Edith Mahier (1892 – 1967) was an American artist and art instructor who was instrumental in helping develop the talent of the
Kiowa Six The Kiowa Six, previously known as the Kiowa Five, is a group of six Kiowa artists from Oklahoma in the early 20th century, working in the "Kiowa style". The artists were Spencer Asah, James Auchiah, Jack Hokeah, Stephen Mopope, Monroe Tsatoke and L ...
during their studies at the
University of Oklahoma
The University of Oklahoma (OU) is a Public university, public research university in Norman, Oklahoma. Founded in 1890, it had existed in Oklahoma Territory near Indian Territory for 17 years before the two Territories became the state of Oklahom ...
. In 1941, she won the commission to complete the
post office mural for the U.S. Treasury Department's
Section of Fine Arts
The Treasury Section of Painting and Sculpture was a New Deal art project established on October 16, 1934, and administered by the Procurement Division of the United States Department of the Treasury.
Commonly known as the Section, it was rena ...
at the
Watonga, Oklahoma
Watonga is a city in Blaine County, Oklahoma. It is 70 miles northwest of Oklahoma City. The population was 5,111 at the 2010 census. It is the county seat of Blaine County.
History
Watonga is located on former Cheyenne and Arapaho Indian Res ...
facility. In her later career at OU she created a division of the arts department dedicated to fashion and even designed motifs for a clothing line developed by
Neiman Marcus
Neiman Marcus Group, Inc. is an American integrated luxury retailer headquartered in Dallas, Texas, which owns Neiman Marcus, Bergdorf Goodman, Horchow, and Last Call. Since September 2021, NMG has been owned by a group of investment compani ...
.
Early life
Edith Albina Mahier was born on December 14, 1892, in
Baton Rouge, Louisiana
Baton Rouge ( ; ) is a city in and the capital of the U.S. state of Louisiana. Located the eastern bank of the Mississippi River, it is the parish seat of East Baton Rouge Parish, Louisiana's most populous parish—the equivalent of counties i ...
to Henry and Maud B. Mahier. She came from an artistic family. Her sister Frances would later serve as the curator of the
Louisiana Art Museum in
Baton Rouge
Baton Rouge ( ; ) is a city in and the capital of the U.S. state of Louisiana
Louisiana , group=pronunciation (French: ''La Louisiane'') is a state in the Deep South and South Central regions of the United States. It is the 20th-sma ...
and design clothing. Her brother, John would run a pottery factory in their home town called Forest Studios. Mahier attended
Sophie Newcomb College
H. Sophie Newcomb Memorial College, or Newcomb College, was the coordinate women's college of Tulane University located in New Orleans, in the U.S. state of Louisiana. It was founded by Josephine Louise Newcomb in 1886 in memory of her daughter ...
, the women's college affiliate of
Tulane University
Tulane University, officially the Tulane University of Louisiana, is a private university, private research university in New Orleans, Louisiana. Founded as the Medical College of Louisiana in 1834 by seven young medical doctors, it turned into ...
, studying under
Ellsworth Woodward
Ellsworth Woodward (1861–1939) was an American artist and art educator. During the late 19th century in New Orleans, Ellsworth and his older brother William Woodward were two of the most influential figures in Southern art. Ellsworth was born 1 ...
and graduating 1916. Following her graduation, she worked as an illustrator at the ''
New Orleans Item''. In 1917, Mahier was hired as an art teacher at the
University of Oklahoma
The University of Oklahoma (OU) is a Public university, public research university in Norman, Oklahoma. Founded in 1890, it had existed in Oklahoma Territory near Indian Territory for 17 years before the two Territories became the state of Oklahom ...
(OU) for the salary of $80 per month. She was a member of
Gamma Phi Beta
Gamma Phi Beta (, also known as GPhi or Gamma Phi) is an international college sorority. It was founded in Syracuse University in 1874, and was the first of the Greek organizations to call itself a sorority. The main archive URL iThe Baird's Man ...
In 1919, when Tulane created the Bachelor of Design degree, Mahier and other prior students whose work was of special merit were retroactively awarded the degree. She later studied at the
New York School of Fine and Applied Arts
Parsons School of Design, known colloquially as Parsons, is a private art and design college located in the Greenwich Village neighborhood of New York City. Founded in 1896 after a group of progressive artists broke away from established Manhatt ...
under
George Bridgman
George Brant Bridgman (November 5, 1864 – December 16, 1943) was a Canadian-American painter, writer, and teacher in the fields of anatomy and figure drawing. Bridgman taught anatomy for artists at the Art Students League of New York for some ...
.
Career
Mahier, who was known as "Eli" to her students, taught while continuing to create her own artwork. In 1918, her painting ''The Pot of Gold at the End of the Rainbow'' was singled out for acclaim during an exhibition of Southwestern artists and her exhibited works were selling. By 1919 she was running the art department during
Oscar Jacobson
Oscar Brousse Jacobson (May 16, 1882 – September 15, 1966) was a Swedish-born American painter and museum curator. From 1915 to 1945, he was the director of the University of Oklahoma's School of Art, later known as the Fred Jones Jr. Museum of ...
's absence and in 1921, she was appointed as artistic director for the university magazine. In 1924, the museum that would later become the
Fred Jones Jr. Museum of Art
The Fred Jones Jr. Museum of Art is an art museum on the University of Oklahoma campus in Norman, Oklahoma.
Overview
The University of Oklahoma’s Fred Jones Jr. Museum of Art holds over 20,000 objects in its permanent collection. The museum c ...
held a solo exhibit of her artwork, and soon after she took a leave of absence to study abroad. She was asked to exhibit at the
Paris Salon
The Salon (french: Salon), or rarely Paris Salon (French: ''Salon de Paris'' ), beginning in 1667 was the official art exhibition of the Académie des Beaux-Arts in Paris. Between 1748 and 1890 it was arguably the greatest annual or biennial art ...
in 1925 and was the first American and first woman to study
fresco
Fresco (plural ''frescos'' or ''frescoes'') is a technique of mural painting executed upon freshly laid ("wet") lime plaster. Water is used as the vehicle for the dry-powder pigment to merge with the plaster, and with the setting of the plaste ...
at the
Accademia di Belle Arti di Firenze
The Accademia di Belle Arti di Firenze ("academy of fine arts of Florence") is an instructional art academy in Florence, in Tuscany, in central Italy.
It was founded by Cosimo I de' Medici in 1563, under the influence of Giorgio Vasari. ...
.
![Mahier Athletics Jambalaya 1916](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/2/27/Mahier_Athletics_Jambalaya_1916.jpg)
In 1926, Mahier met with
Susie Peters
Susie Peters (Kiowa Name: Kom-tah-gya) was an American preservationist and matron at the Anadarko Agency, who worked to promote Kiowa artists. Born to white parents in Tennessee, she moved to Indian Territory with her family prior to Oklahoma stat ...
and two
Kiowa
Kiowa () people are a Native American tribe and an indigenous people of the Great Plains of the United States. They migrated southward from western Montana into the Rocky Mountains in Colorado in the 17th and 18th centuries,Pritzker 326 and eve ...
artists,
Spencer Asah and
Jack Hokeah
Jack Hokeah (December 4, 1901 - December 14, 1969) was a Kiowa painter, one of the Kiowa Six, from Oklahoma.
Early life
Jack Hokeah was born in 1901 in western Oklahoma.Lester, 239 He was orphaned at a very young age and raised by his grandmother ...
. The following term, Asah, Hokeah and their fellow artists,
Stephen Mopope and
Monroe Tsatoke were admitted to a special program at the university and Mahier became their teacher, critic and mentor. Since the Kiowa artists did not meet the entrance requirements and Jacobson was convinced their natural talent needed only coaching, Mahier allowed them to use her office as a studio and gave them a balance of criticism and encouragement. She was forbidden to give instruction on
abstract techniques,
perspective, or
shading
Shading refers to the depiction of depth perception in 3D models (within the field of 3D computer graphics) or illustrations (in visual art) by varying the level of darkness. Shading tries to approximate local behavior of light on the object's ...
, but guided them with discussions about anatomy, including the question of whether Indians had six fingers, and comments about rhythm and design elements. Between semesters, the boys returned to the reservation to work, but returned in January 1927, accompanied by
Lois Smoky. By the fall of that year, they were joined by
James Auchiah
James Auchiah (1906–1974) was a Kiowa painter and one of the Kiowa Six from Oklahoma.Watson, Mary JoAuchiah, James (1906-1974) ''Oklahoma Historical Society's Encyclopedia of Oklahoma History and Culture.'' (28 April 2009)
Early life
James Auc ...
. Exhibitions of their work at the
Denver Art Museum
The Denver Art Museum (DAM) is an art museum located in the Civic Center of Denver, Colorado. With encyclopedic collections of more than 70,000 diverse works from across the centuries and world, the DAM is one of the largest art museums between t ...
and on a tour in
Czechoslovakia
, rue, Чеськословеньско, , yi, טשעכאסלאוואקיי,
, common_name = Czechoslovakia
, life_span = 1918–19391945–1992
, p1 = Austria-Hungary
, image_p1 ...
soon earned the group the name of the
Kiowa Six The Kiowa Six, previously known as the Kiowa Five, is a group of six Kiowa artists from Oklahoma in the early 20th century, working in the "Kiowa style". The artists were Spencer Asah, James Auchiah, Jack Hokeah, Stephen Mopope, Monroe Tsatoke and L ...
, critical acclaim and enduring fame. Their work showed in the U.S. Pavilion at the 1932
Venice Biennial
The Venice Biennale (; it, La Biennale di Venezia) is an international cultural exhibition hosted annually in Venice, Italy by the Biennale Foundation. The biennale has been organised every year since 1895, which makes it the oldest of ...
,
the only year
Native American art
Visual arts by indigenous peoples of the Americas encompasses the visual artistic practices of the indigenous peoples of the Americas from ancient times to the present. These include works from South America and North America, which includes C ...
ists have shown in the U.S. Pavilion.
By 1935, Mahier had become an associate professor when she was honored by inclusion in the volume ''American women'', along with 8 other OU faculty women and around 6,000 women from throughout the nation who had earned recognition in their fields. She began teaching a two-year fashion drawing course in 1938 when the university created a new five-year degree program, Art for Industry, which became the Fashion Arts curriculum in 1941 under her direction. She and her sister, Frances Mahier Brandon, were instrumental in bringing Native American design to fashion, after they presented research on various tribal motifs to
Stanley Marcus head of
Neiman Marcus
Neiman Marcus Group, Inc. is an American integrated luxury retailer headquartered in Dallas, Texas, which owns Neiman Marcus, Bergdorf Goodman, Horchow, and Last Call. Since September 2021, NMG has been owned by a group of investment compani ...
. The designs were later featured in ''
Vogue
Vogue may refer to:
Business
* ''Vogue'' (magazine), a US fashion magazine
** British ''Vogue'', a British fashion magazine
** ''Vogue Arabia'', an Arab fashion magazine
** ''Vogue Australia'', an Australian fashion magazine
** ''Vogue China'', ...
'', and the March issue of ''Holland's Magazine'', when Neiman Marcus developed a fashion line around the motifs.
That same year, Mahier won the federal commission to paint a mural for the
post office mural project for the U.S. Treasury Department's
Section of Fine Arts
The Treasury Section of Painting and Sculpture was a New Deal art project established on October 16, 1934, and administered by the Procurement Division of the United States Department of the Treasury.
Commonly known as the Section, it was rena ...
at the
Watonga, Oklahoma
Watonga is a city in Blaine County, Oklahoma. It is 70 miles northwest of Oklahoma City. The population was 5,111 at the 2010 census. It is the county seat of Blaine County.
History
Watonga is located on former Cheyenne and Arapaho Indian Res ...
facility. She was the only Oklahoma woman to paint murals in Oklahoma as part of the project. Her painting, ''Roman Nose Canyon'', shows Cheyenne Chief
Henry Roman Nose
Chief Henry Roman Nose (June 30, 1856 – June 12, 1917) was a highly respected Southern Cheyenne Chief. Living during turbulent times, Roman Nose was recognized for facilitating a peaceful transition to a non-nomadic way of life, while retaini ...
in the center of the painting with a rifle, accompanied by his family and other Cheyenne. Behind the chief is a
Conestoga wagon with settlers who have stopped for water in the rugged canyon terrain, painted with bright oranges and reds. The artwork was controversial for the local
Southern Cheyenne
The Cheyenne and Arapaho Tribes are a united, federally recognized tribe of Southern Arapaho and Southern Cheyenne people in western Oklahoma.
History
The Cheyennes and Arapahos are two distinct tribes with distinct histories. The Cheyenne (Ts ...
tribe. Chief Red Bird criticized the depiction of Chief Roman Nose, saying that the painting made him "look like a
Navajo
The Navajo (; British English: Navaho; nv, Diné or ') are a Native American people of the Southwestern United States.
With more than 399,494 enrolled tribal members , the Navajo Nation is the largest federally recognized tribe in the United ...
" and complained that the
breech clout was too short and the feathers were worn too far forward on his head.
Mahier founded and became the faculty advisor of a fashion fabrication organization called "Shadowbox", in which students and manufacturers could work together on innovations. In the 1950s, her Fashion Design curricula was moved to the home economics department, when she was transferred there. She completed her OU tenure as the head of the fashion and textiles department, retiring in 1963. Thereafter, she moved to
Natchez, Mississippi
Natchez ( ) is the county seat of and only city in Adams County, Mississippi, United States. Natchez has a total population of 14,520 (as of the 2020 census). Located on the Mississippi River across from Vidalia in Concordia Parish, Louisiana, N ...
, where her sister resided.
Death and interment
At the time of her death, Mahier was living in the Williamsburg (Bahin House) which is listed on the National Register of Historic Places. Mahier died December 2, 1967 in Natchez, Mississippi and was buried at Roselawn Memorial Park and Mausoleum, in Baton Rouge, Louisiana.
References
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{{DEFAULTSORT:Mahier, Edith
1892 births
1967 deaths
People from Baton Rouge, Louisiana
American women artists
American fashion designers
20th-century American educators
Educators from Louisiana
20th-century American women educators
American women fashion designers