The industrial machines of the future as imagined by General Electric in the early 1900s and depicted by Harold Meade Mott-Smith are just one of the industrial age images included in a retrospective of the artists’ work in an eclectic exhibition at Rutherford Library on Jan. 9. (Sarah Masters photo)
Memories and stories line the walls of the Rutherford Library meeting room in South Bristol in the annual “Member Show,” on now through Friday, Jan. 23. Community members were invited to share a piece of their own or a treasured family piece in this eclectic, all-eras exhibit.
A counted cross-stitch sampler wall hanging dates to 1840 and is signed by E. Ferry. The original work includes the alphabet and a home as seen in the oldest samplers along with a more era-appropriate strawberries and vine border. In the early 1990s, Susan Maureen Connery personalized the piece by stitching in her and her siblings’ initials.
In 1943, Majorie Lewis Farrin embroidered four children and their pets on their way to bed, surrounded by the Lord’s Prayer to keep them safe. Farrin’s daughter, Donna Farrin Plummer, keeps this piece close, hanging by her bed eight decades later.
Maroons and greens in sharp chevron stripes cover a footstool hand stitched in a Bargello pattern by Janet Davis, a more modern fiber artwork.
Last year, Bob Emmons, a post-postmodern conceptual sculptural artist, treated the community to “Duct Tape Grape,” a commentary on a commentary the iconic $6.2 million-fetching artwork “Comedian,” by Maurizio Cattelan.
Along with a little silly, Emmons hits sweet and sentimental this year with an untitled teal blue ceramic piece evocative of a fantastical German shepherd dog. The piece won Emmons first prize when he was in first grade.
Accompanying Emmons’ piece is a newer work from a novice artist, Emmons’ granddaughter, who also created a ceramic canine while in first grade.
A three-masted sailing ship comes upon a smaller schooner in a piece painting on a cabinet panel, hinge markings still visible along the top. Francis Vaughan created this work by copying the image on an old sea chest, said his daughter Joy Vaughan.
American engineering is honored and celebrated in a treasure trove of early 1900s General Electric calendar paintings by Harold Meade Mott-Smith. Mott-Smith left his study of architecture at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology to studying painting in Paris, France.
Francis Vaughan copied an old sea chest to paint two sailing ships on the water using an old cabinet panel as a canvas, one of the unusual and unexpected pieces shared by family and friends in “Members Show” at Rutherford Library in South Bristol. (Sarah Masters photo)
Mott-Smith joined the General Electric art department in 1913. His granddaughter, Emily Mott-Smith MacKenzie, shares a large volume of his work illuminating and documenting the innovation, development, and factory work which brought electricity to every home in the country.
“Man-Made Lightning” captures a strike of artificial lightning, a white-hot bolt inside a huge factory as two workers observe from a distance.
Thomas Edison visited the laboratory of Charles Steinmetz in October 1922 to study artificial lighting, a moment depicted in “Their Last Meeting.”
A quote from Owen D. Young states “They appeal to the imagination of us all, they contribute to the warming flow of inspiration to industry” under an image of two unnamed men in three piece suits at a laboratory table littered with electronic equipment in “Workers in Physical Research – The Poets of To-Day.”
On and on, fine art advertorials expound on electric lights making night driving safe and comfortable, construction machines of the future will save human labor, and industry is the future.
E. Ferry stitched this sampler more than 100 years ago and local resident Susan Maureen Connery made it her own by adding her family initials and eventually sharing the piece in “Members Show,” on display now at Rutherford Library. (Sarah Masters photo)
A 1908 photograph provides a striking contrast to all that invention and progress. Mame Martin traveled out west, visiting Yellowstone, Yosemite, and Sequoia & Kings national parks on her honeymoon. In the Canadian Rockies near Banff, British Columbia, Martin posed for a photograph.
A snow capped peak in the distance, a teepee-style tent, a ruck sack, and a smile, Martin seems not just thousands of miles but also hundreds of years away an electric industrial world.
The show also includes pieces celebrating South Bristol, such as Alton Kelsey’s primitive painting of South Bristol’s West Side Road depicting wide green fields dotted with fences and farmhouses.
South Bristol’s current resident artists also included several of their pieces, sharing bits of their own souls with their neighbors. Priscilla House’s “Wild and Crazy Rooster” hooked rug piece is a riot of pink and purple, Kay Miller’s monotype “Vetch meets Queen Anne” turns weeds into subdued floral explosions, Carol Hoagland’s painting of “Birdhouses I Have Known” dots a snowy landscape with yellow and red bright hope for spring.
Diana Mullins ponders “Intuition” in mixed media piece, cool blue and warm yellow watercolors with poetry, one lines asks “Can I surprise myself today?”
The surprising, sweet, informative, and fun show runs through Friday, Jan. 23 at Rutherford Memorial, at 2000 Route 129 in South Bristol. For more information, call 644-1882 or find the library on Facebook.
(Sarah Masters grew up in the woods near Lake Tahoe. She loved being a private investigator in the big city, but a Maine honeymoon showed her the way life could be. To contact Masters, email smasters@lcnme.com.)
