News, In the News | June 2011
Sister Rufinia, Bob Kreibel, Old Lafayette
A PLACE TO CREATE, APPRECIATE ART
Focus On: History
Tippecanoe County early this century proved to be a friendly environment for those skilled in the visual arts and those less-skilled but appreciative of talent.
On April 14, 1909, Laura Ann Fry, head of the industrial arts department at Purdue University, inspired interested patrons of the visual arts to organize a Lafayette Art Association. Superior Court Judge Henry Vinton served as the first president, with Fry as vice president; Katharine Beeson, principal of Centennial School, as secretary; and Cecil Fowler, cashier of National Fowler Bank, as treasurer.
Fry, born in White County in 1857, ranked as one of the more gifted potters among local artists. Born to a family of woodcarvers, she studied that craft and learned about drawing, painting, pottery and design from others. She studied in New York City, took up serious pottery in Trenton, N.J., and continued in England and France. She taught in Cincinnati, at the summer school of Chautauqua, N.Y., and later at Purdue. In 1883, she was a decorator at Rookwood Pottery, Cincinnati, and helped develop the use of an atomizer to apply slip glazes.
Fry joined the Purdue faculty in 1891, at age 34, and retired in 1922. During 1911, the Lafayette Art Association acquired its first painting: F. Luis Mora's The Cruise of the Ellida.
Stained-glass artist
Meanwhile, another Lafayette native gained a following and countless honors. During 1915, workers at Stidham Methodist Church a few miles southwest of Lafayette installed over the pulpit a stained-glass arch designed by Edna Browning Ruby (1887-1937). It measured 156 inches by 88 inches. The church also acquired her grouping of three stained- glass windows, each measuring 70 by 75 inches.
Ruby first trained in miniature portraiture, jewelry design and metal work. Later, she mastered textile design. She graduated from the Art Institute of Chicago and the Pennsylvania Museum and School of Industrial Art, studied at the Philadelphia Academy of Fine Arts, the Art Students' League of New York and Purdue University, later earning membership in the Royal Academy of England.
At age 24, Ruby served as director of design and applied art at the John Herron Art Institute in Indianapolis and at an art school in Muncie during 1916 to 1918. In 1915, at age 28, she took up stained glass and soon gained renown in ecclesiastic window designs, furniture design and church interior decoration.
At the time of her death, she was the only American woman known to be designing, building and installing stained glass windows. Two churches in Indianapolis - West Washington Street Methodist and the United Brethren Church on Walnut Street - contracted for her glass work in 1923. Her glass designs also went into what is now Elston Presbyterian Church just outside Lafayette.
Paintings acquired
The Lafayette Art Association suspended meetings during World War I, reasoning that it should not be collecting money for art while the nation was trying to raise billions through "Liberty Loan" campaigns to finance the military. After a six-year hiatus, the association reorganized in June 1924. Thomas F. Moran took over as president. Eleanor Brockenbrough (1880-1938), a Lafayette-born painter, became vice president.
Brockenbrough studied in Boston, Lake Forest, Ill., the Art Institute of Chicago and the Hawthorne and Ferguson Art Colonies in East Gloucester, Mass. Her paintings won numerous exhibition prizes nationwide, and several graced walls in women's residence halls at Purdue University. In time, the Lafayette Art Association acquired two of her oils on canvas: the 16-by-12-inch Monday dating to 1911, and Gloucester Fishing Boats, an 18-by-16-inch done in 1924.
All 31 paintings owned by the Art Association (14 added after 1918) went on public display in Purdue University's new Memorial Union in 1925. Jack Walters, an association officer and general manager of the Union, produced the booklet Art Exhibition of the Lafayette Art Association for that exhibit.
Accident leads to art
Another Lafayette artist began painting in the early 1920s. Sister Mary Rufinia (1885-1959), a Catholic nun born in Germany, launched a nursing career in St. Elizabeth Hospital in 1906. Crippled too severely in an accident to continue nursing, she became involved as an artist and art teacher in 1920. She studied at the Academy of Art in Berlin, the Art Institute of Chicago and Duchune College. In the 1930s, she opened a studio at St. Francis High School near the hospital and taught watercolor, pottery and sculpture. In an essay titled Reveries of an Artist, she wrote:
"For me, an artist, one of the greatest happinesses this world can offer is to behold the beauty of creation. In each tree, sunrise, sunset, ocean, mountain, landscape and garden, my soul overflows with gratitude to the Supreme Maker."
Bob Kriebel
Old Lafayette