Mary Colter: Innovative Architect and Designer

Mary Colter
1869-1958

Mary Elizabeth Jane Colter was an architect and designer, one of the very few female architects in her day. She was also the chief architectural designer and interior decorator for the Fred Harvey Company from 1902 to 1948 and designed a number of buildings for the Santa Fe Railroad, notably in Grand Canyon National Park. 

Born in Pittsburg, Pennsylvania, her family moved to Colorado and Texas before settling down in St. Paul, Minnesota when she was 11 years old. She was clear about her desire to be an artist and was heavily influenced by Native American art from the large Sioux community that lived in the area. At fourteen, she graduated from high school and, after the death of her father in 1886, Colter left to study art and design at the California School of Design (now the San Francisco Art Institute) during which time she apprenticed at a local architectural firm to help fund her studies. 

In 1901, Minnie Harvey Huckel helped Colter land a summer job as an interior designer with her family's Fred Harvey Company (operator of the famous railstop Harvey House restaurants) for the Indian Building at the Alvarado Hotel in Albuquerque (sadly, since demolished).

Mary Colter
Alvarado Hotel
Albuquerque, New Mexico
1901

Colter began to work full-time for the company in 1910, moving from interior designer to architect and for the next 38 years, Colter served as chief architect and decorator for the Fred Harvey Company. As one of the country's few female architects – and arguably the most outstanding – Colter worked in often rugged conditions to complete 21 landmark hotels, commercial lodges, and public spaces for the Fred Harvey Company, by then being run by the founder's sons.

As the West became more accessible, Native American craftspeople were successfully selling their arts and crafts at railroad stops. Seeing an opportunity to expand their business, the Harvey company commissioned Colter to design the Hopi House, a dedicated marketplace for Native American arts and crafts next to the El Tovar Hotel on the South Rim, creating a building that would fit into the natural setting and reflect the region's history. 

Mary Colter
Hopi House
Grand Canyon, Arizona
ca 1905

The Hopi House is patterned after Hopi dwellings in Oraibi, Arizona and built by Hopi craftsmen constructed using local materials and salvaged items such as Civil War-era Western Union telegraph poles and rails. This is just one of the many buildings she designed and had constructed in the Grand Canyon which also includes the 1914 Hermit's Rest and observatory Lookout Studio, and the 1932 Desert View Watchtower, a 70-foot-tall (21 m) rock tower with a hidden steel structure, as well as the 1935 Bright Angel Lodge complex, and the 1922 Phantom Ranch buildings at the bottom of the canyon. Colter also decorated, but did not design, the park's El Tovar Hotel. She also designed the 1936 Victor Hall for men, and the 1937 Colter Hall, a dormitory for Fred Harvey's women employees. 

Mary Colter
Desert View Watchtower
Grand Canyon, Arizona
ca 1932

Colter produced commercial architecture with striking décor, floorplans with flow calculated for a good user experience and a playful sense of the dramatic.

Mary Colter
Phantom Ranch
Grand Canyon Floor, Arizona
ca 1932

Mary Colter
Phantom Ranch
Grand Canyon Floor, Arizona
ca 1932

As per Colter’s approach to design, the site dictated the materials: rocks and boulders from the area were gathered and used in the creation of the buildings. Everything else—quite literally, from doors to windows and everything in between—had to be hauled down by mule. Cleeland says nothing could be longer than the length of a mule because of the trail’s tight turns and switchbacks. She adds that upon close inspection of the Phantom Ranch buildings, one can identify where rafters and beams were spliced together.

“The remoteness of [this project] necessitated an attention to material and resource efficiency that anticipated today’s sustainable approach to materials in design and construction,” 
Construction History notes.

Colter's creative, free-form buildings at Grand Canyon took direct inspiration from the landscape and served as part of the basis of the developing artistic aesthetic for appropriate development in areas that became national parks. 

Mary Colter
La Posada Hotel
Winslow, Arizona
Route 66
ca 1930

Mary Colter
La Posada Hotel
Harvey Girls Reunion
Winslow, Arizona
Route 66
ca 1930

Mary Colter declared that the 1930 La Posada Hotel was her masterpiece. She was architect and designer for the entire resort from the buildings, acres of gardens, the furniture, china, even the uniforms worn by the maids. The Spanish Colonial Revival building in Winslow, Arizona has been called "the last great railroad hotel built in America." The hotel closed in 1957, cusing Colter to remark, "There is such a thing as living too long." After being used and as office building for the Santa Fe Railroad in the 1960, it stood empty until it was bought by Allen Affeidt and his wife Tina Mion who refurbished and reopened it on its original location on Rout 66. It is now listed on the National Register of Historic Places.

Shortly before her retirement, Colter took on the renovation of the Painted Desert Inn located in Arizona's Petrified Forest National Park. The 1922 inn had been renovated by the Civilian Conservation Corps workers to the Mission Revival style using local materials and Native American Southwestern motifs. Mary Colter supervised bringing in a new color scheme and commissioned Hopi artist Fred Kabotie to add murals to the dining areas. She had plate glass window installed to modernize and allow views of the gorgeous scenery. The inn was slated to be demolished in 1963 however, it survived and was placed on the National Register of Historic places in 1987. Restored to the way it appeared in 1949 after Colter's redesign, it serves as a museum today.

Mary Colter
Painted Desert Inn
Petrified Forest National Park
Northwestern Arizona
Photo by Kathy Alexander
ca 1949

Mary Colter worked with Pueblo Revival architecture, Spanish Colonial Revival architecture, Mission Revival architecture, Streamline Moderne, American Craftsman, and Arts and Crafts Movement styles, often synthesizing several together evocatively. Colter's work is credited with inspiring the Pueblo Deco style.

In 1987, the Mary Jane Colter Buildings, as a group, were listed as a National Historic Landmark.

For more info about this wildly creative and remarkable artist and designer, visit: 

https://www.nps.gov/articles/marycolter.htm

Sources___________________________________________________________

Legends of America, https://www.legendsofamerica.com/mary-colter/, retrieved October 21, 2023

National Park Service, https://www.nps.gov/articles/marycolter.htm, retrieved October 21, 2023

On the Corner of History: La Posada Hotel in Winslow, Arizona, https://passionpassport.com/on-the-corner-of-history-la-posada-hotel-in-winslow-az/, retrieved October 21, 2023

Arizona Women's Hall of Fame, https://www.azwhf.org/copy-of-vernell-myers-coleman-1, retrieved October 21, 2023

AFAR, Alex Pulaski, June 14, 2022, https://www.afar.com/magazine/grand-canyon-architect-mary-colter-buildings, retrieved October 21, 2023

Smithsonian Magazine, Zachary Petit, https://www.smithsonianmag.com/travel/the-grand-canyons-phantom-ranch-turns-100-this-year-180980602/, retrieved October 21, 2023

Mildred Bryant Brooks: Etcher Extraordinaire

Mildred Bryant Brooks
1901-1995

Mildred Bryant Brooks, printmaker, teacher and lecturer, was born in Marysville, Missouri on July 21, 1901. Her father, J. Jay Brooks was president of Tri-State College (now university)before settling with her mother, Millie, in Long Beach, California. 

Brooks, influenced by her mother, an amateur painter, pursued a career in art at the University of Southern California following graduation from high school in 1931. While at university, she married Don J. Brooks in 1924 and during her last two years was a part-time student and part-time instructor. She also attended Chouinard and Otis art institutes.

Mildred Bryant Brooks
Moods
ca. 1935
Dry point and aquatint on paper
9 x 11 7⁄8 in.
Smithsonian Institution, Washington, D.C.

After starting her family, Brooks fulfilled a long-held desire to learn etching and studied with Arthur Miller, an artist and art critic for the Los Angeles Times. During the years between 1935 and the early 1960s she was also an artist in residence at Pomona College (1946), an instructor at the Los Angeles County Art Institute (1952 and 1954), and a lecturer on etching. When her eyesight began to fail, Brooks began to paint murals and worked on interior design where she lived in South Pasadena. 

Mildred Bryant Brooks
The Pines of Monterey
ca. 1935
Dry point on paper
Smithsonian Institution, Washington, D.C.

In 1936, Miller wrote that Brooks made "America's best etching of trees." Over the years, Mildred Bryant Brooks produced trees as well as studies of California's deserts, mountains, and other compelling landscapes. She was the recipient of 22 national and international awards. Her exhibitions were in shows for the California Printmakers (of which she was president 8 times) and she also hung works in exhibitions of the Society of American Etchers, New York, Library of Congress, Laguna Beach Art Association, and Paris International. Her one person events were held at the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, D.C. (1936), and the Laguna Art Museum (1975)

Mildred Bryant Brooks died in Santa Barbara, California on July 3, 1995.

Mildred Bryant Brooks
My Friends
ca. 1935
Etching on paper

11 7⁄8 x 8 7⁄8 in

Smithsonian Institution, Washington, D.C.

Mildred Bryant Brooks

Last Tree

ca. n.d.

Etching on paper

10 7⁄8 x 9 1⁄2 in.

Smithsonian Institution, Washington, D.C.

Sources_____________________________________________________________________________

An Encyclopedia of Women Artists of the American West, Phil Kovinick and Marian Yoshiki-Kovinick. University of Texas Press, Austin. 1998. Pages 32-33.

SAAM, Smithsonian American Art Institution and Renwick Gallery, https://americanart.si.edu/artist/mildred-bryant-brooks-597, retrieved 10/3/2023

The Annex Galleries. 
 https://www.annexgalleries.com/artists/biography/284/Brooks/Mildred#:~:text=Mildred%20Bryant%20Brooks%2C%20printmaker%2C%20teacher,the%20University%20of%20Southern%20California

Juanita Judy Vitousek: Watercolorist of the Islands

 

Born in Silverton, Oregon, Juanita Judy Vitousek (1892-1988) lived in California as a youngster and studied at the University of California. After graduation, she moved to Hawaiʻi from Healdsburg, in Northern California, with her husband in 1917. Most of her career was spent in the islands but she was also an avid traveler. Vitousek became an active force in the Hawai'ian art community and by the late 1920s, began to concentrate on two specific areas: landscape and floral studies. Her paintings would ultimately present some of the most expressive 20th-century depictions on both the landscapes and spectacular flora of Hawaiʻi. 

Manoa
Juanita Judy Vitousek
Watercolor 
n.d.
22" x 30"

Makapu'u
Juanita Judy Vitousek
Watercolor 
n.d.
22" x 30"

Vitousek's watercolors came to the attention of galleries and collectors, not only in Hawaiʻi, but across the country as well. She, along with Juliette May Fraser and Madge Tennent, became part of a group in Hawai’i who formed "The Seven," one of the earliest formalized coalitions of women artists in the United States. A frequent exhibitor with the Association of Honolulu Artists, she received awards in 1933 and 1937 and had several one-person shows at the Honolulu Museum of Art, the first in 1941. In addition to her frequent exhibitions in Honolulu, Vitousek showed her work in Boston, Los Angeles, Santa Barbara, San Francisco, and Seattle. She continued to study at the University of Hawai’i with artists Joseph Albers, Jean Charlot, and Millard Sheets. 

Untitled
Juanita Judy Vitousek
Watercolor 
n.d.
22" x 30"

Island Home
Juanita Judy Vitousek
Watercolor 
n.d.
22" x 30"

An active and dedicated artist, Juanita Vitousek painted well into her nineties.

Sources_____________________________________________________________

askART, https://www.askart.com/artist/Juanita_Judy_Vitousek/103739/Juanita_Judy_Vitousek.aspx, retrieved March 25, 2023.

Art Isaacs Center, Hawai'i Preparatory Academy, https://isaacsartcenter.hpa.edu/artist-works.php?artistId=158221&artist=Juanita+Vitousek+%281890-1988%29, retrieved March 25, 2023.

Cedar Street Galleries, https://cedarstreetgalleries.com/bin/works.cgi?Artist=Vitousek1890-1988Juanita, retrieved March 25, 2023

Genevieve "Gene" Springston Lynch: One of The Seven

Genevieve Springston Lynch
c. 1912

The Seven was a coalition of Honolulu-based women artists who first exhibited together in 1929. Several of the group’s inaugural members — Juliette May Fraser, Genevieve Springston Lynch, Madge Tennent (founder and president), and Juanita Vitousek — would subsequently devote the bulk of their careers to Hawai‘i and painting the beauty of the islands. Female artists largely dictated the terms of 20th-century island culture, rarely encountering the sort of institutionalized sexism that often circumscribed the work of their global counterparts.

Yet, the story of women artists in Hawai‘i extends both before and beyond The Seven’s two-year existence. As early as 1880, Helen Whitney Kelley and Helen Thomas Dranga began turning out depictions of the islands’ scenery, subtly challenging the monopoly set by their renowned male contemporaries, such as D. Howard Hitchcock and Lionel Walden. By the early 20th century, kamaʻaina artists Blasingame, Fraser and Cornelia MacIntyre Foley, and Lynch had trained on the United States mainland and in Europe, returned to Hawai‘i and taken on pupils in the islands, all the while cultivating personal styles that would accelerate the advent of a localized modernism movement

Genevieve (Gene) Springston Lynch was born in Forest Grove, Oregon (26 miles west of Portland) on September 20, 1891.  "Gene" Springston studied at the Pratt Institute and Art Institute of Chicago.  She taught art at Punahou School in Honolulu prior to and after her marriage to L. L. Lynch. Lynch was invited to have a solo show in Paris in 1935. Because of prejudice against female artists, she shortened her professional name and signature to "Gene Lynch." She exhibited in the 1939 Society of Independent Artists show. Her later years were spent in Palo Alto, California. She died there in 1960.  Her forte was stylized paintings of exotic plants.

Genevieve Springston Lynch
Yellow Ginger
c. 1940s
Oil on board
20" x 16"
Private Collection

Genevieve Springston Lynch
Cup-and-Saucer Flowers
c. 1940
Oil on board
20" x 16"
Honolulu Museum of Art

Genevieve Springston Lynch
Hawaiian Shoreline with Figures
c. n.d.
Oil on board
18" x 24"
Private Collection

Genevieve Springston Lynch
Hawaiian Plantation Scene
c. n.d.
Oil on canvas
27" x 32.75"
Private Collection

Lynch's pieces such as Yellow Ginger and Cup-and-Saucer are emblematic of the style of painting pioneered by Georgia O'Keefe and brought to Hawaii in 1939 during O'Keefe's assignment to create promotional imagery for the Hawaiian Pineapple Company.

Her later years were spent in Palo Alto, California, where she died in 1960.  

Sources__________________________________________________________________________

Isaac's Art Center, Hawaii Preparatory Academy, Sisters of the Brush: Women Artists of Hawaii, 1880-2000.

Invaluable, https://www.invaluable.com/auction-lot/painting-genevieve-springston-lynch-7268-c-5514a608bb#

American Eagle Fine Art, https://www.americaneaglefineart.com/genevieve-gene-springton-lynch-1891-1960yellow-ginger-circa-1940s/

askART.com, Genevieve Springston Lynch, 

https://www.liveauctioneers.com/item/53197247_painting-genevieve-lynch

Madge Tennent: Fueled the advent of Hawaiian Modernism

 

Madge Tennent

Hailed as "the most significant individual contributor to Hawaiian art in the 20th century" and "without question the greatest interpreter of the Hawaiian figure," Madge Tennent (1889-1972) was one of The Seven, a coalition of female Hawaiian artists whose work was was first exhibited together in 1929.

Born in Dulwich, England, Tennant was five years old when her family moved to Cape Town, South Africa. At the age of twelve, she entered an art school in Cape Town, and the following year her parents, who recognized and her as a child prodigy, moved to Paris to enable Madeline to study there. She studied figure drawing at the  Académie Julian under William-Adolf Bouguereau, the French realist academic painter, an experience that laid the technical foundation for her later figural drawings and paintings. 

Madge Tennent
Studio Study
age 12 or 13

She and her family returned to South Africa, and after her marriage in 1915 to accountant Hugh Cowper Tennent (OBE), she relocated to his native New Zealand. In 1917, the couple moved to British Samoa when her husband became treasurer for the government. This is where Tennent's fascination with the native people blossomed into the "joyous exploration of the Polynesian form."

Madge Tennent
Olympia of Hawaii (with Apologies to Manet)
ca 1927
Oil on canvas
22 x 18 inches

In 1923, the Tennents left Samoa en route to England, stopping in Honolulu where they were entranced with the Hawaiian Islands and decided to stay. In those early years, Madge Tennent helped to support her family by taking commissions to paint and draw portraits of children. A friend’s gift of a book on Gauguin set her on an artistic course that lasted 50 years, during which she portrayed Hawaiian women in an innovative style that became increasingly individualized and unique.

Madge Tennent
Local Color
ca 1934
Oil on canvas
Represented Hawaii at the
1939 New York World's Fair

Madge Tennent
Hawaiian Girl with Lei Po'o
ca 1940
22 x 18 inches

Tennent was active in Hawai’i from the late 1920s until the 1960s. “The Hawaiians are really to me the most beautiful people in the world," she once said, “no doubt about it – the Hawaiian is a piece of living sculpture”. Using swirls of oil, Tennent portrayed Hawaiian women as solidly fleshed and majestic – larger than life – capturing in rhythmic forms the very essence of their being. "They are strong, serene and proud." Her method of working with impasto – applying thick layers of paint to achieve a graceful, perfectly balanced composition – is evident in works such as Lei Queen Fantasia. Everything on the canvas whirls. The paint is applied in whirls in what might be called the “Tennent whirl” – the colors bright and luminous. Tennent envisioned Hawaiian Kings and Queens as having descended from Gods of heroic proportion, intelligent and brave, bearing a strong affinity to the Greeks in their legends and persons. She was criticized for her portrayal of larger size women but to her Hawaiian women fulfilled the standards of classic Greek Beauty.

Madge Tennent
Lady in Pink Dress
ca 1954
18 x 12 inches

Madge Tennent fueled the advent of Hawaiian Modernism through both her own creative endeavors and unrelenting enthusiasm. She became a champion of the avant-garde and a driving force among Hawaii's visual artists. Tennent was president of The Seven, a coalition of woman artists that included Juanita Vitousek and Juliette May Fraser (her story in the previous post), and with Isami Doi co-founded the Hawaiian Mural Guild. Tennent also lectured on art history and offered studio workshops at the Honolulu Academy of Arts, inspiring an emergent generation of island-born modern artists. A frequent exhibitor both at home and abroad, Tennent rapidly became Hawaii’s most visible presence on the global stage, mounting successful one-woman shows in Auckland, Cairo, Chicago, London, Los Angeles, Paris, Philadelphia, San Francisco, and Sydney. This whirlwind of activity turned on an unwavering ideology: “To paint without thought of pleasing, to keep faith with my furthest discrimination in Art, and to make no compromise aesthetically.”

Madge Tennent
Lady in Victorian Dress
ca 1956
Ink
18 x 12 inches

During the mid-1950s, Madge Tennent suffered the first of several heart attacks, prompting her to shift from large-scale undertakings on canvas to smaller works on paper. She was diagnosed with a permanent heart ailment in 1958, and by 1965 she had discontinued working and moved into the Maunalani Hospital near Manoa. After a decade of gradually declining health, Tennent died in Honolulu on February 5, 1972. Her funeral was held at St. Andrew's Cathedral in Honolulu. Three days after her death, the Hawaiʻi State Senate commemorated the artist's vision, accomplishments, and influence:

IN HONOR OF THE LATE MADGE TENNENT

WHEREAS, Madge Tennent, one of Hawaii's most important artists, died on February 5, 1972 in the 82nd year of her long and eventful life; and

WHEREAS, better than any artist to date, Madge Tennent was able to capture and honestly express in her many paintings and drawings the subtle charm and quiet grace and dignity of the Hawaiian people; and

WHEREAS, Madge Tennent was also a warm and generous person, who gave often and generously of her works to friends and to charity; and

WHEREAS, Madge Tennent, having spent a half century in Hawaii, leaves behind a rich legacy of art, which shall forever belong to Hawaii; and therefore,

BE IT RESOLVED by the Senate of the Sixth Legislature of Hawaii, Regular Session of 1972, that this body solemnly notes the passing of a great artist and person.

Madge Tennent, photograph by Francis Haar

 

Sources_______________________________________

Hawai'i Artist Archives at the University of Hawaii Library - Artist's Biographical Note: Madge Tennent, University of Hawai'i Manoa Library, https://guides.library.manoa.hawaii.edu/c.php?g=953236&p=7434759, retrieved May 29, 2021.

Isaacs Art Center Preparatory Academy, Madge Tennent, https://isaacsartcenter.hpa.edu/artist-works.php?artistId=158230&artist=Madge%20Tennent%20(1889-1972), retrieved May 29, 2021

When Wise Women Speak, interview with Madge Walls (granddaughter of Madge Tennent), https://whenwisewomenspeak.blogspot.com/2012/02/madge-tennent.html, retrieved May 29, 2021

Juliette May Fraser: Painter, Muralist, Printmaker of Hawaii

     

 The story of women artists in Hawai‘i begins well before and beyond The Seven’s two-year existence. As early as 1880, Helen Whitney Kelley and Helen Thomas Dranga began turning out beloved depictions of the islands’ spectacular scenery, subtly challenging the monopoly set by their well-known male contemporaries, such as D. Howard Hitchcock and Lionel Walden. 

Juliette May Fraser

By the early 20th century, kamaʻāina artists Blasingame, Juliette May Fraser and Cornelia MacIntyre Foley had trained on the US mainland and in Europe, returned to Hawai‘i, and taken on pupils there, while cultivating personal styles that would accelerate the advent of a regional style of modernism. Working alongside other women who traveled to the islands in the early 20th century, including Lynch, Russell, Tennent and Vitousek, these artists transformed the concept of “island art” from Hawai‘i’s male-dominated environmental imagery into a more nuanced arena that reflected various modernist trends growing across European at that time. Several would also play instrumental roles in the war effort, designing camouflage for local artillery units and creating large-scale murals at local military bases to encourage the soldiers deployed in the Pacific. 

Juliette May Fraser
Camouflage Rhythms
1940s
Fraser and the lei sellers developed a system consisting of cutting burlap and recycled fabric into strips, dyeing and configuring the strips to blend in with specific areas around the islands, and then weaving the strips onto large-scale nets, often completed while singing Hawaiian songs.

In the later 20th century, several other figures of note emerged to continue the tradition of women artists driving Hawaiian art forward. Betty Hay Freeland and Martha Greenwell pursued seascape and landscape painting in Hawai‘i on their own terms, while batik specialist Yvonne Cheng and graphic artist Pegge Hopper expanded upon Tennent’s genre of the Hawaiian wahine (woman). 

Honolulu-born artist Juliette May Fraser is perhaps best known for the murals she painted both in Hawaii and around the globe. She portrayed Hawaiian legends along with other themes through linoleum cut, oil painting, ceramics, and fresco. 
 
Juliette May Fraser was born on January 27, 1887 during the reign of King Kalakaua in Honolulu. After graduating from Wellesley College in Massachusetts, she worked as an educator, like her mother and father who had come to the islands to teach. "That was practically the only thing a woman could do then," she told an interviewer a few years before her death in 1983. Her comments with regard to her education at Wellesly were that, “Wellesley had excellent art history. They did not have very good--they were not so much interested in art practice. They had some, but even the teachers knew that it wasn't an art school standard. It didn't pretend to be.” She took architecture classes but since Fraser didn’t receive any practical art training, she studied with various teachers and ultimately decided to attend the Art Students League in New York. 

Juliette May Fraser
Little Teacher
1952
Linoleum Cut Lithograph

Fraser returned to Honolulu, taught for a few more years before she received a commission to paint a mural for Mrs. Charles Adams, grandmother of Ben Dillingham. That opportunity placed her on a lifelong path of painting murals, from the World's Fair in San Francisco to Ipapandi Chapel on Chios Island, Greece, where her work was so beloved that the chapel's street was named after her. 

Juliette May Fraser
Makahiki Ho'okupu
1939
Charcoal and sanguine mural on masonite
Made for the 1939 San Francisco International Exposition,
presented to the Library in 1977 by the Hawaii Visitors Bureau and Chamber of Commerce

 Makahiki Ho'okupu (Harvest Celebration) was created by Fraser in 1939 for the Hawaii pavilion at the San Francisco World's Fair. The 50-foot charcoal and sanguine mural (on 13 masonite panels) depicting harvest and gift-giving ceremony remained in storage until 1980, when it was rededicated and placed in Hamilton Library on the artist's 93rd birthday. 

At the University of Hawaii in Honolulu, Fraser's fresco 'Air', (ca 1953) is the largest and most complex of the frescoes in Bilger Hall, and depicts the land-linked culture that sustained early Hawaiian people.

The work of kama'aina (Hawaii born) Juliette May Fraser, can today be found in many Hawaii public buildings. In 1934-35, Faser executed a series of murals based on the legends of Hawaii for the Hawaii State Library. In 1934, she was invited to create a work of art for a public place by the Federal Work Progress Administration and the Federal Emergency Relief Administration which took a year to complete. For three months she received $35 a week to work on the project however, when the funds ran out, she continued on her own until the murals were completed. The murals, which extend from floor to ceiling, depict Hawaiian legends along with additional panels in the room which display various marine life and Hawaii flora and fauna. The murals were unveiled on March 14, 1935 to the general public. 
 

Juliette May Fraser
Hoonanea (Quiet Chat between Friends)
1944
Drypoint
6 x 5 inches
Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco

Fraser is also noted for her printworks, and was associated with Honolulu Printmakers, which is said to be the oldest continuously active printmaking organization in the United States. The group was founded in 1928 by a group of local artists in an effort to encourage the art of printmaking in Hawaii. Each year, one of the organization's members is selected to create a special print. Along with Juliette May Fraser, some of the printmakers of yesteryear - John Melville Kelly, Huc-Mazelet Luquiens, Cornelia Macintyre Foley, Isami Doi, Madge Tennant, Jean Charlot, John Young and others - became world-renowned artists, their prints now demanding much higher sums than the original $5 price. 

Juliette May Fraser
 Hawaiian Nativity
1958
 Fresco
 4 1/2 × 8 ft.
 St. Catherine’s Catholic Church, Kapaʻa, Kauai, Hawaii.
 Photo: Timothy T. De La Vega, 1999.

In 1958, Fraser created the above mural for the newly built St. Catherine’s Catholic Church in Kapa‘a, Kauai, commonly referred to as Hawaiian Nativity. Covering the makai (sea-facing) wall, it shows Hawaiians of various ethnicities presenting ho‘okupu (gifts) to the newborn Christ child, who sits on his mother’s lap.  She wanted the painting to be modern and “international in flavor,” she said, reflecting Hawaii’s ethnic diversity. 

Instead of a donkey, a jeep has brought the holy couple, who are portrayed as Native Hawaiian, to the place of their son’s birth. The license plate reads, “4-20-58,” the date on which St. Catherine’s was dedicated. Mary wears a muumuu and lei, while Joseph stands behind her with a sugar cane stalk. “The Holy Child is hapa [mixed race] with blond hair and strong Polynesian features,” writes Anthony Sommer in the 1999 article for the Honolulu Star-Bulletin that introduced me to this painting. That Jesus’s skin tone is the lightest of the bunch might be regarded by some as problematic, a subtle reinforcer of racial hierarchy. However, it might be the artist’s attempt to show a multiracial Christ, bearing the features of different peoples. 

In Fraser’s fresco, locals approach with ho‘okupu, the fruits of their personal labors given freely as offerings in expression of gratitude, respect, and aloha. Filipino fishermen present their freshest catch, and Portuguese goatherds (as the artist identified them) come with their flocks; they are greeted by a Chinese angel in a T-shirt, jeans, a sideways ballcap, and flip-flops. From the right, a Hawaiian ali‘i (hereditary noble) comes with the gift of an ʻahu ʻula (feathered cloak), made only for royalty. He stands in line behind a child who offers Jesus a lei (flower garland). Traditionally, ho‘okupu are given to an akua (god), king, priest, doctor, or host, so this painting acknowledges Jesus as fulfilling all those roles. 

                                                                                    Juliette May Fraser

                                                                 Kana Wrestling the Turtle

                                                                                 Fresco

                                                                                  1954

                                                                       Hawaii State Museum

 
 
Juliette May Fraser died in July of 1983 in Honolulu, Hawaii at the age of 96. 

 

Sources________________________________________________________________ 

Juliette May Fraser, The Annex Galleries, https://www.annexgalleries.com/artists/biography/740/Fraser/Juliette, retrieved April 19, 2021 

The Watumull Foundation, Oral History Project, Interview with Juliette May Fraser, Honolulu, Hawaii, 1979. 

Art & Theology Revitalizing the Christian imagination through painting, poetry, music, and more, https://artandtheology.org/tag/juliette-may-fraser/, retrieved April 19, 2021 

Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco, https://art.famsf.org/juliette-may-fraser/hoonanea-means-quiet-chat-between-old-friends-l, retrieved April 19, 2021

Mutual Art.com, https://www.mutualart.com/Exhibition/Camouflage-Rhythms--Artwork-by-Juliette-/3597EABE2D690619, Honolulu Museum of Art, retrieved April 19, 2021