The Art of the GoodLife

“We support our local community…”

From huge corporations to your locally owned grocery store, this buzz phrase seems to be at the heart of every marketing campaign everywhere these days. And while we’re completely down with just about any organization embracing this value, what does that statement mean exactly?

We can’t speak to what everyone else is doing, but here at the GoodLife this is something we show up for on a daily basis. We’ve had the honor and privilege of being the town living room these last ten years, and we take that to heart. For us, the heart and soul of the GoodLife is the community we love and call home.

“Support” can mean a lot of things. At the GoodLife, that translates to incorporating offerings from our local farms and foragers into our menu items, providing compost to local pig farms, being one of the biggest employers in our area, and featuring local artists.

If you walked through the doors of the GoodLife ten years ago when they first opened, you’d be met with a stunning display of local artistry. This is something we’ve been doing since day one, and it’s one of our favorite ways to embrace one of the most beautiful aspects of our community – the incredible artists that also call this place home.

From the Mendocino Art Center which welcomes artists in residence, to the sanctuary-like energy of this area, there’s just something about this place that inspires captivating, at times breathtaking, artistic expression. We’ve had the honor of featuring several artists in the cafe over the years, and they’ve all been amazing in the unique, deeply meaningful ways in which they express their creative energy.

In this post, we’re featuring five of these beautifully, wonderfully creative local artists. They each bring something extraordinarily unique to the table when it comes to their craft, and it’s our honor to share them with you.

Chris Cisper

We love a beautiful story… don’t you? Chris’ long-time relationship with the GoodLife as its very first featured artist, as well as his creative presence in the community with his wife Jacquelyn, is definitely one of those stories.

Once upon a time, back when Teddy first bought and took over the space we now know and love as the GoodLife, she was taking a ceramics class with, you guessed it — Chris Cisper. While doing some shopping at a local grocery store she took notice of some cleverly innovative reusable coffee cup lids and… an idea was born.

Teddy took her idea and ran with it. She sourced the environmentally-supportive lids herself and asked Chris to custom-make her some coffee mugs that would fit them. End of said beautiful story? Not so much.

While the GoodLife started off as the only place you could find those beautiful mugs, these days they’re also featured in other businesses around the area — and we love that. You can find Chris’ work at Prentice Gallery, Sportsman’s Park Gallery, and Princess Sea Foods in the harbor. His work can also be found in Eureka, Weaverville, and Crescent City.

Both artists, Chris and his wife Jacquelyn are a synergy of amazing creative energy. They grow their own food and you can find offerings from their bountiful garden as well as plant starts and their artwork on their honor stand porch in Fort Bragg.

Chris uses lots of different colors and styles “that are different, but they all fit together.” He draws from a palette of about 50 different glazes, and typically uses three per mug. He and Jacquelyn also have a process in which she paints on the mugs and uses a relief technique to highlight her beautiful, complementary addition to Chris’ creation.

Jacquelyn’s work featured at the Mendocino Coast Environmental Center.

And Jacquelyn… A seamstress, accomplished painter, poetess, mother, and so much more… You can find her paintings featured locally, and books of her poetry at the Gallery Bookshop in Mendocino. You can also hear readings of her works on local radio.

Formerly a professional musician in the Bay Area, music is still Chris’ first love. But, he also thrives on keeping a diversity of creative activities in his life, whether it’s music, growing and cooking great food, or writing songs and poetry. It’s what “keeps his mind fresh.”

According to Chris, “Anything you do, and you want to do well, is an art regardless of what it is… I try and get in touch with what it is to be a human and live a free life.”

We love featuring Chris’ work in the cafe, and it’s not just about the unique style and creativity he brings into his craft — it’s also about his approach to life and weaving a piece of his and Jacquelyn’s narrative into the fabric of the GoodLife. We have more to share about these two, stay tuned for a future post in which we’ll feature Chris and Jacquelyn in more detail.

In the meantime, you can visit the Cispers at their honor stand in Fort Bragg, and see more of Chris’ art on his Facebook page, Mendocino Mud Man.

Annie Lee

Annie Lee isn’t the artist who created the stunningly vibrant art you see in the images above, but she has been instrumental in bringing it to our area. We think what she’s doing is absolutely incredible, and we love that the GoodLife can be part of it.

So what is Annie up to? The pieces you see in the images above are the creations of a family of artists living in San Juan La Laguna — a small town nestled on the shores of Lake Atitlan in Guatemala. This town, along with its neighbors Santiago and San Pedro, is known for the Tz’utujil arte naif style.

This style first emerged in 1929 and blossomed in the 1960s. It represents the rich history of an ancient people and a broad, beautiful perspective of their culture. It also served as a medium for recording the terrible suffering during the genocidal years of this region.

The paintings you see here are the creations of Tz’utujil Mayan artists Antonio Vasquez Yojcom, Juana Mendoza Cholotio, their son Francisco and daughters Jennifer, Lillian, and Paola. Annie has taken on the no-profit endeavor of bringing their art to the area, and proceeds from sales directly benefit the artists. “Anything I can do to help that family, I’m up for,” says Annie.

Annie first met Antonio and his family during a visit to her husband’s native country of Guatemala. While being taken to see “the best artists” in the area by a local young man with her sister-in-law, Annie befriended Antonio and was captivated by his work. She “bought a few little things" as well as a larger painting that she had shipped to her, and according to Annie — “that began the whole thing.”

That “thing” now encompasses Antonio sending Annie photos of his work, she chooses pieces she feels will resonate with local buyers, and he ships them as canvases. Annie then takes them to Frame Mill Artworks in Fort Bragg where they’re mounted on lauan mahogany.

Annie’s thought behind the choice to mount the paintings versus frame them is to give the buyer freedom to choose their own frame to suit their style and decor — or to hang them simply and beautifully as is. The stunning diversity and visually captivating nature of these paintings stand on their own, and we think Annie has made an excellent choice in showcasing them this way.

What Annie is doing to bring this culturally rich, vibrant art to our area and support this family is nothing short of amazing. It’s another beautiful story that we’re so grateful to be a part of, and one that we’ll be sharing more of here in the near future.

Lizzie Helbig

All of the artists we’re featuring here hold a special place in the GoodLife’s heart, but this one is extra near and dear to us. Why? Because chances are great that when you walk through the door of the cafe you’ll be greeted by the warm, kind smile of this particular artist. Lizzie has been with the GoodLife almost since the beginning, and she’s a huge part of what makes the cafe the special, well-running place it is as its manager.

Lizzie arrived on the shores of Mendocino in 2013 as an artist in residence at the Mendocino Art Center, and after a year of residency... Well, she just never left. She started working at the GoodLife at that time (you know, so she wouldn’t literally be a starving artist) and set about the joyful task of immersing herself in a community of artists.

While she was primarily making sculpture when she first arrived in the area, the art you see today is what Lizzie calls “functional art” — things you can use in your everyday life. Her philosophy is to honor our everyday routines by using things that are special…

“If you travel and buy a mug that reminds you of that place, when you use it you get to revisit those memories.” Lizzie’s aim with her art is to honor those everyday moments by“putting intention into what we’re using while we go through the motions.” Creating ritual around the everyday, the routine, in essence.

According to Lizzie, it’s good to “not be too precious with things, but rather give ourselves nice things to use in these everyday moments and trust ourselves to use them.” We love Lizzie’s concept of creating joy and warmth and celebrating the now by using thoughtful, unique pieces that elevate what could otherwise be considered mundane daily routines.

Lizzie hand-builds all of her pieces and doesn’t use a wheel in her work. She uses a pinch and coil process which is a combination of pinch pot and coil-built techniques and employs lots of surface design and visual texture in her art. When you hold one of Lizzie’s gorgeous pieces, you can feel the pinches where she’s pulled up the walls creating a dappling effect on the surface — the mark of the maker.

As you can see in the images above, Lizzie is “super into patterns” and incorporates maximalism in her work. She mixes patterns — not necessarily on the same piece — and they all work together and are made in the same color family. There’s an intentional “mix and match” style in Lizzie’s art, and we love the way she creates such a diversity of composition by using the same glazes with different designs and patterns.

Aside from at the GoodLife, you can find Lizzie’s art at the Northcoast Artist’s Gallery in Fort Bragg. You can also see more of her beautiful work on her website and in her Etsy shop and can find her on Instagram.

Mark Bagguley

Have you ever noticed the uniquely crafted signs inside the GoodLife? And, if you’ve ever been hanging around outside the cafe you may have remarked to yourself, “Look at these gorgeous koi fish swimming around the… sidewalk?” Those are the creative genius of another local artist we love, Mark Bagguley.

Mark first forayed into the world of pastels and sign boards while working at Trader Joe’s. This was an opportunity for “lots of creative freedom” and led him to other opportunities to share his craft, like the large koi pond he created with pastel chalks in the San Rafael Italian street painting festival.

We’re excited about Mark’s journey as an artist, and we love that the GoodLife can be a part of it. Already an incredible talent with pastels and sign boards, according to Mark this is more the “commercial side of things.” As you can see in the images above, he’s stretching his wings into a whole new area of creative expression — painting.

But let’s back up a sec… Mark’s father, a professional artist himself, discouraged him from pursuing a career in art. You know, that whole protective parent/ starving artist thing. But, according to Mark, “The older I get the more I feel like it’s calling me in.”

We’re so glad Mark’s heeding that call. He’s been diving in with painting classes at Mendocino College and is creating some breathtaking pieces showcasing our beautiful local coastline.

A lifelong surfer, Mark has a deep love and respect for the ocean and its scenery — “…the people in these places I appreciate, the surf, and the lineups of beautiful waves.” Rather than relying solely on images in his mind, or a photo on his phone to create his pieces, Mark is exploring the technique of plein air. This refers to getting out of the studio and painting out in the landscape, and for Mark, it’s a way to “capture it live in front of me — it’s more inspiring.”

Drawing his inspiration directly from the environment, this is also an opportunity for Mark to work within the medium of oil paints, creating beautiful blends and textures that bring the contours of the landscape to life. Mark also has some other, more labor-intensive gigs in his life, like kayak tours and repair work, but these days he’s “working on transitioning into artwork because that’s what I really love and think about all the time. My time is coming so I’m trying to nurture that…”

“I love that kind of work that you just get lost in it and you want to do it, you don’t have to do it. If I really get into it and do my thing just because I love it I feel like other people can see and appreciate that, they’re drawn to it also.”

We couldn’t agree more, and we’re really looking forward to what the coming months and years have in store for Mark as an artist. Aside from at the GoodLife, you can find some of his sign work in Harvest Market in Fort Bragg. Keep an eye out around town for Mark’s paintings, though — he’s evolving and stepping into his passion as an artist, and here at the GoodLife, we love that.

Dorae Hankin

It’s really incredible to witness the plethora of ways artists bring forth their creativity and share it with the world. By the time we get to see it, so much intention, wonderfully expressive energy, and loving craftsmanship has resulted in the beautiful art pieces we get to enjoy. And, when you experience Dorae Hankin’s art, you can’t help but walk away with a tangible sense of that dynamic at play.

Dorae was also an artist in residence at the Mendocino Art Center from 2017-2019, and we were very fortunate to get to work side-by-side with her at the GoodLife for about a year during that time. She’s a wonderful human being and artist, and as you can see in the images above creates functional pottery for the table, kitchen, and home as well as sculpture and installation pieces.

Walnut spatulas made by Bruce Hart brucehartwoodworks.com

What can be tangibly seen in Dorae’s art is her connection with her chosen medium — clay. In her words, “Working with clay is a continual process of listening and responding to the material in my hands, an exercise in patience and persuasion. I am drawn to clay for its malleability and memory, for the way it records the movement of my fingers. I love the evidence of that process made permanent through firing, and the honesty and intimacy of a handmade mark.”

Dorae also seeks to “create a partnership between utility and decoration” with her pieces, bringing greater significance to our daily experiences like eating and sharing meals. Her work elevates what could otherwise be considered utilitarian pieces to something more, adding meaning to daily experiences and beauty to their surroundings.

As can be seen in her installation art, Dorae is also intrigued by the ways in which nature’s forms can be expressed in patterns and rhythms, “contrasting the details of each piece with the overall effect of the whole.” We love the diversity and beauty of Dorae’s creations, and we’re so grateful to have been a part of her artist’s journey.

You can see more of her gorgeous work on her website and on Instagram.

One of the many beautiful things about our beloved Mendocino coastline is the creative vision and energy it inspires. For us here at the GoodLife, that’s expressed through the intention and effort that goes into our in-house crafted menu items and the thoughtfully curated ingredients we use — that’s our medium.

And, we also express that inspiration by celebrating the creativity and expression of others. It’s not solely about supporting our community by showcasing local artists — it’s also about a cumulative experience. We’ve created this community hub of sorts, and it’s our honor and privilege to use that platform to lift others up and provide an immersive experience in the rich artistic culture of our area.

Whether it’s lovingly crafted food, art, music, offerings from local farms, or just the beautiful hum of energy inside and outside the cafe, we’re so grateful to bring these elements together for you, our friends and community. Here’s to celebrating the collective creative expression of our unique, incredible area… We’ll see you at the GoodLife, my friend.