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Q&A with Yonavea Hawkins, Caddo Beadwork Artist

Yonavea Hawkins is an artist who creates intricate beadwork for Native American and Caddo cultural items. We are delighted to have her participate in the upcoming Late Night celebrating the new exhibition Spirit Lodge: Mississippian Art from Spiro, during which she will showcase several of her pieces and talk about her process and the connection between traditional and contemporary beadworking. Read our special Q&A with her to learn more about her practice ahead of the event on March 25!

_{Yonavea Hawkins working on a belt on a loom during a “Live Bead” on stage at an event.}

How did you begin creating art?
As a child I was always drawing and painting, with art class in school being my favorite subject, then to obtaining a fine arts degree from Oklahoma City University and started working as a graphic designer. Eventually my 8 to 5 creative jobs morphed into print quality control with organized paperwork of meeting deadlines and budgets. Then and now with a full-time job, evenings and weekends are my creative times. Working from a small desk, my present work evolved from learning to sew and bead to make Caddo regalia for myself, my children, and then Native American regalia for others. Now I create a variety of bead work, cultural items, or diverse art with different beading techniques for juried art markets with competitions. Changing from pencil and paint to beads and buckskin became new mediums to work in and another way to express myself creatively.

_{Hawkins completing beadwork on a commissioned piece while in her booth at an art market.}

The words “contemporary” and “traditional” carry a lot of weight when describing Indigenous arts. Where do you situate your work?
For my work it’s a combination of contemporary and traditional because of the materials used and the design elements, to the construction of the finished work. Contemporary because of the use of the current Charlotte bead colors and todays materials to bead on. Traditional, when I find the materials online to buy as I am an urban Native American without access to harvest and collect traditional materials once used. The use of glass bead work starts from European contact as beads, wool and silk were trade goods to Indigenous peoples, and these trade goods became traditional for some Indigenous peoples. Beading techniques developed for using trade beads and used today holds the traditional look, but in contemporary colors and designs, unless you find a stash of antique beads.

Tell us about some of the work you’re showing at DMA’s Late Night.
Several years back, a collector of my art told me that my beadwork was “Wearable Art”. As such a great deal of my work created for art markets are bracelet cuffs, contemporary beaded belts, belt buckles, hair barrettes, necklaces, and hatbands. After attending an art market, I never know what work will sell out and what I will be creating next, but I plan to show a variety of pieces mentioned earlier. I will also show cultural items that have won awards at art markets such as moccasins, turtle shell purses, bandolier bags, and pipe bags.

_{Work in progress of a smoked buckskin pipe bag with a Southeastern eagle on the front.}

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You can find out more about Yonavea Hawkins in this recent artist interview. Don’t miss out on our Late Night celebration on March 25, featuring artist demonstrations, art making, performances, films, and talks about the exhibition Spirit Lodge: Mississippian Art from Spiro, and more! Get tickets here.

Expanded for DMA Members: Q&A with Yonavea Hawkins

Published March 16, 2022 Exhibitions , Guest Blog Post , Late Nights , works of art Closed
Tags: Dallas Museum of Art, DMA

What makes working with beads special?
It’s the tactile experience of being able to stroke your fingers across a piece of finished beadwork or to pick it up and hold it. Buyers looking at my work will lightly run their fingers across a strip of beadwork and without hesitation others will pick up a piece to examine it closer and to hold it. Work created with Charlotte glass beads are visually appealing with the sparkle coming from the cut sides and with an iris shimmer. Though I do like the one bead at a time challenge to reach a completed work.

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The Women of the Museum School

Published March 3, 2022 Archive Closed
Tags: Dallas Museum of Art, DMA

_{Margaret Hull taught children’s classes at the Museum School from 1957-1970.}

Arts education has been an important feature of the museum since its founding in 1903. The Dallas Art Association held lecture series and programs featuring the artists, collectors, and art historians of the day to educate members on art and to promote collecting. After the first professional director was hired in 1929, the adult education offerings expanded to include director-led art history lecture series and gallery talks.

Educational offerings were extended to children in 1937 when Director Richard Foster Howard started the school tour program with the Dallas Independent School District and a program of free Saturday art classes for children. By 1940, Maggie Joe Hogue, first head of the education department, reported that the DMFA’s education programs were unique in that they focused on creative teaching where most other museums confine their teaching to appreciation.

The creative teaching element was formalized with the founding of the Museum School in 1941, which offered a variety of art classes for children and adults. A number of well-known Dallas artists taught at the Museum School including Octavio Medellin (see exhibition and library case), Otis Dozier, Merritt Mauzey, and Roger Winter. But as this is Women’s History Month, let’s focus on a few of the women artists who taught at the Museum School.

_{Left: Barbara Maples working with two students
Right: Barbara Maples, Plastic Boxes 2, c. 1967–1968, gelatin silver print, Dallas Museum of Art, Texas Artists Fund, 2009.5}

Barbara Maples (1912-1999) was painter, printmaker, photographer and educator. She began her career teaching elementary and secondary art for the Dallas Independent School District from 1937-1964, and concurrently taught children’s classes at the Museum School from 1940-1954. She went on to become Professor and Head of the Department of Art Education at Southern Methodist University from 1965-1978. Maples had three one-person exhibitions at the DMFA in 1941, 1944 and 1947, in addition to having her works selected for or included in at least 38 exhibitions at the museum. Three prints and one photograph are in the permanent collection.

_{Left: Lucille Jeffries working with students
Right: Lucille Jeffries, Bouquet, n.d., color linoleum cut, Dallas Museum of Art, gift of Mrs. C.P. Wright, 1964.65}

Lucille Jeffries (1903-1950) was a painter and graphic designer. She taught children’s classes at the Museum School in the 1940s, while also teaching at Mt. Auburn School in Dallas. She also had three one-person exhibitions at the DMFA in 1941, 1943, and 1947, and had work included in over 25 juried or group exhibitions. Twenty-five of her lithographs, watercolors and linoleum cuts are in the permanent collection.

_{Left: Evaline Sellors offered Adventures in Clay to the young artists in her summer classes, 1960s.
Right: Evaline Sellors, Bowl, c. 1951, glazed stoneware, Dallas Museum of Art, gift of the Craft Guild of Dallas, 1951.65}

Evaline Sellors (1907-1995) taught adult pottery and ceramic sculpture classes at the Museum School in partnership with the Craft Guild of Dallas from 1950-1968. She also taught children’s classes at the Fort Worth Art Center, and designed costumes and puppets. Her work was included in over 20 juried exhibitions held at the DMFA and was featured in an exhibition of Fort Worth artists with two others in 1934. Two works by Sellors are included in the DMA’s permanent collection.

_{Left: Mary Doyle working with students
Right: Mary Doyle, Texas Oranges, 1953, serigraph, Dallas Museum of Art, gift of the artist, 1954.3}

Mary Doyle (1904-2000) was a printmaker, painter and watercolorist, but her favorite mediums were serigraphy and silk screen. Doyle taught children’s painting classes at the Museum School from the 1940s-1960s, later joining the museum full time as Education Director and Registrar. She also taught art for the Dallas Independent School District from 1935-1972. Doyle had work selected for 10 juried exhibitions held at the DMFA, and two works in the permanent collection.

These are just three of the many women who taught at the Museum School from 1941 to its closure in 1970. Others include: Eloise Blondel, Dorothy Brake, Caroline Daniel, Ellen Dennis, Carolyn Dodson, Sybil Edwards, Patsy Eldridge, Ann Cushing Gantz, Estella Henkel, Wanda Hill, Margaret Hull, Frances Jenkins, Annelies Kahn, Dorothy Kay King, Rita Mallett, Virginia Oechsner, Martha Jane Reed, Coreen Spellman, Jane Stare, Ruth Tears, and Peggy Wilson.

Hillary Bober is the Archivist at the Dallas Museum of Art.

Expanded for DMA Members: The Women of the Museum School

Published March 3, 2022 Archive Closed

In addition to classes, the museum held artist demonstrations daily for visitors to the State Fair of Texas in the early 1950s. The popular Art-in-Action program featured painters, sculptors, printmakers and potters demonstrating their professional talents. While the intent of the program was to fascinate visitors, it also promoted new enrollments for the Museum School and thus featured many Museum School teachers. Other artists who regularly submitted to the annual Dallas County Allied Arts, Texas General, Texas Crafts, and Southwestern Prints and Drawings exhibitions and had one-man exhibitions at the DMFA were also included on the roster of demonstrators.

_{Craft Guild members, jeweler Shirley Lege Carpenter and weaver Stella Lamond demonstrate their skills in the Center Court}

In May-June 1956 the museum revived the demonstrations with the Festival of Art in Action, a series of 4 Saturday-Sunday events with a different media each weekend: Crafts, Printmaking, Painting, and Sculpture.

_{Images above: Marianna Roach demonstrating bookbinding, Janet Turner demonstrating printmaking, Ann Cushing Gantz demonstrating painting, Estella Henkel demonstrating weaving, and Mary Doyle demonstrating serigraphy.}

Many other women artists demonstrated their skill and talents in the Art-in-Action series in the 1950s including: Clara Miller & Nita Cisneros (kick wheel pottery); Sue Brown, Lani Robley, Becca Kennerly, Thelma Killian, Evaline Sellors (ceramics); Ann Truitt (sculpture), Blanche McVey (Etching); and Coreen Spellman, Elizabeth Walmsley, Constance Forsyth, Lea Cuilty (Printmaking).

Hillary Bober is the Archivist at the Dallas Museum of Art.

Connections Across Collections: Love is in the Art

Published February 14, 2022 Curatorial , works of art Closed
Tags: Art, Dallas Museum of Art, DMA, Valentine's Day

Love is in the air—and in the art at the DMA! Take a look below to see our staff picks of art that we heART in celebration of Valentine’s Day.

_{Wedding vase with butterflies, Mary Louise Eteeyan, Jemez Pueblo,} _{1975–2000. Ceramic. Dallas Museum of Art, gift of Dr. and Mrs. Robert I. Kramer, 2014.43.18}.

Becca Merriman-Goldring, McDermott Intern for Arts of the Americas
Each spout of a Pueblo wedding vase represents one spouse; the two are joined by a bridged handle to form a continuous whole. Mary Louise Eteeyan emphasizes that significance in the decoration of this vase, with two butterflies coming together over a single basket of corn.

_{Wedding ring, department of San Marcos, San Pedro Sacatepequez, Guatemala, Maya — Mam, probably 1930s or 1940s. Dallas Museum of Art, the Patsy R. and Raymond D. Nasher Collection of Maya Textiles from Guatemala, gift of Patsy R. and Raymond D. Nasher, 1983.524}.

Dr. Mark A. Castro, The Jorge Baldor Curator of Latin American Art
There are several wedding rings, like this one, in the Museum’s collection of Maya textiles from Guatemala. We don’t know if they were ever used, but perhaps they might bring you good luck if you’re popping the big question this Valentine’s Day!

_{John White Alexander, Miss Dorothy Quincy Roosevelt (later Mrs. Langdon Geer), 1901–1902. Oil on canvas. Dallas Museum of Art, gift of the Pauline Allen Gill Foundation in memory of Pauline Gill Sullivan, 2007.36}.

Martha MacLeod, Senior Curatorial Administrator and Curatorial Assistant for American Art
John White Alexander painted Dorothy’s portrait shortly before she married Langdon Greer. It was possibly a gift for her soon-to-be husband. The composition includes her beloved Irish Setter, Shamrock. Artists often include dogs in paintings to symbolize fidelity and devotion.

_{LaToya Ruby Frazier, Grandma Ruby’s Refrigerator, 2007. Gelatin silver print. Dallas Museum of Art, Lay Family Acquisition Fund, 2018.37}.

Hilde Nelson, Curatorial Assistant for Contemporary Art
In her series The Notion of Family, Frazier centers three generations of women—herself, her mother, and her grandmother. Here, the artist honors her grandmother; the fridge covered with the proud matriarch’s family memorabilia conveys their loving bond.

Expanded for DMA Members: Love Is in the Art

Published February 9, 2022 Uncategorized Closed

Love is in the air—and in the art at the DMA! Take a look below to see our staff picks of art that we heART in celebration of Valentine’s Day.

_{François Lepage, Flowers in a Vase with Two Doves, 1816–1820. Oil on canvas. Dallas Museum of Art, Munger Fund in honor of three members of the Fund who loved flowers, Gertrude Terrell Munger, Rena Munger Aldredge, and Betty Aldredge Slater, 2016.23.M}.

Dr. Nicole R. Myers, Interim Chief Curator and The Barbara Thomas Lemmon Senior Curator of European Art
Everything about François Lepage’s sumptuous still life speaks of love, from the flora to the fauna. The pairs of white doves and monarch butterflies—traditional symbols of love—may reflect the artist’s courtship of his future wife, Julie Blum. Not only was this painting finished the year they married, but it remained in Lepage’s family for almost 200 years, perhaps a sign of its deeper meaning.

Stretching Ed Clark’s “Intarsia”

Published February 7, 2022 Behind-the-Scenes , Conservation , Contemporary Art , Staff , works of art Closed

Ed Clark is an American abstract expressionist and pivotal Black artist in the DMA’s collection who experimented with shaped canvases. His large-scale painting Intarsia is on view for free in the exhibition Slip Zone: A New Look at Postwar Abstraction in the Americas and East Asia. To create this work, he laid raw canvas on the floor, poured acrylic paint directly on the surface, and spread it across the canvas with a push broom in a performative process. The title of this painting refers to a knitting and metalworking technique used to create fields of different colors that appear to blend in and out of one another. Combined with the elliptical shape of the canvas, which Clark saw as evocative of the shape of an eye, the radiant colors give the overwhelming sense of an expanding, pulsating image. Find out how our team of art conservators and preparators worked to preserve this work’s thick layers of paint by stretching the canvas before displaying it.

From Laura Hartman, Paintings Conservator at the DMA:

It was a true team effort—the painting measures over 5 meters by 3.5 meters, and weighs over 200 pounds! This painting is unique in that the artist has applied so many layers of paint that the paint is in fact thicker than the canvas, which changes the entire physics of the work. It has also traditionally been shown pinned directly to the wall, which was possible in 1970 when it was painted, but now the work has aged and needs a new approach to ensure longevity.

We worked directly with a stretcher maker in New York to design a stretcher that would hold the weight of the piece while remaining thin, giving the appearance that the work is pinned to the wall.

I worked with our preparators to create edge extensions, or a strip lining, and attach these to the back of the work to be able to stretch it while retaining the illusion of pinning. We first stretched a loose lining, which is a giant piece of canvas that acts as an additional support, and then carefully stretched the work onto the prepared stretcher, slowly increasing tension over several days to allow the paint to relax and release into a comfortable position. The work is now secure for the long haul, while retaining the artist’s original intention.

It took a lot of hands but we got it done! It takes at least 8 people to safely move the work, so all hands were on deck for this one!

Expanded for DMA Members: Stretching Ed Clark’s “Intarsia”

Published January 27, 2022 Uncategorized Closed

From Laura Hartman, Paintings Conservator at the DMA:

We worked directly with a stretcher maker in New York to design a stretcher that would hold the weight of the piece while remaining thin, giving the appearance that the work is pinned to the wall.

It took a lot of hands but we got it done! It takes at least 8 people to safely move the work, so all hands were on deck for this one!

DMA by Design

Published January 19, 2022 Archive , Dallas , DFW Closed
Tags: Dallas Museum of Art, DMA

January always marks a new year and new possibilities, and at this time almost 40 years ago, the DMA and the citizens of Dallas were looking forward to a brand-new museum and watching it grow from the ground up.

The site for the new museum, chosen in 1977, was in area north of the Central Business District, where it would serve as the anchor of a new Arts District for the city. This location had once been home to grand mansions facing Ross Avenue at the turn of the 20^th century, but by the 1930s and 1940s the area was dominated by car dealerships, tire and auto repair shops, and small machine shops.

_{Mansions along Ross Avenue, circa 1910}

_{Ross Avenue at Harwood Street, circa 1925. Photo from Park Cities: A Photohistory by Diane Galloway, page 51}

The design for the new museum building by architect Edward Larrabee Barnes was created in 1979. Barnes’s plan included a central concourse to connect museum functions, terraced galleries with internal courtyards and skylights for natural light, vaulted space for contemporary art, a sculpture garden, and a quiet continuous background that lets the artworks shine.

_{Edward Larrabee Barnes’s original design for the new Dallas Museum of Art, March 1979. The layout stayed generally the same, but the concourse became straight instead of stepped.}

_{Edward Larrabee Barnes rendering of the East façade (Harwood Street side) of the DMA}

The site chosen was not empty land, and the structures were still mainly automotive related, especially on the Ross and Harwood sides.

_{Northwest corner of Ross and Harwood, the current location of the DMA, looking north along Harwood Street with Ross Avenue in the foreground.}

The demolition of the existing structures began in September 1980, but in keeping with the January theme, the following image is from January 29, 1981.

_{J.W. Bateson Construction, Paula Lawrence photographer; DMA Archives, New Museum Demolition and Construction Progress Photographs}

Construction in January 1982:

^{J.W. Bateson Construction, Photos by Mel Armand Assoc; DMA Archives, New Museum Demolition and Construction Progress Photographs}

This above photo is the back of the Museum and Barrel Vault from St. Paul Street, looking southeast. The First United Methodist Church of Dallas can be seen in the background.

And circa January 1983—there weren’t process photos from January, so the interior view is from December 1982, and the aerial view is from February 1983:

_{J.W. Bateson Construction, photos by L.M. Dale; DMA Archives, New Museum Demolition and Construction Progress Photographs}

This staircase is in the center of the concourse; the first doorway on the left goes to Museum offices; the second doorway in the top center of the image leads to what is now the Arts of the Pacific on Level 3. The windows in the background are where the Hamon building now stands.

In this aerial view, the Sculpture Garden is still under construction on the left side of the image, and construction on the Reves and Decorative Arts galleries has not yet begun. And if you look really closely, you can see Woodall Rodgers Freeway in the top center, which was still a few months away from completion.

The building was completed and on January 29,1984 the new DMA opened!

_{North façade—This side was covered by the Hamon Building in 1993; but the stone-carved “Dallas Museum of Art” can still be seen on the 4th Floor, at the top of the stairs from the Concourse.}

_{Ceremonial Entrance at Harwood and Flora streets}

I am looking forward to what the coming year and the future brings for the DMA.

Hillary Bober is the Archivist at the DMA.

Medellín’s Masterpieces

Published January 10, 2022 Uncategorized Closed

The following is an excerpt from the exhibition catalogue for Octavio Medellín: Spirit and Form, opening for free at the Dallas Museum of Art on February 6, 2022.

_{Octavio Medellín. Courtesy of Bywaters Special Collections, Hamon Arts Library, Southern Methodist University. Photographer: Jay Simmons}

In 1978, the artist Octavio Medellín (1907–1999) wrote a short text that appears to have been the beginning of a book project that he later abandoned. Opening with a poem, The Masterpiece, presumably by the artist, … it reads as a stream of consciousness, unedited and without paragraph breaks. At times the text seems akin to an artist’s statement…. On the third page he writes:

“…we think of materials as purely a medium, I personally believe that materials have a soul of their own particularly if you are to work directly with them, each one is different than the other. My mission was to search in them their behavior so that I communicate with them and develop a sensitive feeling and become part of them, not to take for granted their natural formation but to be inspired and invent a form that is not entirely what’s there, but a mixture of both.”

Medellín’s artistic practice was defined by his exploration of the duality that he alludes to in this unpublished text. He demonstrated a drive to understand and master new materials, beginning first with wood, stone, and clay, later expanding to include various forms of glass and metalwork. At the same time, regardless of facture, Medellín’s work can be characterized by its animate qualities—pose, movement, etc.—that the artist harnessed to provoke an emotional response. This “spirit” comes in part, as Medellín points out, from the materials themselves.

Given his view that an artist’s spirit contributes to an object’s ability to engage its viewers, Medellín was understandably cognizant of the role of his own personal history and identity in his work and its reception. Throughout his almost seven-decade career, he utilized pivotal events in his life as sources of inspiration for his work, such as his experiences of the Mexican Civil War or his transformative trip to Yucatán to study Maya ruins.

Medellín’s philosophies were … also at the heart of his approach to teaching. Over the course of his career, he taught at numerous institutions across Texas, his repertoire of classes expanding alongside his own artistic practice…. Stories and anecdotes abound of his legendary ability to guide students, and of the lingering impact of their interactions with him. Within the city of Dallas, Medellín’s legacy as a teacher has in some senses overshadowed his importance as an artist, but in fact the two roles are intertwined and inseparable—his connections to his students were an important source of inspiration and creativity.

This catalogue, and the exhibition … seeks first and foremost to draw attention to Medellín’s work and his unique place within mid-twentieth century art in North America. A pivotal individual within a network of artists and cultural figures that contributed to the development of modern art in Texas, Medellín also had significant connections throughout the wider field of “American” art, as well as to leading figures within Mexican Modernism. Despite his position at the intersection of so many important groups, Medellín’s work remains relatively overlooked.… This project represents the most expansive assessment of the artist’s career to date.

Dr. Mark A. Castro is The Jorge Baldor Curator of Latin American Art at the DMA.

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