Editor's note: The directory titled "Arizona
Women Artists Active Before 1945: Painters, Sculptors, Potters, Printmakers,
Illustrators, Quilters" was published in Resource Library
in January, 2016, and amended with Ms. Dunbier's essay in August 2017
with permission of the author. If you have questions or comments regarding
the directory or essay, please contact Lonnie Pierson Dunbier at ldunbier@mac.com.
Arizona Women Artists Active
Before 1945: Painters, Sculptors, Potters, Printmakers, Illustrators, Quilters
By Lonnie Pierson Dunbier
2017
Writing biographical
stories about early women Arizona artists is my 'shout out' to females whose
creative skills and ability to cope in challenging circumstances define
much of the unique fine art culture of Arizona's late 20th and early 21st
centuries. My first exposure to Arizona art was in the early 1990s when
I, a native of Nebraska, married Roger Dunbier and moved to Scottsdale.
There I joined Roger in his project of building a database of American artists,
that in 2000 after his death in 1998, became the website of askART.com.
I, supported by much factual data, set out to make obvious that they are
deserving of much enhanced 'name values.'
Several people have been of major help beginning with Ron
Gerba in 1992. Art scholar, appraiser and antique dealer from Prescott,
he loaned me his 'stack' of 3 X 5 cards labeled Artists in Arizona Before
1940. Each had the artist's name, indicator of male or female, and informational
notes. Most were visitors to Arizona and surprise ---there were about as
many females as males! Through Ron, I met Fran Elliott of Sedona,
who was building a regional collection focused on paintings and pottery
by early Arizona women. I spent a lot of time with Fran at her home looking
at and discussing her art collection and also copying data from exhibition
records she had of early Arizona State Fairs and of the Arizona Arts and
Crafts Exhibitions. And Fran introduced me to Betsy Fahlman, researcher,
ASU professor, and, in my opinion, the most readable writer and best of
speakers about early Arizona artists, especially women. In 2012, Fran, Betsy,
and I worked together to create the publication Arizona's Pioneering
Women Artists: Impressions of the Grand Canyon State. Composed of Betsy's
essay, my artist list with thumbnail bios, and images of Fran's artwork,
it accompanied the 2012 exhibition, "Fran and Ed Elliott Collection,"
at the Museum of Northern Arizona in Flagstaff in 2012.
Meanwhile, in my early days in
Arizona, my husband Roger and I began a friendship with John Hazeltine and
his wife Barbara, which I have continued since Roger's death. John is the
creator of Traditional Fine Arts Organization, and its Resource Library
has published writing by both me and Roger, including in 2016 my Directory
of Women Artists Active in Arizona Before 1945. The listing of names
with brief descriptions is a tribute to the many women artists who worked
creatively before World War II in Arizona, then a unique, geographically
challenging part of the American West. In a variety of media they made images
of its people and the land with its 'cactus and coyotes.' To these women
who were born there or arrived by train, cars, horseback or on foot, we
say, thank you. You are a big part of the foundation on which we build.
And now, at John's 'arm twisting' request, I supplement
my Directory of Women Artists Active in Arizona Before 1945 with
the following essay. (Left: Image of front dust jacket for "Arizona's
Pioneering Women Artists - Impressions of the Grand Canyon State," by
Lonnie Pierson Dunbier, editor, Betsy Fahlman, Museum of Northern
Arizona (2012), image courtesy of Amazon. Also see Arizona's
Pioneering Women Artists)
(To view information on artists in the Directory
of Women Artists Active in Arizona Before 1945 please link to these
pages: A-B C-D E-G
H-K L-M N-Q
R-S T-V W-Z.
Source code abbreviations in the Directory are here.)
_____
The number of names
on my Directory totals 536, but actual count is 457, which is reflective
of changes and "add-ons," usually through marriage. An example,
albeit unusual, is the name trail through the marriages of landscape painter
Nell Rhodes Bickel McCoy (1883-1965). Married first when she was
17 to a husband whose name is unknown, the marriage was annulled by her
father. Her second marriage was to ----- Strahan, who worked for the National
Parks Service. This union ended in divorce. A succession of marriages followed:
Clarence Elwood McCoy (3); Walter J Bickel (4); Clarence Elwood McCoy (again,
5) Walter J Bickel (again 6) and last Clarence Elwood McCoy (7 again!).
(askART, ancestry.com)
Women who lived most of their lives in Arizona totaled
141, with sixty-four born in Arizona. Seventy-nine were residents only of
California. From other states, New York with 32 had the highest number of
visitors. Others were from New Mexico, 29; Illinois, 28, Texas, 14; Colorado,
12, and Nebraska, 12. Interesting is that New York, the state farthest from
Arizona, had the highest number of visitors after California, Arizona's
closest 'neighbor'. Other states were represented but with much smaller
numbers of visitors. Relative to highest art school attendance among the
total group, fifty-five women had been enrolled at the School of the Art
Institute of Chicago, forty-seven at the Art Students League in New York
City, eighteen at The Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, and twelve
at the Boston Museum School.
Centenarians and centenarians 'plus' were Grace Chapella
(1874-1980) and Rose Williams (1915-2015) of Arizona; Dorothea
Tanning (1910-2012) from New York; and Mary Agnes Yerkes (1886-1989)
from California.
Of the sixty-four Arizona-born women, thirty-two were Anglo
and the others were Native American. Although the Federal Census of 1890
indicated that 365 native women were potters, only a small number have been
cited by Anglo historians. Earliest born was White Corn Nampeyo (1830-1909?)
and latest born were Helen Naha and Otellie Pasiyava Loloma.
They had the same birth and death dates of 1922-1993. All three of
these women lived on the Hopi Reservation about eighty miles northeast of
Flagstaff. White Corn's heritage was of the Tewa people, who since
1702 had co-existed with the Hopis. White Corn also had historical
significance because she was the mother and teacher of Nampeyo the Old
Lady, (1857/58-1942), who is now regarded as the most famous of the
Hopi Reservation potters.
Grace Chapella, (1874-1980),
also known as White Squash Blossom, lived 107 years, the longest
of any of the women on this Arizona list. Part of the Hopi-Tewa community
and known for distinct white pottery, she was a next-door neighbor and pottery
student of Nampeyo the Old Lady. Grace also received orders throughout
the United States, especially from restaurants, for her sets of salt and
pepper shakers. A lady of 'firsts', she was part of the 'first' group of
Hopi-Tewa students to attend government school, which she did in 1883; her
house was the 'first' private or non-government house in her community;
in 1955, she became the 'first' person to have running water in a private
home at the Reservation; she was the 'first' person in her community to
have a piano; and "in 1927, she became the 'first' person from Hopi
Pueblo to fly in an airplane, going from the Grand Canyon to Long Beach
for a pottery demonstration." (Adobe Gallery, Web)
Rose Williams (1915-2015),
also a centenarian, was a Navajo Indian who lived at the Shonto/Cow area
on the Arizona side of the Reservation. Unlike most of the Navajo women
who did weaving, she dedicated herself to reviving traditions of Navajo
pottery. Speaking only Navajo and left as a widow with fifteen children,
she "lived alone, surrounded by family in the middle of nowhere with
a small herd of sheep and goats and some reservation cats." (askART).
However, she earned money from commercial sales through the Wheelright Museum
in Santa Fe, where she occasionally did pottery demonstrations. Today her
work is in the Smithsonian.
Among Arizona-born Caucasian women artists who remained
in Arizona were Emma Andres, Ina Moore and Margaret Rigden. Emma Andres,
(1902-1988) was a lifetime resident of Prescott. Active primarily from the
1930s to 1950s, "she was a self-taught painter and specialized in miniature
desert landscapes. She remains better known, however, for her quilting,
a skill she learned from her mother, Anna Andres, and something she worked
on while keeping company with her father in his Prescott cigar store. Original
quilts by Andres include her 1938 Arizona Commemorative Quilt, which
featured the Great Seal of Arizona and her Out Where the West Begins,
a pictorial embroidered and appliqued quilt. Both won ribbons at the Arizona
State Fair in 1940. Anders also won a merit award for her entry in the Sears
Quilt Contest at the 1933-1934 Century of Progress World's Fair in Chicago."
(askART, Jean Carlton and Ron Gerba) Ina Moore (1920-) spent her
childhood in the mining and cattle area of Mayer near Prescott, and later
was on the staff of the Phoenix Art Museum. Margaret Rigden, (1917-2014)
also from Yavapai County, married a rancher, John Rigden, and juggling ranch-wife
duties with her art interests, took painting lessons from her artist mother-in-law,
Ada Rigden (1886-1962) and also spent time in Tucson as an art student
at the University of Arizona.
Some 'white' women artists born before 1850 had 'rigorous'
introductions to that Arizona when it was a territory. Mollie Fly (1847-1925),
whose full maiden name was Mary Edith Goodrich, made history in Arizona
as its first well-known woman photographer, something recognized by her
election to the Arizona Hall of Fame. In 1879, she moved with her husband
Camillus Sidney Fly to Tombstone and established a twelve-room boarding
house and photography studio at 312 Fremont Street. While her husband traveled
including taking the only known photographs of the surrender of Geronimo,
Mollie ran the businesses. Camillus died from alcoholism in Bisbee in 1901,
and she continued running the Tombstone Gallery for another eleven years.
In 1912, she donated negatives of her and her husband's work to the Smithsonian
in Washington DC., and moved to Los Angeles where she died in 1925. Of her
it was written: "Mollie Fly was a gentle woman in rough times, a quiet
woman doing a man's job in a pioneer environment---as usual." (askART,
Arizona Hall of Fame).
Helen Henderson Chain (1849-1892),
resident of Colorado and nicknamed "Trot" for her love of travel,
was a painter who not only depicted many mountain landscapes but climbed
them "clad in petticoats, long skirts and corset." (askART, History
Net). She explored Arizona Territory, and is recorded as one of the
first women to sketch the Grand Canyon on location, which she did in 1883.
This was two years after Phoenix was incorporated, and one year after the
Atlantic and Pacific Railroad was completed through Winslow, which opened
doors to the Indian reservations and the Grand Canyon.
Dorothy Kent (1888-1981), a
New York painter and musician and sister of artist Rockwell Kent, traveled
in 1916 with a group sponsored by the Rocky Mountain Camp Company of Santa
Fe. On horseback, they went straight west on the 36th parallel from Espinosa,
New Mexico to Canon del Muerto on the Navajo Reservation near Chinle in
Arizona. Much of the trail, in and out of canyons, was treacherous, across
slick rock. And speaking of treacherous, Frances Davis Whittemore,
(1857-1951), niece of Grand Canyon explorer John Wesley Powell, traveled
sometimes with him in Arizona to sketch artifacts when he was Director of
the U.S. Geological Survey from 1881 to 1894. Frances told her daughter
that "On one occasion Uncle Wes arranged for Frances to draw the entrance
of a cliff dwelling from a bo's'n's chair, which was suspended for that
purpose at just right height and proper angle" over the Canyon. (Dawdy,
Volume II)
Lillian Wilhelm Smith (1882-1971),
one of the 'biggest names' among early women Arizona artists, later told
of her first trip to Arizona, arriving in Flagstaff in April 1913 with her
cousin-in-law and author Zane Gray for whom she was doing illustrations
for his book, The Rainbow Trail. She and Gray and others of
their small traveling party got off the Santa Fe Railroad for land travel
to get farther north. Of this seven-day trip, she said: "I was initiated
into my life in this blessed land by a four-hundred-mile horseback trip
accompanied by a chuck wagon with supplies. . . .Our dear old guide, Al
Doyle, who showed me how to ride like a cowboy. . .showed me a place at
the end of the day where I could paint, and try and oh how I tried -- sometimes
to the point of tears to interpret the divine beauty of those sunsets."
Lillian remained fifty years in Arizona, which included two marriages, the
running of a trading post in Tuba City, and a bed and breakfast in Sedona.
As an artist, she did many landscape and Indian portrait paintings and created
commercial porcelain designs with Indian motifs for the Goldwater Department
stores of Prescott and Phoenix.
As indicated by these stories much of the early Arizona
travel for women was by horseback. However, automobile travel around the
territory had begun about 1910 with a road across the northern part of the
state that was later incorporated into Highway 66. But there were no concrete
or asphalt roads, and only the best had crushed gravel. However, in 1919
a four-million-dollar bond issue was enacted for Maricopa County including
environs of Phoenix for concrete paving of 283 miles of county roads.
Taking advantage of these improvements was Mary Yerkes
(1886-1989), her young daughter and husband Archibald Offley,
from California, where he was a Navy Commander. A plein-air
painter, photographer, and art teacher originally from Oak Park, Illinois,
she was anxious to paint the Arizona scenery. The family traveled on many
weekends in a modified 1920s Buick equipped with canvas sling beds, and
storage pockets. Among her subjects were the Grand Canyon and Organ Pipe
Cactus National Monument. Another traveler by automobile was Texan Berla
Emeree (1899-1948), fearless, adventurous, and highly independent. In
her car, she often camped out. In 1934 on one of those car trips, she 'bought'
gas by trading paintings, but trying to do this near Prescott, she got lost
and had to be rescued.
Gradually roads were much improved, but not enough that
the family of Grace Hemingway (1872-1951) ceased to worry in 1932
when she at age 56, having just learned to drive, left her home in Oak Park,
Illinois and headed to Arizona by herself. Of this trip, Grace made it obvious
she was not inhibited by rules of the road. She wrote: "I worked in
comfort. I framed the picture in the front windshield, banking the car or
maneuvering to left or right to get and artistic grouping." (Lyons)
And then sounding as though it was all professionally planned, she went
onto describe how she moved to the back seat with her canvas, brushes and
easel." However, what she did not say was that she was terrified of
bugs and snakes, detested the bright sun and felt safer in the back seat
of her car painting than out on the ground while she painted desert scenes."
(Lyons) At that time, Grace, was newly widowed and was the mother of six
children including future well-known author Ernest Hemingway. In Chicago,
she was quite professional about her painting. She established a well-appointed
home studio, studied at the School of the Art Institute, and took lessons
from local artists Leon Kroll, Karl Buehr and Pauline Palmer. Eventually
she exhibited her artwork in more than 30 venues, and including her Arizona
paintings as visual images, gave lectures on the "Great Southwest."
One of the reasons that so many women artists from Chicago
went to Arizona in those early years was the convenience created by the
Santa Fe Railroad in 1900 with a direct route from Dearborn Station in downtown
Chicago to California. From this line, which went through northern Arizona,
a rail connection could be taken south to Phoenix or north to the Grand
Canyon. Dulah Evans (Krehbiel) (1875-1951) was one of the early and
possibly the first woman artist to make that trip from Dearborn Station,
which she did in 1900 with her Chicago art dealer sister, Mayetta Evans.
Then five years later, Dulah returned to Arizona as one of many Santa Fe
Railroad artists sponsored with all expenses paid. This arrangement was
in exchange for the artist's donation of art images, which could be used
for tourist promotional items such as for dramatic scenery paintings, posters,
flyers, guidebooks, etc. In 1903, Bertha Dressler Peyton (1871-1947)
from Chicago traveled with this agreement on the Santa Fe Railroad. She
painted desert landscapes and the Grand Canyon. With a personal invitation
from Winfield Scott, she also went south to visit his new settlement of
Orangedale, later named Scottsdale, but originally named for Scott's vast
orange tree orchards. Other women selected by the Santa Fe Railroad to create
commercial art in exchange for free transportation were Jessie Botke
(1883-1971) from Chicago; Alice Cleaver (1870-1944) from Nebraska;
Blanche Cole (1869-1956) from Colorado and California; Lyla Harcoff
(1883-1956) from Illinois and California.
An interesting art project destination reversal by the
Santa Fe Railroad occurred in 1910 when Railroad personnel, aware that Nampeyo
of Hano (the Old Lady) had a reputation far beyond Arizona, transported
her to Chicago with her husband Lesso, and their sixteen-year old daughter,
Nellie Douma Nampeyo (1896-1978). The purpose was to set up an exhibit
at the Chicago Coliseum so the Nampeyo women could demonstrate pottery making
at the United States Land and Irrigation Exposition. They were housed in
a specially constructed adobe looking building, and with their hand work
reinforced the Exposition theme that people close to the land could be productive
with materials of the land. Success of the appearance of the Nampeyo family
was made obvious when they were the only exposition participants singled
out in the Chicago Tribune review (Kramer 107)
Coming west for one's health because of the dry climate
was a big reason many Americans became temporary and sometimes permanent
residents of Arizona. Margaret Sanger (1879-1966) from New York was
one of these people. She was nationally known for her efforts related to
women's health, especially birth control, but her first visit to Arizona,
which was in 1934, was to Tucson with her son who was suffering lung problems.
In 1937, to recuperate from her surgery and a broken arm, she returned to
the same area, settling north of the city in the Santa Catalina foothills.
During this time, she took up watercolor painting, especially of desert
landscapes, and she also took many art classes. She grew so attached to
Arizona and to her relaxed schedule of painting combined with socializing
that in the early 1950s, she moved permanently to Tucson, where she died
in 1966.
"For her health," Jessie Benton Steese Evans,
(1866-1954) age forty-seven, arrived in 1913, and not only was rejuvenated,
but reversed her attitudes about Arizona, which she hated upon first impressions
and then decided it was "more beautiful than in any place I have been."
(askART, Jessie Benton Evans). She was from Chicago, had sophisticated art
education including a graduation certificate from the School of the Art
Institute, and studies with William Merritt Chase. She spoke five languages,
and wealthy from her marriage to businessman Denver Evans, she spent much
of her adult life in Europe, New York City or Cape Cod. Usually she travelled
alone or with her only son, Robert. When her health needed attention, she
with her husband purchased land between Phoenix and Scottsdale, on the southwest
face of Camelback Mountain. In the 1990s this property became part of the
Phoenician Hotel complex. Used to circulating among 'important people,'
and finding her new surroundings lacking in this regard, she hosted 'big
named' persons from Chicago such as Grand Opera star, John McCormack, and
well-known author John Galsworthy. She gave lavish, often raucous parties.
However, Jessie was also a serious minded-person much dedicated to her painting
and to finding exhibitions opportunities for herself and others. In this
regard, she was a forceful member of the Women's Club of Phoenix, which
sponsored the early State Fair art exhibition activities. In 1925, Jessie
chaired the State Fair Art Jury.
In those early days, the Arizona State Fair was the major
venue for women artists, whose dedication ranged from amateur and occasional
painter to nearly full time. The first opportunity, as stated above, was
provided by the Women's Club of Phoenix, which "commenced an annual
art show in 1915." (Fahlman 7) Of the 457 women in this listing, 212
were participants in the Arizona State Fair. Most of the entrants were from
Arizona and the second largest group being from California. But others such
as Susan Barse Miller (1875-1935) and Ida Curtis (1860-1959)
were from Massachusetts; Sybil Huntington (1870-1973) from
Nevada; Laura Ladd (1863-1943) from Pennsylvania, and Viola Patterson
(1898-1984) from Washington State. As an exhibitor of paintings, Viola
was unique as most of the painters worked in naturalist or semi-realist
style, but she was an Abstract Expressionist. Eda Sterchi (1885-1969)
from Olney, Illinois, exhibited batik and metal works in the 1920 Fair.
Apparently, she attracted special attention for non-conformity as someone
described her as "the first woman among her peers to cut her hair in
a bob, the first to get divorced, and the first to smoke cigarettes."
(askART, Illinois Women Project)
Entrants also came from many parts of Arizona such as still-life
painter Kathleen Steven (1895-1984), who ran a grocery store in Bisbee,
Effie Lee Carmack, (1886-1974), landscape painter and early settler
in Winslow; and Evelyn Stokoe (b. 1904), operator of a beauty salon
in Phoenix. Also from Phoenix was Inez Billington (early 20th) who
in 1927 exhibited a painting Happy Moments. She ran businesses in
Phoenix called Unique Tailoring and Unique Gown Shop. Louise Ruth Norton
(1888-1941) from Tucson exhibited Pima Indian subjects in the 1928 and
1929 State Fairs. Also from Tucson was Stella Roca (1879-1954), who
exhibited in five State Fairs and who with Louise Norton was one of the
founders of the Tucson Art Association. Nineteen of the Arizona women State
Fair participants listed their first names as Mrs., followed either by the
first and last name of their husbands or his initials. Mrs. Edwin Bates
in 1920 exhibited ceramics; Mrs. J.A. Greaves fromWinslow submitted
portraits and landscapes, and Mrs. F.C. Bemis, a photographer, submitted
photos from her tent gallery in Globe.
Visiting Indian reservations was an activity of many non-Arizona
female artists. Margaret Magill Hodge (1863-1935) from Washington
DC did watercolor and pen and ink illustrations of archaeological digs,
and when she was a teenager, she accompanied her brother-in-law Frank Cushing
and her sister Emily to the Zuni Reservation in northern Arizona. They remained
there several years, leaving in 1884. Two years later, Margaret returned
to the Southwest from 1886-1889 as part of the Hemenway Archaeological Expedition,
which excavated ruins in both Arizona and New Mexico. (Kovinick) An early
female visitor to the Navajo Reservation was Adelaide Hickok (1887-1987)
from California. For a year beginning 1912 as the wife of civil engineer
Clifton Hickok, she lived on the Navajo Reservation where she made a numbers
Navajo drawings and photographs. Blanche Dougan Cole, (1869-1956),
painter, sculptor, teacher and illustrator lived in 1898 among the Moqui
Pueblo Indians near the Painted Desert in northeastern Arizona. She was
one of the female artist sponsored by the Santa Fe Railroad.
Kate Cory (1861-1958) is arguably
the best known and most pioneering non-Indian female living among Arizona
Indians. In New York, she had met painter Louis Akin, who had been living
with the Hopi. His stories of these people with gentle ways, block-like
adobe homes, and intriguing ceremonies persuaded her to move to the reservation
where he invited her to become part of an art colony he was establishing.
She traveled on the Santa Fe Railroad, was surprised that no one met her
in Flagstaff, but found a driver and took a wagon ride to the Reservation.
No artist colony was organized, but she became so enamored with the people
and the culture she stayed for seven years (1905-1912). During this time,
she did many paintings and photographs, which became valuable documentations,
and trusting her as a member of the community, they allowed her to record
their ceremonies and rituals. She was invited to "become a member of
the tribe, but she graciously declined." (askART, Blue Coyote Gallery).
She lived the remainder of her life in Prescott.
On the Navajo Reservation, the Hubbell Trading Post, was
established at Ganado, Arizona on the Navajo Reservation by John Lorenzo
Hubbell in 1878, ten years after the Navajos were released from U.S. imposed
exile. J.L. Hubbell and his family lived there and were so welcoming that
the Post became a 'not-to-miss' gathering place for people of Indian, Spanish
and Anglo-American heritage including many female artists.
Some of these women were in residence, especially Navajos, who made rugs,
pottery and other crafts, which were popular with tourists. Bertha Mable
Little 1880-1940), a teacher at the Mission School of Ganado in the
early 1900s, painted miniature rugs with Navajo designs, which were marketed
at the Trading Post. Cornelia Davis (1868-1920) became a close friend
of the Hubbells, and sent them a painting, Three Moqui Maidens, which
is in the Hubbell family collections and is one of the few in that collection
by women artists. She was from Ohio, a co-founder of the Museum of Northern
Arizona and had exchanged her painting for purchases at the Post. Lillian
West Tobey (1879-1926), known for metal and leather work, married artist
Maynard Dixon in 1905, and the couple from California honeymooned for several
weeks at the Hubbell Trading Post. They were there when a nine-day Navajo
ceremony was held with three-thousand Navajos in the encampment. Good friends
and frequent guests of the Hubbells were Marian Kavanaugh Wachtel (1874-1954)
and her husband Elmer Wachtel. Famous California painters, they traveled
Arizona in a "specially artist-equipped motor car." (askART, Hughes)
Sadie Adams (1905-1995) worked
at the Hubbell Trading Post as a Hopi-Tewa potter along with other girls
from the Hopi Reservation. Her hallmark was a flower on the bottom of her
pots, and she became so admired from the attention she got at the trading
post as well as her home on the Third Mesa that Dr. Harold Colton commissioned
her to create a set of decorated tiles for the walls at the entrance of
the Museum of Northern Arizona. Colton, a zoologist and scientist with his
painter and sculptor wife Mary-Russell Colton (1889-1971) had a close
association with J.L. Hubbell. They arrived at his trading post in 1913,
and from there explored Navajo and Hopi country including Canyon de Chelly
with an itinerary planned by Hubbell. "That trip was reportedly a contributing
factor in the Colton's move a few years later from the east coast to Flagstaff,
Arizona where they co-founded the Museum of Northern Arizona." (Blue
167-168) Mary Colton served as the Museum's Curator of Art and Ethnology,
and also was a founder of the annual Arizona Artists Art and Crafts Exhibition,
which from 1929 to 1936 facilitated sales for all Arizona artists. Fifty-nine
women from this study of early Arizona women artists exhibited work at one
or more of those shows.
Unlike Mary and Harold Colton, who came to Arizona with
each finding an immediate niche for their talents, some women artists came
primarily from other parts of the country to accompany male companions who
were there for reasons related to employment and/or mental and physical
health. Dorothea Tanning (1910-2012) joined husband Max Ernst in
Sedona, where they, seeking tranquility away from New York City, built a
home and painted together in the early 1940s. Nanette Calder (1866-1960)
spent 1905 to 1906 in Oracle with her sculptor husband Alexander Calder,
who needed clear, dry air for his lungs. Agnes Cox (1891-1976)
also assisting with health recovery was with the first of her five husbands
in Tucson from 1918 to 1921.Via Walling Draper (1892-1968) moved
to Tucson in 1917 with husband William Draper, who had taken a job as a
Laboratory Technician. Margaret Carlstedt (1885-1975) followed her
U.S. Army husband Henry Jones to Bisbee in 1918, and then to Douglas. Also
in Douglas at that time was Jessie Petty (1886-1974), landscape painter
married to an Army officer. Mary Carmack (1886-1974) in the early
1900s moved with husband Henry Carmack to Winslow, from where he worked
on the Navajo Reservation. Mrs. Ross Chittenden (1890-) lived in
Prescott with her husband, who was a water pumper for the Prescott Steam
Rail Road. Nebraska born Stella Roca (1878-1954) settled in Tucson
as wife of Mexican copper mine owner Lauturo Roca, after the couple had
been driven off his mining land by political turmoil. In 1895, Margaret
Hodge (1863-1935) spent much time at the First Mesa of the Hopi Reservation
doing colored drawings of vessels excavated during a Bureau of American
Ethnology project overseen by her husband Frederick Hodge. Marylka Modjeska
(1893-1966) moved to Tucson in 1920 as wife of Sidney Pattison, Chair
of the University of Arizona English Department. From 1885 to 1889, Henrietta
Housh, (1855-1919) landscape painter and teacher, spent the first years
of her marriage to William Harvey Housh on a ranch 75 miles west of Phoenix.
In big contrast to Henrietta and William Housh and other
early Arizona cattle ranch couples who lived in relative isolation were
some ranch owners of thirty to forty years later such as Ethel and John
Wack and Helen and Jack Frye. Ethel Barksdale Dupont Wack (1869-1954),
an academic portrait painter, had a pilot's license as did her husband John
Wack, and they often flew over from Santa Barbara to their cattle and race-horse
spread, the Yolo Ranch in Yavapai County, Arizona. She, from one of America's
wealthiest families, the DuPonts, had sophisticated art education in New
York including training from Cecilia Beaux. Her husband also had money and
social credentials as he was the son of Alexander Wack, a nationally known
artist and founder of Field and Stream Magazine.
Like the Wack's, Helen Virginia Varner Vanderbilt Frye
(1908-1979) and her husband Jack Frye each had a pilot's license. She was
a painter, sculptor and fashion designer much helped along financially by
marriages to two wealthy men, Cornelius Vanderbilt, Jr. and Jack Frye, co-founder
with Howard Hughes of Trans World Airlines. The place where Helen and Jack
felt most at ease and where they often hosted friends was their 700-acre
ranch called Deer Lick near Sedona. Telegramming on July 28, 1942 about
their impending arrival for one of their big social events, Helen sent this
message to the ranch manager: "My housekeeper and secretary driving
to ranch should arrive Friday evening or Saturday. Do not bother to clean
house but please turn on refrigerator and have stove filled. Mr. Frye and
I and Butler expect to arrive soon after. Best regards, Helen Frye."
Seeing such a communication, can you imagine the responses of Henrietta
Housh, Margaret Rigden or Mollie Fly or Lillian Wilhem Smith or................
Sources:
Adobe Gallery, Santa Fe, Specializing in Pueblo Pottery
and Native American Paintings, Alexander Anthony, Owner.
askART.com, Artist Biographies
Blair, Mary Ellen and Laurence Blair, The Legacy of
a Master Potter: Nampeyo and Her Descendants, Tucson: Treasure Chest
Books, 1999
Blue Coyote Gallery, Cave Creek Arizona, Gary Fillmore,
Owner. Features regional Southwest art.
Blue, Martha, The Life and Times of J.L. Hubbell,
Walnut, California, KIVA Publishing, 2000
Broder, Patricia Janis, Earth Songs, Moon Dreams, Paintings
by American Indian Women, New York: St. Martin's Press, 1999
Dawdy, Doris Ostrander, Artists of the American West:
A Biographical Dictionary of Artists Born Before 1900, Three
Volumes, Athens: Swallow Press, 1985
Evans, Jessie Benton Gray, Interviews with Lonnie Dunbier,
2008-2010
Fahlman, Betsy and Lonnie Pierson Dunbier, Arizona's
Pioneering Women Artists: Impressions of the Grand Canyon State,
Flagstaff: Museum of Northern Arizona, 2013
Hughes, Edan Milton, Artists in California 1786-1940,
Third Edition, Volumes One and Two, Sacramento: Crocker Art Museum, 2002
Kovinick Phil and Marian Yoshiki-Kovinick, An Encyclopedia
of Women Artists of the American West, Austin: University of
Texas Press, 1998
Kramer, Barbara, Nampeyo and her Pottery, Albuquerque,
University of New Mexico Press, 1996
Lyons, Channy, Founder of Illinois Women Art Project, biographer
of Grace Hemingway, Interview with Lonnie Dunbier, November 9, 2013.
Mangum, Richard K. and Sherry G., One Woman's West:
The Life of Mary-Russell Ferrell Colton, Flagstaff: Museum of Northern
Arizona and Northland Publishing, 1997
Poling-Kempes, Lesley, Ghost Ranch, Tucson: The
University of Arizona Press, 2005.
Schaaf, Gregory, Hopi-Tewa Pottery: 500 Artist Biographies,
ca. 1800-present, Santa Fe: CIAC Press, 1998
Wikipedia
About the author
Lonnie Pierson Dunbier is an art professional with special
interest in life stories of early women artists 'all across America.' Her
Directory of Women Artists Active in Arizona Before 1945 reflects
this dedication. Another related project, still ongoing, is titled Their
Place, Their Time: Women Artists in Nebraska, 1820s to 1940s. Begun
in 2014, it is in partnership with the Museum of Nebraska Art in Kearney
with plans for a comprehensive book and related exhibitions.
Lonnie's commitment to art began in the 1970s in Lincoln,
Nebraska, where she raised her family, earned an MA Degree from the University
of Nebraska, and began many years as a Docent at the Sheldon Museum of Art.
She also served several terms on the Museum's Board of Directors, and as
Historian, wrote the centennial history, Sheldon Sampler: A Century of
Patronage. In 1987, she was a founder of the Sheldon Museum Statewide
Touring Art Exhibition Program, and shortly after joined the Museum staff
as that program's administrator. During this time, she was scriptwriter
and researcher for the Nebraska Educational Television Network's award-winning
series, The Picture Show, television spots featuring works of art
in the museum collection. Two years later, she did the same type of project
for the Museum of Nebraska Art.
In 1991, Lonnie Pierson, having been widowed several years
earlier, married Roger Dunbier, and moved to his hometown of Scottsdale,
Arizona. Together with programmer Charles Lefebvre, they created the database,
which in partnership with George Collins in 2000 became AskART.com. Roger
died in 1998, but Lonnie continues dedication to that website, which now
has records for several hundred thousands artists. From 2000 to 2008, she
served as Research Director, and then assumed a more 'relaxed' role of adding
biographies and serving as Registrar. For nine years, 1992-2001, she was
a docent at the Phoenix Art Museum, and chaired the docent research program.
In Arizona, she also worked closely with Fran Elliott from Sedona, who collected
work by women artists in pre World War II Arizona, and with Ron Gerba, art
historian from Prescott, who contributed many names for the beginnings of
this documentation of Women Artists Active in Arizona Before 1945.
Resource Library editor's
note:
The Directory of Women Artists Active in Arizona Before
1945 was initially published by Resource Library on January 30,
2016 with permission of Lonnie Pierson Dunbier.
Readers may also enjoy:
For more biographical information on selected artists referenced
in this directory please see TFAO's America's
Distinguished Artists, a national registry of historic artists.
Visit the Table
of Contents for Resource Library for thousands
of articles and essays on American art.
© Copyright 2016-17 Traditional Fine Arts Organization, Inc., an Arizona nonprofit corporation. All rights
reserved.