August 8, 2029 — Today we’ll hear from Mac Magruder, who still lives on the ranch his great-grandfather bought in 1919. Mac went off to college and returned to the family ranch to find the old neighborhood full of back to the landers. He married one of them, my co-host Kate, but he’s still ambivalent about the environmental impacts of the movement.
At the same time, he didn’t plan to be a rancher. His career as a sculptor was starting to take shape. But here’s the thing about Mac’s artwork: it’s full of surprises, a sense of gracefully leaping off into impossible directions. It looks like someone who knows about embracing contradictions has put a lot of thought and careful work into it.
We sat down a little over a year ago at the Grace Hudson Museum, just as a back to the land theme party was getting underway.