Artist portrays bold, subtle Caves interiors
From our weekly issue dated August 05, 2009
Hester Mallonee
Hester Mallonee, who has a law degree, enjoys many diverse interests, not the least of which involves volunteer work at Oregon Caves National Monument.
Until recently, besides maintaining a general practice in law, she routinely drove to Cave Junction from the Seattle area at least twice a year since 2003.
Her mission? To work for weeks at a time as a volunteer on a cave restoration project at the monument, 22 miles east of Cave Junction.
She’s also helped every Presidents Day weekend with the caves clean-up – when National Park service staff collect everything from lint to trash left by tourists. Each June, as a member of the Cascade Grotto Group, she helps teach a one-day workshop in cave rescue for new park rangers.
Mallonee became interested in the sport of “caving” at an early age when her parents took her to Carlsbad Caverns National Park. Since then, she’s engaged in various forms of cave exploration and studied many aspects of caves. She recently attended the International Congress of Speleology held this year in Kerrville, Texas.
At Oregon Caves her primary restoration work has been in the Rimstone Room – so named for the high-rimmed puddle shaped formations which dominate the cavern and look like terraces of miniature rice paddies. This space was central to early tours which lacked standard routes through what has become 3 miles of surveyed pathways.
“Several different paths converged in this room and guides took people wherever they wanted. People were even invited to take souvenirs back then,” Mallonee remarked ruefully.
Due to the low ceiling, the floor was broken out to form a trenched pathway, and later, the entire room covered in asphalt.
In the 1930s the Civilian Conservation Corps blasted out a new exit tunnel. Shattered marble was cast aside or used for fill or entire walls. Currently, the Rimstone Room is no longer part of the tour because it was discovered in 1985 that a quarter of all head injuries in the cave occurred there.
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Science now prevails in the evaluation and care of what many consider the jewel of the Siskiyous -- a marble, as opposed to limestone -- cavern system. The asphalt has been removed and multiple-year restoration projects begun. It took five years alone to excavate and remove thousands of pounds of dirt, formations and contaminants.
Then began the exacting process to find and cement formations back together.
“It’s both a left and right-brain project at the same time indivisibly, like what would be required to do facial reconstructive surgery,” Mallonee explained. Both her daughters have accompanied her on many trips and assisted her at times with the restoration project. Her husband is a programmer-writer with Microsoft Corp.
Although she always has found ways to express her artistic side, she became interested in creating paintings representing the interiors of caves around 2000. She has now created more than 100 acrylic paintings in subtle and bold palettes, mostly of the Oregon Caves.
She fell in love with the painting process and is now semiretired so as to pursue these other passions.
Several of her paintings will be displayed from 5 to 8 p.m. on Friday, Aug. 14; and 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. Saturday, Aug. 15 at the Josephine County Bldg. at Lister Street and Redwood Hwy. in Downtown Cave Junction during a special open house for Illinois River Valley Arts Council.
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