Artists

A native of Salt Lake City, J. George Midgley (1882-1979) was an amateur photographer for more than six decades. He learned the gum bichromate technique, his preferred method, by observation, reading, and experimentation. Because Midgley was less interested in the sub￾ject matter than in the expression the bromoil process could add to it, he avoided professional beauty spots and concentrated instead on the farms that dominated rural Utah in the early part of this century. He began sending works to exhibitions about 1914 and by the 1920s was exhibiting widely in this country and abroad. His mature work became steadily more abstract as he sought sub￾jects with pattern as the principal focus. Many of his abstract works are based on details of abandoned rural structures. Midgley was an artist who found his own way. As a photographer he was largely self-taught, and his choices of subject, treatment, and method were highly personal. He left a body of work that shows a remarkable vision, confidence in his ability, and solid craftsmanship, all factors that account for his acceptance by major salons and presti￾gious institutions. His legacy is a series of images of an earlier Utah embodied in the unusual form he mastered.

Theodore Milton Wassmer was born 23 February 1910 in Salt Lake City, the eldest of eight children. He was educated in Utah and worked at engrav￾ing and wholesale hardware companies from 1923 to 1942. He began to paint in 1927, his interest sparked when he watched Frank Zimbeaux paint a picture of the old Salt Lake Theatre. During the Depression, though he supported his family of ten for two years, he still managed to sell enough of his paintings for five dollars apiece to finance a trip to the 1934 Chicago World’s Fair. There he felt challenged by the old masters to pursue art. He studied five years with Professor Florence E. Ware at the University of Utah, posing and helping paint in the back￾grounds of the Kingsbury Hall murals. v Pearl Harbor interrupted his career. At Sheppard Field, Texas, he found ways to continue his art, painting large murals for the Air Force during his ofLduty hours. A freak accident in 1944 paralyzed his painting arm. Year￾long therapy at Bushnell Hospital in Brigham City helped him regain partial use of the arm; while there, he painted a mural with his left arm. In 1945 he married Utah artist Judy Lund in New York City, where he studied for four years at the Art Student’s League and for two years with Raphael Soyer. He painted portraits for two years in a Carnegie Hall Studio and moved to Woodstock, New York in 1952, where he lived and worked for thirty-three years. He returned to Utah in 1985. Over two thousand of his works may be found in museums, universities, schools, and private collections. In 1990 the Springville Museum of Art celebrated his eightieth year with a sixty-year retrospective, 1930-1990. Wassmer says about his work, “My art can be no better than I myself as a person and no deeper than my understanding of life.”

This issue features the work of George Dibble, noted Utah watercolorist, teacher, and art critic. Dibble was born in Laie, Oahu, Hawaii, and began his studies at the University of Utah with Jack Sears and Mabel Frazer, receiving a teacher’s diploma there in 1925. From 1929 to 1930 he studied at the Art Students League of New York with Ivan Olinsky, George Bridgman, and Howard Giles, then moved on to Columbia University, where he studied with Charles Martin, Arthur Young, and Sallie Tannahill, receiving B.S. and M.A. degrees in 1938 and 1940. From 1930 to 1937 he was the art supervisor for Murray City schools, taught in Salt Lake City schools from 1939 to 1941, and from 1941 to 1972 was on the staff of the art department at the University of Utah, where he is currently professor emeritus. In 1990 he received a Distinguished Alumnus award from the University of Utah. His publications include Water color: Materials and Techniques (New York: Holt Rinehart and Winston, 1966) and the weekly art column, “The Art Scene,” in the Salt Lake Tribune . Dibble married Cleone Atwood in 1932, and they have three sons, George, Jr., Stephen A., Jonathan A., and ten grandchildren. About his work, Dibble says: “Watercolor, like any painting medium, has its own special characteristics. My goal is to consistently increase awareness of such qualities in transparent watercolor painting. “Though watercolors can be capricious, they nonetheless have a high potential for expressing mood and feeling. The medium allows a wide range of approaches- from metic￾ulously managed passages in controlled washes to spontaneously expressed combinations of water and fresh pigment. “I find satisfaction in the stimulating reactions possible between special papers and freshly applied color. Over-management can result in muddy, unclear passages, although desired moods should prescribe the technique in most cases. “I generally avoid try-out steps before working on an idea itself. Such procedures can result in tired, stale painting. It takes courage and confidence to sustain life in a work.”

Randall Lake is a painter of twentieth-century subject and nineteenth-century technique. He writes: “My paintings are painted from life. I dislike working from photographs because the photographic image is so static and unchanging that one ends up copying the ma￾terial rather than interpreting. There is nothing like painting on loca￾tion for that chemistry bred of urgency, of wanting to get it right, of struggling to capture the momentary, and of having to discern what is essential and what is not.” Born in Long Beach and raised in Southern California, Lake grad￾uated from the University of Colorado. He spent the next four years studying art in Paris, France, at the Ecole Nationale Supérieure des Beaux Arts and at Atelier 17. Returning to Utah, where he lives today, he studied with Alvin Gittins, received his masters in painting and “that wonderful old training that’s so hard to come by.” “A recent review referred to my work as ‘purebred conservatism,’ ” Lake says, “probably because I do not try to transform reality but rather represent life with a fidelity that makes most moderns uncom￾fortable. I may not always continue to paint so realistically, but I believe that artistic freedom begins with a mastery of the fundamen￾tals and a thorough knowledge of traditional painting.” Randall travels extensively every year, trying to capture on canvas the essence of life. Every year is a pilgrimage to the continent, Cali￾fornia, central Utah and a studio full of props and figures, and at least one new adventure. “Part of being educated is using the wealth of knowledge that has gone on before you.” This Randall has done by applying his craft to the world he sees. If art is a way of life, then Randall’s actual handling of paint goes to demonstrate his view.

This statement by John Hafen about the purpose of art, though stated as an ideal, actually best describes his own beliefs and the great legacy of his work. Hafen’s landscape paintings reveal a humble man in awe of nature. His gift for painting, his love and reverence for nature, and his unique style springing from French and American Impressionism have transformed these realities into images filled with truth and poetry. While many regional land￾scape artists around 1900 attempted to portray the spectacular scenery of the Rocky Mountains, Hafen’s intimate paintings express the depth and har￾mony of nature, conveying subtle moods and quiet moments. John Hafen (1856-1910) was the son of Mormon immigrami parents who joined the Church in Switzerland and arrived by wagon in Salt Lake City in 1862. The family settled temporarily in Richfield and Tooele but returned to Salt Lake City in 1868, where over the next decade Hafen studied painting with the pioneer artists George M. Ottinger and Danquart Weggeland at the University of Deseret. He also met painters of his own generation: John B. Fairbanks and Lorus Pratt, son of apostle Orson Pratt. In his early twenties, Hafen decided upon a career as a professional artist and learned the photo￾graphic trade. After marrying in 1879, he assisted talented Utah documen￾tary photographer George Edward Anderson in opening a tent gallery at Springville, Utah. Earning a living was a challenge for Hafen, but he always tried to stay close to creative art. He was also an illustrator for several com￾mercial projects, including two fine lithographs of Joseph Smith as general of the Nauvoo Legion and a color booklet illustrating Eliza R. Snow’s poem “O My Father.” In the early 1890s, largely through Hafen’s urging, the Church sent him and four other artists to France to gain the expertise needed to paint extensive murals for the new Salt Lake Temple. The First Presidency set these five men apart as “art missionaries” and gave them financial support for their studies. The students enrolled in a demanding program of classically based academic training at the Julian Academy in Paris and also became conversant with the techniques and values of impressionistic easel painting which had become an accepted tradition in France by then. After returning to Utah in 1892, Hafen played a major role in planning and executing the murals for the Salt Lake Exposure to recent French landscape art, particularly the tonal art of the Barbizon School and the plein-air work of the Impressionists, totally changed John Hafen’s work. Before his French studies, his art contained mosdy nar￾rative subject matter. His canvasses had been tightly executed, highly detailed, and painted in darker “Rembrandt” pigments; afterward, his landscapes were painted in the open air. Fresh color and light capture the reality of the moment, and the artisťs feelings and astute observations become evident. Hafen now applied paint in visible, short broken strokes. In his own words: “In paintings that you may see hereafter cease to look for mechanical effect or minute fin￾ish, for individual leaves, blades of grass, or aped imitation of things, but look for smell, for soul, for feeling, for the beautiful in line and color” (in Gibbs 1987). Commencing in the middle 1890s, Hafen concentrated on depicting the meaning and spirit of the Utah rural landscape. He completed many of his finest works, now considered masterpieces of Utah art, during this period, which lasted until 1907. With no reliable private patronage in Utah, Hafen drifted into debt, unable to adequately support his large family. For several years beginning in 1901, the Church contracted with him for $100.00 or more each month to complete a designated number of pictures, mostly landscapes and portraits of leading Mormon officials. The Church thus acquired scores of paintings, includ￾ing some of his best, which became the nucleus of the finest existing collec￾tion of the artisťs work. Several are currently on display at the Museum of Church History and Art, including “Forest Solitude, Brighton” (1901) and “Girl among the Hollyhocks” (1902), the latter a masterpiece of American Impressionism. Finally, Hafen left Utah to settle in Brown County, Indiana, and became part of a loose-knit group of artists who painted the local landscape in a regional impressionistic style. He also received important commissions, includ￾ing a portrait of the governor of Indiana. Just as financial prospects became brighter, Hafen contracted pneumonia and died in 1910. Today collectors and museums in the Intermountain region hold the work of this great Latter￾day Saint artist and Utah impressionist in the very highest esteem. Of all Utah artists of his generation, he was likely the most successful in communi￾cating the poetry and substance of nature.

This issue features the work of Margaret W. Morrison, a native of Salt Lake City, graduate of the University of Utah, and currently an instructor in the art extension program at the University of Texas at Austin. Morrison says of her work: “Dealing with the human figure as imagery is a complicated matter. The observer is preconditioned to react in a certain way towards that imagery: Does this piece tell a story? Are these people that I recognize? Is this a specific moment in time? What are they thinking about? What are they saying? “I think most viewers experience a piece, make a quick ‘closure’ decision, and move on, almost as if thumbing through a book and then slamming the cover closed . . . finding nothing there to pull the viewer in to a level deeper than mere visual recognition. “I intend in my work to keep that book from slamming closed, offering more than story or portraiture. I try to involve the viewer in several levels of psychological discovery and hope that my imagery pulls at dreams, memories, and feelings you can’t quite put your finger on- a sense of timelessness, a balance between detachment and preciousness.”

Lee Dillon is a talented ceramic artist who, in his own words, “loves the process of creating artwork more than the finished product.” He finds con￾tinual excitement and challenge working in ceramics and has taught in sec￾ondary schools, colleges, and public art centers in the Salt Lake City area since receiving an M.F.A. degree in ceramic design from Brigham Young University in 1978. Lee is represented in a number of private and public collections in

LeConte Stewart was born 15 April 1891 in Glenwood, Utah. After school￾ing at Ricks Academy in Rexburg, Idaho, he studied art in Salt Lake City in 1912, and with the Art Students League in Woodstock, New York, and New York City in 1913-14. While on a mission in Hawaii in 1917-19, he was assigned to paint murals and decorative detail for the temple in Laie. He married Zipporah Layton while in Hawaii, and taught school and proselyted as well. In 1920-22, he painted murals in the Cardston Alberta temple, and returned to settle in Kaysville, Utah, in 1923. He was head of the Ogden High School art department from 1923-38, and from 1938-56 was chairman of the University of Utah Art Department. Stewart taught in elementary schools, high schools, and at the University of Utah, and after retiring in 1956 continued to teach, both with the Univer￾sity and privately in Davis County. His on-site landscape painting classes con￾tinued through the mid-1980s, and he worked actively in painting and draw￾ing the landscapes of rural northern Utah to the age of ninety-five. Stewart’s failing health has recently forced him to retire from painting, and at present he resides in a health care center in Clearfield, Utah.

This issue features the work of Allen Craig Bishop, a painter, printmaker, and art instructor who completed his studies at the University of Denver School of Art and now lives with his wife Alene and their three children in Granite, Utah. He is currently pursuing his career with a Visual Arts Fellowship awarded by the Utah Arts Council. Bishop comments: “In drawing, printmaking, and painting, I use formats and sizes ranging from 2″x2” lithographs to an 8’x240′ mural. I am inter￾ested in the interactions of geometry, shape, and color, which offer intriguing possibilities for investigating varied but universal structures. Virtually all visual phenomena have an elemental relationship to geometry, shape, and color. “Primarily non-objective, my work has taken inspiration from such varied sources as chess, astronomy, creation, and scripture. Recently, however, Fve introduced elements of time, change, and choice by using shaped canvases in rearrangeable, multi-part configurations. This allows the viewer to more fully participate in the process of visual communication, and the “universal struc￾tures” of shape and color function on a more elastic and democratic level. “To name my work, I rearrange syllables and invent words much as I create and organize visual forms. My titles usually have no direct, literal mean￾ing; I only occasionally intend similarity to real words. “It would be hard to imagine life without discovery and creation. I hope someday to become as Bezaleel, ‘filled . . . with the spirit of God, in wisdom, and in understanding, and in knowledge and in all manner of workmanship’ (Ex. 31:3). If my work helps to ‘please the eye, . . . gladden the heart . . . and to enliven the soul’ (D&C 59: 18-19), then I have participated in God’s plan.”