4TH OF JULY EVENTS

7:30 to 10 a.m.

Pre-Parade Entertainment. Orange Avenue.

10 a.m.

73rd annual Independence Day Parade. Orange Avenue.

12:30 to 2 p.m.

Adrian Empire demonstration and San Diego Star Wars Society Photo-Op. Star Park.

2 p.m.

Navy Leap Frogs Aerial Demonstration. Coronado Golf Course, 17th Fairway.

4 to 5 p.m.

Patriotic concert, Coronado Concert Band. Spreckels Park Public Kids Concert, Katleen Dugas performs Disney Songs. Coronado Golf Course, 16th Fairway.

5 to 8:30 p.m.

Public concert, Liquid Blue Coronado Golf Course, 16th Fairway.

9 p.m.

Fireworks. Coronado Golf Course, Stingray Point. Soundtrack on KYXY Radio 96.5FM

Setting a scene

Quilter Kathleen McCabe captures moments of life with pieces of fabric

By MARTINA SCHIMITSCHEK

As a quilter, Kathleen McCabe carefully sews and layers fabric pieces together. But her creations are not your grandmother’s quilt. Although McCabe’s craft is based in the centuries-old quilting tradition, her art is best described as painting with fabric. With a mosaic of pieces, McCabe creates landscapes, portraits, florals and succulents that are not draped over a bed but hung on the wall.

The fabric artist has exhibited nationally and internationally including in China, France, England, Australia and Brazil. McCabe, who is a Coronado native, has an art degree in applied design from San Diego State University. She was on the board of the Visions Museum

« "Mothers and Daughters" catches a moment at a family gathering. Kathleen McCabe (above right) made the quilt in 2020.

PHOTOS COURTESY OF KATHLEEN MCCABE

COURTESY OF KATHLEEN MCCABE McCabe made "Jubilation" in 2014 for the Studio Art Quilt Associates Celebrating Silver exhibition. The quilt is 57 by 44 inches.

PHIL IMMING McCabe works in her home studio. She usually finishes three or four quilts a year.

of Textile Art when the organization first secured the space in Liberty Station in San Diego.

When she’s not quilting, McCabe enjoys gardening and spending time with her husband, Phil Imming, also a Coronado native and cofounder of the Coronado Concert Band. McCabe is also writing her memoir. She took time out of her busy schedule to talk about her fabric art.

Q. How did you get started with quilting?

A. I’ve always sewn, ever since I was little. I made clothes, and when I was in high school, we embroidered our jeans. Then when my children were little, I started making pictures with fabric. I taught myself. I got books from the library, and I tried things.

The first portrait I remember making was in 1981. It was a portrait of my family. It was almost like little paper dolls standing together. I come from a big family. I’m one of nine children, and so it was a lot of us in that portrait.

Q. How would you describe your art?

A. It’s quite clearly quilting because it’s three layers attached by thread. Some people might call it mosaic. I call it raw edge applique. I do it like a mosaic or a jigsaw puzzle. I’ve always done art quilts. In my opinion, traditional quilting is a completely different skill set with geometric designs and matching points and corners.

COURTESY OF KATHLEEN MCCABE

"The Journey," part of the "Girl in Hat" series and finished in 2016, has been exhibited at the Visions Museum of Textile Art in Liberty Station in San Diego.

There are a lot of rules, and I’m not a rule follower.

Q. What’s your process?

A. I always use my own photographs. When I find one I like, I put it into Photoshop and I mess around with it. When I get something I love, I turn it into a grayscale, and I print it life-size and use that as a template. I use almost exclusively commercial fabrics — mostly cotton. I don’t dye my own fabric.

I have what is called a mid-arm sewing machine, where the sewing machine is stable, and I move the quilt around underneath it. It’s called free-motion quilting.

Q. What are you working on now?

A. I’m working on a succulent right now. It’s a diptych. It’s a succulent in my front yard that I really like. I started doing succulents about 2012, and I’ve done quite a few of them. I just really love how the light and shadow play on the leaves. Sometimes they become abstracted.

I am also doing a series of quilts based on my trips to Guatemala that use mostly hand-dyed fabrics. I was there in February

this year. It was my third trip. Two of the quilts use exclusively Guatemalan fabric. Others are scenes from Guatemala. I have about eight now. Every so often I make some more. I’ve made about four this year. I have a couple more on my list.

Q. Do you feel fabric art is underrepresented in the art world?

A. It is very underrepresented in the fine art world. There’s a website called saqa.com (Studio Art Quilt Associates). It shows some of the best art quilters in the world. That stuff will just blow your socks off. There’s an effort to have more exposure for fiber art and we’re making a lot of headway.

Most of the shows that SAQA arranges are not at quilt shows; they’re in museums and art centers. And there are several quilt museums in the United States. One is Visions. They do some great stuff.

Q. What’s the best advice you have received regarding your art?

A. Just to keep at it and keep doing what I love.

Q. What do you love about Coronado?

A. I love the small-town feel and the weather. You can’t beat the weather. ■

Creating a buzz

ASHLEY SALAS

Shelters give solitary native bees, essential for pollination, a home

By MARTINA SCHIMITSCHEK

Candace Vanderhoff wants to help save the planet one bee at a time.

The licensed architect designs, builds and sells shelters for solitary native bees. The wood structures, which should be placed in a sunny spot in a garden, provide a clean, safe place for female bees to lay eggs.

While honeybees, with their buzzing hives, usually get all the attention, solitary bees make up 90 percent of the world’s bee population. They are essential for pollinating plants. Solitary bees, which are native to their region, are about 60 percent more effective at pollinating than honeybees, which came from Europe with the first settlers. In the United States, native bees pollinate about 75 percent of all fruits, nuts and vegetables.

“Native bees are gentle. They don’t have a hive to protect,” Vanderhoff said. “Males don’t even have a stinger.”

The United States has about 4,000 species of native bees. In San Diego County alone, there are

« A female solitary bee pokes her head out of a bee shelter tunnel as she builds her nest.

» A SoloBee tower can be home to more than one bee. Solitary, native bees often build nests in close proximity to each other.

COURTESY OF CANDACE VANDERHOFF

COURTESY OF CANDACE VANDERHOFF

Candace Vanderhoff does all the woodwork at SoloBee's Lemon Grove workshop.

700 recorded species of natives, and more are still being discovered. Globally, there are approximately 20,000 different species of solitary bees.

Vanderhoff said she knew nothing about solitary bees until someone gave her a bee house in 2013. She set it in her yard in her South Park home and bees soon moved in.

After learning more about these native varieties and the threats of habitat loss and pesticides, Vanderhoff founded SoloBee in 2015. In conjunction with the shelters, Vanderhoff wrote “Zoe the

“Native bees are gentle. They don’t have a hive to protect.”

CANDACE VANDERHOFF

SoloBee” to teach children about solitary bees. (The book, along with the shelters, are available at solobee.com.)

Kelly Purvis, senior management analyst for the city of Coronado, bought a bee shelter at this year’s Coronado Flower Show, where Vanderhoff had a booth.

“We have lots of flowers in our backyard, and bees are, of course, important to the flowers,” Purvis said. “I also liked the idea of the children’s book and bee house as an ‘event’ I could share with my grandson. He checks it every time he comes to visit.”

SoloBee, which has sold about 3,000 bee houses to date, combines Vanderhoff’s love of building things with her passion for helping the planet. She also holds workshops where participants can build their own shelter.

COURTESY OF CANDACE VANDERHOFF Candace Vanderhoff has made approximately 3,000 shelters for solitary bees since founding her company in 2015.

Her decision to start the business is part of her life’s journey following her heart.

After traveling and years working in various building-related jobs in her home state of Michigan, Vanderhoff, who had long dreamed of becoming an architect, packed her belongings and headed to Los Angeles to attend the Southern California Institute of Architecture in 1995 at the age of 35.

She found the school environment tough as an older female student and decided to take a break after two years. A professor told her of a position to teach architecture at a Jesuit boy’s trade school in Micronesia. She took the job. Her curriculum was to teach the students how to build a block house with a tin roof.

“I soon realized that these concrete blocks would be destroying the local culture,” she said, because her students were from small islands where families lived in indigenous houses made with coconut posts and thatched roofs. The concrete block houses would disrupt the social hierarchy.

She spent two years in Micronesia living on different islands, teaching and also studying indigenous architecture through fellowships. Visiting the atoll of Kapingamarangi, which is only a few feet above sea level, Vanderhoff realized this tiny piece of paradise — inhabited for

more than 1,000 years — could soon be underwater.

“These are the people who are going to be underwater because of our extravagant consumer culture,” she said. “I came back from Micronesia and decided I was only going to do things good for the planet.”

She completed her degree in architecture, moved to San Diego, worked in the green building industry and founded RainThanks & Greywater, which she still operates. The company specializes in grey-water systems and rain-catchment products.

SoloBees required a new skill set for Vanderhoff.

“I learned that woodwork is all about jigs. I kept refining the process,” she said.

Vanderhoff’s goal was to make bee houses that are practical for the bees and beautiful in the garden. Some use mahogany and come with solar lights and copper tops. The shelters, which range from $69 to $299, all have multiple tunnels where bees can nest.

The tunnels, which are at least 5 inches deep, mimic a wood cavity in nature. The female bee, which lives six to eight weeks, spends her life collecting pollen and laying eggs. Each egg is laid on a nest of pollen and walled off with clay. One bee can lay up to 35 eggs and fill three tunnels, Vanderhoff said.

The shelters are made in a workshop in Lemon Grove. It’s the same space where Taylor Guitars made its instruments when the company first started out. That connection and a mutual respect for each other’s businesses led to a partnership

COURTESY OF CANDACE VANDERHOFF Upcoming models will have plastic glass sides through which people can observe the nest-building process and incubation period.

What:Build a Native Bee Shelter workshop Where: Emerald C Gallery, 1331 Orange Ave. When:10 a.m., Aug. 13 Cost: $75, including presentation and material Information: solobee.com or (619) 807-9193

A leafcutter bee, which is a type of solitary bee, carries pollen on the underside of its belly, creating a bright gold behind that's easily recognizable.

where Vanderhoff uses Taylor’s discarded wood pieces.

SoloBees now operates with 95 percent recycled material, which includes packaging for shipping. Vanderhoff gets 50 percent of the wood for the shelters from Taylor Guitars, the rest she sources from the community, keeping an eye out for properties where fences and decks are being replaced.

Shelters are reusable year after year but need to be cleaned once the outer clay wall has been broken and all the young bees are gone. “Wait a week or two and drill it out to clean,” Vanderhoff said. “If you don’t maintain the shelter, you create a parasite trap. Maintenance is critical.”

The shelters have recently undergone a redesign. Instead of tunnels, the new models have grooves with plexiglass sides so the nesting and incubation process can be observed. In the smaller shelters, the core can be pulled out of the shell to see the nests; the larger models have doors. (The new models are available on Kickstarter at the SeeBee Shelter campaign as of June 25. The link is available on the SoloBee website.)

“The best thing you can do for the planet is build a native garden,” Vanderhoff said. “Here I have a chance to make something beautiful and help the planet.” ■