Lily Martin Spencer was born in Marietta, Ohio, the daughter of parents who moved to America to be able to practices their belief in a progressive cooperative movement. Well educated and intelligent, Spencer by the age of eighteen was committed to a career in art.  In 1840, she moved to New York to pursue her art career and studied at the National Academy of Design.  Women artists were rare at this time, but Spencer was talented and determined. Her choice of subject was genre, not popular in American at the time. Wealthy American patrons still wanted portraits of George Washington, or themselves. Others, if they could afford any art at all, wanted still life paintings. Genre paintings are depictions of everyday people doing everyday things.  In fact, genre painting became popular largely are a result Spencer’s work.  Her choice of subject was centered on home life, considered as the woman’s place.  In 1847, she wrote that she intended to “become a Michelangelo if I can, and I mean to try to make my painting have a tendency towards moral improvements.”  

In 1844, she married Benjamin Rush Spencer, a cloth merchant and tailor, and she had 13 children, of whom 7 survived. She continued to pursue her art career and began to succeed.  In fact, her husband quit his career in 1852, to take care of the home and the children, an unusual choice for a 19th Century male.  Titles of her paintings such as “Domestic Happiness”, “Peeling Onions”, “The Young Wife’s First Stew”, “Patty Cake” and “This Little Piggy Went to Market”, all suggest a happy home life for the entire family.

Spencer’s work became widely known as the result of the invention of chromolithography which gave the public the opportunity to see her work in a new publication called a magazine.  In 1849, Spencer’s work ran in the Union Magazine published by John Sartain.  Engravers made copies of her paintings and they were hand tinted in a factory, usually by women.  

Spencer’s domestic genre also became patriotic during the Civil War. “War Spirit at Home”, also known as “Celebrating the Victory at Vicksburg” painted in 1866, is an excellent example of Spencer’s intelligence, talent, and progressive ideas.  The siege of Vicksburg occurred from May 5 to July 4,1863, lead by General Ulysses S. Grant, has been considered an important victory for the Union Army and a turning point in the Civil War.* Today we may see this painting as a simple depiction of women and children supporting the Union cause.  However there is a much deeper meaning, as the painting includes several symbolic ideas which may or may not have been recognized at the time.  They can be interpreted as subtly referring to the restrictive expectations placed on women at that time.

A mother reading the newspaper to the children and servant seems natural today. However, reading the newspaper was a male activity equated to male authority and superiority.  Besides telling descriptive details of the battle at Vicksburg, it also depicted images of the battle, not considered appropriate for delicate females and children.  The children are engaged in a celebratory march.  The younger boy holds a stick for a gun and wears a paper hat.  The elder boy sits at the table, wears a paper hat and plays a toy horn. In another patriotic note, the garments in the painting are red, white and blue. The next child, a girl, wears a real Union military cap and makes the most noise by banging a spoon against a pot.  In her red dress, she is the most the most active and eye catching of the children.  The daughter represents Spencer’s hope for women in the future to include greater educational opportunity, the right to vote and a more prominent role in the world at large. The Women’s Suffrage movement, started earlier, became important again after the Civil War.  As an early women’s liberation supporter, Spencer was aware of and improved of this.

The servant at the rear of the painting represents another symbolic reference. Spencer makes her skin color non-specific but darker than that of the other figures.  The abolition of slavery was a major cause of the Civil War. The servant’s expression, although not clearly decipherable, indicates she listens to the news and was aware that this war was significant for her future.  

The wriggling baby in the mother’s lap recalls religious images of the Pieta, when the Madonna holds the dead Christ.  The Christ child asleep on Mary’s lap was seen as a premonition of his death.  This idea is supported by the cross shape folds seen in the newspaper. This symbol is one that women of this era would respond to.  It also suggests Spencer’s role as a mother.  She juggles to hold the child  as she struggles to maintain both her domestic and her public life.  

Spencer’s work was exhibited and in Artists Union galleries in New York, Philadelphia and Cincinnati.  Her work was published in other magazines such as the Cosmopolitan Art Journal.  In 1857, the publisher of the Cosmopolitan Art Journal said about Lily Martin Spencer, “No person has done more than Mrs. Spencer to popularize art, and for that the people owe her debt of gratitude, which they do not fail to acknowledge if acknowledgement is signified by appreciation.”    John Sartain, chief of the Art Bureau, chose Spencer’s, “Truth Unveiling Falsehood” for the Women’s Pavilion at the 1876 Centennial Celebration in Philadelphia.  The Spencer family moved from New York to Newark, New Jersey where she continued to paint until her death in 1902, at the age of 80.  In a letter to her parents, written some time earlier, she said “fame is as hollow and as brilliant as a soap bubble, it is all colors outside and nothing of worth kicking at inside.”

*Memorial Day was first celebrated in 1865, after the Civil War and was called Decoration Day because the women felt the graves were too depressing and they put flowers on them to celebrate the dead. In 1882, the holiday became Memorial Day and  in 1967 it became a Federal holiday celebrated on May 30.  In 1971, to create a three day weekend holiday it was changed to the last Monday in May.

Dennis Lee Mitchell grew up in the very small town of Larned, Kansas, and spent a lot of time outdoors where he developed a strong attachment to nature.  When he went to Fort Hays Kansas State University in 1968, he planned on being an art major. Unfortunately his teachers told him he had no talent for art. But needing an art class to graduate he took ceramics. He could make plates and bowls, but he found his niche in hand built ceramic sculpture in which he imbedded found wood, lichen, peeled bark and other bits and pieces from nature.  He went on the get an MA in ceramics in 1969 from Arizona State University and an MFA in 1971.   In 1975-76 and again in 1977, he was awarded a National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship Grant and in 2004 a Special Assistant Grant from the Illinois Arts Council.  From 2006 -2011 he had several successful exhibitions at Dubhe Carreno Gallery in Chicago.

While his ceramic sculptures were proving to be a success, he continued to explore a variety of techniques and materials.  Just before he went on sabbatical in 2011, he inadvertently touched a piece of paper with a gas welding torch and unexpectedly made his first smoke drawing. 

With the time, the inclination, a goal and the support of his gallery, he experimented with several gas torches, learned how to adjust the oxygen fuel mixtures, how to create more carbon smoke and even developed a pressurized can of smoke.  “I can control parts of the drawing process and other parts I can’t. There’s always that edge where I know what I’m doing but don’t want to be too sure because that ruins the piece. I have to keep that edge kind of sharp where I never feel that sure of myself.”

“To a great extent,” he says, “I draw intuitively.”  As one can see, his drawings are abstract but extremely suggestive.  Most of his art is untitled, leaving interpretation to the viewer.  In some we may see mountainous landscapes when Mitchell’s original inspiration, nature, appears.  Some may suggest veiled figures and others the cosmos. Some resemble Chinese brush drawings or elaborate flowers.   They may seem fragile or intangible and float away, or they may be solid and strong at the same time. As Mitchell says, “Material exists and then it changes, and it moves forward.  Everything around you, everything you see, in the future will not be here. The smoke seemed perfect to me to start to discuss the human condition.”  Whether the smoke drawings are smaller than 12 inches or larger at 50 inches they do not overwhelm us but have an impact that draws us in.

Mitchell has made smoke drawings since 2011, and like any artist has learned how to use his torch and to have some control over the work.  He can create colors from a rich velvety black to the most elusive ephemeral grays and by scorching the paper he can create soft to rich browns.  Unlike those of us who use paint, his work can literally go up in flames in an instant.  He makes 100 to 300 drawings, but 90% of them go in the trash.  Sometimes they catch fire.  “I may make as many as 250 or more drawings to secure two or three finished works. The process is repetitive, as I attempted to dissolve expectations, glean the essence, and execute the act while circumventing spurious ideas. Involving chance, the process produces a kind of surrealistic sensuous rendering of the finite and the infinite.”

Mitchell’s smoke drawings have been consistently exhibited in several galleries in the USA and abroad since 2013.  He has had frequent exhibitions at the Grimaldis Gallery in Baltimore and in 2019 at Gallery Neptune and Brown in DC.  In 2015, one of his works was chosen by Ambassador and Mrs. Bass for their residence in Ankara, Turkey, under a new program started in 2015 by the US State Department.  In 2016, he held a series of workshops for adults and children in Ankara and Istanbul.  In 2020, his work was on exhibit at the Ukrainian Institute of Modern Art in Chicago.  He is Professor of Art, Northeastern Illinois University, Chicago, Illinois (Emeritus).  Yes, he has found a way to make smoke drawings on his ceramic pieces.

Beverly Hall Smith was a professor of art history for 40 years.  Since retiring with her husband Kurt to Chestertown six years ago, she has taught art history classes at WC-ALL and Chesapeake College’s Institute for Adult Learning.  She is also an artist whose work is sometimes in exhibitions at Chestertown RiverArts and she paints sets for the Garfield Center for the Arts. 

Edith Meusnier is an environmental artist who chooses common place materials to create large breath taking installations in nature.  A graduate of the National School of Industrial Design in Paris, she has always been interested in textiles. “I’ve always loved playing with fabrics, strings, ribbons and threads of any kind. I like the lightness and fluidity of fibers. I like to manipulate, transform, distort and fabricate textiles.” Consequently she researched the history of textiles and unexpectedly found her technique in a Pre-Columbian plaiting technique called sprang.  “Without tools, I can raise huge structures and I always feel a pleasure to make colors dance directly under my fingers, before deploying them in the landscape.”

In 1996 she moves to Picardy, in the forest of Aumont-en-Halatte near Paris and her interests came together. “I feel a deep connection with the forest, its changing aspects, its noises, and odors. It is all at once a shelter and an escape space, a place to explore or to experiment.”  The forest became her studio and her materials were gift ribbon which she weaves into a variety of shaped nets. “The nets are in turn sensors and protectors; they seep, they ripple, they get through space, dividing or revealing it. They embody a tension between reality and the imaginary.”  Her choice of cheap gift ribbons consciously reflects their special role in giving gifts and for festivals.  She is also very conscious of  “the ridiculous aspect of the cheap shoddy goods that are indicative of a society that puts more importance on the packaging than on the content.”

In 1996 she was discovered by the art world and she has been busy ever since.  Her works have appeared in parks, castles, cloisters, courtyards and beside and over lakes and rivers. Sortilege was made for the Artec Festival in France and spans the L’Huisne River.  The 42 pieces were placed over the river and in other places in the town during the festival in May 2010.  Meunier’s art is seasonal and appears in spring and can last for six months or longer,  and then she takes it down to recycle.

Her process is generally the same.  “First, I walk a long time around the place of the future installation. I look at different elements of the landscape, like trees, river, hills and buildings.  I come back in different hours of the day to take wind and different lights into account. I meet with people, we talk about surroundings and we compare our viewpoints.  I choose a specific site, I take pictures and later I think about colors, dimensions and shapes to do a module that I repeat in a new series.  There are no hard and fast rules. I play with time and I like to take a lot of time to do ephemeral works. “

She also leads collective workshops for all ages in school, hospitals, art-therapy workshops, etc. In 2016 she was for the first time offered an indoor setting in Belgrade’s Museum, Serbia.  As for the future of fiber/textile art she say “textile art has the ability to sneak into the world of sculpture, architecture, but also dance, performance, and street art. I find it funny and revealing, the peaceful, subversive and humorous practices of “yarn bombing” or “knit graffiti”… is a contemporary thing. “All over the world, anonymous groups are created to question the urban life, to repair its faults or to denounce the totalitarianism of video surveillance.”

“With plastic ribbons, I draw in space an unusual parenthesis that questions the ambiguous relationship between mankind and the environment.”  

Beverly Hall Smith was a professor of art history for 40 years.  Since retiring with her husband Kurt to Chestertown six years ago, she has taught art history classes at WC-ALL and Chesapeake College’s Institute for Adult Learning.  She is also an artist whose work is sometimes in exhibitions at Chestertown RiverArts and she paints sets for the Garfield Center for the Arts.

 

 

 

Fragonard was one of the finest painters of the French Rococo period during the reign of Louis XV. French tastes were determined by Louis and his famous mistress Madame Pompadour. Louis’ grandfather Louis XIV, the “Sun King,” was recognized for leading France’s lavish Baroque lifestyle. Still, probably for the redemption of his soul, he changed in the last years of his reign to a stern and puritanical lifestyle for himself and his court. After this very restrictive and solemn lifestyle, Louis XV ushered in an era of extravagant hedonism, which was welcomed heartily by the nobility. Art and life changed from the deep rich colors of the severe and baroque religion art to soft and sensuous pastels and subjects of pleasure, amusement, and a Rococo soft eroticism. Mythological themes replaced the serious and moral subjects of Catholicism. The new preference was for fairytales, fantasy and as I often say, they preferred to look at the world through rose-colored glasses, thus the new popularity of pastel colors. 

This was the era of Fragonard. In the city of Paris, the aristocracy built lavish townhouses, and in them, they began in 1737 to hold Salons. These new settings needed appropriate decorative accompaniment. Throughout his career, Fragonard had a close and loyal group of patrons from the court. He painted both large scale decorative works for display in their lavish townhomes and small erotic cabinet pieces for their more private spaces and tastes.  

In 1752 Fragonard won the coveted Prix de Rome, which paid for his study and time in Rome from 1756- 61. In Rome, he began to develop his style and was able to tour Italy. He was struck by the lavish gardens, fountains, and antique Roman ruins on the sprawling grounds of estates such as the d’Este Villa in Tivoli. These made an indelible impression on him and served as imaginary settings for his art. 

Two of his paintings, entitled The Swing, illustrate the two styles of the Rococo. 1775-80, The Swing, is one of a series of four in the National Gallery in DC. We see an expansive garden where the court spends its time playing, picnicking, flirting, and enjoying life. The colors are pastel, the sky is blue, the trees are more like big plumed fans, and the aristocrats do not have a care in the world. The series illustrates games of Horse and Rider, Hot Cockles, and Blind Man’s Bluff. Take note they are all delightful children’s games, and elaborate setting for simple pleasures are the themes of Rococo art. Portraiture, not Fragonard’s forte, was still popular, but the sitters frequently chose to be portrayed in costumes as mythological figures, not as themselves.

The second The Swing of 1776, is an example of the more intimate and private work. In a setting of fluffy trees in an ancient garden, a lovely maiden swirls her frilly apricot skirts and petticoats high, as she is being pushed on her swing by an elderly Bishop. Knowingly she lifts her legs as she swings forward to give her admirer, hiding in the bushes, a glimpse up her skirt. Oh my! She even tosses him her shoe as a souvenir. Complicit in the charming secret are two sculpted putti on a dolphin fountain, known companions of Venus. A sculpture of Cupid, at the left, is watching joyfully and shushing us to keep the secret. Rococo eroticism was very soft porn.

Fragonard was married to Anne-Marie Gerard, and they had two children, both he taught to paint. As he aged his wife’s sister, Marguerite Gerard came to live with them and became his most able assistant and a notable painter on her own. 

If you have been noticing the date of the two paintings, 1776, the Rococo period, the King and the court’s laze-faire attitude would come abruptly to an end. The success of the American Revolution spurred on the French revolution of 1789. Fragonard left Paris and returned to his place of birth, Grasse, on France’ southern coast. [Consequently, Grasse, where the mountains are covered with roses and flowers, was a center for the perfume industry of France, which still flourishes.]  

Poverty forced Fragonard to return to Paris in 1793. Jacques-Louis David recognized his previous fame as an artist, the painter of the revolution, and David appointed him a curator of the new national museum of art. On his death, he left more than 550 paintings and hundreds of wash illustrations, which he made for several book publishing projects.

Beverly Hall Smith was a professor of art history for 40 years.  Since retiring with her husband Kurt to Chestertown six years ago, she has taught art history classes at WC-ALL and Chesapeake College’s Institute for Adult Learning.  She is also an artist whose work is sometimes in exhibitions at Chestertown RiverArts and she paints sets for the Garfield Center for the Arts.

Zaria Forman studied and received her BS degree from Skidmore College in 2006, where she made large pastel drawings of “tumultuous skies”.  After a 2006 trip to Greenland with her mother, Rena Bass Forman a landscape photographer, Zaria’s  attention turned to “gorgeous icebergs”.  At this point I want to mention again that she works in pastels, an extremely difficult media to handle particularly with her limited palette of whites and blues and the incredible light and texture she achieves.

Her first exhibition in 2006 was at the Carla Massoni Gallery in Chestertown named “The Next Generation”.  This was followed in 2007 with a summer group show, also at the Massoni Gallery.  From Chestertown to the world, Forman’s pastels are shown world-wide and she is known as an important voice supporting climate change.  As she is a contemporary artist she is often interviewed in magazines.  She is an excellent spokes person for her art and her ideas and I have chosen to use several of them in this article.

“With my Greenland series I attempt to capture the ephemeral properties of arctic light. I am interested in the element of water and how it absorbs and reflects the light in its various forms. .. “I am also interested in the transition between these states and enjoy the challenge of translating such sublime experiences into my work. The different forms of illuminated water give rise to the dreamy, atmospheric scenes that I hope will transport the viewer to this remote region of the earth. … Perhaps if people can experience these sublime landscapes, they will be inspired to protect and preserve them.”

In 2008 and 2010 she traveled to Svalbard, Norway to continue her study of arctic light, water and the ice of the archipelago.   In Maine she explored Thompson Lake where the purity, quality and biodiversity of the water is protected by The Thompson Lake Environmental Association.  It is some of the cleanest and clearest water in the world.  In 2012 and 2014, after trips aboard the Wanderbird up the east coast to the NW corner of Greenland,   she created a large collection of pastel drawings called “Chasing the Light”.  These trips also broadened her outlook.  For the first time she took helicopter rides over the top of the ice caps, instead of looking  at them from sea level.  In 10 days she covered 26,000 miles and flew for over 70 hours looking down and photographing.  She had 133,000 Instagram followers on her flight.

“When the climate crisis was illuminated for me…, I knew immediately that I had to address it in my work. It’s arguably the most important crisis we face as a global community. If I can make drawings that will help viewers understand this, and help connect them with a place that is otherwise remote and distant to most people, I knew that was what I had to do.”

Since then she has traveled all over the earth observing and drawing our planets water. Her art came to the attention of NASA.  In 2016 and 2017 she was invited to go on Operation Ice Bridge, which has been mapping and measuring the glaciers on the North and South Poles. 

 “I was able to witness an entirely new perspective of the ice, and in most cases, one that no artist had ever seen before.  These expeditions inspired a new body of work that explores aerial views of polar ice, translating the magnificence that I experienced flying over these large and beautiful ice masses.”

“That’s one reason why I focus on the beauty instead of the devastation. I don’t want to make people to feel overwhelmed or disgusted or depressed. That’s not empowering. I focus on the beauty of these vulnerable regions, in order to empower viewers.”

“Art inevitably creates an emotional response. We also want to protect that which we love. If I can offer people a time and place for viewers to have an emotional connection with these remote landscapes, and fall in love with them as I have, perhaps they will be inspired to protect and preserve them.”

Beverly Hall Smith was a professor of art history for 40 years.  Since retiring with her husband Kurt to Chestertown six years ago, she has taught art history classes at WC-ALL and Chesapeake College’s Institute for Adult Learning.  She is also an artist whose work is sometimes in exhibitions at Chestertown RiverArts and she paints sets for the Garfield Center for the Arts.