Grace Leslie Dickerson (1911-2001)

Grace Leslie Dickerson was born on August 27, 1911, at Brookside, her parents' home, located in Fort Wayne, Indiana. Sometimes referred to as Bass Castle, Brookside was a grand home built by her grandparents and is now the site of the St. Francis College library. Grace Dickerson graduated from the Fort Wayne Art Institute in 1932 and received degrees from St. Francis College (1950) and the Instituto Allende at San Miguel de Allende in Mexico (1958). Grace also studied at the Art Institute of Chicago, Cranbook Academy of Fine Arts in Bloomfield Hills, Michigan, and under Guy Pène DuBois. She worked in oil, acrylic, sculpture, and ceramics. Her art was exhibited throughout the Midwest and in New York, Chicago, Paris, and Mexico. For many years she taught at Harmar School (1950-1951), the Arcola School (1955), and St. Francis College. From 1962 onward, she also gave lessons in her home studio. In addition to being a fine artist, craftswoman, and art instructor, Grace was an illustrator. She provided the illustrations for her own book, Sketchbook of San Miguel de Allende (1964), and a children's biography, Little Turtle by Jean Carper (1959). Grace Leslie Dickerson died on July 11, 2001, in Fort Wayne. She is entombed in the city of her birth.

The cover of Little Turtle (1959), written by Jean Carper and illustrated by Grace Leslie Dickerson. Little Turtle (ca. 1747-1812) was a leader of the Miami Indians and born in what is now Whitley County, Indiana, west of the present-day Allen County and Fort Wayne. One of the men sent against him was a near contemporary, Josiah Harmar (1753-1813), for whom the Harmar School in Fort Wayne is named.

Text and captions copyright 2012 Terence E. Hanley

Ralph McQuarrie (1929-2012)

Ralph McQuarrie, the conceptual designer behind Star Wars and other science fiction, fantasy, and adventure films, has died. McQuarrie passed away on Saturday, March 3, 2012, at his home in Berkeley, California. He was eighty-two. Despite years of declining health (he suffered from Parkinson's disease), McQuarrie had a very long and productive life and career, especially given his injury while serving in the Korean War. During that almost forgotten conflict, McQuarrie received a gunshot wound to the head, an injury that--if it had proved fatal--would have changed the look of science fiction forever, depriving the world of some of the most memorable and recognizable characters ever to appear on the silver screen.

Ralph McQuarrie was born in Gary, Indiana, on June 13, 1929, and spent his formative years in Billings, Montana, where his family owned a farm. He moved to California in the early 1960s and honed his skills as an illustrator at the Art Center School in downtown Los Angeles. Early in his career, McQuarrie created technical drawings and blueprints, first for a dentist, then for the Boeing Company, and most notably and fortuitously for CBS News, for which he created posters and animation on the Apollo spaceflight program. While at CBS, McQuarrie was approached by writer, director, and producer Hal Barwood, who asked him to complete some conceptual paintings for the planned film Star Dancing. Though Star Dancing never reached the big screen, McQuarrie’s work on the project led him to George Lucas, who in 1975 commissioned conceptual designs for Star Wars (1977). McQuarrie illustrated storyboards from Lucas' script and created the initial depictions of Darth Vadar, C-3PO, R2-D2, and Chewbacca.

McQuarrie went on to work on The Empire Strikes Back (1980) and Return of the Jedi (1983). His other film credits include some of the highest-grossing films of the 1970s and '80s, including Close Encounters of the Third Kind (1977), Raiders of the Lost Ark (1981), E.T.: the Extra-Terrestrial (1982), and Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home (1986). He worked on the television series Battlestar Galactica in 1978 and earned an Academy Award for Visual Effects for his work on the 1985 film, Cocoon.

McQuarrie was offered a role as a conceptual designer for the Star Wars prequel series but turned down the offer, stating he had “run out of steam.” His last credit as a conceptual artist or designer was on the 1991 movie short Back to the Future . . . The Ride. Incidentally, McQuarrie played a character named McQuarrie--General McQuarrie--in an uncredited role in The Empire Strikes Back.

An array of images created by Ralph McQuarrie showing his great skill, taste, and imagination. As you can see, he was equally at ease with the human figure, aliens, robots, monsters, spacecraft, architecture, and planetscapes. What would Star Wars--and by extension, the world--have been without him?

Written by Bridget Hanley, Proficient Pen, and Terence E. Hanley

Copyright 2012 Terence E. Hanley

Richard Lonsdale Brown (1892-1917)

The story of Richard Lonsdale Brown's life is--like the story of all lives--one of triumph and sadness. It's a story of a young and very talented artist, determined to make his way in the art world despite his humble origins and the view society had of people of color. He was born on August 25, 1892, in Evansville, Indiana. It would appear that his father was an itinerant tradesman, a bricklayer and construction worker who went where there were jobs. Nineteen hundred found the family in Pittsburgh. They later took up residence in Parkersburg, West Virginia, where Brown spent most of his youth. In his late teens, he attended the Charleston Institute, a trade school in which he learned the skills and techniques of house painting, graduating in 1910. West Virginia proved an inspiration to the young artist, and he began creating impressionistic watercolor landscapes of his father's home state.

At the age of seventeen, Brown ventured from home, pursuing his art career in Pittsburgh before moving on to New York City. He approached numerous art galleries in New York with no success. His youth, inexperience, and color blocked his entry into the mainstream art community. In the spring of 1911, Brown, penniless and in search of affirmation, arrived on the doorstep of an established artist, George de Forest Brush (1855-1941), and asked him to review his work. Brush was impressed and took Brown under his wing. That summer, thanks to a scholarship from the NAACP, Brown studied under Brush at the art colony at Cornish, New Hampshire, and returned with him to New York in the fall. In March 1912, he had a very successful solo exhibition at the Ovington Gallery. He produced illustrations and cover art for The Crisis magazine, and in May 1913, won a bronze medal in the city’s National Academy of Design show. 

The artistic passion and desire for learning that delivered Brown to New York next carried him to Boston, where he continued his studies and paid his way by painting houses. He painted the Robert Gould Shaw House, and while there, produced illustrations for The Crisis as well as civil rights posters, commissioned by W.E.B. Du Bois, the founder of the NAACP. Then, Brown's life took a turn that we--a century later--can only wonder about: He inexplicably abandoned his artistic pursuits on the East Coast and returned home to his parents, moving with them to Muskogee, Oklahoma, in the winter of 1916. It was in Muskogee, in the fall or early winter of 1917, that Brown died at the age of twenty-five, from an "incurable illness," possibly pneumonia. According to an auction website, only three known works by Richard Lonsdale Brown survive. I would suggest that the inextinguishable spirit of the artist also survives.

"An Indian Mound" (ca. 1914), a watercolor by Indiana artist Richard Lonsdale Brown.

"Mount Monadnock" (1911), a work in gouache of a prominence in New Hampshire, where Brown studied with George de Forest Brush at the Cornish art colony.

Brown was also an illustrator, creating work for The Crisis, the magazine of the NAACP under the editorship of W.E.B. DuBois. Here is his cover for the Easter number, April 1912.

Trivia: It's interesting to note that Brown, a painter of landscapes, found benefactors in two men with names having similar meanings: de Forest and DuBois.

Written by Bridget Hanley, Proficient Pen, and Terence E. Hanley
Text and captions copyright 2012 Terence E. Hanley

Elton Clay Fax (1909-1993)

Born on October 9, 1909, in Baltimore, Maryland, Elton Clay Fax attended Claflin College and the College of Fine Art at Syracuse University. He began his career as a lecturer and art teacher at Claflin College in Orangeburg, South Carolina, in the 1930s. He was a prolific artist, illustrating more than thirty books and a multitude of magazine articles, and he produced the weekly comic strip Suzabelle, which ran in several black newspapers during the 1940s. He was also an accomplished writer who travelled extensively throughout the United States and overseas. During his illustrated lectures abroad, Fax brought news of the American Civil Rights Movement to other peoples. He held formal positions as a U.S. Department of State International Exchange Program Representative in South America and the Caribbean, a delegate to the International Congress of Society of African Culture in Rome, and a lecturer with the U.S. State Department in East Africa.

No matter where his other commitments and interests led him, Fax never lost sight of his calling as an educator, teaching courses in colleges and universities throughout the United States, lecturing in schools around the world, and conducting workshops and talks for children in schools and community centers. He held teaching, guest lecturer, and artist-in-residence positions at several colleges and universities over the course of his career, including a residency at Purdue University in West Lafayette, Indiana.

Fax's career as an illustrator began in 1942 with pictures for Astounding Science-Fiction. Illustrations for Science Fiction Stories, Unknown Worlds, and Weird Tales followed. Fax went on to illustrate many children's books, from Tommy Two Wheels by Robert Norris McLean (1943) to The Seven Wishes of Joanna Peabody by Genevieve Gray (1972), which was adapted to the ABC Weekend Specials in 1978. In addition, Fax illustrated his own books on his travels and on the lives of black Americans.

After a long and distinguished career, Elton Clay Fax died at his home in Queens, New York, on May 13, 1993. He was eighty-three years old.

Renowned author, artist, and educator Elton Clay Fax began his illustration career in science fiction magazines. The image is small, but here's an illustration for "The Cave" by P. Schuyler Miller from Astounding Science-Fiction, January 1943. 

This drawing in ink, of President Franklin D. Roosevelt, shows Fax's facility with a pen and with portraiture.

In later years, Fax turned to weightier subjects, such as famine in Africa. The title of this piece is "Bread," and it was part of a series of lithographs called "Black and Beautiful," executed between 1964 and 1968. From the collection of Temple University.

Elton Clay Fax (1909-1993)

Postscript: A portrait of George Washington Carver from the second book illustrated by Elton Clay Fax, Dr. George Washington Carver, Scientist (1944).

Written by Bridget Hanley, Proficient Pen, and Terence E. Hanley

Text and captions copyright 2012 Terence E. Hanley

Norah Hamilton (1873-1945)

Hull House, the Chicago social services agency founded by Nobel Peace Prize winner Jane Addams (1860-1935) closed down on Friday, January 27, 2012. The cause was lack of funds. At its peak, Hull House (or Hull-House, as it was called for many years) served 9,000 people per week with its educational classes, activities, medical help, and other services. The closing brings to an end an institution dating to 1889.

Two Indiana sisters played their parts in the operation of Hull-House during the early twentieth century. Alice Hamilton (1869-1970), a pioneer in the field of occupational health and industrial hygiene, served on the medical staff at Hull-House for three decades. In 1919, she became the first female faculty member at Harvard University. Her younger sister, Norah Hamilton, taught art and other skills at Hull-House for many years. The two sisters were part of an accomplished quartet of Hamilton women. Their sister Edith Hamilton (1867-1963) was the well-known teacher, classicist, and author of The Greek Way, The Roman Way, and other books. Margaret Hamilton (1871-1969) was also a teacher and assumed the head of the English department at Bryn Mawr Preparatory School upon Edith Hamilton's retirement. Two artist-cousins, sisters Jessie Hamilton (1864-1960) and Agnes Hamilton (1868-1961), added to the prominence of the Hamilton name. Agnes by the way was also a settlement house worker.

Etcher, designer, illustrator, and art teacher Norah Hamilton was born in November 1873 in Fort Wayne, Indiana, the daughter of scholarly and well-to-do parents who encouraged their daughters to study art, literature, and the classics. Norah received instruction at the Fort Wayne School of Art under J. Ottis Adams and William Forsyth, at the Art Students League under William Merritt Chase and Robert Henri, and in Paris under James Abbott McNeill Whistler in 1897-1899. In the course of her European studies, Norah suffered a breakdown and repaired to a hospital in Zurich. She would battle depression for the rest of her life.

Norah Hamilton became associated with Hull-House as early as 1909. Her drawings illustrated Jane Addams' Twenty Years at Hull-House with Autobiographical Notes (1910) and her sister Alice Hamilton's Exploring the Dangerous Trades (1943). She also created a number of bookplates. Norah Hamilton taught art at Hull-House for many years, from at least 1910 to after 1930. Her art was exhibited in Paris, New York, and her hometown, Fort Wayne, Indiana.

The Hamilton women lived very long lives. Norah Hamilton was the first of them to pass away, in February 1945, at age seventy-one.

"Hull-House on Halsted Street," an etching by Norah Hamilton for the book Twenty Years at Hull-House with Autobiographical Notes (1910) by Jane Addams. Norah Hamilton lived and worked at Hull-House for many years. The illustrations shown here are from Jane Addams' book and are in the collections of Northern Illinois University.

"A Neighborhood Alley Near Hull-House"

"Sweatshop Workers"

"Aniello, a Child at Hull-House"

Text copyright 2012 Terence E. Hanley

Carl Kidwell (1910-2003)

Carl Edmund Kidwell was born on August 8, 1910, in the southwestern Indiana town of Washington. As a child he suffered from a prolonged illness that forced an end to his formal education while he was in grade school. Kidwell held a variety of jobs as a young man, including being a painter for the B & O Railroad. (I suspect that on that job, his canvas was the size of a boxcar.) During the war years, he served as a radioman aboard the USS Indianapolis, USS Quincy, PC 608 (a patrol craft), and PC 1238 (a submarine chaser). Three of those four craft were lost, two by enemy action. Kidwell's brother, Logan Kidwell, also served on the USS Quincy. Unlike Carl, Logan Kidwell didn't come home.

Carl Kidwell's art career evidently started with the U.S. Navy. Sometime during the war, he was transferred to the staff of The Chaser, the magazine of the Submarine Chaser Training Center in Miami, Florida, where he worked as a designer and illustrator. His illustrations also appeared in the magazine Our Navy. After the war, Carl Kidwell went to New York and began a career as a freelance illustrator, author, and teacher. The earliest credit I have found for him is work for Blue Book in May 1946. In the field of fantasy and science fiction, Kidwell illustrated "Music from Down Under" by Joe Kennedy for Other Worlds Science Stories (Oct. 1951) and "The Seamstress" by E. Everett Evans for Weird Tales (Jan. 1952). During the 1950s and '60s, he created illustrations for juvenile books of mystery, adventure, Western, and American history, including three of his own, Arrow in the Sun (1961), The Angry Earth (1964), and Granada, Surrender! (1968). Kidwell returned to fantasy in the mid-1960s with covers for the digest-sized Magazine of Horror and Startling Mystery Stories.

The last credit I have found for Carl Kidwell is illustration for Smugglers' Island by Martha C. King (1970). After a long life and career, he passed away on July 2, 2003, in New York City and was buried in his hometown, just a few blocks away from his boyhood home.

Text and captions copyright 2012 Terence E. Hanley

Alice Woods Ullman (1871-1959)

Author, illustrator, poster artist, and painter Alice Woods was born in Goshen, Indiana, on November 22, 1871. She attended the Girls Classical School of Indianapolis, the Indiana School of Art under William Forsyth and T.C. Steele, and the Shinnecock Summer School of Art under William Merritt Chase. She continued her art education at the Art Students League, the New York School of Art, and the Académie Colarossi in Paris. Her experiences as an art student in Paris gave her the material she needed for a novel, Fame Seekers, published in 1912.

Alice spent almost two decades in Paris and knew Gertrude Stein, Ezra Pound, Margaret Cravens, and other members of the American art community. She married the painter Eugene Paul Ullman (1877-1953), another Chase student and a near lifelong expatriate. Together they had two sons, sculptor Allen Ullman and painter/illustrator Paul Ullman. After separating from her husband in 1914, Alice Woods Ullman returned to the United States and was associated with the artistic crowd in Provincetown, Massachusetts, and Greenwich Village, New York.

Alice Woods wrote and illustrated stories for The Century, McClure’s, Pearson’s, The Smart Set, and other magazines. She also wrote six novels: Edges (1902), A Gingham Rose (1904),  Fame Seekers (1912), The Thicket (1913), The Hairpin Duchess (1924), and The Gilded Caravan (1927). In the Fame Seekers, Alice wrote: "Modern life has produced nothing more interesting, more charming or more alarming than the American girl," a sure indication of her interest in women's stories and women's themes. Perhaps she offered a commentary on her own marriage when she wrote that if the American girl, studying in Paris, ends "by marrying, [then] heaven help the man, for it is with the secret gnawing of compromise or condescension."

Alice Woods Ullman was a member of the National Association of Women Painters and Sculptors, the National Arts Club, the Woman’s Art Club of New York, and the Portfolio Club of Indianapolis. She died on July 24, 1959, in New York City.

The frontispiece of Alice Wood Ullman's 1904 novel, A Gingham Rose, created by the author herself. The drawing has a poster-like quality and is clearly influenced by the art nouveau style. It should come as no surprise that Alice was also a poster artist.

And a small monotype of eucalyptus trees, signed "Alice Woods," made perhaps before she was married to the painter Eugene Ullman. 

Text and captions copyright 2011, 2024 Terence E. Hanley