I love photos of artists with their cats! and I’m adding this one to my porch cat gallery.
A few weeks back while I was at the MFA/Boston there was a smaller exhibit on the Printmakers of Provincetown, a perfect tie in as I was headed to the PAAM (Provincetown Art Museum) the following week to teach a workshop on Botanical Cyanotypes.
As someone who reads all the artists statements and title cards! The first thing I noticed during this exhibit was that there were 8 women artists out of 9, yay for representation! and the second thing was the amazing collection of artist names Maude, Ethel, Edna, Ada, Juliette and Mildred and Blanche.
Seventeen year old Ethel Mars (September 19, 1876 – March 23, 1959) enrolled at the Art Academy of Cincinnati where she met Maude Hunt Squire with whom she would remain for the rest of her life. The couple went to Paris in 1903, living there until the outbreak of the first World War when they returned to the US and made their way to Provincetown, becoming active in the local art scene. (I’ll be sharing much more on the Queer Art canon for Pride next month). While living in Paris, Squire and Mars became good friends with Gertrude Stein and Alice B. Toklas, Steins famous poem of the time "Miss Furr and Miss Skeene", is believed to be the first such work to use the word "gay" to describe homosexuality, and is thought to be about Squire and Mars.
Described in Paris by a friend, contemporary artist Anne Goldthwaite: “They were nice Middle Western girls . . . with a certain primness [1906] . . . but dramatically transformed themselves in Paris. Miss Mars had acquired flaming orange hair and both were powdered and rouged with black around the eyes until you could scarcely tell whether you looked at a face or a mask…” When in Paris they also /attended salons with Picasso and Matisse!
While researching for this article I learned a new word;
per·i·pa·tet·ic. (adjective). traveling from place to place, in particular working or based in various places for relatively short periods.
Edna Beachboard Boies Hopkins (October 13, 1872 – March 24, 1937) was a peripatetic artist living and working all over! She was also a friend of Squire and Mars throughout their life, they met at the Art Academy and lived close to one another in Paris.
Hopkins’ forte was Japanese-style color woodblock prints based upon Japanese ukiyo-e art, and over a two-decade career. While in Japan on her honeymoon, Edna probably met Helen Hyde, the American artist instrumental in spreading an appreciation for Japonisme and printmaking. A great majority of Hopkins’ imagery consists of flowers and other vegetation, although during two sojourns in southern Kentucky she depicted local scenery and area residents.
Ethel Mars was known for her white-line woodcut prints, also known as Provincetown Prints.
“Provincetown Printers” was an art colony in Ptown during the early 20th-century made up of artists who created art using woodblock printing techniques. The "Provincetown Print"is a white-line woodcut print and was original to this group of mostly women artists. Bror Julius Olsson Nordfeldt (the one male artist featured in the MFA/Boston) was originally credited with developing the technique, based upon Japanese ukiyo-e woodblock printing. Several of the printmakers were his students, however there is evidence that a lesser-known Provincetown artist, Edith Lake Wilkinson, was making white-line prints in 1914, a year earlier than Nordfeldt. Edith Lake Wilkinson was close friends with Blanche Lazzell.
‘Up along’ and ‘down along’ Commercial Street the gayly colored throng constantly moved. The artist with paint box, canvas, and easel, the writers, the musicians, the actors, professors, the staid New England natives, the old Portuguese women with shawls over their heads, the Portuguese fisherman just home from their long fishing trips or from morning traps, the joyous youngsters, the crews from the battleships in the harbor, all elbowed one another good-humoredly on the narrow sidewalks of Commercial Street. Creative energy was in the air we breathed. It was in this quaint setting setting that the Provincetown Print came into being. Blanche Lazzell poetically captured in words the picturesque locale in which the Provincetown Print evolved” said Blanche Lazzell of Provincetown
I too, have long been inspired by Provincetown in my art work- must be in the air
When visiting a place to teach a class or check out an exhibit I try to make some botanical art to help me connect with the flora and deepen my sense of place. This time I made a lumen and cyanolumen print (alternative photo methods) using seaweeds gathered there.
The Provincetown Printing colony is another example of women, art and friendship which I have written about before when referencing Varo/Carrington/Horna and Af Klint and the Five.
Thanks to my friend Lisa Ganci for tipping me off about the show and also letting stay at “Nana’s Cottage” while teaching in Provincetown.
This week (May 15-May 22)
🎨I’ll be offering a FREE class on Eco Printing at the Belding Memorial Library in Ashfield MA, made possible by the Mass Cultural Council/Ashfield Cultural Council. The Next one will be on Sat June 24th “Botanical Cyanotypes.” Sign up while there is still room.
🎨I will be ending the week catching a few exhibits in NYC including the Kati Horna (Mexican Surrealist Photographer and part of the Remedios Varo, Leonora Carrington friendship trio) As well as the new Yayoi Kusama exhibit at the David Zwirner Gallery.
🎨And finally catching up w/ Katy Hessel
at the Wadsworth Museum in Hartford.