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Indepth Arts News:
"Women Printmakers Lone Star Style: Mary Bonner & The Dallas Printmakers Guild"
2002-11-03 until 2002-12-15
McKinney Avenue Contemporary
Dallas, TX,
USA United States of America
The McKinney Avenue Contemporary (The MAC) presents Women
Printmakers Lone Star Style: Mary Bonner & The Dallas Printmakers Guild,
an exhibition of prints by San Antonio artist Mary Bonner and her
contemporaries working in the 1930s. The exhibition is curated by Dr.
Angelika Jansen-Brown of San Antonio, who will be in attendance at the
opening. Mary Bonner is one of San Antonio‚s finest printmakers. Active in the
1920s and early 1930s, Bonner was one of the first women to be
recognized as a professional artist in Texas.
According to Dr
Jansen-Brown, was "the first female etcher ever to exhibit at the Spring
Salons of 1925 and 1926 in Paris, where she won honorary mention
[awards]."
The exhibition serves to highlight Bonner‚s extraordinary achievements
in both the United States and in Europe, to examine the scope of
artistic expression among her Texas contemporaries, and to connect San
Antonio‚s printmaking history to that of Dallas. Works in the exhibition
will be loaned primarily from The Witte Museum in San Antonio and from
private collections in Dallas, focusing on the Dallas Printmakers
Guild. Finally, the exhibition will travel to The Witte Museum after
its close at The MAC.
The Printmakers Guild in Dallas began in 1939,when one of its eight
founding female members, Bertha Landers, was denied membership in the
all-male Lone Star Printmakers. The group would be in existence for 25
years, totally run by volunteers. Their name changed to Texas
Printmakers in 1952 and in 1962 they allowed their one and only male
member, Paul Harris. Besides Landers, the founding members were Lucille
Land Lacey, Blanche McVeigh, Stella L. LaMonde, Mary Lightfoot, Verda
Ligon, Coreen Spellman, and Lura Ann Taylor.
To document the exhibition and Dr Jansen-Brown's extensive efforts to
gather prints that often have never been photographed or shown, The MAC
is producing a CD-ROM that will hold digital reproductions of each print
in the exhibition, written and verbal narratives about the artists, and
a permanent copy of taped interviews by Mary Carolyn Hollers-George,
author of the leading book on Bonner, with printmakers Margaret Batts
Tobin, Emily Edwards, Maureen Johnson Kincaid, and Evelyn Gladney
Witherspoon. The CD-ROM is being designed and produced by freelance
designer Hunter Dorman and will fit into a substantial brochure, where
Dr Jansen-Brown's exhibition essay will be printed.
In short, the project is a tribute to women's historical achievement in
the arts and in printmaking specifically, which are rarely recorded. It
is our hope that contemporary artists today will be able to see the
legacy left to them by Mary Bonner and her colleagues.
The McKinney Avenue Contemporary (The MAC) offers opportunities for
experimentation and for the presentation of art in all disciplines, and
provides a forum for critical dialogue between emerging and established
artists and their audiences. The MAC supports the artist‚s role in
society, cultivates that relation through education and innovative
programming, and stands as an advocate for creative freedom. The MAC is
operated by Dallas Artist Research and Exhibition, Inc., a non-profit
arts organization, and has been operating since October 1994.
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