Louise Crow: Painter of Western Themes

July 13, 2015, 1:40 pm

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Louise Crow Yen-see-do painting ca 1915 Oil on canvas New Mexico Museum of Art, Santa Fe New Mexico

Born in Seattle, Washington, on September 14 1891, Louise A. Crow grew up in the Pacific Northwest. She first studied art in high school with Ella Shepard and Paul Gustin, but did not begin serious training until 1914, when she attended William Merritt Chase's summer school program in Carmel, California. Crow continued to study intermittently at the San Francisco Institute of Art (later California School of Fine Arts) during the years 1914 to 1917, and at the Cincinnati Art Academy under Frank Duveneck from 1917 to 1918. Louise Crow studied at the National Academy of Design in New York and at the Art Students League under Max Weber. 

Louise Crow Yen-see-do painting ca 1915 Oil on canvas New Mexico Museum of Art, Santa Fe New Mexico

Louise (Boyac) Crow Yen-see-do painting ca 1915 Oil on canvas St. George Art Museum, St. George, Utah

Crow traveled and studied in Santa Fe, New Mexico from 1918-1921. From a prominent Seattle family, Crow began exhibiting in California and Seattle as early as 1915, however, when she opened a studio in Santa Fe in 1918, her career began to soar. The harshly critical modernist painter, poet, and essayist, Marsden Hartley, reviewed her 1919 exhibition at the Museum of Fine Arts in Santa Fe with a positive comment: "The indication in her works is as clear as a clearly sounding bell, it has the ring of good metal in it."

Louise Crow  Eagle Dance at San Ildefonso ca 1919 Oil on canvas Whatcom Museum, Seattle, Washington

Louise Crow worked in oils and watercolors, and with a wide variety of subjects including landscapes, Northwest scenes of rugged mountains, seascapes, and portraits of such historical figures as Ezra Meeker, a pioneer who traveled the Oregon Trail. Her technique was crisp and clean and feels contemporary despite her working nearly one hundred years ago. Much of her work, which has been a challenge to locate, concentrated on California and Southwest themes.

Crow became a fellow at The School of American Research in 1920 as a result of her fieldwork at San Ildefonso Pueblo and her work with Dr. Edward L. Hewitt, director of the Museum of New Mexico who also worked with renowned potters Maria and Julian Martinez.

In 1938, Crow was married briefly to writer Roy Keech in Santa Fe. After her divorce, she used the name Boyac, her maternal grandmother's name however, not professionally. Louise Crow died on July 26, 1968 in San Mateo, California.

Crow's exhibitions include the Oakland Museum, CA; Corcoran Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C.; Salon d' Automne, Paris; Salons of America, New York; the Museum of New Mexico, Santa Fe; and the Ainslee Galleries, New York, Artists of the Pacific Northwest, Seattle. She had solo shows at the Museum of New Mexico, Santa Fe; the Museum of History and Industry and the Pioneer Hall, Seattle, and the Governor's Mansion, Olympia, Washington. 


_____________________________________________________________________________________________Sources
Independent Spirits, Women Painters of the American West, 1890-1945, Patricia Trenton, ed., University of California Press, 1995, p. 155, 159, 162-163, 169, 174.
An Encyclopedia of Women Artists of the American West, Phil Kovinick and Marian Yoshiki-Kovinick, University of Texas Press, Austin, 1998, p. 61-62.
Women Artists of Santa Fe, Michael R. Grauer, Essay printed in Panhandle Plains Historical Museum, November 2004, http://www.tfaoi.com/aa/5aa/5aa92.htm.

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Article 1

September 1, 2015, 2:16 pm

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Atlanta, Georgia

It's been a busy summer, now it's time to get organized and back to routine. My husband, Howard, attended a convention in Atlanta, Georgia, in July (YES, in the summer) and I was able to go along for the ride. We just fell in love with the area and its history. Howard, and I stayed downtown and did not bother to rent a car-we were able to get nearly everywhere we wanted to go on Atlanta's efficient public transportation system. Our no-humidity selves from Southern California were overwhelmed by Georgia's summer climate, but with a lot of water and air conditioned destinations, we enjoyed what Atlanta had to offer.

Atlanta History Center

For lovers of history, I heartily recommend the Atlanta History Center, located in the city's historic Buckhead district, http://www.atlantahistorycenter.com/, and its exhibition on the Civil War. Presented chronologically year by year, the exhibit addressed what the intentions were of both the Confederate and the Union forces in each battle, and the final outcome. It was fascinating. The artifacts and weaponry really provided a sobering view of a devastating time in American history.

The Swan House ca 1928

The grounds of the Atlanta History Center are wooded and lovely. Several structures, such as the Swan House, Smith Family Farm, and the Wood Family Cabin, allowed a peek into the lives of local Georgians from the earliest settlements in the area up to the 1930s. The Swan House, traditionally known as one of the most recognized and photographed landmarks in Atlanta, is an elegant, classically styled mansion built in 1928 for the Edward H. Inman family, heirs to a cotton brokerage fortune. In popular culture, it was one of many Georgia set locations used during the filming of the movie The Hunger Games: Catching Fire. 

Tullie Smith House Smith Family Farm ca 1840s

The Smith Family Farm includes the Tullie Smith House, a plantation-plain house built in the 1840s by the Robert Smith family. Originally located east of Atlanta, outside the city limits, the house survived the destruction in and around Atlanta during the Civil War. The house and detached kitchen were moved to the Atlanta History Center in the early 1970s and is listed on the National Register of Historic Places.

Margaret Mitchell

Gone With the Wind! It was written in Atlanta and the film's World Premiere was held there in December 1939. We visited the Margaret Mitchell House and took an apartment tour where Mitchell penned the novel. Writer, playwright, and philanthropist, Margaret Mitchell was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for Gone with the Wind. The tale was made into an equally famous motion picture starring Vivien Leigh and Clark Gable. An adjacent building on the grounds featured an exhibit entitled The Making of a Film Legend which chronicled the transformation of the novel into a film. Sadly, Mitchell died from injuries after being struck by a speeding car when she was just 49 years old.

Margaret Mitchell House 990 Peachtree St NE Atlanta, Georgia

Food-yes, Atlanta has it. We loved the Southern charm and hospitality found in Georgia. Had to find some touristy restaurants and our favorite was Pitty Pat's Porch (http://www.pittypatsrestaurant.com/) named after Scarlett O'Hara's aunt in Gone with the Wind. The restaurant was walking distance from our hotel right downtown and features southern food such as mint juleps, fried chicken with mashed 'taters' and gravy, topped off with hot peach cobbler...only on vacation, yum!

Since this is a blog about female artists working in the west, and at one time, Atlanta was a frontier, I must mention the art scene. It is lively. The High Museum of Art, Atlanta is a wonderful venue for an eclectic collection that includes the Modernist Jewelry of Art Smith to photography by Brett Weston, son of legendary photographer Edward Weston. Howard and I played in the interactive Los Tropos or Spinning Tops at the museum through November 29th. The colorful "tops" are found on the museum grounds where one can sit and/or spin, listen to music and enjoy performances every first and third Friday.

Los Tropos High Museum of Art Atlanta, Georgia

Welcome to Central Park, Atlanta. Centennial Olympic Park is a 21-acre public park located in downtown Atlanta, owned and operated by the Georgia World Congress Center Authority. The park was built by the Atlanta Committee for the Olympic Games as part of the improvements for the Centennial 1996 Summer Olympics. Millions of visitors a year visit the park and events, including a summer popular music concert series (Wednesday WindDown) and an annual Independence Day concert and fireworks display bring in tourists and locals alike.

Centennial Park Atlanta, Georgia

I hope you've enjoyed your trip to Atlanta as much as we did. We're looking forward to returning sometime soon to explore what we missed! Until next time, Bye, y'all.

Anna Althea Hills: Early American Impressionist

September 11, 2015, 12:06 pm

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Anna Althea Hills

Anna Althea Hills  was an American Plein-air painter who specialized in impressionist landscapes of the Southern California coast. Hills is best known for her lovely landscape, marine, genre, and figure painting. 

Anna Hills was born in Ravenna, Ohio on January 28, 1882. Hills, daughter of a minister, moved frequently with her family due to her father's occupation. She lived in Allegheny, Pennsylvania, where her mother passed away when she was only four years old, Olivet Michigan, Springfield, Illinois, and in Oberlin, Ohio. 

As a teenager, Hills explored her passion for painting. She attended Olivet College, the Art Institute of Chicago, and the Cooper Union for the Advancement of Science and Art in New York City from which she graduated in 1908. Hills continued her studies privately with Arthur Dow and Rhoda Holmes Nichols in Ipswich, Massachusetts. Hills won awards for her work in watercolor (1905) and oil painting and still life (1906). Hills traveled abroad for four years, studying in England with John Noble Barlow, and in 1908, attended the Academie Julian in Paris.

Anna Althea Hills painting En plein air

In 1913, at thirty-one years old, Anna Hills returned to the United States. She moved to Los Angeles and changed her artistic focus from painting interior figures using the darker, tonalist style in which she was trained, to creating lighter and brighter impressionist landscapes in a higher chromatic range. Hills settled in Laguna Beach, California that same year where she opened a studio in which she worked and taught in the Plein-air tradition. A highly respected teacher, Hills promoted the visual arts through lectures and the organization of special exhibits, which circulated among Orange County public schools. Hills was inspired by the landscapes of the West with its coastal views, deserts, arroyos and mountains and was often seen painting on the hills above the coast of Laguna Beach.

Hills was also known for her community activism. She was involved with the Presbyterian church and ran the Sunday school. Hills was an active member of the California Art Club and held a membership at the Washington Watercolor club. She won the Bronze Medal at the Panama-California Exposition held in San Diego in 1915, the Bronze Medal at the California State Fair, Sacramento, California, in 1919, and received the Landscape Prize at the Laguna Beach Art Association in 1922 and 1923. Hills was president of the Laguna Beach Art Association for six years and, as president, it was Hills' advocacy that led to founding the Laguna Beach Art Museum there in 1929. 

Anna Althea Hills By the Roadside Near El Torro ca 1914 14 x 11 inches Oil on canvas

Anna Althea Hills California Hills ca n.d. 7 x 10 inches Oil on canvas board

Solo shows included the Kanst Galleries in Los Angeles, the Fern Buford Galleries in Laguna Beach. Forty-four years after her death, the Laguna Beach Art Association sponsored an exhibition of her work in 1974. Her paintings hang in the Laguna Art Musuem, the Irvine Musuem, Irvine, California, the Fleisher Museum of Russian and California Impressionism in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, and the Orange County Museum of Art in Newport Beach, California.

Anna Althea Hills Laguna Canyon Road ca 1912 Oil on canvas Anna Hills Gallery of Art

Anna Althea Hills Springtime, Banning, California ca 1916 Oil on paper/board10 x 14 inches Private Collection, Courtesy of The Irvine Museum

Hills loved the desert, staying often during the winter months at places such as Banning and Hemet, located near Palm Springs, from which she made sketching treks into the surrounding country. Sadly, Hills passed away on June 13, 1930 in Laguna Beach, California at the age of forty-eight. 

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Sources
An Encyclopedia of Women Artists of the American West, Phil Kovinick and Marion Yoshiki Kovinick, University of Texas Press, 1998, p. 142-143.
Independent Spirits, Women Painters of the American West, 1890-1945, Patricia Trenton, ed., University of California Press, 1995, pp. 68.
The Irvine Museum, Essay, Peaceful Awakening: Springtime in California, January 20-May 12, 2007, http://www.tfaoi.com/aa/7aa/7aa55.htm, retrieved September 11, 2015.
Bodega Bay Heritage Gallery Monthly, http://www.bodegabayheritagegallery.com/Hills_Anna.htm, retrieved September 11, 2015.
Anna Hills Gallery, Anna Althea Hills Biography American Impressionist, http://www.annahillspaintingexpert.com/anna-althea-hills-biography/, retrieved September 11, 2015.

Pauline Powell: Oakland Painter and Pianist

October 12, 2015, 12:28 pm

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There's so little information about the earliest female artists and much of their work is lost. The lack of recognition has to do with a variety of factors including the structure of society during the Victorian era that drove independent women west. The era of the woman artist in the American West began as early as 1843 in the San Francisco bay area where the town exploded as a result of the discovery of gold in the foothills of the Sierra Nevada. The women who arrived were the wives, daughters, or sisters of business, religious or professional men; some self-taught, while others had substantial art training. Pauline Powell's story is unique.

Pauline Powell 1872-1912

Pauline Powell was among the first African Americans to enter the professional ranks of painting in California. Her grandmother, Isabella Fossett, was sold from where she lived with her family at Monticello, Thomas Jefferson's estate in Virginia. Isabella was only eight years old, but she succeeded in escaping to Boston in the 1840s using a free pass forged by her brother, Peter. Always afraid and at risk of re-enslavement because of the Fugitive Slave Act, Isabella was finally able to join the rest of her family in Cincinnati by 1860. 

After Isabella’s death in 1872, her daughter, Josephine Turner, moved to Oakland with her husband, William W. Powell, a porter on the new transcontinental railroad. Their daughter, Pauline, demonstrated artistic and musical talent at a young age and pursued years of study of both painting and piano. She gave numerous public recitals in the Bay Area and was hailed as “the bright musical star of her state.”  

Pauline would go on to become the first African American to exhibit artwork in the state of California. The California School of Design was open to blacks but few had the advantages of a middle class life that would permit them to pursue such an uncertain career. 

Pauline Powell ca. 1890 Oil on canvas

In 1890, when she was just fourteen, Pauline exhibited her paintings including Champagne and Oysters, (I could not locate a copy of this painting) at the Mechanics Institute Fair in San Francisco. Burns’s work is extremely scarce, not only because of the time in which she lived, but also because she lived a relatively short life, dying of tuberculosis in 1912. She and her husband, Edward E. Burns, both cultural leaders in their community, left no descendants.
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Sources
Independent Spirits, Women Painters of the American West, 1890-1945, Patricia Trenton, ed.,University of California Press: Berkeley and Los Angeles, 1995,  p. 12. 
Swann Auction Galleries, http://swanngalleriesinc.blogspot.com/2014/01/a-tale-of-two-women-pioneering.html, retrieved October 12, 2015.
Thomas Jefferson Foundation, Pauline Powell Burns, https://www.monticello.org/getting-word/people/pauline-powell-burns, retrieved October 12, 2015.

Frances Hammell Gearhart: Printmaker and Woodblock Artist

November 3, 2015, 11:45 am

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Frances H. Gearhart 1900 Graduation Photograph University of California, Berkele

Watercolorist, printmaker, and teacher, Frances Hammell Gearhart was born in Sagetown, Illinois on January 4, 1869 and grew up in Henderson County Illinois. She moved to California and settled in Pasadena in 1888. Gearhart attended the State Normal School, Los Angeles (now UCLA) from 1889-1891. After her graduation, she joined her sisters, May and Edna, in the field of education, teaching English History at Los Angeles High School for a number of years. During that same period, Gearhart spent her summers from 1905-10 in the East studying watercolor with Charles H. Woodbury and Henry R. Poore. In 1911, Gearhart held her first exhibition of her watercolors depicting the California landscape and, encouraged by the reception of her work, took a years' sabbatical to continue to study and work on her watercolor technique. Other exhibitions of her watercolors followed in 1912 and 1916 before Gearhart moved to the woodcut technique which would become her medium of choice.

Frances H. Gearhart After the Rain ca. 1919 Color woodcut Gearhart joined the newly founded Print Makers Society of California in 1919 and became a driving force in shaping the future of that organization. By 1923, Gearhart left teaching to devote more time to her own career. She and her sisters converted the Pasadena studio into an art gallery where they organized shows while Gearhart co-chaired the selection committee for the Print Makers Society. By championing the color woodcut, the sisters attracted European and British printmakers to exhibit there and to join the society. In 1920, Gearhart produced a color linocut entitled, On the Salinas River (below) for the Print Makers Society of California that became the first of their gift prints to members. Francis H. Gearhart On the Salinas River ca. 1920 Color Woodcut Frances H. Gearhart The Joyous Worldca. 1923 Color woodcut

In 1924, Frances and her sister, May, had a two-person exhibition at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art. Gearhart was also a member of the Prairie Print Makers and the American Federation of the Arts which organized a circulating exhibition of her block prints in 1930. There was a solo exhibition of her prints in 1933 at the Grand Central Galleries in New York and Gearhart was included in survey exhibitions of American color woodcut at the Brooklyn Museum and the American Institute of Graphic Arts.Toronto Museum, and the Worcester Art Museum.

Frances H. Gearhart
Above the Trail
ca. 1929
Color woodcut

While her sisters traveled, Gearhart stayed in California where she found subject matter for most of her works. In time, she sketched in the variety of areas offered by a state with such diversity canvassing coastal regions, deserts, and the mountains.

Frances H. Gearhart Big Sur Bridge ca. 1933 Color woodcut

Frances H. Gearhart October Splendor ca. 1930 Color woodcut

Gearhart lived a long, productive life. Her work is represented in the collections of the Achenbach Foundation for the Graphic Arts, Art Institute of Chicago, Library of Congress, Los Angeles Museum of Art, Rhode Island School of Design, Smithsonian Institute.

 Frances Hammell Gearhart died in Pasadena, California on April 4, 1958.

_________________________________________________________________________

Sources

An Encyclopedia of  Women Artists of the American West, Phil Kovinick and Marion Yushiki Kovinick, University of Texas Press, Austin, 1998, p. 106

Los Angeles County Museum of Art, http://collections.lacma.org/node/228973, retrieved November 3, 2015.

Los Angeles Times Blog, Deborah Netburn, http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/home_blog/2009/12/frances-gearhart-color-block-prints.html, retirieved November 3, 2015.

The Annex Galleries, Frances Gearhart Biography, https://www.annexgalleries.com/artists/biography/781/Gearhart/Frances, retrieved November 3, 2015.

Francis Gearhart, http://www.francesgearhart.com/, retrieved November 3, 2015.

June Wayne: Pushing Boundaries, Bending Definitions

November 24, 2015, 11:54 am

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June Wayne Photo: Niku Kashef

An artist and art historian, I had heard of, but was not really familiar with June Wayne's life or her artwork. Considering her body of work and renown it seems impossible to have missed that enormous talent and contribution to the world of art throughout the twentieth century but...I did. Wayne was a true Renaissance "Woman." She was a print-maker, painter, tapestry creator, author, filmmaker, educational TV star, lecturer, administrator, feminist thinker and activist-whew! 

Born in Chicago in 1918, as June Claire Kline, she quit high school at 15 years old to become an artist and had her first solo show-a series of abstract pointillist paintings-in the city at the Boulevard Gallery in 1935. On the strength of that show, she was invited to Mexico City by the Department of Education to create and install an exhibition in the Ministry of Public Administration alongside the works of Diego Rivera at the Palacio de Bellas Artes. 

June Wayne Waiting for Newspapers ca 1936 Oil on canvas

Wayne returned to Chicago in 1935 to work with the Works Progress Administration (WPA) as an easel project artist and continued to paint in the Social Realist style. By 1939, she landed in New York, where she would continue to paint while supporting herself making jewelry, as an industrial designer creating buttons and notions in the garment district, and as a production illustrator and staff writer for radio, bouncing between New York and Los Angeles.

June Wayne Cryptic Creatures Kafka Series ca 1948 Oil on Canvas 36 x 30 inches

With the United States entry into World War II, Wayne moved to Los Angeles with the intention of working in the aircraft industry. She took classes in production illustration run by CalTech and Art Center but returned to Chicago to work for radio station WGN. 

As I explored opportunities for women during the early years of the twentieth century in my doctoral thesis, Wayne's experiences seemed to further prove it was difficult for female artists to work independently and to exhibit their work. She recalled in an interview with Betty Hoag, "...in those days one of the reasons it was easy to get on the project is that government really didn't take seriously that any art was going to come out of it. It was "made" work in which categories of people got jobs, but nobody really took the job seriously."

Despite the limitations of the era, Wayne painted and explored, refining her technique in lithography, the process of printing from a plane surface (as a smooth stone or metal plate) on which the image to be printed is ink-receptive and the blank area ink-repellent.

After the war, in 1945, Wayne settled permanently in Los Angeles. She incorporated techniques she learned at CalTech and developed a body of work that anticipated POP and OP art incorporating invented images suggesting nuclear fission and the atom bomb. Wayne produced a series of lithographs -- the Kafka Series and the Justice Series. She was ready to embark on the next body of work, a collection based on the poems of John Donne. Erotic in nature, her California printer balked and, frustrated, Wayne looked to other options. En route to Paris to work with the renowned printer Marcel Durassier, at a layover in New York she met Mac Lowry of the Ford Foundation. Irked by the lack of creative collaborative support available to artists in the States, Wayne asserted her feelings. Intrigued, Lowry asked her to keep in touch. "I remember saying to him: No wonder Picasso was so prolific. Anything he wanted to do, there was an army of craftsmen to fabricate it or him.They had a tradition of collaborative practices. We don't have that here."

June Wayne The Final Jury Justice Series ca 1954 Lithograph June Wayne Collection, Louis Stern Fine Arts

During the 1950s, Wayne exhibited in major shows at museums in Southern California including and in San Francisco at the De Young Museum of Art, California Palace of the Legion of Honor, and the San Francisco Museum of Art. She also showed her work at the Art Institute of Chicago and the Philadelphia Art Alliance. She set out to revive the art of lithography and created a plan of the Tamarind Lithography Workshop, a place where a pool of master printers would be trained and collaboration of artists would be encouraged. Under her direct supervision and administration, over 300 printers were trained and virtually all the major print workshops in America today trace their roots back to Tamarind.

June Wayne Grande Vague Noire (Black Tidal Wave) ca 1973 Woven at Atelier de Saint Cyr

Her tapestry era began with travel to France to work with master weavers in translating her pieces into tapestries. She felt the weaving with its rhythmical, slow, technique created an appropriate way by which she could transmit to the viewer a sense of time passing that is integral to the process. 

June Wayne Delegate Dorothy from The Dorothy Series  ca 1977 Color lithograph printed by Edward Hamilton.

In the late 70s Wayne created The Dorothy Series, a traveling exhibition of 20 lithographs, accompanied by a video presentation that appeared in museums across the country. The combination of ephemeral-sequential imagery of narrative in collage from letters, documents, newspaper clippings, and old photographs that narrated the life of her mother, a traveling corset saleswoman. 

Wayne was also involved in the feminist art movement in Los Angeles in the 70s.  Her biggest contribution to the movement was in education, as Wayne taught a series of professionalization seminars entitled "Joan of Art" to young women artists beginning around 1971. Wayne's seminars covered various topics related to being a professional artist, such as pricing work and approaching galleries, and involved role-playing and discussion sessions. They also encouraged giving back to the feminist community since graduates of Wayne's seminars were required to then teach the seminars to other women. Wayne, along with fellow artists Shelia Levrant de Bretteville, and Ruth Weisberg founded the Los Angeles Council of Women in the Arts which sought the equal representation of women artists in museum exhibitions. In addition, Wayne was also part of the selection committee for the exhibition Contemporary Issues: Works on Paper by Women, which opened at the Los Angeles Woman's Building in 1977, featuring the works of over 200 women artists.

"Wayne's uniqueness lies precisely in her departures," then-Times art critic William Wilson wrote in 1998. "She offers a fruitful alternative model for the artist. Never allowing a signature style to imprison her, like a creative scientist she investigates her ideals and passions even when they lead her out of the studio. She does more than make superior art in Los Angeles. She helped mold its larger culture."

June Wayne Tenth Wave ca 1972 Lithograph June Wayne Collection, Louis Stern Fine Arts

Wayne never reached the prominence as an artist some said she deserved. Experts offered several reasons for her limited recognition. "She has not fallen into any of the art movements that have had such publicity," Los Angeles County Museum of Art curator Victor Carlson said when a retrospective of Wayne's work opened in L.A. in 1998. He mentioned Pop Art, Abstract Expressionism and Color Field painting. "None of those brackets explain her," he said. "I think that a lot of critics have not known what to make of her."

June Wayne Anki Cognito Series ca 1984 Acrylic and silver leaf on paper marouflaged onto canvas with gesso and gelatin 72 x 54 inches

Wayne's art has been exhibited all over the world and is part of several museum collections, including the National Museum of Women in the Arts, the Norton Simon Museum, the Museum of Modern Art, and the Los Angeles County Museum of Art. She has been awarded honorary doctorates from the Rhode Island School of Design, Moore College of Art and Design, California College of Arts and Crafts, and The Atlanta College of Fine Arts.

In 2002, Wayne became a research professor at the Rutgers Center for Innovative Print and Paper. Wayne also donated a group of over 3,300 prints, both her work and the work of other artists, to the Rutgers Center for Innovative Print and Paper, which established the June Wayne Study Center and Archives to house the collection.

Wayne passed away at her Tamarind Avenue studio in Hollywood, CA on August 23, 2011 with her daughter and granddaughter by her side.

_____________________________________________________________________________
HYPERALLERGIC, Alicia Eler, June Wayne's Farewell, June 23, 2014, http://hyperallergic.com/129722/june-waynes-farewell/, retrieved November 24, 2015
The Creative Cosmos of June Wayne, Lynell George, KCET, Artbound, http://www.kcet.org/arts/artbound/counties/los-angeles/june-wayne-pasadena-museum-of-california-art.html, retrieved November 24, 2015.
Yesterday and Tomorrow: California Women Artists, Sylvia Moore, ed., Midmarch Arts Books, New York, 1989, p. 15-159.
The New York Times, June Wayne, Painter and Printmaker dies at 93, William Grimes, August 22, 2011. http://www.nytimes.com/2011/08/28/arts/june-wayne-painter-and-printmaker-dies-at-93.html?_r=0
The Los Angeles Times, June Wayne dies at 93; led revival of fine-art print making, Mary Rourke, August 25, 2011,
http://articles.latimes.com/2011/aug/25/local/la-me-june-wayne-20110825, retrieved November 24, 2015.
The June Wayne Collection, http://www.junewayne.com/about.php, retrieved November 24, 2015.

Kathleen Blackshear: Treating her subjects with Humility and Grace

December 4, 2015, 2:43 pm

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Kathleen Blackshear Unknown Photographer

Kathleen Blackshear was born in the Texas cotton belt. She grew up spending summers on the nearby cotton plantations of both her maternal and paternal families close to Navasota, a town founded by her grandfather. It was there that she became friends with the children of the African Americans who picked cotton for her family-an experience that would have great significance in her later career, both as an artist and teacher. She began to study art at age 12. The first woman in her town to wear trousers, Blackshear bucked convention her whole life. She earned a bachelor’s degree in modern languages from Baylor University in Waco in 1917 and studied at the Art Students League in New York, where her teachers included Solon Borglum, George Bridgeman, and Frank Vincent DuMond. In 1918, she left New York and spent the next six years travelling and exploring career options in Los Angeles, where she got a job creating posters for films. She also found work in Culver City coloring films in the days before Technicolor, and when every transparency had to be hand-colored under a magnifying glass. Blackshear also explored New Orleans, Europe, and Mexico, continuing to produce photographs, prints, paintings, and sculpture.

Blackshear moved to Chicago in 1924, where she attended the School of the Art Institute of Chicago (SAIC) to study painting and graphic arts. She was inspired by the art history class taught by Helen Gardner in which she enrolled in 1925. Gardner became mentor and inspiration to Blackshear, and they formed a close relationship which lasted until Gardner's death in 1946. Blackshear began teaching art history in 1926, continuing until her retirement in 1961. Like Gardner—whose widely used textbooks, Art Through the Ages (1926) and Understanding the Arts (1932) which she illustrated—Blackshear introduced modernist ideas in her courses. She did not teach the standard history of classical through Renaissance art, but included a wide variety of non-western, pre-Renaissance, and progressive, twentieth-century art in her classes as well. She sent students to explore not just the galleries of the Art Institute, but the Field Museum of Natural History, the Shedd Aquarium, the Oriental Institute, and the Bronx Zoo for inspiration. In this way, Blackshear influenced generations of students at SAIC to discover idiosyncratic sources and connections with cultures other than their own, laying the groundwork for later Chicago artists of the Monster Roster and Imagist movement. Blackshear was particularly influential in inspiring and supporting the careers of the African American students in her classes, such as Margaret Burroughs. She also made two dioramas for the 1933 Century of Progress Exposition in Chicago, and illustrated Art Has Many Faces by Katherine Kuh. Blackshear emphasized the aesthetic over the historical in teaching art history.

Kathleen Blackshear Untitled (Woman Mopping) ca 1930s Lithograph

Blackshear frequently depicted African Americans, inspired by her summer visits to Texas and her childhood memories but also by her experiences in Chicago. Her lithograph,Untitled (Woman mopping) sympathetically depicts a sturdy washerwoman mopping, in a generalized style typical of the American Scene and regionalist styles of the Depression era. Blackshear renders her head at an unnatural angle as if to emphasize the backbreaking work, and her heavy, bulky form suggests that she has and will continue to spend hours performing this monotonous task. It exemplifies why critic C. J. Bulliet called her “Chicago’s most sympathetic, most understanding painter of the American Negro” in 1939. Bulliet continued: “Her Negroes in these slight but expert drawings live and breathe a happy, wholesome life,” though he was quick to qualify that she was not a Communist recruiter.

 From 1924 to 1940, Blackshear returned to Navasota to visit her mother at Christmas as during these visits, she often depicted the small-town Texas ritual of Saturday shopping. Her familiarity with her subjects enhanced her sensitivity and understanding of a "simpler world where eloquent compassion was adequate for commenting on racial issues and clean form was remarkably effective in communicating art values."

A Boy Named Alligator demonstrates her interest in storytelling found in much Regionalism of the time and the painting's interest lies not in the narrative, but in its bold, simplified forms and rhythmic patterns of the land.

Kathleen Blackshear A Boy named Alligator ca 1930 22 1/8 x 18 1/8 inches

Kathleen Blackshear Ruby Lee and Loula May Washington ca 1932 Oil on canvas

In her best works, Blackshear captures her subjects with simple grace and humanity without sentimentality or cliche. In her painting, Ruby Lee and Lula May Washington, she paints a dual portrait where the wood grain provides and intriguing visual backdrop.

Blackshear maintained a studio in Houston and spent many summers at her home in Navasota, After her retirement in 1961, Kathleen Blackshear returned to Navasota with her companion, Ethel Spears, and continued to lecture on art at museums and schools throughout Texas until the early 1970s. She received the title Professor Emeritus from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago in 1968. She died on October 14, 1988 in Navasota where she is buried in Oakland Cemetery.

Blackshear’s work was exhibited at the Art Institute of Chicago, Chicago Society or Artists; Witte Memorial Museum, San Antonio, TX; Museum of Fine Arts, Houston; Museum of Fine Arts, Dallas; among others. Her works also are held in the Art Institute of Chicago.

Kathleen Blackshear Title Unknown ca 1930s Oil on canvas

Sources______________________________________________________________________

1. Bulliet, C. J. “Artists of Chicago Past and Present: No. 97: Kathleen Blackshear.” Chicago Daily News, July 29, 1939.
2. Illinois Women Artists Project, http://iwa.bradley.edu/?q=artists/KathleenBlackshear.
3. Kovinick, Phil, and Marian Yoshiki-Kovinick. An Encyclopedia of Women Artists of the American West. Austin: University of Texas Press, 1998.
4. Landauer, Susan, and Becky Reese. “Lone Star Spirits.” In Patricia Trenton, ed. Independent Spirits: Women Painters of the American West, 1890–1945, 199–200. Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1995.
5. Tormollan, Carole. A Tribute to Kathleen Blackshear. Chicago: School of the Art Institute of Chicago, 1990.
6. Tormollan, Carole. “Kathleen Blackshear.” In Women Building Chicago: 1790-1990, edited by Rima Lunin Schultz and Adele Hast, 84–86. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2001.
7. Weininger, Susan. “Kathleen Blackshear.” In Elizabeth Kennedy, ed. Chicago Modern, 1893–1945: Pursuit of the New, 92. Exh. cat. Chicago: Terra Foundation for the Arts, 2004.
8. Yochim, Louise Dunn. Role and Impact: The Chicago Society of Artists, 222. Chicago: Chicago Society of Artists, 1979.

Z. Vanessa Helder: Early Northwest Modernist

December 17, 2015, 10:54 am

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Z. Vanessa Helder (Paterson) 1904-1968

Zama Vanessa Helder was an American watercolor painter who gained national attention in the 1930s and 40s, primarily for her scenes in Eastern Washington. She painted with a bold, Precisionist style not commonly associated with watercolor, rendering landscapes, industrial scenes, and houses with a Magic Realist touch (an American style with Surrealist overtones) that gave the pieces a forlorn, isolated quality, somewhat in the manner of Charles Sheeler and Edward Hopper. I love her dynamic style!

For a number of years,  Helder's work was out of vogue and largely forgotten by the public, but the power of her artwork has gradually been rediscovered, particularly in the Pacific Northwest. The Tacoma Art Museum held an exhibition of her work in 2013, and the Northwest Museum of Art and Culture in Spokane has her twenty-two piece series relating to the construction of the Grand Coulee Dam - generally considered her masterwork - in its permanent collection.

Born in the town of Lynden near Bellingham, Washington, her somewhat eccentric family had an artistic bent whose interests included music, theosophy and astrology, Helder was an unconventional figure often found strolling Seattle's streets dressed in her finest attire with "Sniffy," her pet skunk in tow. She kept an unorthodox array of pets throughout her life (at one time making inquiries with various state agencies to find out if she could legally own a flying squirrel). 

Portrait of Blanche Luzader Morgan (Losey) Z. Vanessa Helder ca. 1939 Oil on masonite Private collection

Her mother, passionate about art, gave Helder her first painting lessons at a young age and, eventually, she studied at the University of Washington. After graduation, Helder established herself as a well-known local watercolorist in the area. In 1934, she received a scholarship to the Art Students League in New York and studied with artist/educators Frank Vincent DuMond, George Picken, and Robert Brackman. During this time, Helder's work became more refined and she began to experiment with other mediums such as oil and lithogrpahy. In 1935, Helder was elected to the National Association of Women Painters and Sculptors club and in 1937, received a solo exhibition at the Grant Studios in New York. In addition, she won membership in the American Watercolor Society in 1943. 

Sand and Gravel Works Z. Vanessa Helder ca. 1939-1941 Watercolor

After she moved back to the Pacific Northwest after her studies in New York, Helder became a member of the Women Painters of Washington (WPW) an organization created to provide an opportunity for women to network and overcome obstacles faced by women artists in the male-dominated art world. WPW is still active and lively-information about the organization, membership, and exhibitions can be found at http://www.womenpainters.com/. 

Hallett House, Medical Lake Z. Vanessa Helder ca. n.d. Watercolor

When the Federal Art Projects began in 1933, members of the WPW became involved. The projects continued under the Works Progress Administration, established by President Franklin D. Roosevelt in 1939. Helder created a striking series of watercolors depicting the construction of the Grand Coulee Dam executed between 1939 and 1940.

Grand Coulee Dam Z. Vanessa Helder ca. 1940 Watercolor

After relocating back to Seattle in 1941, Helder married industrial architect Robert J.S. "Jack" Paterson. Following the attack on Pearl Harbor, she joined the Washington State Artists Council for Defense. Helder continued exhibiting locally and nationally, and in 1943, reached a high point in her career when several of her works were selected for inclusion in American Realists and Magic Realists, a major exhibition at the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) in New York. 

Sea Shells - Blue and Gold Z. Vanessa Helder ca. 1942 Watercolor

In 1943, Helder followed her husband, Robert Paterson, to Los Angeles as he pursued professional opportunities and joined the board of the California Watercolor Society while she continued to exhibit old and new works in California, Washington, and New York,. She also maintained an active involvement in the Los Angeles art associations that were the primary exhibitors of California artists at that time. Of course, art evolves and tastes change. While Helder made an attempt to keep pace with the post-war developments happening in the art world, she was squeezed out of the New York galleries by Abstract Expressionism which began to take precedence in painting while watercolor fell out of favor. 

Near San Jacinto Z. Vanessa Helder ca. n.d. Watercolor

Helder lived in Los Angeles for 25 years and worked as an instructor at the Los Angeles Art Institute from 1952-1955. Over time, Helder exhibited less regularly and as a result of poor health, she passed away on May 1, 1968, just one week after her husband's death.

Her art estate was bequeathed to the Westside Jewish Community Center in Los Angeles, a puzzling decision since she herself was not Jewish. The center sold the remaining works from her estate in several sales over the ensuing years, unfortunately with no record of the buyers. Of the hundreds of artworks Helder made over her lifetime, the majority remain missing -- to this day. 

Exhibitions/Collections

Museum of Modern Art, the Whitney Museum, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Denver Art Art Museum, Seattle Art Museum, collections at the National Museum of American Art, Smithsonian Institution, the Newark Museum, the High Museum of Art, the Portland Art Museum, Portalnd Oregon, the Philadelphia Museum of Art, the St. Louis Art Museum, the Academy of Arts and letters, Washington State University, I.B.M Corporation, the Northwest Museum of Arts and Culture, and the Whatcom Museum of History & Art.

Sources___________________________________________________________________

1. An Enduring Legacy: Women Painters of Washington, 1930-2005, Whatcom Museum of History & Art, Bellingham Washington, University of Washington Press, Seattle, 2005, pp 74-77.
2. George Stern Fine Arts, Z. Vanessa Helder, http://www.sternfinearts.com/zvahe119.html, retrieved December 17, 2015.
3. HistoryLink.org, Women Painters of Washington, Essay 7644, http://www.historylink.org/index.cfm?DisplayPage=output.cfm&File_Id=7644, retrieved December 17, 2015.
4. Independent Spirits: Women Painters of the American West, 1890-1945, ed. Patricia Trenton, University of California Press, Berkeley and Los Angeles, 1995, p. 120.
5. An Encyclopedia of Women Artists of the American West, Phil Kovinick and Marian Yoshiki-Kovinick, University of Texas Press, Austin, 1998, p. 135.

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Blanche Chloe Grant: Painter, Muralist, and Historian

February 4, 2016, 3:01 pm

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Olive Rush, Blanche C. Grant, and Edith Pennewill in Howard Pyle's Studio ca 1911 New York, New York

Blanche Chloe Grant was Born in Leavenworth Kansas and grew up in Indianapolis. She graduated from Indianapolis High School, where her father was principal, and went on to attend Vassar College in New York. Grant did not take any art classes at Vassar due to her parent's stern Victorian attitudes. Determined to be an artist, later, while living in Bridegwater and Tauton, Massachusetts, Grant studied with Francis Mortimer Lamb, then went on to the School of the Boston Museum of Fine Arts (1906-1908), followed by study at PAFA, the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts, Philadelphia. Her study at the Art Students League in New York with Howard Pyle and Frank Noyes resulted in her association as an artist in Pyle's circle working in Wilmington, Delaware and, by 1914, she was working as a magazine illustrator and landscape painter. She established a studio in New York.

Blanche Chloe Grant Indian Tales, Taos ca 1922 Oil on canvas

In 1916, Grant accepted an associate professorship in the art department of the University of Nebraska, Lincoln and held the position until 1920 with a short break as a YMCA secretary in Le Mans, France. During a vacation, Grant traveled to New Mexico and fell in love with the art colony Taos. She decided to stay and became one of the community's most active members. In 1922, Grant served as editor of the Taos Valley News and in time became a leading historian and ethnologist of the region. She lectured often and wrote several important books on Taos including When Trails Were New: The Story of Taos, 1934. 

Blanche Chloe Grant ca 1934 Southwest Heritage Series Sunstone Press

Reluctant to share information with strangers and determined to maintain their traditional way of life, the Taos Indians chose not to speak with strangers about their culture. They were willing to communicate with people they knew and trusted to properly share their stories and Grant was one. She assured the Taos Indians that the written word would be a source of information for their descendants and a permanent accounting of their lives for future generations.

Blanche Chloe Grant ca 1925 (original) Southwest Heritage Series Rio Grande Press

Blanche Chloe GrantTaos Indian with Bowl ca n.d. Oil on canvas 18 x 22 inches

Grant was active in Taos as a painter, muralist, and etcher and was also a member of the local art association. She painted portraits of Kit Carson, the frontier scout, and Lewis A. Garrand, Taos pioneer and author. She also painted Native Americans, pueblo life, New Mexico landscapes and exhibited widely.

Blanche Chloe Grant Touch-Me-Not Mountain, Ute Park, New Mexico ca 1928 Oil on board 20 x 16 inches

Blanch Chloe Grant Faith n.d. Oil on canvas 24 1/4 x 33 inches Her work can be found in the collections of the County Courthouse and Harwood Foundation in Taos and in the Southwest Museum in Los Angeles.  Sources______________________________________________________________________ An Encyclopedia of Women Artists of the American West, Phil Kovinick and Marian Yoshiki-Kovinick, University of Texas Press, Austin, 1998, p. 116. AskArt, http://www.askart.com/artist/Blanche_Chloe_Grant/5811/Blanche_Chloe_Grant.aspx, retrieved February 4, 2016. Zaplin-Lampert Gallery, http://www.zaplinlampert.com/category/blanche-chloe-grant.html, retrieved February 4, 2016. artnet, http://www.artnet.com/artists/blanche-chloe-grant/indian-tales-taos-SK1C1N5HHl-IZHdSoImxlQ2, retrieved February 4, 2016.

Mary H. Teasdel: Prolific Artist but...Where is Her Work?

March 16, 2016, 8:58 am

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Mary H. Teasdel 1863-1937

One of the most frustrating aspects of doing the research and writing a blog about early American female artists is the lack images available of their work. Mary Teasdel is the perfect example of a well-known, respected artist who studied abroad, exhibited in both Europe and the United States, and whose work hangs in museums and in the state capitol in Utah, her home state. Locating more than just a few of her pieces, however, is nearly impossible. I present to you a fascinating, driven artist with just a few examples of her work.

Mary Teasdel, daughter of a successful merchant, was born and grew up in Salt Lake City. An important and active impressionist painter, she was one of the first women from Utah to study in Paris. 

Teasdel took music lessons, was provided the best schooling available, and lived in a large and comfortable home in Salt Lake City. She attended the University of Deseret from 1882 until 1886 where she studied under painter, George Ottinger. At the age of 23, Teasdel graduated with honors and continued her studies with painter, J. T. Harwood. Teasdel, along with her friend Cora Cooper, traveled to New York to study drawing and painting at the National Academy of Design. 

Mary H. Teasdel Springtime ca. 1922 Oil on academy board 9 x 11.75 inchesUtah Museum of Fine Arts

Upon her return home to Utah, she found her family had fallen on severe financial times which appeared to prevent Mary's dream of becoming a professional artist. However with the money she had saved and an inheritance from one of her brothers, Mary was able to travel to Paris to study art. Early in 1899, Teasdel and two close artist friends, Lara Rawlins (later Chairman) and May Jennings (later Farlow), studied in France for three years where William Benjamin-Constant, Jules Simon, and James Whistler were her instructors. She also spent summers sketching and painting in Normandy.

Mary H. Teasdel A Summer Bouquet ca. n.d. Watercolor 21 x 17.5 inches

Teasdel's work was exhibited at the Paris Salon in 1899—the first woman and second Utah artist to receive this honor. She exhibited at the International French Exhibition in 1900. When she returned again to Utah in 1902, she was immediately appointed by Governor Wells to the governing board of the Utah Art Institute, and became involved in a number of statewide and Salt Lake City cultural activities. Teasdel was an art instructor in the Salt Lake City school system as well as in her private studio within her residence.

Mary H. Teasdel Mother and Child ca. 1920 Oil on canvas 30.5 x 24.5 inches State Fine Arts Collection, Salt Lake City, Utah

In 1920, Teasdel lived briefly in Carmel California before moving to Los Angeles the following year. During her years in Los Angeles and, until her death, she was active with the California Art Club and the Women Painters of the West. In addition, she frequented the Monterrey Peninsula and sketched in other scenic spots around our beautiful state.

Mary H. Teasdel Seascape ca. n.d. Oil on canvas 30.5 x 24.5 inchesJ. Willard Marriott Library, University of Utah

Teasdel, known as Utah's Mary Cassatt, was one of the most interesting and talented Utah artists ever to study in Paris. As Robert Olpin, Utah Art Historian commented, “she was a more flamboyant brush handler than (her instructor) J.T. Harwood. A subtle colorist she would in fact demonstrate an increased love of the “painterly approach“ in many later landscape and still life scenes. Also a portraitist, Teasdel was proficient in oils, watercolor, and pastels. Her artistic eye was often combined with her other skills within interior design and eventually, she became the designer of several residential locations accentuated by her own painted work. Teasdel's inclination toward the decorative arts frequently inspired her choice of attitude toward the pictorial subject matter she treated.

Mary H. Teasdel Untitled Seascape ca. n.d. Watercolor 7 x 10 inchesUtah Museum of Fine Arts

In 1908, Teasdel received the top prize at the Utah State Fair, a first for a woman. She won other local awards during the following years and displayed works at the Springville Museum of Art in Utah and the annual exhibition in Heyburn, Idaho. She had a one-woman exhibition at the Gallery of Alice Horne in Salt Lake City in 1932. Her work hands in the Smithfield Library, Museum of Art, the State Capitol, the University of Utah and the Utah State Institute of Fine Arts.

Sources__________________________________________________________________________

Mary H. Teasdel, Springville Museum of Art, http://www.springvilleartmuseum.org/collections/browse.html?x=artist&artist_id=643 (retrieved March 16, 2016.
Deseret News, Art Historian Robert S. Olpin Dies, http://www.deseretnews.com/article/635159268/Art-historian-Robert-S-Olpin-dies.html?pg=all, (retrieved March 17, 2016).
Utah Artists Project: J. Willard Marriott Library, Mary H. Teasdel, http://www.lib.utah.edu/collections/utah-artists/UAP-Mary-Teasdel.php, (retrieved March 17, 2016).
An Encyclopedia of Women Artists of the American West, Phil Kovinick and Marian Yoshiki- Kovinick, University of Texas Press, Austin,1998, p. 298-299. 

Ruth Joy Hopkins: Painting "the bigness of it all"

April 20, 2016, 12:23 pm

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Ruth Joy Hopkins (1891-1973) grew up in Fremont, Nebraska and began sketching as a young girl. While she was just in her teens, Ruth taught and painted regionally in a variety of towns in the state. She did not gain recognition for her work until years later, after she married painter Linton Hopkins in 1913 and settled in Casper, Wyoming in 1918. Ruth continued to work as an artist in the interim while raising a family, and in 1931 and 32, she attended the Broadmoor Art Academy in Colorado Springs. Soon after, she joined the art community in Casper and remained an important figure in the cultural life of Wyoming.

Ruth Joy Hopkins Mountain Cabinn.d. Etching 5 1/2 x 7 1/2 inches

Ruth Joy Hopkins Church of the Transfigurationn.d. Mixed Media 9 1/2 x 7 3/4 inches

As a child and teen, Ruth was interested in and created scenes of Nebraska. As a full-time resident of Casper until her husband's retirement in the early 1950s, she focused on the beauty of Wyoming. As she and her husband were both artists, they focused on themes in there and indicated an interested in "painting the story of Wyoming: the mountains, the sky, the sheep and sheep wagons, the bigness of it all." She produced canvases of Wyoming's landscapes, ranches, wildflowers, historic structures including a "Forts of Wyoming" series. Ruth also painted pioneer figures such as Jim Baker, Father Pierre DeSmet, and Captain Benjamin de Bonneville in her "Trail Blazer series. Her studies of Native Americans were distinctive as one, Arapaho Camp-Wyoming, hung at the National Association of Women Painters and Sculptors (NAWPS) in New York.

Ruth Joy Hopkins Portrait of Caspar Collinsn.d. Oil on canvas

Ruth Joy Hopkins Mountain Cabinn.d. Etching 5 x 4 inches

Hopkins and her husband spent summers from 1934 until the mid-1950s sketching in Mexico and, in 1956, she studied art at the Escuela Belle Artes in Morelia there. Three years later, she and Linton hung their work, paintings of Mexico at the Casper Fine Arts Club. Ruth exhibited widely at such galleries and museums as the Argent Galleries in New York, Joslyn Memorial Museum in Omaha, NE, the Wyoming State Fair, Casper and Midland colleges, and the Governor's Exhibition in Omaha. One-person shows include the Wyoming Art Association and University of Wyoming in Laramie and the Denver Art Museum.

Ruth Joy Hopkins Goose Egg Ranchn.d. Watercolor 5 1/2 x 7 1/2 inches

Work created during her last years spent in Fremont is seen in the collections of Holdredge Museum, Nebraska, Wyoming State Capitol, Cheyenne, Fort Casper Museum, Wyoming, and Kansas State College, Pittsburg.

Sources__________________________________________________________________________
An Encyclopedia of Women Artists of the American West, Phil Kovinick and Marian Yoshiki-Kovinick, University of Texas Press, Austin, 1998, p. 148.
The Oregon Trail Crossing: Western Art for your Lodge, http://www.oregontrailcrossing.com/Western_Art.html, retrieved April 20, 2016.
The WPA Guide to Wyoming, The Cowboy State, Federal Writers Project, 1940, no page number.

Laura van Pappelendam: Prolific Painter and Educator

May 27, 2016, 12:06 pm

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Laura van Pappelendam

Laura Peternellie van Pappelendam was an educator and an artist. She was dedicated to ensuring that the study of art become a legitimate component of liberal arts curriculum.

van Pappelendam grew up in Keokuk, Iowa. Following her graduation from the local high school in 1902, she attended classes at the Art Institute of Chicago from 1904 until her graduation in 1909. She continued her education and won honorable mentions along the way in 1910, 1911, 1912, and 1917 until she earned her Bachelor of Arts degree in Art Education in 1926.

Pappelendam had a nearly life-long association with the Art Institute of Chicago, first as student, artist and then, as an instructor there for fifty years. Van Pappelendam earned a doctorate in 1929 from the University of Chicago, where she helped establish both the Department of Art in 1924 and the Renaissance Club, and then taught in the University Department of Art part time from 1919 to 1948.

Laura van Pappelendam Taos ca. 1925 24 x 20 inches Oil on canvas Oak Park Art League

During the 1920s, van Pappelendam began to spend her summers painting in New Mexico. The west offered women an escape from the prevailing societal assumptions that they were delicate creatures with fragile mental and physical constitutions. The opportunity to travel, to explore, and to adapt to a new environment had a great deal of appeal and empowered women in their personal and professional lives. Traveling by car during the summer of 1920, van Pappelendam wrote, " I was wild about these camping/painting trips. Generally my younger brother went with me. We camped in all kinds of conditions and places. Snakes have come up in tent rooms when we camped over their holes...There is no better way to see the landscape than to be sleeping out."

Laura van Pappelendam Weeding the Garden ca. n.d. 30 x 24 inches Oil on canvas

Her other western expeditions included visits to Colorado, California and Santa Fe which she used as a base for visits to Arizona, Utah, and Nevada. A prolific artist, her works included impressionistic views of everyday life in the region as well as landscapes and flower studies.

Laura van Pappelendam Around the Birdhouse ca. 1942-44 29 x 36.5 inches Oil on canvas, mounted on board

Laura van Pappelendam's exhibition history was immense. She participated in more than 250 while teaching at the Art Institute of Chicago, the City Art Museum, St. Louis, Women Painters of America, Wichita, Kansas, the Sesquicentennial International Exhibition in Philadelphia, Women's International Exhibition, Detroit, Carnegie Institute, Pittsburgh and the Whitney Museum of American Art, Riverside Museum, and Academy of Allied Arts, all in New York among others. van Pappelendam enjoyed an extended solo show at the U.S. Embassy Residence in Dublin from 1957 to 1962.

Laura van Pappelendam Anne on the Patio ca. 1960 Oil on canvas

For additional paintings, see Laura's work on Flicker posted by her great nephew, Ben McLeod: https://www.flickr.com/photos/benmcleod/sets/2922/

Sources_________________________________________________________________

An Encyclopedia of Women Artists of the American West, Phil Kovinick and Marian Yoshiki-Kovinick, University of Texas Press, 1998, pages 316-317

Independent Spirits: Women Painters of the American West, Patricia Trenton, ed., University of California Press, 1995, pages 156, 164, 171, 172.

Laura van Pappelendam's Paintings, http://www.auntlauraspaintings.com/, retrieved May 27, 2016.

The Brutons: Sisters in Art

June 6, 2016, 1:08 pm

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The Bruton Sisters, Artists Imogen Cunningham ca 1930 Gelatin silver print Imogen Cunningham Trust

Margaret, Helen, and Esther Bruton, San Francisco Bay Area natives, lived and worked together at home, in an old-fashioned decidedly female "refuge" with an attic studio. They exhibited together, and frequently collaborated on projects. Their modernism was a combination of tradition, innovation, and experiment that enabled them to cross boundaries with style. The sisters worked in nearly every medium: easel painting and murals, mosaics both large and small, ceramics, etchings, woodcuts, and linoleum block prints.

It isn't possible to write about one without including the others as they singly and collectively contributed to the cultural life in the Bay Area .

Margaret Bruton, the eldest daughter, is often known for her landscapes, figures, graphics and murals. Although her family had lived in San Francisco, California, Margaret was born in 1894 in Brooklyn, New York, where her mother had relatives. When she was two months old, Margaret returned to California with her mother where she and her sisters Helen and Esther attended public high school. As a young girl, Margaret showed artistic talent, which prompted her art education in 1913. She began her studies at the Mark Hopkins Institute of Art in San Francisco where she learned under Frank Van Sloun. At the age of twelve she won a prize for her artwork and later earned a scholarship that enabled her to study at the Art Students League in New York City. She studied with Frank Vincent Dumond and Robert Henri.

Margaret remained in New York for four years, returning to California in 1918. Bruton worked at Letterman Hospital in San Francisco for two years until the end of the war after which she traveled south of the city to Monterey, California where she attended open-air sketching classes with Armin Hansen. By 1924, her entire family relocated to Monterey. In 1923 Bruton won a prize for a painting she exhibited at the Los Angeles Museum. In 1925 Margaret and her sisters traveled to Europe to study art and she remained in Paris, France to study at the Academie de la Grand Chaumiere for a year. When she returned to California she gave her first solo-exhibition at the Beaux Arts Gallery in San Francisco (1926). 

Margaret Bruton Barns on Cass Street  ca 1925 Oil on canvas 38 x 44 inches Monterey Museum of Art

When the Beaux Arts show traveled to Bullock's Wilshire gallery in Los Angeles the following year, the critic Arthur Miller praised the women separately and as a group. "The showing consists of paintings and drawings by Margaret, decorative scenes in silver and gold, wood engravins and drypoints by Eshter and wood-block prints by Helen, and its immediate impression is on the score of the intelligence, order and clarity of style displayed in the work of each..."

Margaret Bruton The Harmonica ca 1930-35 Oil on canvas 40 x 34 1/2  inches Collection of Teresa and Eric Del Piero

During 1929 she spent time in New Mexico for inspiration, discovered Native American art which led to painting Indian portraits and exhibited her works when she returned to California. She took frequent sketching trips with her mother and sisters to Nevada and Mexico. Margaret often exhibited with the California Society of Etchers, the Club Beaux Arts, the San Francisco Society of Women Artists and the San Francisco Art Association. Margaret Bruton died in California in 1983.

Bruton Sisters Peacemaker's Mural, Court of Pacifica ca 1939-40 Golden Gate International Exhibition (California World's Fair)

(Anne) Esther Bruton
Esther Bruton is best known as a skilled muralist, and for her ability to work with wood and paint. Born in Alameda, California in 1896. After attending a local public high school Esther joined her older sister Margaret in New York City. From 1917 to 1918 she studied under George Bridgeman at the Art Students League in New York. She studied commercial art at the New York School of Fine and Applied Arts. After her studies she took a position as an advertising illustrator at Lord and Taylor department store in New York.

After her return to the family home in Alameda, she worked for the prestigious I. Magnin department store as a fashion illustrator over the next seven years, while also traveling periodically with her family. In 1924 Esther spent four months in Tahiti where she lived with a friend in a grass-hut. She headed for Europe in 1925 with her sisters where they took classes in Paris at the Studio de la Grande Chaumiere. Esther ultimately gave up her job as a commercial artist in 1929 to concentrate on her Fine Art. On another trip with her family to Taos, New Mexico she sketched the Pueblo. When the family returned, Esther and her sisters gave a joint exhibition at the Beaux Arts Gallery in San Francisco in 1929. During the 1930s she continued to show her work within California where she gained critical praise and earned awards.

Esther Bruton Art in Action ca Mid twentieth century Dry point 4.4  x 3.1  inches de Young Museum, San Francisco, California

Each sister had unique talents and Esther’s was her ability to work with wood and paint. She made painted screens and was a skilled muralist. One of her commissions included the circus-theme murals in the cocktail lounge at the Fairmount Hotel in San Francisco. Esther was selected chairman of the jury for the fifty-seventh Annual Exhibition of the San Francisco Art Association at the San Francisco Museum of Art in 1937. She remained an active member of the California Society of Etchers and also the San Francisco Art Association in her later years.

Helen Bruton had intended to be a sculptor but turned instead to woodblock printing and engraving. She later became known for her mosaic murals. Born and raised in Alameda, California, Helen attended the University of California, Berkeley where she majored in Art.

During World War I, she worked with her sisters in occupational therapy at the Letterman Hospital in San Francisco. In 1920 she moved to New York to take classes at the Art Students League for one year under sculptors Sterling Calder and Leo Lentelli. She joined her sisters in Europe to study art, mainly in Paris.

Returning home, Helen became interested in California-Spanish architecture. She was commissioned by tile producer McBean and Company to create mosaic panels for the Mudd Memorial Library at the University of Southern California. In 1929 Helen and her mother, along with sisters Margaret and Esther, traveled to New Mexico where all three young women painted and sketched. When they returned they held a joint exhibition at the Beaux Arts Gallery in San Francisco. Helen also exhibited at the California Society of Etchers and the Progressive California Painters in 1934. She later worked with her sister Margaret on a WPA project for the Fleishacker Park in San Francisco. The sisters designed and implemented the two mosaic panels that were the first tile mosaics to be done in San Francisco by local artists. Helen later received a commission from the University of California Berkeley to create mosaic panels to adorn the University Art Gallery (1936).

Florence Swift and Helen Bruton  Left: Music and Painting - Right: Sculpture and Dance ca 1936 Mosaics-Byzantine Style 18  x 10 feet  UC Berkeley Old Art Gallery

Helen Bruton died in Monterey, California in 1985.

The following murals created by the Margaret, Esther, and Helen, on the Mother’s Building at the San Francisco Zoo were projects for the WPA. 

Bruton Sisters Mosaic ca 1934 San Francisco Zoo

Detail of St. Francis Mosaic, ca 1934 San Francisco Zoo

Individually and collectively, these three artists created a tremendous body of work that was dynamic and experimental, unconventional and intelligent. Their work remains an important contribution to the fabric of the San Francisco Bay Area .

Sources_________________________________________________________Phil Kovinick and Marian Yoshiki Kovinick, An Encyclopedia of Women Artists of the American West, University of Texas Press, Austin, 1998, p. 34.Marian Wardle, ed., American Women Modernists, The Legacy of Robert Henri, 1910-1945, Rutgers University Press, New Jersey, London, 2005, pages, 47-51.WPA Murals.com, The Bruton Sisters, http://www.wpamurals.com/bruton.htm, retrieved June 6, 2016. askart.com, The Bruton Sisters, Bruton Sisters WPA Mural at the San Francisco Zoo, http://www.artandarchitecture-sf.com/bruton-sisters-wpa-mural-at-the-san-francisco-zoo.html, retrieved June 6, 2016.Helen Bruton's Tile Murals at the Golden West Hotel, http://www.artandarchitecture-sf.com/tag/tile-art, retrieved June 6, 2016. 

Evelyn J. Cameron: Rugged Outdoors-woman and Photographer

June 30, 2016, 11:42 am

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Evelyn J. Cameron ca. 1921 Terry, Montana Website

Evelyn J. Cameron was a pioneer photographer and rancher who lived in eastern Montana during the early years of the twentieth century. An rancher and rugged outdoors-woman, Cameron photographed documentary images and portraits of life, acquaintances, and family near her ranch from 1894 until her death .A witness to the end of the open range and the height of the railroad, her photographs are a highlight of Western photography and a window into life in the West during that period. 

Evelyn J. Cameron Heading Flax ca. 1913 Terry, Montana Website

Evelyn Jephson Flower was born August 26, 1868, near Streatham, England. The Flower family was tied to England's elite--her half brother Cyril Flower became Lord Battersea in 1892. Ewen Somerled Cameron was born in 1854 in Scotland, to a genteel, but penniless family. Evelyn married Ewen in the fall of 1889 and they spent their honeymoon in Montana. The couple relocated to the state in 1893 to breed and train polo ponies which, unfortunately, was an unsuccessful venture. She and her husband were part of small British group of colonists looking to prosper from ranch life. Cameron enjoyed the rugged Western lifestyle and its demands. Her chores included milking cows, churning butter, cooking meals, raising pet coyotes and wolves, laundry, and gardening (a potato harvest would weigh in at 2000 pounds). She broke horses, went on two-month hunting trips in the winter, butchered game, and pursued photography. 

Evelyn J. Cameron Ewen Cameron with pet wolves ca. 1908

In addition to the polo pony business, Ewen Cameron was interested in Montana wildlife, especially birds. He became a noted ornithologist, published several articles in various British science magazines and spent many years on a book describing birds of the western United States. Evelyn Cameron photographed wildlife and birds in addition to illustrating her husband's articles on birding and outdoor life. She photographed the badlands and bluffs of eastern Montana, but is best known for her straightforward and authentic views of ranch life. 

Evelyn J. Cameron with wolf pup Montana Historical Society

Photography helped to relieve some of the loneliness of living on the plains. It provided much needed income, allowed Evelyn to work with Ewen on his wildlife studies and provided an opportunity for meeting and learning about her neighbors. Her photographs captured the experiences of men and women on the plains of Eastern Montana in starkly vivid and candid terms. Cowboys, women, ranchers, farmers, children, itinerant workers, sheep herders, and the stark landscape all found their way into her photos. Her work was carried in magazines throughout the country. 

Evelyn J. Cameron 1928 Diary Page Montana Memory Project

Cameron kept a series of diaries (35 in total) that chronicle her daily life including the books she read, chores, lists of letters both written and received, local and national events, photographs taken, social activities,verbatim copies of special letters, and weather. The diaries also include minutiae that reveal not only the fabric of her own life but that of many women living in eastern Montana at the time.  For example, her diaries include bits of information such as the number of eggs gathered and chickens killed per month; notes on the amount of butter she churned; methods of skinning a coyote and  breaking a horse; accounts of money made from her photos and garden produce; lists of supplies; and Evelyn’s favorite poems and quotes. 

Evelyn J. Cameron Sheepshearers ca. n.d. Terry, Montana Website

In 1914, Ewen became ill and had to be taken to Pasadena, California, to receive treatment for cancer. He died the following year and was buried in California. Evelyn, contrary to the requests of her family, returned to Fallon to run the ranch by herself where she continued her photography for the remainder of her life. She died in 1928 at age 60 following an operation for appendicitis. Evelyn Cameron is buried in Terry, Montana.

Opportunties to see more of Evelyn J. Cameron's work can be found at the Prairie County Museum and Evelyn Cameron Gallery, 101 S. Logan Ave., Terry, MT and the Evelyn Cameron Heritage Center, 204 Laundre Ave., Terry, MT 

Sources_______________________________________________________________________
Montana Memory Project, Evelyn Cameron Diaries, http://cdm15018.contentdm.oclc.org/cdm/landingpage/collection/p16013coll11, retrieved June 30, 2016.
Terry, Montana, http://visitterrymt.com/website/EvelynCameronStory.htm, retrieved June 30, 2016.
Archives West: Orbis Cascade Alliance, Evelyn J. Cameron and Ewen S. Cameron Papers, 1893-1929, http://archiveswest.orbiscascade.org/ark:/80444/xv71834, retrieved June 30, 2016.

Olinka Hrdy: Abstract Painter and Muralist

September 6, 2016, 11:17 am

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Olinka Hrdy

Olinka Hrdy exemplifies the female artist who was not only well-known during her lifetime, but worked extensively and was respected by major artists and architects of the day. She was a risk-taker and an artist who worked in a genre that was not mainstream in her native Oklahoma. Hrdy's star has, unfortunately, faded into near obscurity.

Olinka Hrdy is one of Oklahoma's first modern artists. She was born in 1902 near a small Czechoslovakian settlement in Prague, Oklahoma, fifty-three miles east of Oklahoma City. She considered herself a 'soddy,' that is one who was born and grew up in a sod house, a successor to the log cabin found during frontier settlement in Canada and the United States. Olinka, Czech for "Olive," was of Czechoslovakian descent. After her parents divorced, she and her mother worked a large Indian lease which is land owned by Native Americans but leased to whites for agriculture. They tilled several hundred acres on their own. She remained there until she left to attend the University of Oklahoma.

Hrdy was a talented crafts woman and earned additional money throughout high school doing embroidery, a traditional Czech art. With only fifty dollars to see her through the entirety of her schooling at the University of Oklahoma, she originally enrolled in the domestic art department, but within weeks was doing so well that she was made a student instructor. Since Hrdy became bored in a craft with which she already excelled, she decided to enroll in the art department the following year. When her instructors found that she had no funds to buy supplies or clothing and recognizing her talent, they arranged for her to work on a mural in one of their offices based on a poem entitled, "Maker of Dreams." 

Olinka Hrdy Development of the Body Mural Oklahoma City University Law School South Wall

Although Hrdy wanted to continue her studies, lack of money was a critical issue. Befriended by the faculty, another of her professors arranged again for her to work on painting a series of twenty doors measuring two by sixteen feet at the state dormitories for women at the campus of the university which covered her room and board for the year. The doors were eventually removed and relocated to a museum in Tulsa Oklahoma.

Hrdy produced murals for architect Bruce Goff's Riverside Studio in Tulsa. Goff designed the studio for his music teacher and commissioned Hrdy, a student at the University of Oklahoma,to create murals for the walls. The murals signified various forms of music: primitive, vocal, piano, symphonic, choral, string, and modern. Five feet wide and 13 feet long, the paintings decorated the studio’s recital hall, situated above the air vents and running the length of the wall until they met the ceiling. As you can see from the above image, the murals were an experiment in composition and color.

Olinka Hrdy Painting a mural in Goff's Studio Tulsa, Oklahoma

Architect and artist Frank Lloyd Wright was also a fan of her work and he invited her to paint murals in Taliesin East in Spring Green, Wisconsin.

A prolific artist from the 1920s to the 1960s, Hrdy is not particularly well-known in the art world today.  Few of her sketches, small paintings, and graphic design work remain, and most are held in collections by the Fred Jones Jr. Museum of Art in Norman, Oklahoma. Olinka Hrdy enjoyed a few years of acclaim before fading her renown faded. She worked as an industrial designer after World War II, diagramming blueprints for radios and radio cabinets, waste baskets, clothes hampers, and even the interior of a private airplane, but she has received little historical recognition for her work. A retrospective of her work was mounted three years ago at the Fred Jones Jr. Museum in Norman which exposed new generations to the beauty of her style. 

Catalogue for Hrdy Oklahoma Moderne Exhibition Fred Jones Jr. Museum of Art ca. 2013 University of Oklahoma, Norman Oklahoma

In addition, Hrdy didn’t sell much work during her lifetime. The market in which she worked didn’t support her style of art, and much of it was considered decoration, rather than fine art. Her gender and being from Oklahoma also seemed to create obstacles in her work. Hrdy and Goff collaborated again in 1930 when Goff was asked to redesign the interior Tulsa’s unattractive and outdated Convention Hall—the historic structure now known as the Brady Theater. Goff asked Hrdy to design a 50-foot long asbestos fire curtain for the stage and a mural for the entrance. Both of these works have either disappeared or been destroyed, but, at the time, they solidified Hrdy’s understanding of abstraction and her position as a modern artist.

“That type of abstract art in the 1920s and ’30s was not going to play well in places like Oklahoma, nor even in Chicago, and L.A., and she spent the majority of her career in California. It isn’t until the post-WWII period that the type of abstraction she’s producing has an audience in those areas states Mark White, curator of Norman, Oklahoma's Fred Jones Jr.'s Museum of Art. 

Olinka Hrdy Good Earth ca. 1938 Lithograph 11 3/4 x 16.5 inches Illinois State Museum Collection

The fact that Hrdy has lagged in scholarly attention has hurt her reputation as well-yet, she was innovative, creative, and forward-thinking in terms of her art and design. An in-depth exploration of her life and work will certainly expose how important the work she created, especially during her years in Oklahoma, really is.

Olinka Hrdy passed away at the age of 85 years old. She spent the last twenty years of her life back in Prague, Oklahoma, enjoying local celebrity status but creating little artwork. Tragically, few pieces of her work remain, or have yet to be brought forward if it is in the hands of private collectors, that Hrdy seems to be an enigma-waiting to be rediscovered.

Olinka HrdyDevelopment of the Mind Mural Oklahoma City University Law School North Wall

Olinka Hrdy Deep Sea Magic ca. 1939 Mural Long Beach School District

Sources_________________________________________________________

Oral History with Olinka Hrdy, 1965, Betty Hoag, interviewer, Smithsonian Archives of American Art, http://www.aaa.si.edu/collections/interviews/oral-history-interview-olinka-hrdy-12581, retrieved 9/1/16.

This Land, Lost Olinka, Holly Wall,  http://thislandpress.com/2011/09/20/lost-olinka/, retrieved 9/2/16.

Splurge Magazine, OKC, http://splurgeokc.com/olinka-hrdy/, retrieved 9/6/2016.

Design Matters, https://fsb-ae-blog.com/2014/09/16/divergent-view-3/, retrieved 9/6/16

Fred Jones Jr. Museum of Art, Norman Oklahoma, http://www.ou.edu/content/fjjma/visit.html

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Mary Elizabeth Colter: American Architect and Designer

November 2, 2016, 1:01 pm

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Once again, the beginning of the school year took over my life for a couple of months. Now that we have settled into a routine, I have some time to continue the exploration of the cache of incredible female artists, photographers, and architects of which you are unfamiliar!

Mary Elizabeth Colter

Let's examine the compelling life and work of Mary Elizabeth Colter, an architect and designer working during the early twentieth century in the West. Colter was one of the few female American architects in her day. She was the designer of a number landmark buildings and spaces for the Fred Harvey Company and the Santa Fe Railroad, notably in Grand Canyon National Park. Colter's work had enormous influence as she helped to create a style that blended Spanish Colonial Revival and Mission Revival architecture with Native American motifs and rustic elements, that became popular throughout the Southwest.

Born in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, to William H. Colter, an Irish immigrant, and Rebecca Crozier, she moved with her family to Colorado and to Texas before settling down in St. Paul, Minnesota, which she considered to be her home. Colter graduated from high school in St. Paul at the age of 14.  After her father died in 1886, Colter attended the California School of Design (now the San Francisco Art Institute), and apprenticed with a local architectural firm. She then taught art, drafting, and architecture in St. Paul for some years, at the Mechanic Arts High School for fifteen years and lectured at the University Extension School.

In 1901, Colter met Minnie Harvey Huckel, daughter of founder Fred Harvey, owner of the well-known rail stop Harvey House restaurants and pioneer of cultural tourism. The 46-year relationship with Harvey began with her task to decorate the Indian Building at the Alvarado Hotel in Albuquerque (unfortunately, since demolished).

Colter designed the interior of the museum at the Alvarado Hotel, pictured in the center of the above photo, known as the Indian Building.

Colter began working full-time for the Fred Harvey Company in 1910, promoted from the role of interior designer to architect. For the next 38 years, she served as chief architect and decorator for the company, often working in rugged conditions to complete 21 landmark hotels, commercial lodges, and public spaces for the Fred Harvey Company, by that time, run by the founder's sons. She and the Harvey Company civilized travel across the Southwest by providing what it lacked-restaurant efficiency, palatable food, clean-cut and primly dressed pretty young women, high-end tourism, and quality souvenirs. Anthropologists on his staff located Native American art and artifacts such as pottery, jewelry, and leather work and merchandisers designed goods based on those artifacts. In strategic locations, Colter produced commercial architecture with striking decor based on concern for authenticity, floor plans were calculated for smooth user experience and commercial function and she employed a playful sense of the dramatic inside and out.

Travel pamphlets designed by Mary Elizabeth Colter

The Santa Fe railroad bought the La Fonda hotel on the plaza of the old city of Santa Fe, New Mexico, in 1925 and leased it to the Harvey Company to operate. For a major expansion, Colter was assigned to do the interior design and decoration. She hired artists and artisans from the nearby pueblos to make the furniture. Native American styles were employed in hand-crafted chandeliers, copper and tin lighting fixtures, tiles and textiles, and other ornamentation. La Fonda became the most successful of the Harvey House hotels with its striking blend of Pueblo and Spanish artistic influences, today known as the Santa Fe Style.

Mary Elizabeth Colter Hopi House Grand Canyon, South Rim ca. 1905

Mary Elizabeth Colter The Watchtower, with its construction hoist still attached, circa 1933 ca. Begun 1932

Colter created a series of remarkable works in the Grand Canyon National Park, most located on the South Rim: the 1905 Hopi House, the 1914 Hermit's Rest and observatory Lookout Studio, and the 1932 Desert View Watchtower, a 70-foot tall rock tower with a hidden steel structure, as well as the 1935 Bright Angel Lodge complex, and the 1922 Phantom Ranch buildings at the bottom of the canyon. Colter decorated, but did not design, the park's El Tovar Hotel. In 1987, the Mary Jane Colter Buildings, as a group, were listed as a National Historic Landmark. (She also designed the 1936 Victor Hall for men, and the 1937 Colter Hall, a dormitory for Fred Harvey's women employees.)

Colter worked in a wide array of styles including Pueblo Revival, Spanish Colonial Revival, Mission Revival architecture, Streamline Moderne, American Craftsman, and Arts and Crafts Movement styles, often synthesizing several together evocatively. In addition, Colter's work is credited with inspiring the Pueblo Deco style. She was one of the first architects to give buildings a site-specific sense of place.  

Mary Elizabeth Colter Art Deco Ashtray Design

Colter was a chain-smoking, Stetson-wearing dynamo, a tough-minded woman in a man's world who knew how to negotiate for and insist on what was most important to her. The architect was a stickler for authentic materials and motifs, which she deployed with theatrical flair. cIn an economic climate where Colter's male counterparts earned up to ten times more for their efforts, her career was quite successful. Harvey was an innovative tourism entrepreneur who also tapped into the postcard publishing business that featured photographs of his 84 hospitality facilities, those "Harvey Houses," which went a long way to expose Colter's work to the general public. Many of her female contemporaries, including those who were apprenticed with the equality-minded and internationally famous Frank Lloyd Wright did not fare as well.

Though operated by the Fred Harvey company, the buildings Colter designed were built and owned by the Santa Fe Railway, which produced construction blueprints based on Colter's floor plans and elevation drawings. The Santa Fe Railroad's chief architect, E.A. Harrison, signed off on her work, which later may have unfairly diminished her role. While sometimes referred to as the company decorator, she always called herself (correctly) "Harvey architect and decorator."

By the early 1960s, Mary Colter was virtually unknown. In recent years books about her have brought her name back into the consciousness as a brilliant American place-maker. The art critic Robert Hughes once called Colter "one of the pioneers of the American theme-park mentality." This is somewhat true—in some ways she was a precursor to Disney, an architect of entertainment. But her holistic approach to design and construction makes lavish popular theme parks seem like superficial hodgepoge. Like the centerpiece castle in Disneyland, Colter's Watchtower was a composite of several sources; however, unlike Snow White's castle, the Watchtower could be mistaken for an actual artifact from the past.

Mary Colter retired to Santa Fe, New Mexico in 1948. Four of her Grand Canyon National Park buildings are protected within the Mary Jane Colter National Historic Landmark District, 11 are on the National Register of Historic Places. 

Mary Colter, ca. 1919

For more information about her Grand Canyon structures, see https://www.nps.gov/nr/feature/wom/2001/colter.htm, National Park Service Women's History Month entry. 

Sources___________________________________________________________________

San Diego Reader, Pioneering Women Architects of the Wild West,  Ruth Newell, June 7, 2011,  http://www.sandiegoreader.com/weblogs/roody2shoes/2011/jun/07/pioneering-women-architects-of-the-wild-west/#, accessed November 2, 2016.

Curbed, Meet Mary Colter The Architect Who Conjured the Romance of the American West, Jeff Book,  http://www.curbed.com/2015/7/29/9936432/mary-colter-architect, July 29, 2015, accessed November 2, 2016.

Friends of BNSF Railway Company, https://www.friendsofbnsf.com/content/mary-colter, accessed November 2, 2016.

Irene Lentz: Fashion and Style Icon during Hollywood's Golden Age

December 6, 2016, 11:39 am

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With all the craziness since the beginning of the school year, I completely missed Women out West's third birthday last month! So, thank you for joining me as we continue to honor the talented women who have added such richness to our lives.

     Along the way we have explored female painters, sculptors, photographers, quilters and architects. Time to give a nod to women artists who braved the early entertainment business. It’s a tough venue in which to work and I can assure you from experience, just getting the proverbial “foot in the door” is a real challenge.

Irene Lentz Pictured with original designs Los Angeles, California

     There is an enormous range of artistic areas in which to work in show business; everything from animation, which includes storyboard artists and inkers, make-up, scene painters, set designers and dressers and costume designers. Most people with even a cursory knowledge of film costume designers are familiar with the names Edith Head and Bob Mackie. Unfortunately, few have ever heard of Irene Lentz, a twice-Oscar-nominated designer with a seemingly charmed career that ended in tragedy when she leaped to her death from her room at Hollywood's Knickerbocker Hotel in 1962. 

Irene at a fitting

     Born in Baker, Montana, Lentz began her Hollywood career as a silent film actress at age 20 appearing in supporting roles in silent films with Mack Sennett as early as 1921. She appeared as an ingénue in roles opposite Sennett's leading comedians, Ben Turpin and Billy Bevan. Her first film was directed by Sennett's production chief, F. Richard Jones and their professional relationship matured into a personal one. They had been married for less than a year when Jones perished, most likely due to tuberculosis which was rampant in Los Angeles in the 1930s. After his death, Irene Lentz left for Europe where she discovered couture.

Frank Richard JonesAmerican Director and Producer Husband of Irene Lentz ca 1919

     Lentz had been sewing since childhood and, with a gift for style, she opened a small dress shop on the USC campus in Los Angeles. After her husband's death and her return from Europe, she opened another boutique at 9000 Sunset Boulevard where she built a following among wealthy women. Those influential clients included MGM chief Louis B. Mayer's daughters Irene and Edith and a celebrity clientele that would embody Marilyn Monroe, Ava Gardner, and Carole Lombard. Bullocks, a now defunct but high-end department store in Los Angeles, offered Lentz the opportunity to open her own custom design shop at the store. As a costume designer, her first big film break came when she designed the wardrobe for the 1933 film Flying Down to Rio.

     Lentz remembers, the day Mayer called. "I thought maybe he wanted me to design wardrobe for some pictures," instead, he offered her the job as head of MGM's costume department, replacing the well-known Gilbert Adrian, who was leaving to start his own fashion line. During her tenure, Lentz (who had by then closed her shop at Bullocks) clashed with Mayer. "It was not easy for her," says fashion writer Mary Hall, founder of The Recessionista blog, who has researched Lentz's life. "She had conflicts with Mayer because she wanted quality in design. Mayer's top priority was economy in design." In addition to work pressures, her second marriage to screenwriter Eliot Gibbons (brother of MGM head art director Cedric Gibbons) was said to be an unhappy one.

Ginger Rogers in Irene Shall We DanceRKO Radio Pictures ca 1937

     Billing herself simply as "Irene," her first work was on the 1933 film, Goldie Gets Along, featuring her own designs for star, Lily Damita. Lentz was also hired to create the gowns for Ginger Rogers on the 1937 film Shall We Dance with Fred Astaire. This was followed by additional designs in another Rogers’ film as well as work for other independents such as Walter Wanger Productions, Hal Roach Studios and major studios RKO, Paramount and Columbia Pictures. During the 1930s, Irene Lentz designed the film wardrobe for leading ladies such as Constance Bennett, Hedy Lamarr, Joan Bennett, Claudette Colbert, Carole Lombard, Ingrid Bergman, and Loretta Young among others.

Ava Gardner The Postman Always Rings Twice Metro-Goldwyn-Mayerca 1946

     Lentz not only costumed Hollywood's Golden Age stars for the big screen, famously putting Lana Turner in then-scandalous high-waist shorts with a midriff-baring top in 1946's The Postman Always Rings Twice, she also dressed them in life. Her signature Irene clothing line was one of only two to have its own salon at the Bullocks Wilshire department store in the 1930s and '40s (Coco Chanel had the other). But since her death, until fairly recently, Lentz has been largely forgotten. "She is the most celebrated costume designer nobody has heard of," says TV and movie costume designer Greg LaVoi, who is in process of writing a book about her.

Doris Day in Irene ca 1960

     Her close friend Doris Day, whom Lentz dressed in the early ’60s films Lover Come Back and Midnight Lace, still remembers her fondly. "She was such a talented designer, and I loved everything she did for me," Day tells THR. "She knew exactly what I liked, and when we did a film, we didn't even have to discuss my wardrobe because she knew what I would wear." Lentz was revered for her dresses in ultrafine silk soufflé, luxurious bias-cut chiffon gowns and kick-pleated day skirts. Her looks represented a new wave of modern American dressing: wide swingy trousers with elegant silk blouses, tailored suits cut to hug a woman's curves, with hand stitching and exquisite buttons. "Her tailoring flattered a woman's figure," says Doris Raymond, owner of L.A. consignment store The Way We Wore.

Irene Lentz Design Dinner dress of  bianchini black crepe

     By the end of the ’40s, Lentz wanted out of MGM. After leaving MGM, she founded her own fashion line and sold that line in 20 of the biggest department stores in America in the 1950s. including Bergdorf Goodman and Neiman Marcus, to relaunch her line at a more mass-market level. "It was marketing genius. Upscale stores could offer clients the Irene garments that stars loved," says Hall. "Today, that would be similar to how someone like [designer] Janie Bryant has leveraged Mad Men to design a fashion line for Banana Republic. Except Irene was a fashion designer before she was hired by the studios."

Irene Lentz Design

     If her career sounds like a Hollywood movie, the ending is a real tear-jerker. On Nov. 15, 1962, days after her latest show received rave reviews and three weeks short of her sixty-first birthday, Lentz checked into the Knickerbocker in Hollywood under an assumed name. (The now-closed hotel has a history of tragedy: Actress Frances Farmer was arrested there before her institutionalization, and I Love Lucy's William Frawley was dragged there to die after he had a heart attack on the street.)

Hollywood Knickerbocker Hotel 1714 Ivar and Hollywood Boulevard ca 1940s

     There is some question as to what drove her to such despair. In her 1975 autobiography, Doris Day wrote that Lentz had spoken of a longtime love for the actor Gary Cooper who was married, but known for his many affairs and had died the year before. Other factors surely played their parts as well: her husband's ill health following a series of strokes, her alcoholism and an incident (recounted by client Barbara Sinatra in her autobiography) in which Lentz suffered facial paralysis after falling asleep with her face under an electric blanket.

     Lentz jumped to her death from her bathroom window where she landed on the awning of the lobby entrance and was not discovered until the following morning. Lentz left suicide notes for friends and family, for her ailing husband, and for the hotel residents, apologizing for any inconvenience her death might cause. As per her wishes, Lentz is interred next to her first husband, F. Richard Jones, at the Forest Lawn Memorial Park Cemetery in Glendale, California.

Sadly, her line closed a few years after her death. But Lentz no doubt would be pleased to see her designs coming back into style. Says Day: "I can see why there is interest in her today. I often hear from fans telling me how much they loved my wardrobes in films, and I can thank Irene for that. Her designs are truly timeless."

Marlene Dietrich in Irene The Lady is Willing Columbia Pictures ca 1942

Doris Day in Irene Midnight Lace Ross Hunter Universal-International ca 1960

Now, 51 years after her suicide at age 61, Lentz's designs have a new group of admirers including Tory Burch who wore a Lentz creation on the NYC charity circuit, and for 2010's The Tourist, costume designer Colleen Atwood, who dressed Angelina Jolie in a caramel shawl and ivory sheath based on an Irene look. "I have always been enamored of the refinement of her eye," says Atwood. Her most enthusiastic fan is the aforementioned Greg LaVoi. During the run of TNT's The Closer, he dressed star Kyra Sedgwick in 60-year-old suits, and in spring of 2013, relaunched the Irene line with the consent of her family. Irene items come up for sale occasionally at The Way We Wore and Melrose Avenue's Decades and are priced from $1,800 to $3,800. It's a wonderful tribute to a legendary designer!

Irene Lentz

sources__________________________________________________________________________

1. http://articles.latimes.com/2014/feb/17/image/la-ig-irene-20140216, retrieved December 2, 2016

2. Colette, Californian Elegance, February 2011, https://blog.colettehq.com/inspiration/irene-californian-elegance, retrieved December 2, 2016

3. http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/news/irene-lentz-costume-designers-chic-430898, retrieved December 2, 2016

Vintage Style Files, The California Elegance of Irene Lentz, January 2014, 4. http://www.bluevelvetvintage.com/vintage_style_files/2014/01/06/the-california-elegance-of-irene-lentz/, retrieved December 2, 2016

5. The Hollywood Reporter Remembers Irene, Mary Hall, 2013, http://therecessionista.com/the-hollywood-reporter-remembers-irene-lentz/?doing_wp_cron=1481046590.9050979614257812500000, retrieved December 5, 2016

Una Hanbury: Sculptress Extraordinaire

March 16, 2017, 1:13 pm

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Una Hanbury Lioness and Cubs ca. 1984 Bronze Rio Grande Zoo Albuquerque Public Art Program Albuquerque, New Mexico

After a long and unintended break from exploring talented women artists in history, let's check out sculptor Una Hanbury (1904-1990). I connect with her because, as I have done, Hanbury had several careers and even lived in Washington, D.C. before she ended up out West...as an artist.

Una Hanbury Phoenix Rising from Ashes Bronze ca. n.d.

Hanbury was born Una Rawnsley in Middlesex, England in 1904, and grew up primarily in Kent County, UK. Her grandfather was Hardwicke Rawnsley, a Church of England clergyman, poet, hymn writer, local politician, and conservationist. He was also one of the founders of the National Trust. 

Hanbury exhibited artistic talent when she was quite young and received instruction from animal artist Frank Calderon. When she reached fourteen years old, she attended the London Polytechnic School of Art after which she studied for three years at the Royal Academy of Fine Arts. Sir Jacob Epstein, an American sculptor who championed many concepts central to the modernist sculpture movement was her most influential teacher. During this period, Hanbury learned the art of stone cutting on the Italian island of Capri.

Una Hanbury married her first husband, Anthony H.R.C. Hanbury, a stockbroker, in 1926, and retired from her art career to raise a family. She later divorced Hanbury, left England with the children at the outbreak of World War II, and settled in Bermuda in 1940. Hanbury relocated to Washington D.C. in 1944 to work for the British Embassy. After the war she became a real estate broker and general contractor until she married again in 1957 to Alan Cotsworth Brown. 

Una Hanbury Lying Horse Foal Bronze ca. n.d.

After some time in Canada, she resumed her artistic endeavors and studied painting at the Academie de la Grande Chaumiere, Academie Julian, and L'Atelier de Vieux, located in Paris. Her interest in sculpture was stimulated by a piece she created while using her youngest stepdaughter as a model. When she returned to Washington in 1961, she had to address personal and professional issues before exploring sculpture as her medium of choice. 

Beginning in the mid-1960s until 1982 or '83, Hanbury produced an impressive body of work in bronze, cast aluminum, stone, terracotta, and marble. 

Georgia O'Keeffe posing for Una Hanbury ca. 1967 Unidentified Photographer

Una Hanbury Bust of Rachel Carson ca. 1965 National Portrait Gallery, Smithsonian Institution Washington, D.C.

Hanbury resumed her sculpting career, completing a number of large-scale commissions for public buildings such as the Medical Examiners Building, Baltimore, and St. Mark's Lutheran Church, Springfield, Virginia. She developed a fine reputation as a portrait sculptor, and commissions included busts of Rachel Carson, Enrico Fermi, Buckminster Fuller, Laura Gilpin, Richard Neutra, Georgia O'Keeffe, Robert Oppenheimer, S. Dillon Ripley, and Andrés Segovia. In addition, animals--particularly horses--were a favorite subject since childhood; sculptures were commissioned by several zoos, and horse portraits often were commissioned by owners. She had solo exhibitions at the Folger Shakespeare Library and National Portrait Gallery in Washington D.C. in 1971.

Una Hanbury Circle of Three Lamas Bronze ca. 1970 Potomac School, Washington, D.C.

In 1970, Una Hanbury relocated to Santa Fe, New Mexico, where she continued working well into old age and became a significant force in the art life of that region. Her western themes included animals, both domestic and wild and Native Americans.

Una Hanbury Navajo Land Bronze ca. n.d.

Hanbury exhibited in shows at the Royal Academy, London; Salon d'Automne, Paris; Religious Art Commission, Washington, D.C.; Mostra d'Arte Moderna, Camaiore, Italy; NAD; National Arts Club, New York; and National Cowboy Hall of Fame, Oklahoma City. Her papers are in the Smithsonian Archives of American Art.

Sources__________________________________________________________________
An Encyclopedia of Women Artists of the American West, Phil Kovinick and Marion Yoshiki-Kovinick, University of Texas Press, Austin, 1998, p. 125.
The Potomac School, https://www.potomacschool.org/about-us/100-plus-years, retrieved March 16, 2017.
Public Art Archive, http://www.publicartarchive.org/work/lioness-and-cubs, retrieved March 16, 2017.

Ethel Magafan: American Muralist and Painter of Abstract Western Landscapes

May 8, 2017, 12:36 pm

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Jenne (left) and Ethel (right) Magafan ca. n.d.

Ethel Magafan and her sister Jenne were identical twins, born in Chicago, Illinois in 1915 to Petros Magafan, a Greek immigrant father and Julia (Bronick) their Polish mother. Due to their father's health concerns, the family moved to Colorado, where the landscape reminded Petros of his native village in Greece. The family lived in Colorado Springs and then in Denver from 1931-1934. The twins both wanted to become artists and were supported by both teachers and family members. Unfortunately, Petros died suddenly in 1932, a tragic loss for both of the girls. 

The twins attended East High School in Denver, where they found a mentor in their art teacher Helen Perry. She had studied at the Art Institute of Chicago and her background made her uniquely qualified to help the girls in their pursuit of an art career.

 In 1936, Jenne won the Carter Memorial Art Scholarship and shared it with her sister so that they both could attend the Broadmoor Art Academy in Colorado Springs. Once they ran out of money, Mechau, now teaching there, hired them as assistants. Through their involvement at the Academy, the twins entered into careers as muralists, working at first with Mechau and then with Peppino Mangravite.

From 1937 to 1943, Ethel was commissioned to paint her first of seven government sponsored murals. Located in the US Post Office in Auburn, Nebraska, this commission made Ethel (at age 26) the youngest artist in America to receive such an honor. Denver Art Museum director Donald J. Bear once commented that "[Ethel and Jenne's] study of local detail makes them appear as little Bruegels of ranch genre - natural and unforced."

Ethel Magafan Andrew Jackson at the Battle of New Orleans, January 8, 1814 ca. 1943 Mural Recorder of Deeds Building, Washington, D.C.

Other New Deal Works Progress Adminstration (WPA) murals included the US Senate Chamber, the Recorder Deeds Building, and the Social Security Building in Washington, D.C. which Ethel painted with her sister. One of her earliest submissions to the Treasury Department Section of Fine Arts was a study of The Lawrence Massacre for the Post Office of Fort Scott, Kansas. The subject was a tragic event in the town but was not accepted as a design at the time. Magafan realized that she needed to work with government bureaucracy in order to have her ideas accepted and focused her subjects on local agriculture and industry. She included subtle references that pushed against the limitations of subject matter in her work such as including Black workers depicted in a noble light during a period of segregation in the South for a mural in the Wynne Post Office in Arkansas.

Ethel Magafan The Cotton Pickers ca. 1940 Oil on Canvas Post Office, Wynne, Arkansas

During the World War II era, the sisters would frequently drive across the country together in their station wagon to research and complete art assignments. They were thrifty as they saved gas coupons and used re-treaded tires in order to secure their work.

Ethel Magafan at Palisades Reservoir, Minidoka Project, Idaho.

As mural painting commissions diminished, Ethel began to do more easel painting for which she used a palette knife and tempera paints to great effect. Ethel earned her first solo exhibition in 1940 at the Gallery of Contemporary Art in New York. She and her sister collaborated to create seven joint exhibits during the course of their careers. While working together, yet maintaining their own artistic styles, the sisters were able to avoid the competitive nature of business and respect each other's abilities.

Phil Fitzpatrick, Ethel Magafan, Bruce Currie, Cecile Forman. Photograph by Adrian Siegel. Courtesy of WAAM Archives.

After living in Los Angeles, California for five years and briefly in Wyoming, the twins relocated to the art colony at Woodstock, New York in 1945, where the sisters lived and worked apart for the first time. Ethel began working in a style that evolved from the literal to the semi abstract and from figurative studies to landscapes. She met fellow artist Bruce Currie at an artist's party, and the two were married in 1946.

Ethel Magafan Corralled Horse ca. 1947 Etching, pencil signed and titled, lower margin 10 x 14 inches

Both sisters were awarded Fullbright Scholarships and Tiffany Foundation Awards which allowed Ethel to go to Greece and Jenne to Italy.In 1952, almost immediately upon their return to the U.S., Jenne died suddenly of a cerebral hemorrhage, a loss that Ethel would mourn deeply. With her sister gone, her landscapes became much more abstract, as she sought out the feeling of the scene rather than an exact representation. She ignored the rules for color and explored simplicity and open space in her work.

Ethel Magafan Canyon Cascade Tempera on canvas 96.5 inches highx48.5 inches wide

In 1956, Ethel gave birth to a daughter, Jenne Magafan Currie, named after her sister. During the mid-fifties, Ethel began to make annual trips to Colorado to sketch and find inspiration. She was elected an Academician of the National Academy of Design in 1968 and taught art throughout the 1970s at both the University of Georgia and Syracuse University in New York. Her stature within the art world was solidified in 1971 when the United States Department of Interior requested that Ethel tour and draw sketches throughout the Western U.S. These sketches were later exhibited at the National Gallery in Washington and then sent on a national tour by the Smithsonian Institution.

Ethel's last mural "Grant in the Wilderness" was installed at the Chancellorsville Visitor's Center at the Fredericksburg National Military Park, Virginia, in 1979. From 1962 until her death in 1993, she had an impressive 19 solo gallery shows. Ethel Magafan died at her home in Woodstock from a series of strokes in 1993. In a later Woodstock Times interview, her husband stated "if there was one word for Ethel, it would be warmth, because there was never a person or an animal with a broken wing or broken heart she didn't try to help."

Ethel Magafan Gibson Dam on the Sun River Project, Montana ca. n.d. 27 x 53 inches

Ethel Magafan was a member of the American Watercolor Society, Audubon Artists Incorporated, the National Academy of Design, Woodstock Artists Association and the WPA/Federal Arts Project.The recipient of a number of awards including the Fullbright Grant, Tiffany Fellowship, Hallmark and Ranger Awards, Purchase and Altman Prize, the Audubon Artists Medal of Honor and the Childe Hassam Purchase Award. Her work is included, but not limited to collections in the Denver Art Museum, Metropolitan Museum of Art, NY, Museum of Modern Art, NY, National Museum of American Art, Washington, D.C., Oklahoma Museum of Art, and the United States Department of the Interior. 

Sources_______________________________________________________________________-

An Encyclopedia of Women Artists of the American West, Phil Kovinick and Marian Yoshiki-Kovinick, University of Texas Press: Austin, 1998, p. 199-200. 

Sullivan Goss, An American Gallery, Ethel Magafan (1916-1993), Alish Patrick, http://www.sullivangoss.com/ethel_Magafan/, retrieved May 8, 2017.

David Cook Galleries, Ethel Magafan Ethel Magafan (1916- 1993) http://davidcookgalleries.com/artist/ethel-magafan, retrieved May 8, 2017.

Ask Art, Ethel (Currie) Magafan, http://www.askart.com/artist/Ethel_Currie_Magafan/20672/Ethel_Currie_Magafan.aspx, retrieved May 8, 2017.

New York Times Obituaries, Ethel Magafan, Dead, Published April 29, 1993,  http://www.nytimes.com/1993/04/29/obituaries/ethel-magafan-dead-landscape-painter-76.html, retrieved May 8, 2017.

Waldine Tauch: American Sculptress

September 20, 2017, 9:12 am

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Waldine Amanda Tauch at work

The Tauch Family. Standing: Emma (left) and Waldine Courtesy Fayette Heritage Museum & Archives

Waldine Amanda Tauch was born on January 28, 1892, in Schulenberg, Texas, the second of three children of William and Elizabeth (Heimann) Tauch. Her father, the mayor of Fayetteville, a farmer and photographer, recognized and encouraged her emerging artistic abilities by giving her photographs to draw. At age seven she began to sculpt, initially modeling in clay, and later carving soap, wood, chalk, and stone. When she was 13, while living in Brady, Texas, she carved a figure from butter for the McCulloch County Fair. Brady Tuesday Club president Maggie Miller Henderson convinced local rising sculptor Pompeo L. Coppini to take Waldine as his pupil, and in 1910, just two weeks shy of graduating from high school, she began her studies with Coppini in San Antonio. When funds for her education were exhausted, Coppini taught her without tuition and he and his wife welcomed her as a foster daughter in their home. 

Pompeo Luigi Coppini May 19, 1870-September 26, 1957 b. Moglia, Mantua, Italy

Under the influence of Coppini, a staunch advocate of classical sculpture, Tauch developed a naturalistic style, He condemned abstract art as "an irritation to the eye and an insult to the mind!" By 1911 she had secured her first public commission, a bas-relief (low-relief sculpture) commemorating Mrs. I. J. Rice, for the Brownwood Library. More commissions followed, primarily for portrait busts. Tauch determined that she wanted to sculpt heroic public monuments and Coppini initially opposed her decision, arguing that a small woman would not have the strength to complete the larger-than-life-sized works, an issue that faces all women who sculpt large-scale works.

From 1918 to 1922 Tauch worked with Coppini in his Chicago studio, where she assisted him with various projects and completed a life-sized marble high relief commemorating her early patron, Maggie Miller Henderson (1919), which was placed over Henderson's grave in Richmond, Kentucky. Tauch returned to San Antonio for a short time but, in 1922, moved to New York to help Coppini's wife recover from an injury and to assist him in his work on the Littlefield Fountain for the University of Texas at Austin.

During the following twelve years in New York City, Tauch completed a number of major sculptures, including her first commission for a large work, the Indiana War Memorial (1926) in Bedford, Indiana. While in New York she began producing small genre figures that were reproduced for the mass market by the Gorham Company. Small statuettes such as Surfboard (ca. 1924), Gulf Breeze (1929), and Boy and Eel (1924), all of which celebrated the nude figure, revealed a more romantic, personal, vision than the sober commemorative works that occupied most of her time. 

Waldine Amanda Tauch Turbulent Youth Bronze Bookends 1940

Tauch returned to San Antonio in 1935 in order to compete for commissions inspired by the Texas Centennial celebration (1936). She was awarded the commission to carve The First Shot Fired For Texas Independence (1935), a life-sized bronze bas-relief set in granite seven miles southwest of Gonzales, near the site of the battle of Gonzales. She also completed Centennial memorials to Moses Austin (1937–38) in San Antonio and Isaac and Frances C. Lipscomb Van Zandt (1938) in Canton. In 1936 Tauch and Coppini built a studio at 115 Melrose Place, San Antonio. Their sharing the costs of the studio indicated a move away from their mentor-protege's relationship to a partnership. Tauch remained in San Antonio for the rest of her career, completing works for patrons throughout Texas and in New York, Massachusetts, Virginia, and Oklahoma. 

Waldine Amanda Tauch Douglas MacArthur Bronze ca. 1969 Douglas MacArthur Academy of Freedom Affiliated with Howard Payne University

Her best-known works are Douglas MacArthur, an eight-foot bronze statue at Howard Payne University, Brownwood; Higher Education Reflects Responsibility to the World (1965), a heroic-sized bronze at Trinity University, San Antonio; Texas Ranger of Today (1960), an eight-foot bronze statue at the Union Terminal in Dallas; and Pippa Passes, a bronze, life-sized high relief at Baylor University, in Waco, Texas.

Waldine Amanda Tauch Pippa Passes Bronze ca 1956 Baylor University, Waco, Texas

In addition to sculpting, Tauch traveled throughout the state promoting traditional art in lectures to various clubs and organizations. In 1939 she began teaching, initially at the San Antonio Art Academy and later in her own studio. She taught at Trinity University from 1943 to 1945, when Coppini was head of the art department there. In 1945 Coppini and Tauch founded the Academy of Fine Arts, a club dedicated to traditional art styles and techniques. Members met regularly for discussion and exhibited their work in museums and galleries throughout the state. The organization was later renamed Coppini Academy of Fine Arts and was sponsored by Tauch after her mentor's death in 1957. 

Coppini Academy of Fine Arts 1926-Present San Antonio, Texas

Tauch was active in a number of other organizations, including the Society of Medalists, the Southern States Art League, the Artists Professional League, the National Society of Arts and Letters, Artists and Craftsmen, the San Antonio Art League, and the National Association of Women Painters and Sculptors. In 1941 she was awarded an honorary doctorate of fine arts degree by Howard Payne College, and in 1964 she was elected a fellow of the National Sculpture Society of New York City. The Texas Senate awarded her a Recognition Certificate in 1969 for her contribution to the cultural and artistic life of Texas and the nation. In 1971 Alpha Delta Kappa, an honorary society for women educators, named Tauch Woman of Distinction. She continued to sculpt into her eighties, when her eyesight began to fail. 

Comanche Indian bas-relief figure, once a fountain Waldine Tauch Commerce Street Bridge, San Antonio, Texas

Waldine Tauch died in San Antonio on March 31, 1986, and was buried at Sunset Memorial Park in the plot where the Coppinis are buried. Many of her sculptures are on view at her former studio, which now houses workshops, classes, and exhibitions sponsored by the Coppini Academy of Fine Arts. Tauch, who was a fellow of both the National Sculpture society and the American Academy of Arts and Letters is also represented in many public collections, among them the Panhandle-Plains Historical Museum, Canyon; the MacArthur Memorial Foundation, Norfolk, Virginia; the National Cowboy Hall of Fame, Oklahoma City, Oklahoma; and the Witte Museum, San Antonio.

Here is a link to a video for more information on the life of Waldine Amanda Tauch. 

https://vimeo.com/184717184

Sources

__________________________________________________________________

Phil Kovinick and Marian Yoshiki-Kovinick, An Encyclopedia of Women Artists of the American West, University of Texas Press, Austin, 1998, p. 298.

Texas State Historical Association, Waldine Amanda Tauch, https://tshaonline.org/handbook/online/articles/fta36, published in partnership with University of Texas at Austin, retrieved September 19, 2017.

Pompeo Coppini, From Dawn to Sunset (San Antonio: Naylor, 1949). Coppini-Tauch Papers, Dolph Briscoe Center for American History, University of Texas at Austin. Dallas Morning News, April 3, 1986. 

Patricia D. Hendricks and Becky D. Reese, A Century of Sculpture in Texas, 1889–1989 (Huntington Art Gallery, University of Texas at Austin, 1989). Alice Hutson, From Chalk to Bronze: A Biography of Waldine Tauch (Austin: Shoal Creek, 1978).

Vimeo, Waldine Tauch Documentary, https://vimeo.com/184717184, retrieved September 20, 2017.