Magic Hours and Woven Together | Hillary Goidell and Marla Pedersen

Gallery Exhibit April 13 - June 22

Reception: Sunday, April 19 | 1:00 - 3:00 pm Pacific

Magic Hours honors Bay Area Young Survivors/Mets in the City and their cancer retreats held since 2012 at Commonweal. Hillary Goidell's photography from retreats over the years reverberates with pieces made by participants, along with the precious partnership of BAYS/MITC alumna Marla Pedersen, whose Woven Together is set in a recreated working studio space within Gallery Commonweal.

Magic Hours

To arrive at Commonweal is to be welcomed into a nest shaped by time, place, and people. Participants bring vibrant courage to join an emerging collective body, cradled by the land, springtime or fall, entering a lineage of BAYS/MITC members past and future.

Magic Hours offers a small fraction of photographs, like hints at the deep connections created at retreat. Our weekends are steeped with the unbounded and varied richness of participants’ experiences–finding shapes and rhythms as they dance, sharing a grief ritual and taking walks the land, witnessing each other throughout.

Mirroring how the group is organically held at retreat, my photography centers care. Image-making becomes a collaborative act. Called to the bluff or to the trees, we can sit with impermanence, breathe emotional resonance into images. Both body and camera imprint sensations that surface, for participants to tap into long after retreat ends.

The process is illuminating. Interior landscapes mix with exterior. Wind carrying voices, thrum of reliable waves, piercing sun.

Magic Hours puts retreat photographs into conversation with large-format fabric cyanotype panels, tangible yet fluid manifestations of sunlight and the body at play. The juxtaposition, and the prints themselves, speak to all that veils, masks, and is revealed through our continually evolving process of unknowing.

This exhibit is made possible thanks to kind material support from the Lloyd Symington Foundation, and scarves donated by Susan Flores/Cyanotype Store in honor of her mother and artist, Johannah Sinclair, who died of breast cancer in 1985 at age 35. We also offer our ongoing appreciation to Gudrun Sjoden for the generous contribution of scarves for BAYS/MITC retreats.

All my thanks to Deborah Cohan, Marla Pedersen, Maya Churi, and Leah Koransky for their potent creative collaboration.

Deep gratitude to all the Commonweal guides and co-facilitators who trust that photography has its place on retreat: Arlene Allsman, Riki Bloom, Clover Catskill, Deborah Cohan, Rachel Gardner, Kate Holcombe, Stacy Lawson, Angela Madonia, Katrina Mayo-Smith, Ladybird Morgan, Jen Parr, and Natalie Portis. Retreats are exquisitely nourished by Chef Claire Heart and Sheri Cates, Savannah Rippe and Beth Carusillo. And heartfelt thanks to the Commonweal Cancer Help Program which has laid strong and eloquent foundations for this work.

At the heart of this work, I hold in memory the BAYS/MITC participants who are no longer with us, and offer my immense thanks and admiration to all for their trust.

Hillary Goidell is a photo-based artist whose work centers on the body, individual and collective, and considers the complexities of its form, incarnations, and constant recalibrations.

She collaborates with choreographers to document bodies in movement and narrate the emotional and physical labor of dance-making, extending this observational practice by writing and performing creative audiodescription. On a broader scope, her photography explores human fault lines at the intersection of strength and vulnerability like illness, end of life, and gestures of care.

She has brought image-making into her work across disciplines, from her field research in anthropology to creative production and teaching. In turn, these foundations along with decades living in France solidly inform her thinking and process.

Hillary holds a Bachelor’s Degree in Anthropology/French from Amherst College, Master’s in Anthropology from Université de Paris VII, and pursued PhD research at the Ecole des hautes études en sciences sociales (EHESS). Her work has been shown in exhibitions in California and France/Germany, and published internationally in a variety of museum catalogs and magazines. www.hillarygoidell.com

Woven Together

Woven Together is a series of art works created to illuminate the experience of how I incorporate disease into everyday living and of the paradoxes of holding hope and grief, joy and sorrow, light and dark. Many identities are woven into each of us, and it can be a challenge to make space for all of these, especially when one is so loud, screaming for attention, shouting, “You’ve changed, remember?!” Four years into a Stage IV Breast Cancer diagnosis, I want to exhibit the veil that can hide us, what we see in ourselves, and what others see in us. The view in the mirror can be very different from that of the onlooker.

The term woven, not only is important as the relationship to myself, the artist, but also to the systems that support me, as I have found great connections through Cancer organizations such as BAYS, MITC, UCSF Art for Recovery, as well as through my local community, family, and friends. It feels as if there is a continuous thread that holds us together as we each navigate the hardships and triumphs of living and dying. Healing has come through art making, through weaving meaning into honest and powerful relationships with others, others that see more than what is on the surface.

In this series, I use various mediums and weaving techniques to portray my journey and relationship to Cancer, and the story created from diagnosis to present. This work is fueled by the deep learning and curiosity of what it means to be present, to hold the mystery of the unknown, and to let go of control. Art is our thread, let it tug at our heartstrings, open us up to a flood of beauty and vulnerability, and then mend us back together with the pieces that were missing.

Marla Pedersen is an arts educator and visual artist based in Petaluma, California. Her works are a merging of worlds, incorporating the beauty and mystery of nature into the complex contradictions of living with Stage IV Breast Cancer. Relationships between natural organic forms, portraiture, and abstract expressionism illustrate the dichotomies of being human and our multifaceted existence, while appreciating the interconnectedness to each other through lived experiences.

Pedersen has exhibited at the UCSF Mission Bay campus, UCSF Women's Health Center,  and is currently showcased at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art in collaboration with the UCSF Art for Recovery program. Her next exhibition will be at the Dance Palace in Point Reyes, California in May of 2026.

She holds a Bachelor of Arts Education from The Ohio State University and currently leads workshops from her home studio after a career teaching K-12 Arts Education in Sonoma County Schools. Pedersen also has a certificate in Expressive Healing Arts and End of Life Doula care.

To find out more about Marla and her work, visit her website. And to hear more about her story with Cancer and art making, watch the interview with Art for Recovery.

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Gallery Commonweal is a 1,500-square-foot gallery with 30-foot ceilings, large north- and south-facing windows, and unique historic detail. For 25 years, we've featured arts that heal our bodies, minds, and souls. Our gallery is open from 10:00-4:00 pm Monday through Friday. We recommend that you call our main line at 415-868-0970 to make an appointment anyway, just to be sure the space is open (we sometimes use the gallery space for retreats and group meetings). For directions, read this document (PDF). Gallery Commonweal is on the 2nd floor of our historic building, and there is no elevator.