Art Show at Senior Center Honors Family Artists

Art by Carl Peter Lehmann

By Jan Kolton Titus

If you’re an artist or have one in your family from any previous generation, you’ll enjoy the July show at Orcas Senior Center, “Celebrating Our Artistic Heritage. A reception for relatives and artists will be held July 15, 5-7 PM, at the Senior Center. Everyone is invited.

On the exhibit poster is a copy of a print that now hangs in the Hermitage in St. Petersburg. It is by Jeannine Lehmann Rodenberger’s great grandfather, Carl Peter Lehmann (1794-l876). A print by him also is hanging in the show. His son Emil, also an artist, emigrated to the U.S.

Island residents have submitted works in varied media done by their relatives. Trudy Erwin, who with her mother, the late Julia Crandall, started Orcas Island Pottery in 1953 after purchasing the magnificent site from its first operators, provided a taste of Crandall’s work, a group of covered jars depicting family.

“In putting together the exhibit, we discovered that each relative had fabulous stories about ‘their’ artist,” said Sue Lamb, chair of the Senior Center’s Visual Arts Committee.

For instance, Susan Mustard lent a portrait that her father, Jack Mustard, drew of her mother when both were students at Kansas State University during World War II. Another artist, Vargas, had chosen Jean Mustard as one of the four most beautiful women on the college scene that year.

The indomitable Jean Putnam’s daughter, Jeannie Doty, paused (in the middle of a week of moving the Food Bank to its new location, as well as tending market gardens) to bring two of her mother’s works—a 1985 map of the San Juan Islands and a 1995-ish watercolor. Putnam is also remembered for her work with the fledgling Orcas Center as well as teaching many accomplished artists.

Carl Bonelli, a cartoonist for the Oregon Journal, is represented by memorabilia including the framed drawing, “Bathing Party.” Mary Greenwell, his daughter, noted that while she was in college, he sent her messages in Morse Code.

Mary Hatten’s great uncle, George Thomson, whose paintings hang in the National Museum in Ottawa, visited Eastsound in 1946. The Owen Sound, Ontario resident painted extensively around the village. In the current show is one depicting the landscape between the Donohue house on North Beach Road and North Beach itself, with pools of water standing in the fields and peat bogs where the airport now lies.

Sara Hennessey’s father, Sig Purwin, is represented by collage, tempera and watercolor, a fine Brayer roller painting, and a wire sculpture, to give some idea of the breadth of his work.

One of the better-known artists related to an Orcasian has to be Howard W. Klippert, Heidi Lindberg’s father, who has four works in this show. Including one of Rockport, Massachusetts, done in the 1950s.

Ann Jones, who just completed illustrations for a forthcoming children’s book, found time to bring two of the works by her great aunt, Margaret Rosenstengel, whose father was Abraham Lincoln’s minister. Born in 1885 in Springfield, Illinois, these are one of chrysanthemums and one of a young auburn-haired woman.

Finally, there are several works by Lucile [cq] Ayers in the collections of her daughter, Pat Blay, who said her mother could build a patio or fence as handily as she could make a painting or sculpture. Four of the latter grace this amazing show.

It will close on August 5.