Caron McCloud is a writer, artist, designer, and entrepreneur. She was born April 25, 1937 in Oakland, California, and has spent most of her life in the San Francisco Bay Area, where she had the art gallery Vagabond House in Sausalito and also in Sonoma, California. In partnership with her mother, Eden McCloud, she founded a women’s clothing design and manufacturing company, Karen Johnson Inc. Experience in these businesses led to teaching and public speaking. Since 1996 she and her partner, Jim Wilson, divide their time between their home in Port Townsend, Washington and family in Northern California.

McCloud writes and performs poetry, and is a member of the Washington Poet’s Association where she has been a semifinalist in the “Bart Baxter Performance Poetry” competition three out of three times entered, and besides winning a “Carlin Aden Award” for her Alexandrian sonnet, Last Trump Tango, she was a 1st place winner of the “Charlie Proctor Award” for her poem Holmes Ranch Hags, which she also read as the introduction for the Alice Walker/Sue Sellars event “Neighbors and Artists” in Berkeley, California. She has been a guest on several radio shows, and was a reader for the poetry collection by J. Glenn Evans CD, Windows in the Sky. She was a participant in the “PoetSpeak Reading Series” at Frye Art Museum in Seattle, with poems published in “Poets West Literary Journal.” Her poem Common Ancestry was 1 of 14 of the 400 contest entries selected to be included in the poetry contest chapbook, Saltwater. Besides being published in various other venues she has over a dozen chap books to her credit, she is the author of RACHEL’S BAG In Search of the Qabalah of Our Mothers, a book about the radical actions of Old Testament women. Her youngest daughter Shiloh did the introduction, the cover, and the illustrations. Caron is currently working on a book to be used in a workshop format, Living The Tree Of Life .

While her main focus is writing, she is still involved in the visual arts, painting, stained glass, and working with fabric. She says, “The one thing crosses over and informs the other, as all skills do. Some of my poems are inspired by my art  and some of my art arises from my writing. I love the feel of my tools and of my palette of paint and textiles. Working with my hands provides a much needed balance and reprieve from the intense concentration and involuted process of writing.”

Materials from her former business have provided her with a vast collection of fabrics, remnants, trims, buttons, beads, lace. McCloud says “Mom raised us on axioms such as, ‘Necessity is the mother of invention,’ and ‘Waste not, want not,”  and I take great satisfaction and pleasure in putting together the pieces to create what I call ‘McCloud Covers: Coverings for Body, Bed, and Wall.’ She will design tapestries and paintings using themes and color schemes customized to the taste and decor of her clients. “I know some artists won’t do that,” McCloud says, “but I find creating pieces for which an entire room becomes the setting is very rewarding.”

The McCloud Clan legacy in the arts continues with Caron’s youngest daughter, Shiloh, who has had galleries in Port Townsend,Washington, and in Sonoma, Sausalito, San Francisco, Mendocino, and Healdsburg. Caron is also involved with Cosmic Cowgirls University founded by Shiloh.  She has another daughter Shannon, a son Brent, three granddaughters, Kirsten, Morgan, and Haley; and four great-grandsons, Dillon, Cole, Cody, and Austin.