Heartland Art: Selections from Your Indiana Collection

May 1, 2010 - February 13, 2011

Object labels for the exhibition

 

Untitled

Jacob Cox (1810-1892)

Oil on panel

1835

Transferred from the Indiana State Library

 

Cox, the "patriarch of Indianapolis art," was, for many years, Indiana's most important painter. Born and raised in the east, he came to Indianapolis in 1833 to open a copper and tin ware business. By 1841, he was advertising himself as a portrait painter, although he also painted landscapes, still lifes, and genre paintings.

 

 

Indians Playing the Moccasin Game

George Winter (1810-1876)

Oil on canvas

1853

Donated by James A. Sample

 

Winter came to Logansport from England because it was the heart of "Indian Country" and the ideal place to document the "noble savages" before civilization destroyed them. His romantic view of the conflict between indigenous people and new settlers only slightly colors the documentary value of his work.

 

 

Portrait of Indiana Governor Oliver P. Morton

Marion N. Blair (1824-1902)

Oil on canvas

c. 1865

Transferred from the Indiana State Library

 

Morton was the first Indiana-born man to serve as governor. Blair uses artistic license to simultaneously show both the interior of the governor's office and the exterior of the state capitol. The building, the column, and the law books convey Morton's authority rather than depicting a real space.

 

 

Portrait of John Moore

John Elwood Bundy (1853-1933)

Oil on canvas

1884

Donated by Lois Hagedorn

 

Originally from North Carolina, Bundy's family moved in 1858 to Monrovia, Indiana. In 1888, he became the head of the Earlham College Art Department in Richmond. Ten years later, Bundy became the figurative "dean" of Richmond's new art association. The association remains one of Indiana's oldest and best art collections.

 

This portrait was commissioned by the boy's mother, to be painted by J. E. Bundy while they lived in Martinsville, Indiana. It was later purchased at an antique market by John Moore's niece, who recognized the portrait.

 

 

Portrait of Benjamin Cox Stevenson

Julia Cox (born c. 1860)

Oil on canvas

c. 1885

Indiana State Museum Collection

 

Julia Mary Cox (Mrs. Albert S. White) was the daughter of the famed Indiana portrait artist Jacob Cox. Although she was quite accomplished, her surviving portraits are rare. One of her most ambitious pieces was a full length portrait of Lovina Streight (1817 ­ 1910), the wife of Colonel Abel D. Streight, who marched with her husband's 51st regiment during the Civil War.

 

 

Red Snapper Still Life

William Merritt Chase (1849-1916)

Oil on canvas

c. 1905

Purchased with funds from the Governor's Contingency Fund

 

According to Chase's brother George, "Our father started a shoe store and Bill was put to work there. He was a complete failure at his job. He drew pictures on all the shoeboxes. The minute he saw a piece of white, clean space anywhere, he would pull out his pencil and get busy." The boy's father decided to save his business and took the budding artist to study with Barton Hays. Chase spent much of his adult life at the Art Students' League in New York, teaching the next generation of American painters (O'Keefe, Demuth, Hopper and many more).

 

 

Portrait of Theodore Clement Steele

Wayman Adams (1883-1959)

Oil on canvas

1911

Donated by Selma Neubacher Steele

 

T.C. Steele posed for this portrait when he was 64, four years after building his "House of the Singing Winds" in Brown County, Indiana. The inclusion of the paint brush, like objects chosen for most formal portraits, tells the viewer of the sitter's profession or interests.

 

 

La Misere

William Edouard Scott (1884-1964)

Oil on canvas

1913

Shortridge High School Collection

 

Scott studied at Manual High School before leaving for Paris and the tutelage of American expatriate Henry O. Tanner. Murals make up many of the artist's most important commissions and grandest paintings. In most of these works, Scott cites the achievements of Negroes in America, making his work among the earliest public art to address issues of African-American history.

 

 

Katherine McLead Smith

Wayman Adams (1883-1959)

Oil on canvas adhered to board

c. 1915

Donated by Mr. and Mrs. Edgar Claffey

 

Adams studied with both noted American art teachers William Merritt Chase and Robert Henri. Working from his Indianapolis studio, the artist built a national reputation with his portraits of public figures such as Booth Tarkington and Calvin Coolidge. After this recognition of his work, Wayman Adams followed his market to New York.

 

 

Birches

Theodore Clement Steele (1847-1926)

Oil on canvas

c. 1884

Donated by Selma Neubacher Steele

 

Born in Owen County, T.C. Steele moved to Indianapolis in 1873. Seven years later, with the financial support of art dealer Herman Lieber and other business people, Steele joined a group of Indiana artists leaving to study at the Royal Academy in Munich. His Munich phase contains work dominated by dark tonalities.

 

 

Black Man

Theodore Clement Steele (1847-1926)

Oil on canvas

c. 1883

Donated by Selma Neubacher Steele

 

This portrait was painted at the Royal Academy in Munich while Steele was a student. The man, like the one in the portrait by J. Ottis Adams, was a model at the school. Though mostly thought of as landscape artists after returning to Indiana, all of the Hoosier Group painters created portraits as well. Steele's main income throughout his life was from portraits.

 

 

Study of Old Man

John Ottis Adams (1851-1927)

Oil on canvas

c. 1885

Purchased with funds from the Governor's Contingency Fund

 

Born in Amity, Adams attended Wabash College and then traveled to London to further his art education. After studying two years at the South Kensington Art School, he went to Munich in 1880. This man was a model at the Royal Academy, where elderly people were considered more useful than younger models because their weathered faces were full of character.

 

 

Hollyhocks

Otto Stark (1859-1926)

Oil on canvas

c. 1900

Indiana State Museum Collection

 

Stark studied at the Art Students' League in New York under the instruction of William Merritt Chase. While the other painters in the Hoosier Group traveled to Munich for their European education, Stark followed Chase's instruction to go to Paris and the Académie Julian. While sharing many stylistic traits with Steele, Forsyth and Adams, Stark's color choices are frequently much brighter in tone and subtler in hue.

 

 

Hunting Rock Oysters (The Oregon Coast)

Theodore Clement Steele (1847-1926)

Oil on canvas

1903

Donated by Selma Neubacher Steele

 

Steele ventured to the West coast in 1902 and again in 1903 with his daughter Daisy. They visited his son Shirley in California and his mother and brothers in Oregon. While there, Steele painted the ocean and seashore for the only time in his career. The different scenery inspired fresh, unique paintings which are unlike his Midwestern landscapes in light, atmosphere, and feel.

 

 

The Bridge (Garfield Park)

William Forsyth (1854-1935)

Oil on canvas

1913

Indiana State Museum Collection

 

Forsyth described himself and his Hoosier Group colleagues: Before their time those who painted, only guessed and dreamed in their studios, but these men went out into the open and joyously sought to measure themselves with nature.

 

 

A Jar of Peonies

Theodore Clement Steele (1847-1926)

Oil on canvas

1924

Donated by Selma Neubacher Steele

 

Steele began painting floral still lifes inspired by flower arrangements created by his second wife, Selma. The still life paintings allowed the use of colors different from his outdoor landscapes. Steele almost always included some dropped or dying petals surrounding the base of the arrangement, perhaps to signify the passage of time.

 

 

Spring Scene

Will Vawter (1871-1941)

Oil on canvas

c. 1915

Transferred from Soldiers and Sailor's Children's Home

 

John William (Will) Vawter was born in Greenfield, Indiana, and first became known as an illustrator, but changed his focus to landscape painting when he moved to Brown County in 1908. He was known for painting landscape scenes from his car and cleaning his paintbrushes on the car's interior roof. He illustrated several books by James Whitcomb Riley.

 

 

Grey Goose

Ada Walter Shulz (1870-1928)

Oil on canvas

c. 1925

Donated by Mrs. Richard Crane and Charles Beall

 

While enrolled at Shortridge High School, Ada Walter began the drawing lessons with Roda Selleck that soon led her to the Art Institute of Chicago and eventually to Paris. However, she gave up her career following her marriage to painter Adolph Shulz and the birth of their son Walter. Ten years later, when her son was older, she reclaimed her painting. She spent the last 23 years of her life painting, primarily children, and today is the most highly valued of all Brown County painters.

 

 

Approaching Storm

Adolph Robert Shulz (1869-1963)

Oil on canvas

c. 1930

Donated by Alberta R. Shulz

 

Adolph Robert Shulz was a prominent landscape artist originally from Delavan, Wisconsin. In 1917, he moved to the town of Nashville in Brown County, Indiana, with his artist wife Ada. He encouraged other artists from the Art Institute of Chicago to relocate in Indiana and helped to found the Brown County Art Gallery Association.

 

 

The Hoosier Cabin

Edward K. Williams (1870-1950)

Oil on board

1931

Donated by the Tri Kappa Sorority

 

Williams, originally from Pennsylvania, first took a job tinting photographs in Pittsburgh and eventually moved into painting decorative landscapes on safes for the American Safe Company. He eventually settled down as a commercial artist in Chicago, where he married Effie Teegarden. The couple moved to Nashville, Indiana, after their daughter had grown up.

 

 

Early Spring (Young Spring)

C. Curry Bohm (1894-1971)

Oil on canvas adhered to board

c. 1930

Bequest of Harriet C. Beasley

 

Bohm studied at the Art Institute of Chicago under Edward Timmins and is known primarily for his Massachusetts paintings of harbor boats and his trademark snow scenes.

 

 

Procession

Gustave Baumann (1881-1971)

Woodcut on paper

1930

Transferred by the Indiana State Library

 

Born in Germany, Baumann was brought to Chicago at the age of 9. He studied at the Art Institute and settled in Brown County in 1910. While there, the artist set up his graphics workshop and produced edition after edition of stunning woodblock prints, constantly perfecting his complicated process. Baumann moved to Santa Fe, New Mexico, in 1924, where he created his artwork for almost 50 years. The prints produced there range from intimate images of traditional Pueblo life to stunning Southwestern vistas.

 

 

 

Zinnias in Blue Vase

V.J. Cariani (1891-1969)

Oil on canvas

c. 1930

Indiana State Museum Collection

 

Born in Renazzo, Italy, "Cari" came to the United States at the age of 3. He met Marie Goth while they were both students at the Art Students' League and the National Academy of Design in New York. She eventually led him to Indiana. Her invitation to come spend some time in Brown County's Peaceful Valley saved Cari from a nervous breakdown following his World War II service in the trenches.

 

 

Untitled

Virginia True (1900-1989)

Oil on board

1927

Donated by Dr. Steven Conant in memory of Mrs. H.L. Conant and in honor of Miss Joan D. Weisenberger

 

A native of St. Louis, True attended the John Herron Art Institute, and then taught there in the 1920s. Although she had likely been exposed to the work of Victor Higgins (1884-1949), an Indiana artist who had moved to the American Southwest, she did not actually travel there herself until 1928. The simplified forms of the women, who appear to be Southwestern, are painted in bright colors with expressive brush strokes, reflecting a Modernist style popular prior to the Great Depression.

 

 

Silver Beeches

Maude Eggemeyer (1877-1959)

Oil on canvas

c. 1930

Shortridge High School Collection

 

Eggemeyer was born in New Castle, Indiana, and studied at the Art Academy of Cincinnati, where she received the first scholarship awarded to a woman in 1904. She also studied at Earlham College under J.E. Bundy and H.L. Meakin. She lived many years in Richmond with her husband, Elmer Eggemeyer, who was the postmaster, and she also painted at their summer home in Provincetown, Massachusetts.

 

 

Bomar Cramer

Ruth Pratt Bobbs (1884-1973)

Oil on canvas

c. 1930

Donated by Dr. Steven Conant in memory of Mrs. H.L. Conant and in honor of Miss Joan D. Weisenberger

 

This portrait of Bomar Cramer, a pianist with the Indianapolis Symphony Orchestra in 1930s, is unusually informal. The artist, Ruth Pratt Bobbs, became well known for her portraits after her studies at the Herron School of Art, the Académie Julian in Paris, the Chase School of Art, and Art Students' League in New York. She married William Conrad Bobbs, head of Bobbs-Merrill publishing company and moved to Paris after her husband's death in 1926.

 

 

Salt Lick Creek, Brown County

John Wesley Hardrick (1891-1968)

Oil on board

c. 1930

Indiana State Museum Collection

 

Hardrick studied at Manual High School under Otto Stark and then attended the John Herron Art Institute. Among his many awards was the prized Harmon Foundation Award (1922) given to young black Americans for excellence in science, religion, and the arts.

 

 

Moonlight Symphony

Frank Dudley (1868-1957)

Oil on canvas

c. 1940

Purchased with funds from the Governor's Contingency Fund

 

Born in Delavan, Wisconsin, Dudley studied at the Art Institute of Chicago. In 1921 he won the prestigious Logan Medal at the Art Institute's annual exhibition for his painting Duneland (now in the collection of The Brauer Museum of Art, Valparaiso). With this success, Dudley sold his art supply business and built a home and studio at the dunes on Lake Michigan in northern Indiana. He devoted more than 40 years to documenting the people, places, and plants of the dunes region.

 

Natural phenomena, such as storms and cloud formations, were favorites of the artist. Here, moonlight, partially obscured by clouds, provides a glimpse of a sentinel tree, silhouetted against a dune.

 

 

Old Mining Town

Edmund Brucker (1912-1999)

Oil on board

c. 1940

Donated by Dr. Steven Conant in memory of Mrs. H.L. Conant and in honor of Miss Joan D. Weisenberger

 

One of Indiana's Regionalist artists, Brucker's work was consistently straightforward, using an objective viewpoint. This painting, created on a trip to the West, depicts a mountain mining town in a pleasing diagonal composition. Brucker was a faculty member at the Herron Art Institute from 1938 to the early 1980s, and his work was juried into almost every annual Hoosier Salon exhibit during those years.

 

 

Butler Campus

John Zwara (1880-1951)

Oil on canvas adhered to board

1942

Donated by Glen F. Norris

 

Zwara had a difficult but notable life in Indianapolis. Remembered by many as that sweet, strange man who panhandled for money for food and art supplies downtown, he slept in the streets and mumbled to himself about water, Omaha and other nonsensical things. Zwara was committed to Central State Hospital in 1938 and diagnosed as a schizophrenic. He escaped just six months later while painting on the grounds of the hospital.

 

 

Don Quixote - Sancho Panza

Robert C. Morris (born 1896, death date unknown)

Oil on canvas adhered to board

1949

Indiana State Museum Collection

 

In keeping with the comical ambiance of the book Don Quixote, by Cervantes, Morris illustrated the protagonist in armor and holding a lance, preparing to do battle with a windmill. From Anderson, Indiana, the artist participated in exhibitions at the State Fair and in Hoosier Salon annuals.

 

 

Gloucester Harbor

Frederick W. Rigley (1914-2009)

Oil on canvas

c. 1950

Gift of the artist

 

Known for his harbor scenes as well as his landscapes, Rigley spent most of his professional career in Brown County, Indiana, but in summer often painted in Gloucester, Massachusetts. For the last several years of his life, he painted en plein air with artist Patricia Rhoden Bartels. He had studied at the Art Students League in New York City and the Ringling School of Art in Sarasota, Florida.

 

 

Quarry

Felrath Hines (1913-1993)

Oil on canvas

1952

Donated by Dorothy Fisher

 

Following his 1940s and 1950s semi-abstract landscapes, Hines embraced Minimalism's hard edges to create wholly abstract, elegant compositions of asymmetrical shapes and non-primary colors. A leading African-American artist, Hines advocated "painting that gives visual as well as spiritual pleasure, and presents a sense of balance and harmony."

 

 

Dairy Barn

Robert Selby (1909-1997)

Oil on board

1958

Donated by Susan Forsyth Selby Sklar

 

The son-in-law of William Forsyth, Selby was born in Owensville, Kentucky, and attended the John Herron Art Institute. While he enjoyed success as a painter, Selby worked in advertising in Indiana and New Jersey. He won Best of Show at the 1958 Hoosier Salon for this work, Dairy Barn.

 

 

Terre Haute

Robert Indiana (born 1928)

Oil on canvas

1960

Indiana State Museum purchase

 

Robert Indiana, born Robert Clark in Noblesville, drew his visual vocabulary from what was around him. Part of the generation following the New York School, Indiana and other Pop artists brought imagery back to art, but a new kind of imagery. For Indiana, it was the words and signs he saw all around him at his home in lower Manhattan. This work, one of his first word paintings, recalls his home state.

 

 

North of Oolitic

Martha Slaymaker (1930-1995)

Oil on canvas

c. 1967

Donated by Ian Fraser

 

In several of Slaymaker's abstract paintings, she explores the textured surface of the limestone blocks. This more realistic landscape is not as common. Martha Slaymaker, born in Saratoga, Indiana (Randolph County), was a printmaker and painter, who moved to New Mexico in the mid-1970s and expanded her reputation as a paper maker.

 

 

Summertime

Carolyn Roth (born c. 1950)

Acrylic on canvas

c. 1968

Indiana State Museum Collection

 

Carolyn Roth has been teaching at the University of Southern Indiana since 1984. Born in New York and educated at Herron School of Art and Florida State University, she has been on the full-time art faculty of the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga, Southern Illinois University and the University of Evansville. This whimsical early work, done in a quick, expressive style, conveys her impressions of summer.

 

 

Night Water Lilies

Mary Beth Edelson (born 1934)

Acrylic on canvas

c. 1968

Donated by Mrs. William Hanley

 

Mary Beth Edelson created this early painting prior to her move to New York City in 1975. A whimsical piece, the design-like quality is enhanced by bold colors against a dark background.

 

Edelson became nationally known for her artwork advocating for the women's liberation movement in the early 1970s. A native Hoosier, she studied at the school of the Art Institute of Chicago, DePauw University, and New York University.

 

 

Untitled Yellow Relief

James Spencer Russell (1915-2000)

Acrylic, wood and plastic

c. 1975

Donated by Dr. Steven Conant in memory of Mrs. H.L. Conant and in honor of Miss Joan D. Weisenberger

 

Russell was born in Monticello, Indiana, but spent most of his life in New York City. He studied with Raymond Johnson at the University of New Mexico and with Donald Oenslager at Yale University. His artwork was exhibited all across the United States and he was considered a pioneer of set design for conversion to color television, working at NBC Television.

 

 

California Lattices

William Itter (born 1942)

Casein on board

1978

Donated by Dr. Steven Conant in memory of Mrs. H.L. Conant and in honor of Miss Joan D. Weisenberger

 

This richly complex abstract painting creates depth and interest with its overlapping and intersecting translucent shapes. William Itter, a Professor Emeritus at the Hope School of Fine Art, Indiana University, earned both his undergraduate and graduate degrees at Yale University and taught three years at the University of Pittsburgh before moving to Bloomington.

 

 

The Barber Shop

Steven Stoller (born 1945)

Oil on canvas

1981

Donated by Bruce and Mary Tryon

 

Stoller spent many years as a street painter in Indianapolis, Georgia, and New Orleans. Between 1982 and 1997, he lived in Indianapolis with his poet-wife and six children, producing a large output of street work as well as important documentation of interior scenes of the Wheeler Mission Library, and Free Peoples Poetry Workshop, among others. He now lives and paints in New York City.

 

 

Visual Ambiance (Paris Nights)

Jerald Jacquard (born 1937)

Acrylic on canvas-board

1984

Donated by Michael J. Egy

 

Known for his monumental sculptures in Michigan and Indiana, Jacquard has enjoyed painting abstract pieces featuring well-defined color masses, not unlike the Hard Edge style of painting common in the 1980s. He received a Guggenheim Fellowship for sculpture, as well as a Fulbright Scholarship to study bronze casting in Florence, Italy, and taught at the Hope School of Fine Art at Indiana University until his retirement.

 

 

Hommage to G. O'K

Robert Berkshire (born 1932)

Oil on canvas

1995

Indiana State Museum Foundation Purchase

 

An Indianapolis native, Berkshire won the prestigious Fulbright Scholarship in 1955 while a student at the John Herron Art Institute. The award allowed him to travel to New York and Rome to continue his education. That trip exposed the young artist to the International Style also known as Abstract Expressionism. For most of his mature career, Berkshire has been a proponent of gesture in his art. Strong color and vigorous brushwork are coupled with subtle figurative or landscape references.

 

 

Morning at Lighthouse

Angel Mercado (born 1959)

Oil on canvas

2000

Indiana State Museum Foundation Purchase

 

The large simplified blocks painted in primary colors create a bold design in Morning at Lighthouse. Angel Mercado is a native of Chile. He came to Indiana in 1980 and attended Ball State University.

 

 

Contentment

John Domont (born 1950)

Oil on canvas

2001

Donated by Douglas Tillman

 

Using simplified color blocks to render elements of Indiana farmland, Domont creates paintings that are more than landscapes. They are Zen meditations on light and color. His work continues the long tradition of Indiana landscape painting but propels it forward, rather than miring it in traditional formulas.

 

 

First Light

Tom Keesee (born 1954)

Oil on canvas

2002

Indiana State Museum Foundation Purchase

 

Born in Crawfordsville and now living in Fort Wayne, Keesee uses the landscape as a framework on which to build paint. Although his process involves numerous sketches on location, he ultimately paints in his studio, using thick paint and confident color shapes. Expanding on the tradition of plein air painting, he is able to capture atmospheric and light effects without referencing more traditional Impressionist models and tricks.

 

 

The Camel Precedes the Lion

Matthew Davey (born 1962)

Oil on canvas

2002

Indiana State Museum Acquisition Fund Purchase

 

The contemporary-looking choices of the artist to use a square format and cut-off figure strengthen this arresting portrait of a 21st century man. While with traditional commissioned portraits the artist typically tries to capture the sitter's positive character traits and facial appeal, this depiction reveals a man preoccupied by troubles while communicating mild defensiveness through his body language.

 

Davey has had significant success garnering prizes and acceptance in juried competitions in New York; Munich, Germany; Canada; and the Pacific Northwest. His paintings, as well as his bronzes, are classically inspired in style.

 

 

Autumn's Vista

Patricia Rhoden Bartels (born 1950)

Oil on canvas

2006

Gift of the artist

 

Patricia Rhoden Bartels writes, "I think of the shapes in more abstract terms ... I decide on the movement and direction and hatch and cross-hatch, using alternate warms and cools, complementary colors. I try to create a texture." Bartels often paints on location, then returns to her studio to complete her works. She squeezes her plein air and studio painting projects between a full time teaching job in the Brown County public schools and extensive world travel fulfilling grant fellowships.

 

 

Woman Under Palm

Ruth Hembree (born 1948)

Oil on canvas

2008

Purchased by the Indiana State Museum Foundation

 

The artist uses foliage shadows to create interest in this full-faced portrait of a young woman. Although Hembree grew up in Bicknel, near Vincennes, Indiana, she has spent much time living and studying in Western Europe and currently resides in Virginia.

 

 

Ground Plan

Betsy Stirratt (born 1958)

Oil on board

2008

Donated by Dr. Steven Conant in memory of Mrs. H.L. Conant and in honor of Miss Joan D. Weisenberger

 

Known for her works using large areas of vivid flat color, Stirratt's painted shapes, resembling bubbles, appear to float above the deep red space. Her color-saturated compositions blend representational and abstract forms to create images that reference the natural world. Ground Plan reflects the style of work Stirratt has been producing over the course of the past nine years. Stirratt is on the faculty of the Hope School of Fine Art, Indiana University, and manages the department's School of Fine Arts (SOFA) gallery exhibitions.

 

 

Surviving the Past, Creating the Future

Carol White (born 1958)

Mixed media on paper

2008

Donated by Charles Wesley White in memory of Dr. Willie White

 

Described as a "paper quilt" by the artist, the cut-out figures approaching a golden dome suggest the sense of optimism many African Americans felt when Barack Obama was elected President of the United States. White, an African American artist who lives and works in Indianapolis, has exhibited her work in numerous regional and national exhibitions and received an Indianapolis Arts Council Creative Renewal Fellowship, which took her to Cuba in 2003.

 

 

August Moon

Tamar Kander (born 1958)

Mixed media on canvas

2009

Indiana State Museum Acquisition Fund Purchase

 

Tamar Kander works with a variety of materials, including powdered gesso, cold wax, drywall compound, acrylic medium, marble dust, and oils to build her impasto surfaces. Although her pieces express subjective responses to experiences and surroundings, her measured process begins with sketches, notes and diagrams, and her paintings defy the Abstract Expressionist categorization.

 

 

The Old Neighborhood

Paul Kane (born 1962)

Oil and acrylic on board

2009

Purchased by the Indiana State Museum Acquisition Fund

 

The Old Neighborhood depicts a wistful look at urban childhood, as an old man watches the street activity from behind a window. Kane's work often involves a more sculptural approach. In this piece, the oil and acrylic paints are so thickly built up that the planes of the composition rise from the surface.

 

 

SCULPTURE

 

 

Star and Horse Vase

Mary Overbeck (1878-1955)

Glazed ceramic

1923

Transferred from the Indiana State Library

 

Mary Frances Overbeck was born and died in Cambridge City, Indiana. She attended the Indiana State Normal School in Terre Haute, the Art Academy of Cincinnati, and the Ipswich Summer Art School in Massachusetts. Along with her sisters, Hannah Borger and Elizabeth Gray, she began a pottery business that produced works that were exhibited extensively nationwide and were some of the most unique and heralded work of the Arts and Crafts Movement from 1911 to 1955.

 

 

Philogyrics Polygyric and Untitled

Robert Lohman (1919-2001)

Glazed ceramic

c. 1960

Donated by Dr. Steven Conant in memory of Mrs. H.L. Conant and in honor of Miss Joan D. Weisenberger

 

Lohman's abstract work in a variety of media, including wood, plaster, oil paint, watercolor, ceramic, and bronze, references organic forms in a Modernist style. An Indianapolis native, he graduated from Shortridge High School, attended the Herron Art Institute, and received the Prix de Rome in 1941 and the Mary Milliken Traveling Fellowship in 1942. He was the director of fine arts at the Cranbrook Academy of Art from 1947 until 1949, when he returned to Indianapolis to establish a studio.

 

 

Cyclades

Neil Goodman (born 1953)

Bronze

1986

Indiana State Museum Foundation Purchase

 

One of the "cage series" of Goodman's sculptures, Cyclades is an early piece that explores defined interior space and multi-dimensional balance. Goodman is a northern Indiana artist, born in Hammond, who teaches at Indiana University Northwest in Gary and has built his reputation with commissioned large outdoor sculpture.

 

 

Spirit Boat II

Valerie Eickmeier (born 1957)

Wood, resin, mixed media

1997

Donated by Dr. Steven Conant in memory of Mrs. H.L. Conant and in honor of Miss Joan D. Weisenberger

 

Over the years, Eickmeier's work has included woodcarving and construction, metal casting and fabrication, cast polyester resins, glass, stone, and other mixed media. She wrote, "Much of my work utilizes vessel forms as an extension of uniting land and sea elements. The vessel/boat/pod forms become symbols to suggest travel, birth, transcendence and journeys of the physical and spiritual worlds."

 

 

Woman Under Construction II

Susan Tennant (born 1951)

Found materials, leather and metal

2001

Donated by Ann Stack

 

"The Woman Under Construction sculpture is a collection of objects that represent the female figure as multicultural and mobile. The parts are collected, modified, or created and finally assembled." Tennant writes, "The concept of the Woman Under Construction series stems from both personal experience and overview of the challenges of women in contemporary American culture. Expectations include constructing a meaningful balance of job, family, home and (if time permits) creative activity."

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