| Black River Art Gallery |
The Black River Art Gallery is pleased to be sponsoring this retrospective on Dorothy's work. Please join us Friday, May 9 from 4 p.m. until 7 p.m. for an Opening Night Reception!
....In 1962 Joan Ronca taught the first art class in the Medford High School and also taught an adult oil painting class in the evening. I wasn't aware that I had any talent in painting but I thought I'd try it. What a surprise! At 40 years of age it opened a new world of arts and crafts for me. During that class I saw a photo of a creative stitchery sampler in a magazine and found an old piece of burlap and filled it with embroidery stitches and really loved it... Read Dorothy's complete essay below.
In 1962 Joan Ronca taught the first art class in the Medford High School and also taught an adult oil painting class in the evening. I wasn't aware that I had any talent in painting - but I thought I'd try it. What a surprise! At 40 years of age it opened a new world of arts and crafts for me. During that class I saw a photo of a creative stitchery sampler in a magazine - and found an old piece of burlap and filled it with embroidery stitches and really loved it. I entered some stitcheries in the Wisconsin Regional Art Show and the Marshfield Art Committee show and to my surprise I won prizes in every show I entered. During the next few years I made over 100 stitcheries. I had 16 articles sent to the State Show in Madison through the years.
I still liked working with textiles better than painting and the sewing machine was my favorite tool for creating. I decided to try and combine painting and the sewing machine by splashing paint on wet canvas and when it dried I used the sewing machine to find a design in the paint and accent it with the sewing machine. The first one I made won the Alice Weber Award for creativity when it was entered in the State Show in Madison.
Macrame became popular in the 70's and I covered everything I could find with knots and taught many classes in that technique. I also became interested in Papier Mache and covered many pieces of "junque" with that method - including re-doing old trunks, boxes, etc… with fabric, leather, lace and newspaper, etc...
Our daughter received a kiln and potters wheel for graduation - so that gave me another craft to try. I made a few pots - but really had more fun making ceramic jewelry. It sold faster than I could make it.
Next I started collecting dried weeds and grasses and made many wreathes and gave lessons and demonstrations on that technique.
Most of the craft articles I made were made from found objects - used binder twine from hay bales, potato bags, loopers, driftwood, antiques, tree branches, old rusty nails, pieces of bamboo or wood, pegboard and anything else that was off beat. I guess I always march to a different drummer.
My husband always teased me about all the nail holes I pounded in the wall to hang my "art". He said when the wind blew you could play Yankee Doodle.
I like to share my art with others - and gave demonstrations in schools, homemakers meetings, Home Economics Classes, Boy and Girl Scout meetings, etc… All over central Wisconsin.
I also took watercolor classes and palette knife painting from Father Glocar. The University Center here offered many classes in art and I participated in them all.
After I tried just about all the different crafts - I started making quilts and with all the fabric scraps I had left over I started making appliquéd pot holders - That's what I'm doing at this time of my life.
My Great Grandmother, Betsy Sears, was a quilt maker in the 1850's and she has two of her quilts in museums - one in Los Angles and one in Fort Atkinson. One of her quilts was exhibited in the Wisconsin Sesquicentennial Quilt Show at the Museum of Modern Art in Milwaukee in 1998. Both of her quilts were documented in the Helen Allen Textile Collection at the University Madison. I also have two stitcheries in that collection. Quite a coincidence 150 years apart.
Dorothy May, 2003