Author Archives: Jennifer Redmond

Special Collections, students, and living artists

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Guest writer Christina Lisk (Bryn Mawr 2014) is one of 15 student ambassadors participating in Docu-Commencement, a Bryn Mawr College Special Collections artist residency/exhibition project that began with four artists –Kay Healy, James Johnson, Jennifer Levonian, and Gilbert Plantinga – spending all or most of the weekend of Commencement 2012 on campus and will culminate in an exhibition that opens in late October. In August, Lisk attended and documented studio meetings with Healy and Levonian; she and other student ambassadors will continue to participate in the development of this project.

Kay Healy—A Closer Look

By Christina Lisk

I recently accompanied Curator and Academic Liaison for Art and Artifacts Brian Wallace and Master’s candidate in the History of Art Amy Wojceichowski to meetings with Kay Healy and Jennifer Levonian, two of four artists developing new works as part of Docu-Commencement, a residency and exhibition project organized by Special Collections.

Kay Healy, Untitled (video still from work in progress), 2012, digital image, dimensions variable; courtesy the artist

Healy, who works out of a studio space in South Philadelphia, and who recently debuted a long-term installation artwork at the Philadelphia airport, focuses her work on textiles and printmaking.  The emphasis of her work is on the relationships between sociological differences, such as class, sexuality, and race, and individual memories. With these materials, and through these relationships, Healy ponders whether or not it is possible for one to truly return home. This question holds particular importance for Bryn Mawr, as many students call this campus “home” after their time in college ends. Healy and the other three Docu-Commencement artists spent 24 hours “in residence” during commencement weekend this past May; the artists are all developing new artworks to be shown on campus beginning in late October.

Healy intends to show her work in and outside of Canaday Library. While she is still pursuing a number of different possibilities, Healy is looking at installing an 8 foot wide replica of an orange couch she saw in Goodhart on Canaday’s walls. Televisions around campus may play a stop-action film of a similar orange couch being consumed by a garbage truck. Outside, silkscreened replicas of furniture will be placed on various buildings throughout campus. The decay of these replicas will be closely observed, and may have an appearance in both the exhibition and the daily lives of Bryn Mawr students.

Can a Bryn Mawr student really return home after graduation? Come answer that question through Healy’s work. For more information on Kay Healy and her projects, please see the images below or visit http://www.kayhealy.com

Jennifer Levonian—A Closer Look

By Christina Lisk

Have you ever seen another Bryn Mawr student and wondered “What is her story? What has happened to her during college?”  Jennifer Levonian, a Philadelphia-based painter and animation artist, explores this question in the intricate, detailed portrait of Bryn Mawr College she is in the midst of developing for Docu-Commencement, a Special Collections artist project. One of four artists participating in Bryn Mawr’s first artist residency/exhibition, Levonian examines campus culture through intricate paintings of dorms and students. Current Bryn Mawr women will recognize people and places from their “home” instantly. Those who are unfamiliar with Bryn Mawr’s most intimate settings will see obscure, yet significant elements of Bryn Mawr in Levonian’s work.

Jennifer Levonian, Untitled (digital still from work in progress), 2012, digital image, dimensions variable; courtesy the artist and Vox Populi Gallery, Philadelphia

 

Levonian is converting these paintings into a 5 to 7 minute video animation that tells linked stories about Kaitlin, a fictitious Bryn Mawr student. One of Kaitlin’s stories includes pushing through an academic year, a process illustrated with paintings named for Bryn Mawr College students’ final essays. Another tale from Kaitlin’s life includes her job at Wal-Mart, where she observes people paying with food stamps and discovers she is the only worker at her Wal-Mart who attends college. How does each story end? What stories does Bryn Mawr College have to tell? Come learn the answer through Levonian’s work.

A talk by Levonian and the other three artists will be held before the Docu-Commencement opening reception at Canaday Library on October 25th, 2012. For more information on Jennifer Levonian, please attend the upcoming artist’s talk and the exhibition, or, in the meantime, visit http://www.jenniferlevonian.com/.

 

The Levine Collection Has Arrived!

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This blog post was created by Maeve Doyle, Ph.D. Candidate, History of Art, Bryn Mawr College

This past Tuesday was no ordinary workday in Bryn Mawr College Special Collections. By 10 in the morning, our seminar room in Canaday Library was overflowing with boxes and large bins containing the first shipment of the Jacqueline and Howard Levine Collection. If you’re walking past Canaday 205, be sure to stop and enjoy the sight of us squeezing through wall-to-wall crates of art!

Hyoungee dives in

This new wealth of works on paper is due to the generous gift of Jacqueline and Howard Levine. Jacqueline Koldin Levine, class of 1946, has long been an active member of the Bryn Mawr community, serving on the Board of Trustees from 1979 to 1991. The Levines’ art collection focuses mainly on prints and contains a wide range of examples of European modernism as well as a particular emphasis on American Social Realist movements, such as the Ashcan School. We are tremendously grateful to Jackie and Howard Levine; their donation of this superlative collection will allow Bryn Mawr students to discover, study, and enjoy its works for generations.

Howard Levine & Brian Wallace, Curator and Academic Liaison for Art and Artifacts, in the Levines’ home gallery, before the collection’s move

Before that can happen, however, we need to integrate these new pieces into our existing collections. That’s down to Hyoungee Kong and me: two students , twenty-two boxes and bins, and 482 works of art (so far!). Our first step is to assign a Bryn Mawr accession number to each object and to make a concordance between the Levine catalogue numbers and the new identifiers. Next we’ll be moving the works out of their temporary boxes and bins and into the archival folders and boxes that will be their permanent homes. While we do this, our eyes will be peeled for the best exemplars of the Levine Collection, which we’ll showcase in an exhibit next year. Our last step will be to catalogue each new addition and to make images and information about the artworks available on the Tri-College TriArte Art and Artifacts Database. We’ve been working closely with Marianne Weldon, Collections Manager, Art and Artifact Collections in Special Collection to complete this mammoth task.

Maeve starts the inventory for a new box; you never know what you’ll find!

As we pull works one by one from their boxes, we’ve come face-to-face with the works of master printmakers of the 20th century and earlier. From the artistic avant-garde of Pablo Picasso or George Grosz to the social commentary of Käthe Kollwitz or the Social Realist artists of the 1920s and 30s, the images are startling, challenging, touching, and beautiful. This is a collection with emotional as well as artistic range. Here is just a taste of what’s to be discovered in the Levine Collection …

Francisco de Goya, Tanto y Mas, 1810, 2012.27.241

Pablo Picasso, Nude (constructed title), 2012.27.457

Moshe Gat, Old Man in a Doorway (constructed title), 2012.27.432

Woodmere Art Museum exhibition features two works from Doris Staffel on loan from the Bryn Mawr College collection

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The Woodmere Art Museum, (9201 Germantown Avenue, Philadelphia, PA 19118) is hosting a new exhibit titled ‘Doris Staffel: Painter, Teacher’ that will run through July 28 – September 30, 2012. It focuses on the work of painter Doris Staffel, described as one of Philadelphia’s preeminent abstract painters and colorists. This is the first exhibition to examine Staffel’s entire career, as well as her first solo show in a museum. Along with Staffel’s solo exhibition the Woodmere Art Museum will also be showing a smaller collection of works highlighting three-generations of Philadelphia artists: Staffel’s own teachers, her colleagues, and the students that she taught. Drawn mostly from Woodmere’s permanent collection, it includes several recent acquisitions and promised gifts exhibited for the first time.

The exhibition brings together all fourteen paintings and works on paper by Staffel that are held in the Woodmere’s collection, pieces that represent her various career phases from the 1940s to the present. The two pieces from Bryn Mawr College have been loaned along with other pieces from public and private collections to complete the exhibition.

The two pieces on loan from Bryn Mawr College Special Collections represent the different media within which the artist worked.

The piece below, Dragon’s Teeth, dates from 1984 and is a charcoal on paper (18 3/4 in. x 17 1/2 in.) and is from the William and Uytendale Scott Memorial Study Collection of
Works by Women Artists, a gift of Bill Scott.

This piece, Enfolding, from 1990, is an acrylic on paper (23 in. x 30 1/4 in.) and is also a gift of Bill Scott. Born in 1921 in Brooklyn, Staffel came to Philadelphia in 1940 to study at the Tyler School of Art where she stayed to teach for twenty-seven years at The University of the Arts in the city. She is described by the Woodmere Art Museum as being an influential figure to younger artists, and her work is displayed in galleries in Philadelphia and elsewhere in the US.

An interview with Staffel in which she discusses her work and life is available on You Tube

For more on the exhibition, please check the Woodmere Art Museum website.

Searching the M. Carey Thomas Papers online

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Many people are interested in the papers of M. Carey Thomas, not just to explore the details of her own life, but because of the numerous famous people she hosted at the college and her voluminous correspondence with notables of her day. The above photograph shows Thomas standing on the verandah of the Deanery, her home for over five decades of her life. A history and guide to the Deanery has been digitized and can be found in Bryn Mawr College’s new institutional repository by clicking here.

The index or finding aid to her papers at Bryn Mawr College Special Collections was created when this archival material was committed to microfilm, and we have now digitized the index to make it even easier to search her correspondence. Although this collection is relatively well known, we hope it will become even more so now that you can search the descriptions of the materials online.

Using Triptych, you can now perform word searches of the many letters she wrote and received and which can be viewed either in their original form by coming to the Special Collections Reading Room or you may view them on the microfilm machines in Canaday Library or through ILL. To request material, just pay attention to what Reel Number is indicated as this corresponds with the relevant box of original material.

The M. Carey Thomas index can be found in the ‘Finding Aids’ section of the Triptych site and there are three different listings by which entries can be searched: the Author Index, the Reel Listings and the Author/Recipient Index.

Mary Garrett at May Day celebrations

The Author Index details the correspondence Thomas had with others and gives descriptions of the letters in the folders, such as the below screenshot describing correspondence with Mary Garrett in 1894-5 regarding her health and financial matters. Searching this way will allow you to pinpoint more specifically what letters you may wish to view; Thomas’ correspondence with certain people is extensive and this will assist you if you wish to focus just on a certain period of letters or those from a particular person. As part of our work we have been digitizing and transcribing the letters between Mary Garrett and Thomas and this will form part of the digital collections of The Albert M. Greenfield Digital Center for the History of Women’s Education site (see previous post by Amanda Fernandez ’14 on the Educating Women blog, ‘From frustration to fascination’ which describes her work on this part of the project).

The Reel Listings are in chronological order and begin with material relating to Thomas’ early life as a child and include letters and materials related to her family.

For those interested in her formative years, this material includes papers from her mother, Mary Whitall Thomas, describing her personal reflections on religion and women’s place in society, and her journal detailing the Baltimore life of the Thomas household. This material gives us a glimpse into her personality and helps us to understand somewhat where Carey Thomas received her belief in women’s independence and the possibilities for a woman’s role outside domestic concerns.

A selection of this early material from Thomas’ childhood is currently being transcribed by volunteer Joanne Behm, a Bryn Mawr College alum, and a blog post on some of her findings will follow soon on the Educating Women blog so check back for more details. Many of the early letters between Thomas and her cousins are richly illustrated with their childhood drawings and will also be digitized and made available to view online as part of our digitized collections.

Finally, the Author/Recipient Index allows you to search if you know the name of the person corresponding with Thomas, and this will direct you to the reel/box numbers where you can find their letters (note: you will find letters arranged by year and thus correspondence over time from the same person can often be found in multiple boxes)

A note on the limitations of this method of searching: it is often necessary to know the exact name of a person as names of organizations are not always listed, so for example, you may need to know the exact name of the Secretary or Treasurer of an organization in order to find letters relating to them. There are also precautionary tactics needed when searching for correspondents who married whilst Thomas was writing to them as seen in the screen shot below.

Despite these limitations, the possibilities afforded by online searching of this catalog greatly increase the likelihood of you finding the letters that you wish to and it is much easier to use than the hard copy.

Our thanks are due to digital project assistant Jessy Brody for digitizing the materials and digital collections specialist Cheryl Klimaszewski for her work on Triptych.

Guest instructor Anne Tiballi, PhD of the California Institute for Peruvian Studies comes to Bryn Mawr College Special Collections

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Students in an Anthropology class taught by Dr. Richard Davis, recently had the opportunity of taking a class with guest instructor Anne Tiballi, PhD, Director of Archaeological Textile Studies at the California Institute for Peruvian Studies.

The students are pictured here looking at Peruvian textiles held in Special Collections at Bryn Mawr College. This included a variety of techniques, culture groups and materials from different time periods. Some of the materials displayed were from the Middle Horizon period and weaving techniques include tapestry, double cloth and brocade out of camelid and cotton fibers.

The culture groups represented included Nasca and Huari. Here are a few more close up examples of what we have in the collection….

Wari Tie-Dyed Textile Fragment with Diamond Pattern, ca. 600 – ca. 1000, Middle Horizon, Cotton fiber

Camelid wool. Discontinuous warp and wefts joined along scaffolding

Three pieces of cloth woven together together; then taken apart for dying and put back together along header chord. Two complete pieces finished on 4 sides; yellow cloth tie dyed green or red with a pattern of diamonds. South coast, middle horizon period.
Gift of Ward M. Canaday and Mariam Coffin Canaday, Class of 1906, 2000.3.50.a

 

 

Peruvian Tapestry Fragment with Repeating Feather Pattern
Colonial
Cotton and camelid fiber

Very fine yarns- pattern of feathers woven, joined by very fine sewing- two sections–red background with yellow, white, and brown feathers; brown background with yellow, white, and red feathers. Brown sewn edge on one side where another section of
cloth was joined. Colonial, colors look Inca, possibly a tunic with the side binding of the tunic, feather imagery, cotton warp, excentric weft, selvedge chained off and bound differently in some areas. Spectacular piece. There are eccentric wefts making this a tapestry. The eccentric wefts contribute to the contour of the feathers. The weave density of the wefts changes. Warp and weft are camelid wool.

Gift of Ward M. Canaday and Mariam Coffin Canaday, Class of 1906,  2000.3.20.a

Peruvian Textile with Staff God and Bird Figures

200 – 1000, Probably Middle Horizon or earlier
Camelid and cotton

Staff god with bird figures. Geometric patterns in white, gold, red, blue, and green camelid yarns. Cotton warp. Left side is finished, others are not.
Interlocking tapestry . Probably made as a tab to hand down from a
tunic, like a fringe. Has eccentric wefts around the eyes. Single and paired warps contribute to the compression of the fabric. Warps are cotton, wefts are wool. Made on the coast because it uses both
cotton and wool.

Gift of Ann L. Pfeiffer-Murphy, 2007.1.18

Wari (Huari) Tunic Fragment with Geometric Design and Camelid Imagery

ca. 600 – ca. 1000, Middle Horizon
Camelid fiber

Fine geometric design in browns and golds. The design includes the eye  and mouth of a Llama (or camelid)  along the edges of the fragment. Remnants of red selvage binding. Very fine tapestry (high status). Wari (Huari). Wool (camelid). Dovetail tapestry joins between the colored areas. There are holes along the edge where the binding used to be, but was removed. The binding was red and yellow.

Gift of Ward M. Canaday and Mariam Coffin Canaday, Class of 1906, 2000.3.174

Peruvian Textile Fragment with Human Figure Imagery

Cotton and camelid fiber

Slit weave tapestry fragment with three repeating alien-like figures (possibly marine animal?, possibly squid). Background is gold with figures in brown, red, and black. Sewn (lined) to balanced plain
weave blocking of brown cotton on four edges. Peruvian textile is
all wool. Lining is not Peruvian. Originally part of a belt or head
wrapping.

Gift of Ward M. Canaday and Mariam Coffin Canaday, Class of 1906
2000.3.17.a

 

Peruvian Knitted Ornament Depicting a Human Head

ca. 200 – 600
Early Intermediate, Camelid fiber

Needle knitted (Cross-knit looping) face. Fragment of fringe. Design in pink, red, brown, and white yarns.

Gift of Ward M. Canaday and Mariam Coffin Canaday, Class of 1906, 2000.3.61.a

 

Admitted Students visit Bryn Mawr College Special Collections

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Bryn Mawr College Special Collections is proud to be part of the community offering campus wide activities for admitted students who will begin their Mawter lives in the Fall. Over the past few weeks we have welcomed dozens of students and their families into the Special Collections Reading Room on the Second Floor of Canaday Library.

As part of the active program of events at Bryn Mawr College, Special Collections staff and student workers spoke with admitted students and their families about the holdings we have spanning the College Archives, the Rare Books and Manuscripts Collection and the Art and Artifacts Collection.

Treasures on show include old scrapbooks from students in the early twentieth century, illuminated manuscripts of Chaucer’s collected works, first editions of novels by Charles Dickens and Jane Austen and Asian and African art. These are a small selection of the wonderful pieces we have in our collections, and if you would like to know more about our holdings visit the Special Collections website here

If you have not yet visited with your family, this is the last week of our admitted students activities so please make sure you come along!

 

All images courtesy of Marianne Weldon, Collections Manager, Art and Artifact Collections