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Interview: Carolyn Harris August 3, 2005
1. How long have you been a resident in Siskiyou County?
I have been here about sixty years.
What brought you here?
My father worked on the McCloud River Railroad. I have traveled to almost all of the places I want to go, but I always end up coming back here.
2. Can you give a short explanation of your specialty or your artistic medium?
I like humor and I like fiction. I would like to say I am a raw fiction writer but it doesn't pay very well. I think I draw my characters from the people I used to know in the logging camp. My characters are not always the rich and famous.
3. How long have you been making art (professionally and unprofessionally)?
I started writing in college. Only because I had to in order to get through college, not because I wanted to. I had two young kids and I was trying to finish up my education. I was writing when I had to write and I had something published by a professor at that time. Then, I didn't do much for quite a long time. The first thing I published after that was an article for Mother Earth News on how to remodel a school bus.
4. Is art your full time career?
No.
5. What else do you do as a profession?
I worked for the weed school district for a long time. Then I found out my husband had cancer. Every chance that we got we traveled. Your perspective changes after you find out you might not live much longer.
6. How have you learned your art? Have you had any formal art education?
No. It was just something that always came easy. I think I got most of my help from Squaw Valley Community of Writers. I learned how to find the best point of view and how to critique and edit.
7. Have you had any special mentors that have influenced you and your style?
Not that influenced my style, but I met James Houston, who wrote Snow Mountain Passage, my first year at Squaw Valley and he encouraged me because he understood what I was trying to say.
8. Can you talk a little about your experience as an artist in Siskiyou County? (In other words, what is unique about being an artist in this area?) (Pros and Cons) (economic, cultural, physical/geographic)
It is a very good place to write but it is not a very good place to market. That is why I have a place in Tucson for five months of the year.
9. Do you feel like living in Siskiyou County has influenced your art? What aspects have you drawn inspiration from?
In my fiction I write about the people who lived around the logging camps in the 1950's-loggers and alcoholics and unhappy women. It was differnt in the logging world at that time-a very socially segregated, ethnically segregated man's world. I tend to write more about women because I have more interest in women's issues. Most of my men characters are kind of befuddled.
10. If you had to describe your style in a few words how would you do this? First 5 words that come to mind?…
Raw and aggressive with off-beat characters in my fiction. I try to mellow this with humor.
11. What is it about making art and the creative process that you find most interesting or are most passionate about?
Fiction. It gets in your head and you live with unusual people.
12. How is this apparent in your work if at all?
I write about ordinary people-usually struggling to survive. A touch of strangeness helps. Nobody wants to read about someone boring.
13. Do you have one particularly interesting story about your adventures as an artist? The most unusual work you've done, the hardest work, the most interesting commission, celebrities you’ve worked with, your biggest success story or biggest failure, or your earliest memory of making art.
My biggest failure. When I was in college, I published something about the Southern Pacific Railroad. My husband at the time worked on the railroad. The union asked me to do some work for them. I wrote a story about how they treated the railroad employees. They were cutting off half the rail crews. At the same time I got a group of my friends together and we went down to the rail station in Dunsmuir when the president of the Southern Pacific came through. He thought we came to welcome him, but we were picketing with our children. The little kids carried signs that said, "Save Our Daddy's Jobs." He we so paranoid that he always traveled with a priest so he could have his last rites in case he was killed. Hes saw us and thought we were going to assassinate him. The train took off to get way from us. This kind of backfired. This and my article about the railroad got my husband fired and everybody below him on the senority list. I found out three years later I'd been investigated and followed.
14. Is there any way you would like to see your county arts organization better assist you?
I think I would like to see some help with marketing and I would like to see the writers getting together. This would help see who is here and what can be done.