As a bonus to going on my Hildreth Meiere pilgrimage in March, I was introduced the work of Gabriella Polony-Mountain in the Regina Quick Center for the Arts collection.  I had never heard of her, and was glad I discovered her work. She was born in 1918, and just in 2009 at age 91, had a first comprehensive showing of her work in Kansas City where she lived for many years after emigrating from Hungary.

Polony-Mountain takes a journey with a journalist to the sites of many of her Kansas City works of art, including a mosaic panel, in pristine condition, hidden behind a mirror in an apartment building lobby.  A resident of the building describes her relief that mosaic has reemerged, since she remembered seeing it as a child, and then moved into the building as an adult and it was gone.  Much of Polony-Mountain’s work is yet to be found.  Fortunately, the Quick Center has mosaics, stained glass, and copper repousse doors.

The very first piece was a work of stained glass, Making Music, by the entry, followed by an interpretation of the same theme in mosaic.  In the same space, there is a magnificent set of copper repousse doors, with a Guardian Angel on the left side, and a Fallen Angel on the right side.  When her name appeared as the artist for these as well, I was amazed by her many talents, and glad to see its manifestations in one place.

Gertrude Martin and her sisters made this mosaic at the Chapel of the Holy Spirit at St. Anne’s in Belfast, showing the hand of God in blessing over the waters of creation.  The mosaic is composed of over 150,000 pieces of glass.  I would imagine you could get lost in that world of glass, the colored bits of light.  Stepping back to look at the whole dome must have been like viewing the earth from space.

There were five Martin sisters, and Gertrude, Margaret and Dora were the three who apprenticed with a local mosaicist, named George Bridge.  None of the sisters married, and one author speculates there were no available partners after the World War. Maybe they just liked making mosaics. . .Gertrude is credited with installing mosaics as part of Westminster Cathedral’s Lady Chapel in 1913.  She died in 1952.  I love the formal portrait of her holding mosaic nippers in one hand and what looks to be a piece of glass in the other.

As soon as I heard about Walls Speak:  The Narrative Art of Hildreth Meiere, I knew I had to make a pilgrimage.  As I have written, Meiere’s mosaics at the Wernersville Jesuit Spiritual Center were the first mosaics to catch my eye, and set the desire in my heart to make them.  Because mosaic and murals are often part of architecture, it’s a challenge to do an exhibit in a museum.

St. Bonaventure University’s Regina Quick Center for the Arts is the host of this first major retrospective of Meiere’s work.  To develop as full a representation as is possible, the exhibit ranges from photographs of her installations at the Cathedral Basilica of St. Louis, the Prudential Building in Newark, NJ, and the Nebraska State Capitol Dome, plus sketches, a smalti sample board, and Triptychs for the Armed Services, and sample mosaics from the Cathedral Basilica of  St. Louis project.

I was fascinated by the Triptychs which were from World War II.  Meiere organized a group of artists to paint over 500 Triptychs for Catholic, Protestant and Jewish worship in the field during the war, painting 70 of them herself.  The portable altars are like a morsel of the church in the midst of destruction, and I can’t even imagine what the experience might be like to worship in a war zone.

St. Bonaventure University’s buildings is are a tile lover’s dream, with “Italian Transitional” architecture with red roof tiles, and bas relief plaques.  And Olean, NY was also home to the American Olean Tile Company, which coincidentally had a factory here in Lansdale as well.  In addition there was a sculpture of St. Francis by Beniamino Bufano at the Regina Quick Center, the artist I discovered while writing about Martin Luther King Day.

If you have the chance, go check it out before June 13th, when the Meiere exhibit ends.

Related Post:

The Ignatian Spirit and the Mosaics of Hildreth Meiere

March 24th was Ada Lovelace Day.  According to the site, Finding Ada, Ada Lovelace was one of the world’s first computer programmers, and one of the first people to see computers as more than just a machine for doing sums. She wrote programmes for Charles Babbage’s Analytical Engine, a general-purpose computing machine, despite the fact that it was never built. She also wrote the very first description of a computer and of software.

Bloggers from around the world wrote about a woman in science or technology on the 24th.  I had planned to be one of them but after a day at a craft show, I completely forgot.  I chose Sally Prasch, scientific glassblower.  I didn’t even know that such an occupation existed.  Scientific glassblowers make custom glass laboratory equipment for chemists, and have their own professional American Scientific Glassblowers Society.  East Carolina State has an interesting page of resources describing the work.

Sally Prasch took a flameworking class at 13 years old, and loved it, and went on to apprentice with a scientific glassblower.  She went on to get a degree in Scientific Glass Technology from Salem Community College in Carney’s Point, NJ.  This is the essence of Ada Lovelace day, the possibility of women discovering what they love to do, and being able to pursue it.  There are only about 700 scientific glassblowers, and Prasch is among a handful of women in the field.  She also creates artistic glass, bridging the worlds of science and art.