Nissley Gallery: Spring '21 Selections from the Permanent Collection

Thomas Addison Richards was part of a cohort of artists who sought inspiration through the environment and became known as the Hudson River School. He introduced many people to the aesthetics of nature, focusing on the Catskills in New York and views of the southern United States. In the late 1850s, Richards contributed to the first travel guide for the US and Canada, including tips, stories, and illustrations drawn by Richards and others. His use of paint to create a romanticized atmosphere of nature creates a serene work of art that was popular at the time of creation and continues to evoke the peacefulness that Richards sought to achieve.

One of the members of the CoBrA (Copenhagen, Brussels, Amsterdam) arts group, Appel started creating artwork at an early age and was educated during the Nazi occupation at Rijks-Academie in Amsterdam. Appel’s style is characterized by abstract forms, bold lines, and colors inspired by folk and child art. In the 1970s and 80s, he worked in both painting and sculpture.

Adger W. Cowans is one of the most influential contemporary photographers in the art world. In the 1980s, Cowans was part of the group AfriCOBRA (the African Commune of Bad Relevant Artists) that was founded in Chicago in the late 1960s by a group of artists intent on defining a “black aesthetic.” These artists were associated with the Black Arts Movement in America and wanted to celebrate identity and awareness of political struggles by using black visual culture. This print was based off of an artwork that Cowans completed in 1980 in support of the resistance to apartheid, centered around the Johannesburg neighborhood of Soweto (SOuth WEst TOwnship). The artist stated that the print was made to celebrate the life of Steve Biko, a leader in the anti-apartheid movement that was killed by police officers following an arrest.

Käthe Kollwitz was a German artist renowned for her skill in printmaking. The series The Peasant War and The Weavers are some of her most recognized works; depicting the hardships of life for the working class prior to WWI. Infused with emotion, Kollwitz expressed the desperation of the German people, focusing on the plight of women and mothers. In this print, she was inspired by the Charles Dickens novel, A Tale of Two Cities. Kollwitz depicts the frenzied dancing on the streets of a German town in a way that is reminiscent of the scenes of the French Revolution in Dickens’ book.

Samuel Bak was born in Vilna, now Vilnius, Lithuania and narrowly escaped being executed during the Holocaust by being smuggled out of the Vilna Ghetto in a cloth sack. His extended family were all killed during the war, and only he and his mother survived. Much of his art is informed by the trauma he suffered in his early childhood, as demonstrated by his depiction of desolate scenes or war torn landscapes. Often depicting pears in his artwork, Bak commented that he saw, “something vulnerable, almost human about their form.” Drawn as multiple materials such as cinder blocks, these different pears sit in a heap of rubble.

African American abstract painter Al Loving, Jr. was well known for his fabric collages, assemblages, and hard edge painting. Involved with the Once Group Organization, Loving engaged with other members such as Claes Oldenburg, Robert Rauschenberg, and Andy Warhol. He had his first solo exhibition at the Whitney Museum of American Art within a year of moving to New York City. Josef Albers geometric hard edge shapes and use of color and quilts were major influences on his work. This collage was created while in residency at Franklin& Marshall College after Loving was invited by painting professor Bill Hutson. He presented the work as a gift at the culmination of his time with the college.

“I have been sustained by an inborn love of art and accomplished all I have undertaken through the severest struggles which, while severe enough for white men, have been enhanced tenfold in my case.” —Edward Mitchell Bannister

As an African American, Bannister’s work reflects the cultural climate of the time through his personal experiences including the horrors of slavery and the hope of the underground railroad. Born in St. Andrews, New Brunswick, Canada, to Hannah and Edward Bannister, Edward was recognized for his artistic talent by the age of ten. After the death of his parents, Bannister moved to Boston, a center for abolitionists. Bannister married his wife Christiana in 1857 and boarded with Lewis Hayden whose home was a stop on the Underground Railroad. Bannister’s interaction with the fugitive slaves and his participation in abolitionist organizations like the Colored Citizens of Boston had a profound influence on his work. By 1869 he was living in Providence, Rhode Island and became a well-respected Hudson River School artist by the 1880s. This untitled painting is a superb example of his incorporation of cloud and sky studies in his landscapes.

For many, the word “samurai” conjures images of a stoic warrior outfitted in his armor. This set dates to the Edo period, around 1750. A samurai arms and armor expert speculates that the gold dragon maki-e design was applied during the Meiji period (c.1868–1912) to make the armor more attractive to Western tourists. Suits were sold by soldiers who could no longer use them as the Meiji period of Japan introduced Westernization and the eventual disbanding of samurai. Armor was then more available for interested Western tourists, which is how the PMA’s staff hypothesizes that this suit became part of the permanent collection.

One of the world’s longest continual art forms and a treasured Australian Aboriginal tradition, tree bark paintings like this one were created on the bark of a eucalyptus tree (Stringybark). The image depicts the mythical Bubba Peibi, a short, stocky figure that catches fish with a pronged spear and either puts them in his basket or drags them in the water by a vine through their gills. Created in Arnhem Land, a northern territory of Australia, these artworks traditionally contain natural material paints such as ochre, charcoal, and white clay. The meaning behind these types of designs can be very complicated and personal, but typically figurative, abstract, or geometric imagery exists in all areas of Arnhem Land. The museum believes that this tree bark painting was most likely produced as a commercial item.

Born on the eastern side of the Hudson Bay, Kinniksie’s sculpture of two women and a baby is consistent with the block-like artworks created by artists from these communities. This sculpture commemorates these women’s roles as nurturers, as well as their countless other responsibilities to their families, including food distribution and preparation, clothing creation, and caregiving in the community.

Much of Inuit art follows narratives that depict traditional lifestyles and techniques for survival. Other themes are the animals of the North, the spirits of those animals, and the shamans and mythologies which were the links to that spirit world. In this sculpture, Ikiluk may have been capturing the spirit that resides in the fish of the area. Without information from the artist or an indigenous perspective, it is difficult to interpret with certainty.

David Ruben Piqtoukun is from the Mackenzie Delta area in the Western Arctic. His family lived off the land, traveling to different camps before he was sent to a Canadian Residential School at the age of five. Piqtouken became interested in sculpture as an adult and his work reflects some of the beliefs and folklore of the Inuit people. The Qualupalik is a well known human-like mythological figure that lives in the water. Children are warned that if they venture too close to the water’s edge they may be taken by the Ice Crawler.

Enook Manomie was born in Cape Dorset, Nunavut, an area well known for its sculpture production. Manomie learned the art of sculpting partially from watching his father. Wildlife, in particular bears, are featured prominently in Manomie’s art and his expertise in achieving a perfect balance of the work adds to its whimsical representation of this important arctic animal.

Musk ox are a very important part of Inuit culture, providing some communities with food, horn for crafts, and an extremely fine natural fiber called qiviuq. This soft underwool provides some of the warmest fur for its weight and is highly valued in cold climates. The imagery of the musk ox appears a great deal in Inuit crafts. The artist, Joanassie Faber, was born in Greenland before he moved to British Columbia to collect and sell Inuit art, as well as sculpt his own works.

Born in Breckenridge, Minnesota, Fritz Scholder is one-quarter Luiseño, a Southern California Native American Mission tribe, and was a major influence on a generation of Native American artists although he considered himself a “non-Indian Indian.” As his career progressed, he went on to have multiple solo and group exhibitions, receiving a John Hay Whitney Fellowship, and accepting a position as instructor in advanced painting and contemporary art history at the Institute of American Indians Art in Santa Fe, New Mexico in 1964. In 1970, the Tamarind Institute invited Scholder to do a suite of lithographs, titled Indians Forever, the beginning of a large body of work which led to the publication of his first book, Scholder/Indians. Scholder’s continued success with lithographs, paintings, and sculpture resulted in exhibitions around the world, two PBS documentaries, multiple books, and the 2002 Arizona Governor’s award. He passed away in 2005.

Indian Encampment after Blakelock, c. 1970, is based on an oil painting by Ralph Albert Blakelock (1847–1919). Similar features include the canoe in the foreground and teepees in the background, although Scholder’s work is a night scene with less defined lines based on the nature of the printmaking process.

“I succumbed to a subject that I vowed I would never paint: the American Indian...The subject was loaded, but here I was in Santa Fe. It was hard not to be seduced by the Indian.”—Fritz Scholder

Abstract artist and F&M faculty member Bill Hutson’s Homestead with signs, symbols and numbers recalls the artist’s childhood memories of his home at 733 Center Street in San Marcos, Texas, where his family lived for three generations. According to the artist, the painting’s color palette is primarily blues and greens with white and black accents to reflect the surrounding streams and garden landscape of his home in San Marcos. To create the painting, Hutson folded a large section of unprimed canvas that was tied and pigmented with a mixture of pigments and acrylic medium, which was then dried and ironed flat. Shapes were then drawn or taped to the surface and painted with acrylic colors. The final application of paint was applied with a palette knife, cardboard, and sumi (hake) brushes. As seen in the painting and in the house sculpture on view, the architecture of the house is in the shotgun style, a narrow rectangular structure with each room arranged behind the other and doors at each end. With origins dating back to the early 1800s, it is thought to have been based on West African structures and introduced to America from Cuba and Haiti, evident by the house’s steep gable and raised foundation. It was the most popular style home in the South from 1861–1920s.

Hutson used a variety of personal symbols to reference the rich history of the area in the painting. His “abstracted teepee shape” is derived from the history of the Native American presence in San Marcos area such as the Kickapoo people. Other examples of symbols include an arrow resembling a lightning storm sign. Additional structures that appear in the work are an iron pot, an outhouse, and a storehouse, that the artist says can be viewed as “historical parts of the painting.” Hutson also included symbols and numbers inspired by his time in Mali and the Nsibidi signs from East and Central Africa. He says these more mysterious elements are “based on emphatic, more historical points of departure.” According to the artist, using symbols “gave a specific historic purview and encouraged me to respond to my belief that there was an invincible quality about San Marcos; a concealed magnetism, covert vitality, and sacrosanct ambience generated by the town’s past.” The homestead was abandoned in 1953 after Hutson’s mother Mattie Lee Edwards Hutson passed away, and the house, storehouse, and outhouse were removed at a later date. (Label information take from archival notes and research written by Bill Hutson on the creation of Homestead with signs, symbols and numbers, c. 1990s.)

Vivian Springford, an American abstract painter, was active in the New York art world during the 1950s through the 1970s. While Springford started her career in portraiture, she soon ventured into abstract expressionism drawing inspiration from Chinese calligraphy, Taoism, and Confucianism, but by the 1970s Springford had developed her own individual color field painting style. Her technique of using thinned paint on a raw or thinly-primed canvas led to the creation of her own style of stain painting. Her work may look simple but it is quite difficult and time consuming to get the desired pattern and concentrations of pigmentation. While Springford continued to paint through the mid-1980s, she led a very solitary lifestyle and became more isolated as macular degeneration caused eventual blindness. Due to her family’s wealth, Springford did not have to support herself by selling her art and instead stored many of her works in her studio in Chelsea. Today, Springford’s works are again being more widely exhibited, celebrating her distinct style of painting.

Springford once said that to her, painting was an“attempt to identify with the universal whole.... I want to find my own small plot or pattern of energy that will express the inner me in terms of rhythmic movement and color. The expansive center of the universe, of the stars, and of nature is my constant challenge in abstract terms.”

Born and raised during the Great Depression, Sheba Sharrow, daughter to Russian Jewish immigrant parents, developed a style of artwork that was grounded in the humanist tradition. Her paintings and prints reflect her passion for social justice and awareness of the human condition much like Käthe Kollwitz, to which her style and subject matter was often compared. Sharrow would occasionally incorporate text, usually poetry, within her paintings. The segment seen here is from the poem“Barbarian” by French author Authur Rimbaud (1854–1891) that balances softness and aggression in the prose much like this example of Sharrow’s work.

“Oh! the banner of raw meat against the silk of seas and arctic flowers.”

Abstraction, color, and repetition are common themes in Hershey’s artistic style. Often influenced by nature, patterns, and crafts, his art is approached as a meditative process. Many of his pieces are extremely intricate abstractions, with very controlled brush strokes. This work leans toward his interest in 1970s geometric styles.

A lifelong Lancaster resident, Brumbach’s versatile styles of painting range from realistic landscapes of the city and county to mixed media abstraction. This work is part of a series of large scale faces that are a stark contrast to the watercolors of barns and the countryside that are often associated with him.

An “adopted” Lancaster artist, Rudisill has been active in the regional art scene for decades. Her abstract paintings walk a balance of colors and gestures, and this piece is no exception. Thick, bold strokes paired with delicate lines are inspired by figures, sculpture, and nature. During this time period, Rudisill was painting bodies of water, and in this case, a breakwater. Rudisill is part of the Echo Valley Arts Group, a select cohort of 25 Lancaster County based artists.

This bent wood painted box would have been used by a woman to hold precious keepsakes, handkerchiefs, and documents. Artisans made these heirloom boxes by soaking thin pieces of wood until they were pliable and holding them to a mold. Once dry, the ends were lashed together with reeds. Popular with the Pennsylvania German population, we are able to discern the dates of this piece by the types of floral decoration along the sides and the style of dress the figures on the lid are wearing.

This delightfully quirky carved scene is typical of the artisan, George Wolfskill. Originally from Lancaster County, Wolfskill made his living by selling his carvings, cutting hair, and peddling medical concoctions made with “skunk grease.” This group of figures may represent a parable or just a peculiar farming scene. Although the museum is unsure of its provenance, it is possible that this piece came to the museum through Hattie Brunner, an important regional antiques dealer who was known to have many Wolfskill works in her possession.

When this weathervane was made, American Indian iconography was closely tied to tobacco production and sale in Pennsylvania. Weathervanes of this type would have stood atop tobacco barns where the leaves would be air-cured before processing. It is interesting to note that the original paint is still visible after being exposed to the elements for such an extended period of time.

The large size of this cake board (or springerle board) indicates that it would have most likely been used by a professional baker rather than by women in a household. Some of the earliest American cake boards are dated to 1820, and would have been carved by bakers as tools of their trade. One of the most famous of these men is John Conger, who created highly detailed, almost lace-like, prints. His successor, James Y. Watkins, may have carved this piece as there are other examples of his work showing similar imagery of an eagle and shield. Other patriotic images were commonly used, such as Lady Liberty or firefighters.

A native Pennsylvanian, Lloyd Mifflin grew up in Columbia and is most celebrated for his poetry. His love of painting started at an early age, and he studied in Philadelphia with Thomas Moran (1837–1926), a painter and printmaker known for his landscapes of the American West. Many of his paintings are landscapes that include the Susquehanna River he grew up on. He eventually turned to poetry and wrote at a frantic pace. Many of his poems were illustrated by his longtime friend, Moran, and are held in the Phillips Museum of Art’s permanent collection.

This regional artist excelled at depicting landscapes especially quaint pastoral settings. Born in Philadlphia and mostly self-taught, Craig also took courses at the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts. He moved to New York City in the late nineteenth century and became a regular exhibitor at the National Academy of Design. Craig painted almost exclusively Pennsylvania and New Jersey landscapes.