Making clay while the sun shines—in Sun City, of course

By Ed Goldman

It’s evident that Maggie Rose McGurk—who’s recently turned her multi-talented artistry to designing a series of one-of-a-kind Valentine heart-shaped jewelry—never received that memo as a young woman advising her to not spread herself too thin.

With her low, calm voice and expressive face, McGurk, a longtime friend, could easily have had a career in TV or radio. Instead, she used her unerring eye and technical savvy to become one of the region’s most ubiquitous photographers—in fact, the official photographer for the Sacramento Kings in the mid-1980s, for the “people” sections of Sacramento and Comstock’s magazines (for the latter, she even had a column called “RSVP”) and as former Governor Gray Davis’s personal photographer. (Californians will recall Davis. In fact, they did.)

For four decades, McGurk, who’s always worked out of her home, also donated some of her art pieces to the KVIE (PBS-TV) Art Auction. During its most recent fundraiser, her painting, “Tranquility at the Sacramento Yacht Club,” a sunset vista, sold for well over its appraised value—a fairly common occurrence for her work.  

But several years ago, she says that a now-former friend she’d trained to take event pictures became her competitor, showing up at the same public functions McGurk had come to capture, crowding her out of the limited field (despite the plethora of politicos and glam news anchors, the Sacramento region isn’t a destination spot for paparazzi). 

After a while, “I just decided to move on and concentrate on all of the other things I loved,” she tells me in an interview last Friday. Those include what she calls “upcycling” CDs into jewelry pendants and earrings, and combining her painting and photographic skills into unique multi-media pictures. She also took up a freelance residency with the family-friendly Lincoln News Messenger, for which she produces a visual column called “Fun Through the Eye of Maggie McGurk”—”and I do have fun!” she exclaims.

McGurk, who seems to take equal amounts of pride and joy in her work, studied art and photography at Sacramento City College. She is also a nursing school graduate. “I loved being a nurse,” she says, but before long she says she “went for my passion” and continued studying art and photography at what’s now called Sacramento State University. “It was so much fun!” she says (this may be her most familiar mantra). After graduating she worked for Sacramento Sports Magazine and made a literal splash taking an iconic picture of a participating craft at a Sacramento Yacht Club regatta nearly engulfing her in its wake. (Need we ask if this, too, was so much fun?)

McGurk lives in the Sun City community of Lincoln, about 24 miles from California’s capital. For a century-and-a-third, clay production has been the top industry of this semi-rural town. 

If you’re in the mood for a country drive, you can buy McGurk’s polymer-clay Valentine’s hearts in person at the Art League of Lincoln’s gift shop: 580 Sixth Street, Lincoln, open Thursdays through Sundays from 11 a.m. to 3 pm. The phone number is 916.209.3499 and the email is artleaguelincoln@gmail.com.