September 22, 2005

Exhibits focus on women artists

By Judy Moore

Three exhibitions celebrating reevaluating the contributions of several women artists will open to the public Sept. 23, at the Mary and Leigh Block Museum of Art.

One exhibition will be the first ever devoted to the graphic work of Chicago-born architect/artist Marion Mahony Griffin, who became one of Frank Lloyd Wright’s principle designers at the turn of the 20th century.  A second exhibition will salute the creativity of American women printmakers who lived and worked during the first half of the 20th century. The third will feature the work of pioneering video artist Steina Vasulka.

“Marion Mahony Griffin: Drawing the Form of Nature,” curated by Debora Wood, senior curator for the Block Museum, will be open to the public from Sept. 23 through Dec. 4, 2005, in the Alsdorf Gallery.  The first woman licensed to practice architecture in Illinois, Mahony Griffin began her career in Frank Lloyd Wright’s studio, where she developed the striking “Japanese-style” presentation drawings associated with Wright’s office. In 1911 she married fellow architect Walter Burley Griffin, and together they embarked on a career that including the experimental Rock Crest, Rock Glen residential development in Mason City, Iowa, and the winning plan for the Federal Capital of Australia at Canberra.

Like her husband and collaborator, Mahony Griffin believed that buildings should reflect the character and culture of their natural surroundings. Her architectural presentation drawings are distinctive in their tall, narrow format, with a mixture of landscaped horticulture and natural growth linking the structure to its natural environment. By emphasizing natural materials and continuous horizontals, her drawings illustrated that architectural design and forms of the natural landscape are inseparable.

Drawn primarily from the Block Museum’s collections, “Drawing the Form of Nature” will include a number of the Griffins’ presentation drawings created for prominent architectural commissions in the United States, examples of Mahony Griffin’s work as a landscape architect, and her little-known series of intricate botanical drawings and paintings of Australian landscapes.

“The juxtaposition of Mahony Griffin’s architectural renderings and her botanical drawings will foster a better understanding of her work and create new interest in Mahony Griffin as an artist,” said David Robertson, director of the Block Museum. “This exhibition will present Mahony Griffin as a unique, talented artist in her own right.”

Accompanying the exhibition will be an 80-page catalog with essays on Mahony Griffin and color reproductions of her work.

In addition, the Block has planned several programs, including “In Wright’s Office,” Saturday, Oct. 15, 2 pm, a lecture by exhibition curator Debora Wood focusing on Mahony Griffin’s work for architect Frank Lloyd Wright, and a daylong symposium Saturday, Nov. 5 exploring the significance of Mahony Griffin’s work with David Van Zanten, professor of art history; Christopher Vernon, senior lecturer at the University of Western Australia in Crawley; Paul Kruty, professor of history and preservation at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign; James Weirick, professor of landscape architecture at the University of New South Wales in Sydney; Alice Friedman, professor of architectural history at Wellesley College; and Anna Rubbo, associate professor of architecture at the University of Sydney.

In addition, on Thursday, Nov. 10, 6 pm, the Block will host a talk by award-winning landscape photographer Linda Bryan.

The exhibition “Paths to the Press: Printmaking and American Women Artists, 1910-1960,” Sept. 23 to Dec. 11, in the Main Gallery and Print, Drawing, and Photography Study Center, will survey the graphic work of 80 women including Mary Cassatt, Elizabeth Catlett, Bertha Lum, June Wayne and others who were active in the medium during the first half of the 20th century. American women printmakers such as these and others worked both independently and in tandem with their male counterparts creating innovative and arresting works.

However, they have been underrepresented in the history of printmaking, a condition this exhibition from the Kistler Beach Museum of Art at Kansas State University, begins to correct.

In a related program, “Paths to the Press” curator Elizabeth Seaton will present the Phyllis Weil Ellis lecture “How Together Were They?:  Bringing Together Women Printmakers, 1910-1960” Oct. 6, 6 pm.

“Orbital Obsessions,” Sept. 23 to Dec. 11, in the Ellen Phillips Katz and Howard C. Katz Gallery, includes excerpts from Steina Vasulka’s pioneering mid-1970s videos “Signifying Nothing,” “Sound and Fury,” “Switch! Monitor! Drift!” and “Snowed Tapes,” all made with an invented device called “Machine Vision.”

In these works, Steina focuses on time, space, and movement, and the means by which the mechanical can inform and engage with electronic media.