ART & WOMEN, WOMEN & ART: EDNA

KENY GALLERY, 300 Beck Street, recently offered one of the most beautiful and varied exhibits ever. Kindred Spirits: Cross Currents in Modernism at the Pennsylvania Academy 1907-1930 closed at Keny on March 2. It was at Kindred Spirits that I "met" EDNA BOIES HOPKINS (1872-1937). At the opening I heard other viewers oohing and ahhing about Edna too! Boies Hopkins' woodcut prints--many of them of familiar garden flowers --"Cineraria," "Zinnias" and "Sweet William" --were executed around 1915. The dusty, luminous oranges and yellows, the chalky lavenders and pouty greens, reveal an elegant "palette."--Woodcuts are a most difficult medium, yet, Boies Hopkins' prints manage to be warm and delicate, cool and sharp--all at the same time!--In 1917 Edna crafted the simple but moving "Homeward Trail/The Circuit Rider." In it a gangling, slouch hatted man leads a mule down hill against monochromatic sections of rural land. The sky is a dull lemon; the white mule points his ears toward the tall man's white shirt. This cut, and some other Boies Hopkins, remind me not only of pastel paintings, but of charming quilt designs, appliques! --I've seen no woodcuts like hers!
In 1904 Edna Boies, from Michigan, married James Hopkins from Ohio. (of the Ohio State University's Hopkins Hall.) Edna and James were able to live in Paris for months each year, "during the formative years of European Modernism."--Roughly the same time Fitzgerald and Hemingway hung out there. If the Hopkins gave a New Years party, Edna made gorgeous invitations, and Keny Gallery owns them!
Boies Hopkins became a member of the French Engraving Society and the Society National des Beaux Arts.--Her extensive list of permanent collections includes The National Museum of Stockholm and the Biblioteque d'Art et Archeology in Paris, France.--I want to see more of Edna's prints and learn more about her. (She's a permanent resident at Keny, but you may have to ask.) The Keny opening included a real-live-in-the-flesh TAMIE BELDUE. Beldue accompanied her own large Fine Drawings, Graphite Watercolors(!) of semi nude women. These full length portraits suggest a classical past; they are poetic , serious. Fetching. First rate.
ALAN GOUGH. The master painter Alan Gough, --yeah, I know he's a guy--opens at Keny on March 9 and runs thru April 2 in Alan Gough: Recent Landscapes. "Little Red Bud Tune; Pond Pads; Paint Creek" emit the vibes of Mid West Rural, yet, they're universal, like a William Blake phrase about eternity. Curators and owners, James Keny and Timothy Keny--yeah, they're guys, brothers,--run a superb gallery, and I'm always a better art person when I've been there.