Mary Alys Polk was born in about 1903 in Greenwood, Indiana, to Burr H. and Carrie Polk. Her sister, Helen M. Polk, was younger by a year. The family lived in Chattanooga, Tennessee, and Indianapolis, where Mr. Polk was a working man. Mary Alys Polk (also called Mary Alice Polk) graduated from Technical High School (now Arsenal Technical High School) in 1921 and studied at the Herron School of Art from 1921 to 1926. She also studied at the Grand Central School of Art in New York City in the summer of 1926. She taught at Tudor Hall in 1924 before moving on to teach drawing and art at the Indiana State School for the Deaf, also in 1924. In 1927, Mary Alys took a position as supervisor of art for the Franklin, Indiana, schools. She resigned that position in 1929 to marry Wallace Stover, an Indiana artist then living in New York City. Mary Alys Polk was a painter, illustrator, and costume designer, and she exhibited in the Hoosier Salon. Mary Alys Polk Stover is supposed to have lived in China Lake, California, in the 1960s. And that's all I know of her.
Revised on April 12, 2016.
Copyright 2013, 2024 Terence E. Hanley
