Mount Tam Continues to Inspire Killion

Mill Valley native Tom Killion caught the Mount Tam bug early in life, and it’s rarely wavered.

As a teen in 1969, the then-fledgling printmaker wanted to create a block-carved holiday card for his family, and turned to the mountain, depicting its East Peak in the distance as seen through a pair of trees. The holiday card officially began Killion’s lifelong look at the Sleeping Lady for inspiration. It went on to become “Mt. Tam from Bootjack Camp," part of Killion’s book 28 Views of Mount Tamalpais, which he published in 1975.

The print is part of a new exhibit of Killion’s work, “The Art of Mount Tamalpais,” in the Alemany Library at Dominican University of California through March 31. The exhibit was organized by Leslie Ross, the chair of Dominican’s Art History department, as part of her course of the same name. Her students in that class curated the exhibit, which also includes some of the tools and materials Killion used to create the prints.

More than 40 years after first turning to the Tam for inspiration, Killion says he continues to do so constantly.

“I’ve devoted a good part of my artistic life to making prints of Mount Tam,” Killion said. “I never get tired of it and I have many more I hope to do. It’s a very complicated and rich and diverse environment and has a great big human cultural history to it as well.”

Killion, a grad, has an exhibit much larger than the Dominican one opening in May at the San Francisco Bay Model, as well as a career retrospective at the University of San Francisco that is set to run from August through the holiday season.

And despite being at the stage of his career where universities are hosting career retrospectives of his work, Killion remains as focused as ever on Mount Tam and the California Coast. He’s working on a new edition of his 1979 book of wood and linoleum cuts, The Coast of California, with Malcolm Margolin’s Heyday Books in Berkeley set to publish it.

Killion is also in the midst of a long-term project called Treescapes. As usual, he plans to participate in Open Studios and the , for which he serves on the board.

The 411: Tom Killion’s “The Art of Mount Tamalpais” exhibit opens at Dominican University’s Alemany Library on March 3 and runs through March 31. The exhibit is on display in the library’s reading room during normal business hours. Dominican is hosting a reception for the exhibit on Thursday March 22 from 5 p.m. to 7 p.m. in the Alemany Library. RSVP by March 19 by contacting Dharna Obermaier at 415-485-3222 or dharna.obermaier@dominican.edu.