Backstage
Meet our new back-page columnist, Wendy MacNaughton.
By Douglas McGray
Photographs by Alanna Hale
Meet our new back-page columnist, Wendy MacNaughton. We love Wendy — we’ve been roping her into our Pop-Up Magazine shows practically since the beginning, and she collaborated on a miniseries for the first three issues of California Sunday. Wendy defies easy professional labels. She’s a bestselling illustrator who also reports, or a journalist who also draws and paints. (If you meet her and ask her what she does, she’ll probably just tell you she’s “a drawer.”) I visited her studio in San Francisco’s Dogpatch neighborhood, in an old wooden building on the bay, and we talked about how she works — and what we’ll be doing together.
It’s amazing that we’re sitting in your studio and hearing seagulls. It’s so idyllic. It’s a totally different San Francisco here. It’s like stepping back in time a little bit.
What prompted you to start drawing and painting in such a journalistic way? It’s not an obvious thing to do. I had no exposure to journalism whatsoever. I kind of stumbled upon it. But my background was in art and social work and advertising —
— you went to art school, got a master’s in social work, and worked at an ad agency before you started doing what you do now. If you made a Venn diagram of those three things, it ends up looking like this illustrated journalism thing.
So how did you begin? I went out and I started sketching people. The first story I did was about chess players on Market Street. I had no idea what I was doing. I just went out with a sketchbook. Eventually I got up the guts to actually ask somebody, “What are you doing?” Even if you’re an outgoing person, it’s hard at first to walk up to strangers and ask them questions.
How do people respond to you? Nine times out of ten, they’re intrigued. Oftentimes they’ll come up to me and ask what I’m doing. Drawing is a really easy way to start a conversation.
Why is that? How often do you see a woman standing on a street corner drawing? Especially, I think, in some of the places where I’m drawing. Like Sixth Street in San Francisco, which, when I spent a month drawing there, had one of the highest crime rates in the city, or Folsom State Prison.
Then other times you’re really funny. Wouldn’t it be exhausting if I only did serious work? It would also be pretty superficial if I only drew dog parks. Although I do think there can be as interesting a story in a dog park as there is on a rough street. And I do think there is humor to be found on a rough street. I like to find the joy in places that are usually only thought of as challenging.
How do you work? I’ll go out and draw during the day and write down everything anybody says to me. I carry a phone with me to take pictures for color reference. Then I’ll paint at night.
What gets your attention? What inspires you? I’m interested in contradictions. I’m interested in disparities. I’m interested in small moments that seem to have a lot of meaning packed into them, moments we can overlook pretty easily.
When we first talked about this column, you asked what we had in mind, and I said, “I want you to be curious.” I can do that!
So what were you curious about this month? In every Chinatown I’ve been in, I’ve noticed these pink plastic bags. They’re just part of the landscape. I wondered why. And only in Chinatowns? Where did they come from? Why are they pink?
Follow the link below to see what Wendy found out. And follow along in the months ahead as she roams across the West asking questions big and small, and answering them in the way only she can.
Originally published at californiasunday.com on June 2, 2016.
