The Luxton Park Painters group began with children’s painting classes at Luxton Park, held outdoors from 1956 to 1966. Norma Olson, the instructor, wondered, can you teach painting to children in a public playground setting?, the answer, she decided, was a resounding yes. You can handle 60 kids 2 at a time with one teacher and a handful of teenage helpers, fences for easels, newspapers, a generous supply of tempera, and a brush for each can of paint.
In 1966 artist Norma Olson was hired to conduct classes for adult residents of the Glendale Housing project in Minneapolis. As the program grew, a group of outstanding women artists oversaw classes, programs and art sales (the group initiated the first garbage can painting contest in Minneapolis). The Luxton Park Painters remained active until 2006.
This exhibition looks at 25 paintings by founder Norma Olson as well as a number of the Luxton Park Painters such as Jere Purple, Maggie Moulton, Judy Horns, and Betty Feilzer, and others.
The Works of Josephine Lutz Rollins (1896-1989)
Josephine Shella Lutz was bron July 21, 1896 in Sherburne County, Minnesota. One of four girls, Jo showed an artistic bent very early. Her mother gave her pencils and an old wallpaper sample book, on the back of the sheets Jo would draw pictures, frequently depicting the hero
After demonstrating artistic talent very young, Jo’s mother gave her a wallpaper sample book and pencils in which to draw. Jo would draw her favorite characters from the stories that she was reading at that time. Her first work of art was hung behind the baseburner in the living room.
After the death of her father when she was nine, Jo’s mother moved the family to Iowa in order to obtain a good education for all of her girls. Jo attended Cornell College and would have become an architect had women been admitted to the program at that time. Instead Jo would go on to have a lengthy and influential career in Fine Arts.
During the war years (1917-1918) Jo took life classes at the endowed school of the Corcoran Gallery and Museum. Of this experience Jo said, “they had gotten so broad minded that they now allowed boy’s and girl’s to sit in the same life class.”
After the war Jo and her family moved back to Minnesota where she attended the University of Minnesota. Jo graduated from the Arts Education Department in 1920.
Jo Rollins was at the forefront of the women’s art collectives, which began in the early 1970s.
More biographical details being added.....
The exhibition opens on 5 June 2010 and runs thru Fall 2010.
Our June 5th guest speaker, Julie L'Enfant, is presently working on a much anticipated book called, Pioneer Modernists: Minnesota’s First Generation of Women Artists.
We hope to have Julie back to the museum for a program when the book is completed in the fall/winter of 2010.
Click link to visit the Afton Press site.
Book Summary (provided by publisher)
In the early twentieth century Francis Cranmer Greenman, Alice Hűgy, Elsa Laubach Jemne, Clara Mairs, Evelyn Raymond, Jo Lutz Rollins, and Ada Wolfe established successful careers as artists in Minneapolis and Saint Paul. They played significant roles in the development of the art schools, galleries, and arts organizations that make the Twin Cities a major cultural center today. Yet their strong reputations were eclipsed mid-century by the rise of Abstract Expressionism and other male-dominated modernist movements.
Drawing on unpublished papers, contemporaneous accounts, and interviews with descendants and collectors, Pioneer Modernists presents a new picture of their cosmopolitan art training, multi-faceted careers, and sometimes unconventional lives, set in the context of the tumultuous events of the twentieth century. It examines their work--paintings, prints, decorative work, and sculptures—in terms of its humanistic ideas, technical sophistication, and visual appeal. By relating this work to national and international art movements, Pioneer Modernists contributes to a new understanding of Modernism as richly diverse.