of our own lives.

If you know Sonya, or treasure any of her works, I hope you'll want to add to this page about Sonya Ann Magill. I will promptly share with Alec. If you leave contact info I will send it his way, too.

A memorial celebration for Sonya will be held at a future time: friends and family anticipate gathering somewhere near her incredible Studio and the Pacific Ocean she loved. I can post details as they emerge.