Original drawings of Hazel McFeely Fontana

Hazel McFeely Fontana was an Arizona artist who was born in 1931 in Yuba City, California. Her father was an orchard farmer and at an early age she learned to do budding and grafting on the fruit and nut trees. Hazel was valedictorian of her high class and graduated with honors from the University of California, Berkeley with majors in art and literature. In 1954 she married her high school sweetheart Bernard “Bunny” Fontana. She was talented in multiple media artist; making detailed pencil drawings of missions, re-creating lush landscapes out of vibrant opaque watercolors, infusing ink-and-paper sketches with Asian influences, silk-screening greeting cards and combining the styles of African tribal artists with the disjointed geometrics of Picasso when she painted self-portraits. Hazel Fontana died in 2009.