If so, please comment below by clicking on “comments.” Or, please email me at mariongundersonart@gmail.com, especially if you have photos to share of anyone/anything related to Barr Art. For now, this post will stay at the top of this page. There are current posts further down this page.
Author Archive
Cathrine Barr’s Influence, Mother (Marion), and Barr Art
June 8, 2009(Aside from the photos and caption text, this post is taken from page 114 of the Pocahontas County, Iowa, History, compiled in 1981 by the Pocahontas County Historical Society Members and Friends, copyright 1982 by the Pocahontas County Historical Society, Rolfe, Iowa. If you have anything–including photos–regarding Barr Art and/or Cathrine that you’d be willing to share, please comment at the post at the top of this page and/or email me at mariongundersonart@gmail.com. Thank you.)
“Throw away your fear and timidity. Polish up your gambling spirit, and pick up your brush, ready for the dare.”
Mother (Marion) and Daddy (Deane) Gunderson with their first four children, (L to R) Clara, Martha (born October 1948), Charles and Helen. The future Barr Art Association began meeting just months before, during the summer of 1948, while Mother was pregnant with Martha. (Click photo to enlarge.)
That’s exactly what happened when, in the summer of 1948, Cathrine Barr, a commercial artist and illustrator from Weston, Connecticut, came to Rolfe to visit her mother, Myrtle Anderson, and her grandmother, Addie Beam. This was the first of several summers from 1948 to 1952 when Cathrine organized classes and taught watercolor painting. Her emphasis was on basic techniques, originality, creativity and working directly from subject matter rather than copying other works. The classes proved popular, and each summer enthusiasm for the art of watercolor grew until the students numbered about 76 persons from Humboldt to Spencer, with a large nucleus in Pocahontas County.
On October 25, 1949, a group of these students met in the Shaw and Shaw Law Offices in Pocahontas to organize an Art Association. Marion Gunderson, Rolfe, was the first president, and Maude Herrick, Gilmore City, was the first secretary.
The name "Barr Art Association" was adopted in the fall of 1951, the same fall that my sister, Peggy, was born. Here Mother (Marion) is pictured with (L to R) Clara, Martha, Peggy, Charles and Helen. I (Louise) was born in the fall of 1955. The artwork on the wall was painted by Charles. (Click photo to enlarge.)
It was not until the fall of 1951 that the group adopted the name of Barr Art Association, giving recognition to the person who had been their teacher and motivation.
The purpose of Barr Art was “to promote and stimulate interest in art.” This they accomplished in two ways. First and foremost was meeting regularly in each other’s home or else on location to pursue what they had learned from Cathrine. Secondly, they exhibited together annually at such places as the Blanden Gallery and the KVFD “Little Art Gallery” in Fort Dodge, sidewalk art shows, various women’s clubs and churches, and at Regional Amateur Art Shows sponsored by the Iowa Arts Council.
The Association thrived through the ’50s and ’60s, but in the late 1970s interest dwindled and the group disbanded.
Barr Art Association was “open to anyone interested in the various arts.” Its members painted together and enjoyed the satisfactions of artistic endeavor that only a group of working artists can enjoy in an atmosphere of relaxation and creativity.
To view names of many of the people who attended Barr Art, and also the communities they represented, click here.
Grain Elevators and Teenage Dating — Part II
June 6, 2009To understand the “story” better, if you haven’t already read my last post (Grain Elevators and Teenage Dating – Part I), you might want to scroll down and read it and then come back to this post. Click here…before or after reading Part I.
Grain Elevators and Teenage Dating — Part I
June 3, 2009Think small town (population ~ 800) and rural northwest Iowa, early 1970s…
I started dating my (now) husband and love-of-my-life when I was a sophomore in high school. Bill Shimon was a Rolfe (Iowa) High School senior at that time and I had just turned fifteen. The first time I remember knowing of Bill was when I was in sixth grade and he was in eighth. During the awards assembly the last day of that school year, our junior high principal, Lyle Foster, presented an award to Bill based upon Bill’s work ethic and character.
I don’t recall having much interaction with Bill until my sophomore year in high school when he was consoling me about “boy problems” I was having. Within a few weeks of that conversation, Bill asked me out.
Where do Bill’s character, grain elevators and dating fit it? I’m getting there! More…
Watercolors to John Deere
June 1, 2009
Mother's signature on one of the returned watercolors
Decades ago, my mother, Marion Gunderson, sold to a neighboring farming couple a few watercolors she painted in the late 1940s/early 1950s. Since she painted these before I was born, I was only vaguely aware these watercolors existed.
Last September my father, Deane Gunderson, a retired farmer who also worked in the 1940s as an engineer for John Deere, celebrated his 90th birthday. (Engineers are artists in a way!) In honor of my father’s 90th, the neighboring farming couple (now retired and moved into town—Rolfe, Iowa) returned three of these paintings to my father. My father had me ask more
Marion Gunderson Art (and the Farmer's Daughter) 