Bay Area artist and environmental activist Linda Gass is best known for her intricately stitched paintings about climate change, land use and water issues in California and the American West. She graduated from Stanford University with a BS in Mathematics and MS in Computer Science, and has been creating art for more than 20 years after a decade long career in software. Her work has been exhibited throughout the US and in Europe and Russia, at venues including the Museum of Craft and Design, Oakland Museum, the Bellevue Arts Museum and the US Embassy in Moscow. Gass’s work has been written about in The San Francisco Chronicle, National Geographic’s All Over the Map: A Cartographic Odyssey, 500 Art Quilts, The Map as Art: Contemporary Artists Explore Cartography, Why We Quilt: Contemporary Makers Speak Out about the Power of Art, Activism, Community and Creativity, and American Craft as well as other publications. Her work is held in several public and private collections including the International Quilt Museum, San Jose Museum of Quilts and Textiles, Zuckerberg San Francisco General Hospital, UCSF Hospital, and the Kapor Center for Social Impact. Awards include the prestigious Fleishhacker Foundation Eureka Fellowship, the Arts Council Silicon Valley Artist Fellowship and the Creative Ecology Art and Science Residency through the Palo Alto Art Center and Junior Museum and Zoo. Gass was born and raised in Southern California and has a studio at The Alameda Artworks in San Jose. When she’s not making art or championing environmental causes, you can find her backpacking, camping and hiking in the wilderness areas of the West where she finds much of the inspiration for her work.

Portrait of artist Linda Gass
Linda Gass painting on silk in her studio.
Photograph by Jeff Rumans.