It’s Women’s History Month, and the Lompoc Museum is celebrating by putting women in the spotlight. Specifically, that light is focusing on women printmakers. This month’s exhibit is “Looking at Prints by American Women: 1900-1950,” which features American women printmakers who worked in the first half of the 20th century.
The exhibit features works by Helen Hyde, Bertha Lum, Bertha Jaques, Blanche McVeigh, Elizabeth Norton, and Agnes Tait, among others. That list of artists represents a mix of well-known and obscure figures in the contemporary scene, though all their works can still be found in many museums, galleries, and personal collections throughout the United States and around the world.
In the early days of the previous century, only some families—usually wealthy ones—allowed their daughters to pursue an art education. Often, the women would study in Europe or more exotic locales. They gained access to galleries and business connections via their social standing. Other women used their studies and art skills to become teachers or illustrators, or to find work at other jobs that were in some way connected to art.
The Lompoc Museum exhibit includes lithographs, woodcuts, etchings, and serigraphs from the collection of Kenneth Shields, owner of Collectors Gallery West.
Shields majored in art at the University of Wisconsin, Oshkosh, in the late 1950s, where he specialized in printmaking. In the 1960s, he started collecting art; some of the works in the Lompoc Museum exhibit come from that collection.
Shields said printmaking is a medium that’s readily accessible, and he hopes the exhibit will spark an interest in collecting prints.
“Prints are relatively easy to acquire, and graphic pieces by established artists are fairly inexpensive to purchase,” he said.
The exhibit will showcase three lithographs of similar size and subject (Ogunquit, Maine) by Adele Watson, presented in three different framing styles. While one print will be framed in gallery molding (like the other pieces in the exhibit), the other two Watson prints will be framed in a completely different approach, demonstrating that any piece of art can be presented in a way that reflects the taste of the collector.
And with a lot of collectors out there—or, as Shields hopes, a lot of potential collectors—there are a lot of tastes, too. Fortunately, there are a lot prints in the world.
Arts Editor Shelly Cone is in print every week. Send comments to scone@santamariasun.com.
This article appears in Mar 17-24, 2011.
