Constance Edith Fowler

{{Infobox artist

| birth_date = June 2, 1907

| known_for = Expressive realism of wood engravings and oil paintings

| birth_place = International Falls, Minnesota

| death_date = May 11, 1996

| image = Constance_Fowler.png

}}

Constance Edith Fowler (1907–1996) was an American artist known as a painter and printmaker, an author, and an educator who taught at Willamette University and Albion College.

Early life and education

Constance Edith Fowler was born June 2, 1907, in International Falls, Minnesota.{{Cite web|url=http://www.oregonencyclopedia.org/articles/fowler_constance_1907_1996_/#.VtqQvZMrLsk|title=Constance Fowler (1907-1996)|last=Hull|first=Roger|website=www.oregonencyclopedia.org|access-date=2016-03-05}} She was the daughter of immigrants George Fowler, a butcher from England, and Matilda Einfeld (Braaker) Fowler, from Hamburg. The family lived in Aitken, Cuyuna, and Crosby, Minnesota, before moving to Pullman, Washington, in 1923, where she finished high school.{{Cite book|title=An encyclopedia of women artists of the American West|last1=Kovinick|first1=Phil|last2=Yoshiki-Kovinick|first2=Marian|publisher=University of Texas Press|year=1998|isbn=9780292790636|location=Austin|pages=99}} She earned an A.B. at Washington State College in 1929, studying with the painter William McDermitt.{{Cite web|url=https://libmedia.willamette.edu/cview/archives.html#!doc:page:manuscripts/2139/|title=The Constance Fowler Papers and Collection of Art Catalogue|last=Hull|first=Roger|date=September 21, 1995|website=Willamette University Archives|access-date=2019-11-03|archive-date=December 30, 2019|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20191230232603/https://libmedia.willamette.edu/cview/archives.html#!doc:page:manuscripts/2139/|url-status=dead}} She also studied for three terms at the University of Washington before moving to California, and later to Salem, Oregon in 1932. She enrolled during five summers at the University of Oregon, where she was supported by three summer Carnegie grants; she studied there with Walter R. B. Willcox and Andrew Vincent, earning an M.F.A. in 1940.{{Cite web|url=https://design.uoregon.edu/constance-fowler-1940|title=Constance Fowler 1940, A champion of Northwest Regionalism in painting, printmaking|last=Aubin|first=Claire|date=2017-06-16|website=College of Design|language=en-US|url-status=live|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20150523051238/http://aaa.uoregon.edu/100stories/alumni/constance-fowler|archive-date=May 23, 2015|access-date=2019-10-07}}

Career

In Salem during the depression, she gave art lessons for a dollar per session, and volunteered to run an art club for Willamette University students. In 1935 Fowler "became a founding faculty member of Willamette University’s art department".{{Cite news|url=https://www.newspapers.com/clip/43279390/miss_fowler_to_direct_art_section/|title=Miss Fowler to Direct Art Section|date=1934-02-17|work=The Capital Journal|access-date=2020-01-31|pages=5}} She taught art at Willamette University from 1935 to 1947, and from 1949 to 1956, she taught summer classes at Central Washington State and Bayview Summer College in Michigan. Fowler taught at Albion College in Michigan from 1947 until her retirement to Seal Rock, Oregon, in 1965, where she continued to exhibit locally.{{Cite web|url=https://library.uoregon.edu/design/old-exhibits/fowler-in-old-salem|title=Constance Fowler: The Old Days in and near Salem, Oregon. Exhibit: Design Library, University of Oregon, UO Libraries|website=library.uoregon.edu|access-date=2020-01-30}} After a stroke in 1993, she lived in Milwaukie, Oregon, with her sister, and then went to a nursing home in Oregon City. She died in 1996.

Critical reception

Critics have observed that Constance Fowler's works range from representational or expressive realism to abstract. Fowler published a limited edition of her master's thesis, which included twenty wood engravings of Willamette Valley historic sites and explanatory text, entitled The Old Days, In and Near Salem, Oregon. When it was displayed at the Salem library, the library staff wrote,

{{Blockquote|text="The Old Days, in and Near Salem, Oregon," written and illustrated by Constance Fowler of the art department at Willamette University... is by far the most beautiful and interesting book about Salem ever published. The people who have long admired Miss Fowler's wood engravings in are gallery exhibits will find new pleasure in this collection of 20 illustrations printed from the original wood blocks.|title=|source={{Cite news|url=https://www.newspapers.com/clip/43336529/family_bookshelf_by_the_library_staff/|title=Family Bookshelf, by the Library Staff|date=February 2, 1941|work=Statesman Journal|pages=12}}}}

The Capitol Journal of Salem said, "The pioneer period of our native state is graphically presented in the twenty wood engravings of historic spots around Salem done by Constance Fowler... Miss Fowler has been accorded recognition as one of the northwest's outstanding artists. She is an annual exhibitor in the northwest and Pacific coast galleries. One of her pictures was selected a prize to the state, winning first place in National Art Week in 1940."{{Cite news|url=https://www.newspapers.com/clip/43338995/pioneer_period_is_shown_in_work_at_art/|title=Pioneer Period is Shown in Work at Art Center|date=1941-03-06|work=The Capital Journal|access-date=2020-01-31|pages=18}}

Biographer Roger Hull has said of Fowler's move to Michigan, "Leaving Oregon in 1947 was a major step at a crucial moment in the cultural history of the United States, with World War II at an end and younger artists questioning the values of American Regionalism and realism."

In another analysis, Hull wrote,

{{Blockquote|text=Her fortunes greatly changed with her departure from Oregon in 1947... Fowler's realism had been inflected with expressive abstraction, but the challenges of Abstract Expressionism and complete nonrepresentation were difficult for her to deal with... she spent the rest of her career experimenting with vocabularies of painterly and geometric abstraction, relying most consistently upon the Pacific Ocean off the Oregon coast for her fluent, abstract vocabulary.|author=Roger Hull{{Cite web|last=Hull|first=Roger|title=Constance Fowler Papers : Willamette University Archives|url=https://libmedia.willamette.edu/cview/archives.html#!doc:page:manuscripts/2139/|access-date=2020-09-23|website=libmedia.willamette.edu|archive-date=December 30, 2019|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20191230232603/https://libmedia.willamette.edu/cview/archives.html#!doc:page:manuscripts/2139/|url-status=dead}}}}

Commenting in 1957, that "Her recent work, now on display at the Bush Museum, will no doubt surprise many of these admirers, both for the new aesthetic approaches and the new concepts that motivate this work", Carl Hall explored differences in her later works that are "very contemporary in her concern for the abstract consequence", with "this atomic age the great impersonal forces at work in the universe have to be taken into account" and the "human frailty with which we confront them".{{Cite news|url=https://www.newspapers.com/clip/43279065/images_review_of_constance/|title=Images (review of Constance Fowler exhibition at Bush House Museum, Salem)|date=1957-07-28|work=Statesman Journal|access-date=2020-02-01|pages=15}} Hall continued,

{{Blockquote|text=Hence this new work while still very spirited in concept and execution is different from the more intimate work of former years... Much of it is common to the modern movement in art, even to the symbolical forms she makes use of, but in certain works something distinctive is said that haunts one's imagination.|author=Carl Hall|title="Images"|source=}}

Roger Hull reported she was aware of perplexing some of her viewers, and she "wrote with a note of ruefulness", that "The term 'abstract' causes many mortals to barricade the windows of their minds and reach for the aspirin."{{Cite web|url=http://oregonvisualarts.org/wp-content/uploads/Constance-Fowler-spreads_Excerpted_7of9.pdf|title=Constance Fowler, Tradition and Transition|last=Hull|first=Roger|access-date=January 30, 2020}} In 1996 Hull wrote, "she was rightly recognized as an artist genuinely expressive of the mood and poetry of the Northwest. More than most others, she sensed and expressed the turbulence and darkness of nature, as well."{{Cite web|url=http://portlandartmuseum.us/mwebcgi/mweb.exe?request=record;id=5885;type=701|title=Constance E. Fowler|website=portlandartmuseum.us|access-date=2020-02-01}}

Selected exhibitions

Fowler's works are held in the permanent collections of Portland Art Museum, Willamette University, and Washington State University Library. Her works have been exhibited at the Seattle Art Museum and the New York World's Fair in 1939. Her work was in San Francisco Museum of Art’s "Oregon Artists" exhibition. In 1949, she held a one-person show at the Memorial Auditorium in Indianapolis, and in 1968 she exhibited at the Willamette University Gallery.

Publications

{{Cite book|title=The Old Days In and Near Salem Oregon|last=Fowler|first=Constance E.|publisher=Dogwood Press (Frank McCaffrey); Limited Edition|year=1940|location=Seattle|asin=B0021VZ9CU}}
{{Cite book|title=Constance E. Fowler: Inventory; Artist Teacher|last=Fowler|first=Constance E.|publisher=Constance Fowler|year=1990|asin=B004JOLNX6}}

Awards

William G. Purcell prize, best work in Oregon Society of Artists spring exhibition, 1934{{Cite news|url=https://www.newspapers.com/clip/43323845/miss_fowler_awarded_prize/|title=Miss Fowler Awarded Prize|date=1934-05-29|work=The Capital Journal|access-date=2020-02-01|pages=5}}
Carnegie grants, summers, 1936 through 1938
First place, National Art Week, 1940
Katherine B. Baker Memorial Purchase prize, 28th annual exhibition of northwest artisls, Seattle Art Museum, 1942.{{Cite news|url=https://www.newspapers.com/clip/43339571/stayton_mill/|title=Stayton Mill|date=1942-10-10|work=The Capital Journal|access-date=2020-02-01|pages=6}}
Willamette University award, 1991{{Cite web|url=https://libmedia.willamette.edu/archives/as/repositories/2/digital_objects/3877|title=President Hudson gives Constance Fowler her award as Mary Libby (far left) and Jennifer Viviano stand in the background, 1991 September 28, University Archives|website=libmedia.willamette.edu|access-date=2020-02-02}}

References

External links

[https://libmedia.willamette.edu/archives/as/repositories/2/resources/68 Constance Fowler Collection, Willamette University]
{{YouTube|title=Constance Fowler Traditions & Transitions Exhibit|id=E7HEFGm4zDk}} (video, 4:46 minutes)

Category:1907 births

Category:1996 deaths

Category:20th-century American printmakers

Category:20th-century American women artists

Category:Albion College faculty

Category:American women printmakers

Category:Artists from Minnesota

Category:Artists from Oregon

Category:Artists from Washington (state)

Category:Educators from Michigan

Category:Educators from Minnesota

Category:Educators from Oregon