'The Women Of South Mountain Road' At Rockland Center For The Arts

WEST NYACK, NY — A remarkable community of artists is the subject of a fascinating new installation that explores both the artists and their creative works.

The Rockland Center for the Arts (RoCA) announced that for its 75th anniversary, it will be presenting The Women of South Mountain Road, an exhibit in partnership with the Historical Society of Rockland County. The exhibition was inspired by Susan Deeks’ lecture on the subject and was curated by Susan Deeks, Daly Flanagan, Barbara Galazzo and Jonathan O’Hea.

The Women of South Mountain Road will be exhibited from October 17 - November 23. The free exhibit will be open on Mondays - Saturdays, from 11 a.m. - 4 p.m. An opening reception will take place on Saturday, October 22, from 2 p.m. - 5 p.m. The Rockland Center for the Arts is located at 27 South Greenbush Road, in West Nyack.

From the Rockland Center for the Arts

During the first half of the 20th century, the South Mountain Road area was home to many of the top artists in the country, including playwright Maxwell Anderson, composer Kurt Weill, his singer/actress wife, Lotte Lenya, and actor/ producer John Houseman. It was also home to painters, sculptors, ceramicists, textile artists and glass artists, some of whom were quite well-known, and whose prominence in their respective fields still remains today.

The Women of South Mountain Road focuses on the accomplishments of the female artists, many of whom were more than just early adopters of Europe’s Modernist vision — they were also "game-changing innovators in their crafts."

Many of the prominent artists and intellectuals of the time were introduced to the area by John and Mary Mowbray-Clarke, artists and political activists who lived on South Mountain Road since 1907 at their home, known as The Brocken.

The Mowbray-Clarkes were co-founders with the painter Arthur B. Davies of the 1913 Armory Show, the famous NYC avant-garde exhibition that introduced the Modernist vision to the U.S. A growing group of artists eventually followed the Mowbray-Clarkes in purchasing property on South Mountain Road, many of whom would become the core members of the Rockland Foundation, which later became the Rockland Center for the Arts.

The talented and energetic Mary Mowbray-Clarke was central to championing the arts in Rockland County. In 1934, Mowbray-Clarke designed and supervised Rockland County’s only WPA project, the Dutch Gardens. Sharing the grounds of the county courthouse in New City and showcasing the craftsmanship of Italian artisan, Biagio Guggliozzo, the Dutch Gardens achieved national recognition and numerous awards.

One of the founding artists of the South Mountain Road collective and the Rockland Center for the Arts, Martha Ryther Kantor was renowned locally and in the NYC art world. As a painter making profound inroads in her chosen field while truly believing in arts education for the young, she instructed youth at the RoCA for over 25 years. Her development took her through different types of painting until she discovered her own talent in painting on glass, a particularly difficult medium to work with. Kantor’s scenes typically featured group gatherings or a single figure in a room, as well as still life subjects and landscapes, all given an element of fantasy or nostalgia.

Also on display will be work by Ruth Reeves, one of the most renowned U.S. textile designers of the first half of the 20th century. Reeves trained as a painter and textile designer at the Pratt Institute and the Art Students League in NYC, as well as in Paris with Fernand Léger. While in Paris, she pioneered the use of vat dyes and the screen print process for home fabrics. Her best-known work is the carpeting and wall coverings at Radio City Music Hall, which she created in 1932.

Eva Zeisel was a Hungarian-born American industrial designer known for her work with ceramics, primarily after she emigrated to the U.S. Her now familiar forms are often abstractions inspired by the natural world and human relationships. Zeisel referred to herself as a "maker of useful things." She worked until she was 101, when she designed the 101 Dinnerware and vases for Royal Stafford, England for Bloomingdale's in NYC. She died in 2011 at the age of 105. Her work was known for being fluid with curves.

Zeisel’s works are in the permanent collections of the Metropolitan Museum, the Brooklyn Museum, the New York Historical Society, the Cooper-Hewitt Design Museum, The Museum of Modern Art, the British Museum, The Victoria and Albert Museum and several other museums. In 2005, Zeisel won a Lifetime Achievement award from the Cooper-Hewitt National Design Museum.

Lucille Corcos Levy was considered one of the foremost "modern primitivist" painters in America, creating revealing composite urban scenes, often depicting her own home as well as her neighbors' homes on South Mountain Road. Known for her sense of humor and a contrarian streak, her work often consisted of detailed, densely inhabited private and public spaces with interior cutaways showing activity on the inside of a space as well as its outside.

Levy’s commercial work included magazine pieces for Vanity Fair, Fortune, Life, Vogue and Cosmopolitan. Her illustrated books became immediate classics, such as Illustrated Treasury of Gilbert & Sullivan (1940) and A Treasury of Laughter (1946). She also wrote and illustrated her own books: Joel Gets a Haircut (1952) and The City Book (1972). Her paintings which revealed the imagined activities of interior spaces would go on to inspire and be imitated by other artists. Levy's works were "whimsical x-ray exposures filled with a humorous look at human activity inside public buildings and home interiors."

Anne Poor came from an artistic family — her father was a painter and her mother was a novelist. Her stepfather was Henry Varnum Poor, who she assisted on murals for the Departments of Justice and the Interior in Washington, DC. She also worked on a number of commissions for the WPA during the Depression and throughout the Second World War. During the war, Poor enlisted as a member of the WACs, the Women’s Army Corp. She did a series of drawings of the evacuated wounded in the South Pacific. Poor served as one of only two female artists in the Army Air Corps allowed to artistically document the war. She would continue to do independent commissions for the WPA.

Poor served as one of the directors at Skowhegan School, started by her stepfather, and she also taught there until 1967. She served as a trustee from 1961 - 1983. In 1987, Poor was elected to the American Academy and Institute of Arts and Letters. She was also a member of the National Academy of Design. Poor's work can be found in the Metropolitan Museum, the Whitney Museum of American Art and the Brooklyn Museum of Art.

Bessie Breuer, married to Henry Varnum Poor, was a novelist and a short-story writer. She began her career as a reporter, but towards the end of WWII, she was national director of publicity for the American Red Cross. She wrote for The Ladies’ Home Journal, Harper’s Magazine and the Pictorial Review. Her first novel, "Memory of Love," was published in 1935 and was made into a film in 1939 titled "In Name Only" starring Cary Grant and Carole Lombard. Other novels include "The Daughter", "The Actress" and "Take Care of My Roses." She won four "O Henry Awards" between 1943 - 1947. Her screenplay, "Sundown Beach" was presented on Broadway, directed by Elia Kazan and starring the then-unknown actress Julie Harries.

In Gallery One & Two, the works of contemporary artists living on South Mountain Road, sculptor Doris Laughton and textile designer/painter Carolyn Ray, will be exhibited.

Free exhibition-based programs accompanying The Women of South Mountain Road include:

• Nov. 3, 7 p.m.: Susan Deeks, executive director of the Historical Society of Rockland County, introduces ten of these gifted female artists of South Mountain Road—Mary Mowbray-Clarke, Ruth Reeves, Lotte Lenya, Bessie Breuer Poor, Martha Ryther, Marjorie Content, Anne Poor, Hesper Anderson, Eva Zeisel, and Lita Hornick—to explore their unique achievements and make a case for why they should have a more prominent place in the history of American arts and letters.
• Nov. 6, 1-4 p.m.: Naomi Vladeck, creativity and transformational coach and author of "Braving Creativity" will conduct an interactive workshop for women artists. Participants will explore the unique relationship between creativity and the periods of transition in their lives.

The Women of South Mountain Road will be exhibited from October 17 - November 23. The free exhibit will be open on Mondays - Saturdays, from 11 a.m. - 4 p.m. An opening reception will take place on Saturday, October 22, from 2 p.m. - 5 p.m. The Rockland Center for the Arts is located at 27 South Greenbush Road, in West Nyack. For information on the exhibition-based programs accompanying this exhibit, visit the Rockland Center for the Arts website.