Frank Stella, "Agua Caliente"

FRANK STELLA

Agua Caliente
Print, Silkscreen, 1972

Frank Stella is one of America’s leading contemporary artists. He was a pioneer of the Minimalist art movement of the 1960s, a type of art that stressed the reduction of the image to its most basic elements of color, shape, and design. Minimalists strove to create artwork that was devoid of symbolism, representation, or opinion. Stella is famous for saying “What you see is what you get”. In the 1970s he deviated from Minimalist designs to incorporate sculpture as a third dimension in his work. By the 1990s he had progressed toward more complex imagery, creating elaborate, vivid works that paid homage to his extensive cultural and literary knowledge.. Stella’s abstract prints in lithography, screen printing, etching, and offset lithography ( a technique he introduced) have had a strong impact on printmaking as art.

Frank Stella was born in Malden, Mass, in 1936. He studied painting at the Phillips Academy in Andover and later at Princeton University. He moved to New York City in 1958 and has spent most of his life living and working in the city, though his art projects have taken him around the globe. He has done large scale outdoor sculpture, mural projects, and has done architectural designs for pavilions and museums. He did set design for dancer Merce Cunningham for the musical Pajama Game. He is a printmaker of the subjects and styles of his paintings. His series called “Indian Bird” is derived from one of his favorite pastimes, bird watching. He has won numerous awards, grants, and honors and has taught and lectured at universities and museums in America and abroad. Never one to rest on his laurels, Frank Stella is constantly evolving, changing, and responding to the world around him.

This biographical information is from several internet sites including AskART, Art Cellar Exchange, MetroArtWork, Hollis Taggart Galleries and Answers.com.

Submitted by Lois Smalley

Hans Meyer-Kassel, "Nevada Landscape"

HANS MEYER-KASSEL

Nevada Landscape
Oil on canvas, 1945

From the Nevada Historical Quarterly, by Jeff Nicholson:

"Hans Meyer-Kassel, a native of Germany, arrived in Nevada in 1937 at the age of 65. Prior to his moving to Nevada, he had enjoyed success and honors as an artist in Germany and had exhibited throughout Europe. Born Hans Meyer in 1872, he studied art at the University of Munich, choosing portraiture as his field of art. At the age of nineteen he was already welcoming clients to his first professional studio and received many important commissions in the years following. He became a professor at Germany’s Royal Academy of Art and was a founding member of the International Art Society of Munich. In recognition of his early achievements, his native city, following longstanding tradition, bestowed upon him the high honor of adding its name, Kassel, to his."

"A classically trained and accomplished painter, Meyer-Kassel produced a steady stream of landscapes, still lifes, nautical scenes, and portraits. In Nevada he had studios in Genoa, Reno, and Carson City. During the 1940s he did portraits of four of Nevada’s past governors as well as several Nevada dignitaries. Working in oils, pastels and tempera, he was a prolific artist and many of his works are in public and private collections throughout Nevada. Hans Meyer-Kassel maintained his vigorous painting until the last day of his life in 1952, when he simply laid down his brushes for an afternoon nap and never awoke."

Robert Swain Gifford, "Landscape with Cattle"

ROBERT SWAIN GIFFORD

Landscape with Cattle
Etching, 1888

Robert Swain Gifford was born in 1840 on Naushon Island, Massachusetts. He studied art with a Dutch artist, Albert Van Beest, in Bedford. In the early 1860s he had studios in New York and Massachusetts. By 1866 he had made New York City his permanent home, although he returned regularly to Massachusetts and other parts of New England to sketch and paint. In 1869 he traveled and sketched extensively in the Western States. In 1870 he began a series of trips to Europe and the Middle East. He was especially taken with the work of the Barbizon artists, especially those whose work he saw on a trip to Marseilles. Peter Bermingham in American Art in the Barbizon Mood, (Smithsonian Institution Press, 1975) notes the change in Gifford’s style as a result of that exposure to the different palettes of some European artists: “...after that his style evolved from an overblown romanticism,....to stark, simpler compositions, wide spacious vistas, and, most typically, a cold, somber mood drawn from the barren dunes and rugged cedars of the New England coast.”

In 1877 Gifford began teaching at Cooper Union School in New York City. He remained there for thirty years, the last nine years as director. He helped establish the New York Etching Club in 1877 and was a founding member of the American Society of Painters in Watercolors. He won medals at Expositions in Philadelphia, Buffalo, Charleston, and Paris. He was a friend of Thomas and Mary Moran, both accomplished etchers. His work is in the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York and the Smithsonian American Art Museum. He died in New York City in 1905.

-- Kathleen Durham

Harold Joe Waldrum, "Morning Light"

HAROLD JOE WALDRUM

Morning Light
Aquatint etching, 1991

Joe Waldrum is best known for his paintings, aquatint etchings, and linocuts of the adobe churches and mud-hewn moradas of New Mexico. His color-saturated paintings have minimal lines, but he has mastered the use of light and shadow to portray these sacred places. For several years Waldrum made his “window series:, which were works with the “painting as a window” type of composition. Just as Matisse, Magritte, and other artists have been drawn to that format, so was Waldrum. The churches of New Mexico proved to be a passionate subject for him as he depicted the spiritual and mysterious aspects of these earthy structures in his works.

Harold Joe Waldrum was born in Savoy, Texas on August 23, 1934. He earned a college degree in music from Western State College in Gunnison, Colorado, and a master’s degree in studio painting from Fort Hays State College in Kansas. Waldrum taught art and music in the public schools of Kansas for sixteen years. In 1970 he moved to the hill country of Texas and then in 1971 to Santa Fe, New Mexico. After he killed a man during a break-in in his studio, Waldrum moved to New York for a time to escape the man’s angry relatives. By 1979 he had returned to New Mexico and began painting the churches. He lived on a remote ranch and raised mules. In 1994 Waldrum had a book published with provocative essays, photographs of his “Mountain Ranch” mules, and color reproductions of his work. Joe Waldrum died in 2003 in his beloved New Mexico.

Quotes from the artist:
“There is a beautiful place in the United States of America. It is in northern New Mexico between the two mountain ranges. This place is called “The Cradle”. Its people, the land, and its elements are special and peculiar. I find the genius of this place reflected in the churches”.

“When my analyst in New York identified me as socially schizophrenic, I felt better knowing that my malady had a name; and when I first saw the mountain range of the thieves...I felt better knowing there was a place for the socially schizophrenic to live.”

This information compiled from articles from Artspace Quarterly, the online gallery of Rio Bravo Fine Arts, and the online archives of AskART.

-- Lois Smalley

Harold Lukens Doolittle, Morning in Yosemite

HAROLD LUKENS DOOLITTLE

Morning in Yosemite
Aquatint (no date)

Harold Doolittle (1883-1974) was an etcher, furniture maker, and civil engineer from Southern California. Though he worked in all the graphic processes including photography and collotype, he is most known for his beautiful aquatints. Doolittle was an inventive man who built his own press and mezzotint rocker, and preferred to make his own linen paper.

Doolittle was born in Pasadena and studied at Cornell University and Throop Polytechnic Institute, now known as Caltech. He worked for many years as chief design engineer for the Southern California Edison Company.

He served as President of the California Print Makers in the 1940s and 1950s. Other memberships that he held included Pasadena Society of Artists, Society of American Graphic Artists, and several chapters of the Society of Etchers. Doolittle is represented in the Library of Congress, California State Library, and public libraries of the cities of New York and Los Angeles.

This biographical info provided online by two galleries representing Doolittle’s works: The Blue Heron Gallery and the Annex Galleries.

--Lois Smalley and Kathleen Durham

William Dassonville, Yosemite Valley

WILLIAM DASSONVILLE

Yosemite Valley
Photograph, Platinum Print, 1906

The following is from the book Dassonville, with a biographical essay by Peter Palmquist.

William Dassonville’s photographic legacy is considerable, including an outstanding body of fine photographs in the pictorialist tradition. During his lifetime his photographs were widely published and he won numerous prizes and honors. He was an innovative craftsman and self-taught chemist, a perfectionist who developed and marketed his own line of photgraphic printing paper: Charcoal Black.

Born in Sacramento, CA, in 1879, William Dassonville was given a camera as a youth and made photos of his friends and relatives. In 1900 he opened a portrait studio in San Francisco, and about that time he joined the California Camera Club. In addition to portraits he did landscapes and seascapes. His favorite areas to photograph included Yosemite, the High Sierra, the Pacific Coast around Monterey and Carmel, and Marin County north of San Francisco. Dassonville exhibited at the San Francisco Photography Salons of 1901, 1902, and 1903. His works traveled the nation with the American Photography Salon. In 1906 the San Francisco earthquake and fire destroyed his studio and all negatives of his pre-1906 work were lost, but he continued to exhibit his photographs. By 1910 his portrait business had grown and he had many customers of significant financial means. When World War I caused a critical shortage of platinum printing papers which Dassonville’s work depended on, he began to experiment with a silver bromide emulsion to coat high quality paper. This led to his Charcoal Black paper and in 1924 he sold his portrait studio to concentrate on the manufacture and marketing of Charcoal Black. He had good success with this as it was popular with photographers such as Ansel Adams. In 1941, at age 62, Dassonville sold the business. He continued to be active in photography, and worked as a medical photographer at Stanford University’s Hospital in San Francisco. William Dassonville died July 15, 1957, in San Francisco.

-- Lois Smalley

Jeff Nicholson, Sunset Down South

JEFF NICHOLSON

July Down South
Oil on canvas, 1979

Jeff Nicholson has been painting landscapes for 35 years, working primarily in oil and watercolor, making art that captures the beauty of Nevada and the Great Basin. He has been described as the “consummate Nevada realist painter”, and his works are in several permanent collections, including the Nevada Museum of Art, the University of Nevada Reno, and the Governor’s Mansion in Carson City.

Nicholson was born in 1947 in Arcata, moved to Reno in 1962, and graduated from Reno High School in 1966. He attended the University of Nevada Reno, completing his studies there in 1978. Nicholson has been involved in art-related employment for many years; he served as a draughtsman in the U.S. Army in the Panama Canal Zone (1967-68), and has worked as a commercial silkscreener and layout artist. He has taught art at Truckee Meadows College and is founder and co-owner of Great Basin Gallery in Carson City. Over the years his art has been exhibited at several Reno and Carson City galleries, and the Nevada Museum of Art has twice honored him with one-man shows. Nicholson states the inspiration for his art is drawn from noted artists Maynard Dixon, Robert Caples, and Craig Sheppard.

Quote from the Artist (from the late 1970s):

“I’d like to pay tribute to Maynard Dixon, whose works I have studied so intensely. One day I hope it can be said that I accomplished as much in capturing that mystical, spiritual quality of the high desert as he did.”

Biographical information from Scenic Nevada.org and Renown Health Center Online Art Gallery.

--Kathleen Durham and Lois Smalley

Frank de Haven, Sunset Landscape

FRANK DE HAVEN

Sunset Landscape
Oil on canvas, 1910

Frank DeHaven was born in Bluffton, Indiana (date unknown). He came to New York in 1886 and studied with George Henry Smillie. He was one of several artists who painted shoreline scenes on Long Island and in Massachusetts. In his father’s obituary in 1915 there were flowery descriptions of the rest of the family. Frank DeHaven was described as “the well-known landscape painter of New York City”. In another amazing passage the unknown author states: “It is not surprising to find latter-day Hudson River School influences, and an intense Barbizon, or more specifically, Tonalist sensibility in much of DeHaven’s work.” DeHaven was also known as an accomplished violin maker. He and his wife traveled extensively through the United States always searching for new places to paint.

--Kathleen Durham and Lois Smalley

Edwin M. Dawes, Fields of May

EDWIN M. DAWES
1872-1945

Fields of May
Oil on canvas, ca. 1915

Edwin Dawes was born in Boone, Iowa in 1872. He studied art in Pennsylvania with William Lathrop and the New Hope school of American Barbizon painters. He supported himself as a sign painter in Minneapolis for several years, but continued to paint and study art in his spare time. He exhibited with the Minneapolis Artists’ League and his work was shown at the 1913 Chicago Art Institute show.

In 1914 Dawes moved West, traveling and painting in Montana, Arizona, Missouri and Nevada. He worked for the Atchison, Topeka & Santa Fe Railway Company, painting the Grand Canyon and Glacier National Park. He settled in California in 1915, but left frequently to explore mining possibilities in gold and silver. He lived for a time in Fallon and in Reno. Dawes died in Los Angeles in 1945.

--Kathleen Durham and Lois Smalley

Suzanne Kanatsiz, Ceremonial Cloak II

SUZANNE KANATSIZ

Ceremonial Cloak II
Mixed Media, 1994

Suzanne Kanatsiz works in sculpture, installation, and drawing. Her forms are wide-ranging; relief panels, earthworks, steel sculptures, and more. Her experimental and conceptual work makes use of diverse combinations of organic and manufactured/machined materials. Many of these works have primitive features, and are created via slow, laborious processes. Concentric rings, circles, and spheres done in repetition are prominent in her designs. Ceremonial Cloak is an example of that type of work. The principal material of the cloak is from pine cones, which were an important part of the Washoe Paiute Indian culture, and the pattern of the piece is repetitive and concentric. It was made during a time when Kanatsiz was living in Nevada.

Born in Detroit, Suzanne Kanatsiz grew up in San Diego and earned a BFA in painting from San Diego State University on 1984 and an MFA in sculpture from San Jose State University in 1988. Arabic text has long been a part of her work due to her Turkish heritage; Kanatsiz is one of two daughters born to an American mother and a Turkish father. She has lived and traveled extensively in Europe and the Middle East, including a teaching appointment at Sabanci University in Istanbul. She has also traveled to Australia, Canada, Mexico, Scotland, Korea, and other places in order to observe/learn the culture of the native peoples of the region and incorporate that into her artwork. She has taught sculpture at the University of Nevada Reno and at Weber State University in Utah. She currently lives in Ogden with her husband and son.

Quotes from an interview by a writer and friend of hers, Jordan Clary:

Question by Clary: “A lot of your art seems to be inspired by tribal societies. What is it about that that you try to convey with your work?”

Kanatsiz: “Indigenous peoples had a highly sophisticated relationship to the arts and its transformative powers. I am interested in imbuing that power in my work. Also different landscapes reflect my inner landscape. I love the ancient feel of a dry desert, the expansiveness of that is powerful.”

Information from “A” Gallery of Salt Lake City, The Utah Artists Project, and artist-at-large.com interview, 2007.

--Lois Smalley and Kathleen Durham

Mildred Bryan Brooks, Twilight

MILDRED BRYAN BROOKS
1901-1995

Twilight
Etching, 20th Century

Mildred Brooks was born in Missouri and came with her family to Long Beach, California in 1907 when she was six years old. She graduated with honors from USC. She went on to study at Otis and Chouinard Art Institutes. Her teachers/mentors were Tolles Chamberlin (also in this show), and Arthur Millier, who steered her toward printmaking, with an emphasis on etching. She began her career designing Christmas cards but soon acquired her own printing press and began working on her own. She taught at Stickley Art School in Pasadena, the Los Angeles Art Institute, and Pomona College. Her work won awards nationally, including one from the Chicago Society of Etchers – their first ever awarded to a woman or a Westerner! During the Depression she was able to support her family completely with her printmaking. She is best known for her etchings of trees.

--Lois Smalley and Kathleen Durham

William Franklin Jackson, Untitled (Landscape)

WILLIAM FRANKLIN JACKSON
1850-1936

Untitled (landscape)
Oil on linen, 1920-late 1930s

William Jackson was born in Council Bluffs, Iowa. His family came to Sacramento by covered wagon in 1863. He went to San Francisco to study art at the San Francisco School of Design with Virgil Williams and Benoni Irwin. He kept a studio in San Francisco until 1880 when he moved back permanently to Sacramento.

Jackson was a plein air painter known for depicting rolling hills, spring wildflowers and vistas of the American River and Donner Lake. He was a close friend of the painter William Keith. He won gold medals wherever his work was shown.

Jackson is perhaps best known for his role at the Crocker Art Museum. When the Crocker family deeded their art gallery/home to the City of Sacramento in 1884, Jackson became curator and director of the art school. He worked there for fifty-two years, until his death in 1936.

--Kathleen Durham and Lois Smalley

Trude Hanscom, "The Tempest"

TRUDE HANSCOM

The Tempest
Drypoint, 1952

Trude Hanscom was known primarily as a graphic artist who practiced her art in California. She was born Gertrude Fandrich in Oil City, PA on December 6, 1890.
She grew up in Waterloo, NY, and studied art at Syracuse University. About 1930 she moved to California, where she married Charles Hanscom. Her etchings, aquatints, and drypoints depict southern California landscapes. She did a series of works on Los Angeles’ Chinatown, and drew portraits and Indian genre scenes during trips to New Mexico, Arizona and Utah. She sketched Mexican children on frequent visits there. Trude Hanscom studied art at many schools in California, including Scripps College, Claremont, Otis Art Institute, and several universities in the Los Angeles area. While working on her own art, Hanscom taught art to private students and in the public schools of Alhambra, Glendale and San Gabriel. She exhibited works in galleries and shows including the Golden Gate International Exposition, Society of American Etchers in New York, the Royal Academy in London, and various art venues in California. In 1965 she received an honorary life membership in the Society of American Graphic Artists. Trude Hanscom died in a Santa Barbara retirement home on June 7, 1975.

Biographical information is from AskART and The Annex Galleries, online.

--Lois Smalley and Kathleen Durham

Mary Frances Wildman, "Sierra Juniper"

MARY FRANCES WILDMAN
1899-1967

Sierra Juniper
Etching, 1937

Mary F. Wildman was born October 10, 1899, in Indianapolis. She lived in Philadelphia and then moved to Los Angeles to study art at Otis Art Institute. In the 1930s she moved to Palo Alto and earned her Ph.D. from Stanford University. She was active as an artist in California, and her etching subjects were of the High Sierra, Fallen Leaf Lake, and landscapes around the Stanford area. Wildman exhibited at galleries in San Francisco and Los Angeles and held memberships in several artists’ clubs, including the Palo Alto Art Club, Society of Etchers, and Philadelphia Print Club. She died on the Monterey peninsula on April 27, 1967.

--Lois Smalley and Kathleen Durham

Ruth Doris Swett, "Carolina Long Leafed Pines"

RUTH DORIS SWETT

Carolina Long Leafed Pines
Drypoint, 1938

Ruth Doris Swett was an artist who was active during the 1930s making drypoint and etchings. She was a native of Southern Pines, North Carolina, and much of her work involved the pine needle motif. In December 1941 the local newspaper of Southern Pines, The Pilot, reported that its new nameplate was designed by Ruth Doris Swett from her original drawing of pine needles, a compass, and a map of Moore County.

Not much is know about Swett but Who Was Who in American Art, by Peter Hastings Falk, lists her as an etcher born in 1901 in North Carolina and notes that she had studied at Chouinard Art Institute in California. The Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Online Catalogue has three prints by Swett: Florida Pine, The Lone Palm, and Long Leaf Pine, all of which were done in the 1930s.

--Kathleen Durham and Lois Smalley