For Mary Lou Goertzen, art was woven (sometimes literally) into the fabric of everyday life and work.
The special exhibit “Piece / Work: The Art of Mary Lou Goertzen” opens Aug. 30 at Kauffman Museum. Admission is free that day. Hours are 1:30-4:30 p.m., with a presentation on the exhibit at 3 p.m.
Dr. Rachel Epp Buller, Bethel College professor of visual arts and design, is the exhibit curator and will present this Sunday-Afternoon-at-the-Museum program in the museum auditorium.
Goertzen (1929-2020) grew up as a Bethel “campus kid” when her father, Willis Rich, became the college’s first director of public relations in 1934.
She showed artistic talent from a young age, studying art with the legendary Marie Orr, who also inspired Vernon Rickman, at Newton High School (as well as Lena Waltner at Bethel College, J.P. Klassen at Bluffton [Ohio] University and Robert Kiskadden at Wichita State University).
As a high school student, she entered regional art contests for several years, winning recognition in watercolor, painting and sculpture, with some of her pieces chosen to be part of a traveling exhibit of outstanding high school work.
Goertzen is best known for her pen-and-ink/watercolor compositions that were later reproduced on greeting cards and, most notably, on china dishes sold at high-end department stores across the country.
“Piece / Work”explores individual pieces of Goertzen’s oeuvre, or body of work – drawings, collages, porcelain china and a range of textiles – as well as the nature of work for an artist who rarely held a paying job.
Goertzen created artwork during the in-between times of domestic labor while raising a family in northern California and Oregon’s Coast Range. She and her husband, Ernie Goertzen (d. 2004), also an artist, had three children.
She taught occasional art classes and sold her artwork at festivals and farmers markets. By the mid-1970s, she had created cards and prints with her botanical art – delicate pen-and-ink drawings, with splashes of watercolor, of flowers, fruit and plants.
Some of these were sold at the New York Botanical Garden, where they caught the attention of Jay Block, the CEO of Block China.
Block came himself from New York to Oregon to talk Goertzen into putting her designs on a Block China porcelain dishware series. The series was in production from 1980-90, placing Goertzen’s work in front of people all over the country and the world.
Goertzen celebrated and nurtured the relationships in her life through her art. She made richly colored quilts that responded to her own artwork and that told stories about herself and others, and she collaged portraits of friends.
Buller’s presentation, “Piecing Stories Together,” gives a curatorial overview of Goertzen’s processes, artistic motivations and unexpected commercial success.
The exhibition and public programs are sponsored in part by the State of Kansas through the Kansas Arts Commission and the National Endowment for the Arts, and by the Kauffman Museum Association, whose donors provide the foundation that sustains the collections, exhibitions and programs.
Regular Kauffman Museum hours are Tues.-Fri. 9:30 a.m.-4:30 p.m., Sat.-Sun. 1:30-4:30 p.m., closed Mondays and major holidays. Admission to the special exhibit, “Piece / Work,” and the permanent exhibits, “Of Land and People,” “Mennonite Immigrant Furniture” and “Mirror of the Martyrs,” is $5 for adults, $3 for children ages 6-16, and free to Kauffman Museum members and children under 6. The Museum Store is open during regular hours with no admission charge.
For more information on Kauffman Museum’s exhibitions and public programs, visit the website, www.kauffmanmuseum.org, or Facebook page, or contact the museum at kauffman@bethelks.edu or 316-283-1612.
