TABLE OF CONTENTS

Cover Story: Dzigurski Special Exhibition

Currently Showing/Coming Soon

First Saturday Tour

Saturday Speaker Series

Out in the Gardens: Climbing Vines

Tips from Kip: Perennials

Emily on Education

Voices from the Archives:
William Hines

From the Library

Featured Artist:
James Peter Cost

Featured Artwork:
On the Maine Coast

Did You Know?

Information, Please

How They Saw It Then

Art and Appetite

Worth Quoting

Norton Information

Peace and Natural Beauty Showcased in
Works of Alexander Dzigurski

If you've long admired our two works by seascape artist Alexander Dzigurski, you'll love our special exhibit coming April 27. "Alex Dzigurski (1911-1995): Poet of the Land and Sea" showcases eighteen paintings representative of the artists' work. This exclusive engagement is on display through August 1.

Dzigurski sought peace and beauty in America after an earlier life spent in turmoil in his native Serbia (later part of Yugoslavia), where peace was hard to find. During his life, the Balkan Wars of 1912-13, the harsh German occupation in World War II, and Yugoslavia's turn to communism ripped apart families and scorched cities and countryside.

Dzigurski fled communist Yugoslavia with his wife and family in 1949, arriving in America with a group of other displaced persons on the Liberty ship, SS Marine Jumper. Soon he began painting the natural grandeur of his new home, especially the nation's shoreline seam of sea and land.

You certainly won't squint in examining Dzigurski's expansive canvases. Pacific Gale measures 48 X 96 inches, and reflects the sea's power along the California coast. Sawtooth Mountain Range (42 X 64 inches) captures the high magnificence of the Idaho range. Ventana Sunset, documenting day's end in California's Big Sur, spans 54 X 96 inches.

Other works portray the deep, blue fjords of Norway, the walled city of Dubrovnik on the Dalmatian coast, the soar of Glacier National Park, and other mountains, shorelines, and shrines.

Painting mainly en plein air, Dzigurski sank his easel legs inches from tidal surge and in grasses near the feet of towering mountain ranges. He often worked in his studio through the middle of the afternoon, then stepped outside when day's late light suffused his subjects in ever-enriching colors.

Some have likened his work to the soaring strings of symphony, with Dzigurski using his brush like a conductor's baton.

"He had a love of color, energy, and light," comments his son, Alex Dzigurski II, of Mountain View California, an artist in his own right. "He also painted in the studio in all hours and played classical music while he worked."

The elder Dzigurski painted for more than sixty years. While his body of work documents his journey from Serbia to America, it also reflects his passion both for his native land as well as for America--a haven of peace for an artist, his art, and his family.

"He was such a great, gregarious person," Alex comments of his father. "He loved this country very much. He was joyful about what he did. That desire and passion comes through in his work."

Every day you can certainly sense that desire and passion in our two Dzigurski works-Seascape and Moonlight, Carmel-which hang in our 20th Century Landscapes Gallery.

--Gary D. Ford, Staff Writer

Currently Showing

Fantasies and Fairy-Tales:
Maxfield Parrish and the Art of the Print
January 26- April 11, 2010

For seventy years he painted dreams, creating form and face for the mist of imagination and human emotion - all in bold and luminescent colors. From the 1890s to the 1960s, Maxfield Parrish enjoyed a reputation as the most popular artist in America and excelled in many avenues of art. Print media was one of these. Fantasies and Fairy-Tales: Maxfield Parrish and the Art of the Printfeatures 126 examples of his work in advertisements, books, illustrations, lithographs, magazine covers, and posters. The exhibition comes from Trust for Museum Exhibitions, based in Washington, D.C. The Norton is its only venue in Louisiana, Texas, Arkansas, and Oklahoma.

Coming Soon

Alex Dzigurski:
Poet of Land and Sea
April 27 - August 1, 2010

For those of you who had enjoyed seeing Dzigurski's paintings, Moonlight, Carmel and Seascape, in our South Wing, you'll enjoy the full range of the artist's vision in this selection of eighteen works from the artist's estate. The New York Times wrote of Mr. Dzigurski, "Few marine painters have been able to tell the story of the sea so beautifully. His water is wet, deep and alive . . . [he] is always the poet of the sea." The Chicago Tribune noted, "Few painters of the American scene have had his meteoric rise to universal popularity."

Under the Magnifying Glass:
Fifty Miniatures by Wes and Rachelle Siegrist
May 4 - July 25, 2010

This husband-and-wife team from Townsend, Tennessee, has captured the attention of viewers not with large canvas but with miniature paintings. So exquisitely crafted the Siegrists' works are often mistaken for tiny photographs; they usually measure less than nine square inches. Previously, the Norton has included the Siegrists' works in four earlier exhibitions: Art and the Animal, Art of the Rainforest, Blossom - Art of Flowers, and Paws and Reflect: Art of Canines.

DeFratis advises visitors to wear walking shoes.

Do dark skies threaten on the day of the tour? Fear not! We'll enjoy an indoor Rainy-Day tour, exploring spring-themed artwork throughout the museum.

--Gary D. Ford, Staff Writer

On April 17 at 2 p.m., Katherin Aulds of Shreveport will present a program on Native Americans in art as part of the museum's monthly "Saturday Speaker Series." Aulds, a floral designer who often presents programs on American Indians, will gear her program to children as well as to adults.

"I've taught Indian lore at Boy Scout camps. Youngsters will learn a lot, too," she remarks.

Aulds' presentation will incorporate both art at the museum and artifacts she will bring from her collection, such as a war bonnet, dresses, dolls, and other artifacts of Sioux and Blackfoot tribes.

She'll also lead visitors through the museum's expansive collection of paintings and sculptures of the American West, including those of Charles M. Russell, who lived with the Blackfoot tribe during his life as a cowboy. Fringe, for example, depicted in Charles M. Russell's Three Generations, helped deflect rain from garments, Aulds says. A zig-zag painted on the chest of the leader of a group in Russell's Covering the Trail represents lightning and symbolizes power.

--Gary D. Ford, Staff Writer

If I could make spring breezes visible by spinning wisps of air into threads of life, they would appear as leaf, stem, and bloom of climbing vines that grace our gardens. They seem in tune with this time of year---almost joyful in their exuberance, like the way paper-thin petals of wisteria scatter the ground like confetti tossed in spring's parade.

As I work in our gardens, I catch their scents that carry a whiff of the old-fashioned. Like an old-fashioned perfume, they recall memories of ladies in their hats and white gloves enjoying spring's warm days among their flowers. I rather like that image as I hurry around in jeans and work boots. Climbing vines weave together all decades of springs in a garden.

Jessamine, jasmine, wisteria, and later trumpet creeper and morning glories are great for garden and home decoration. We use ours, with their blooms and twining limbs, to add texture and color to the soaring columns of our trees.

You might train yours to meander along walls, twine trellises, and brush against the sides of buildings.  Carolina or Yellow Jessamine, (Gelsemium sempervirens) bursts in yellow, tubular flowers and frame nicely doorways and bay windows. Be careful. Like wisteria, jessamine can take over trees, if you don't cut them back severely after bloom. Drive country roads and notice wisteria and Jessamine climbing high in trees--colorful whispers of springs past around a house that disappeared long ago.

Another twining vine, Confederate Jasmine, or Star Jasmine, (Trachelospermum jasminoides) bring a delightful scent to early summer. Bees love jasmine's white flowers, as you'll see on a stroll through our garden.

Just as our jessamine and jasmine die away, trumpet creeper (Campsis radicans) sound their notes. Their reddish-orange tubular flowers flare like the bells of horns announcing summer.

Morning glories (Ipomoea purpurea) may thread trellises, climb garden gates and wrap mailbox posts. No wonder we like them; they share the same genus as the sweet potato. Native to tropical and subtropical regions, morning glories thrive in sun. They are a delightful welcome when we arrive for work each morning, a good companion for coffee as we plan our day.

Jessamine, jasmine, wisteria, and morning glories can get out of hand, but we tame their growth only slightly. With their flowers and fragrance, climbing vines have their own, wild ways of weaving together one tapestry of spring after another, year after year.

--Kip Dehart, Landscape Director

Call your perennials what you will--more beauty for your buck, more color for so little care. Plant perennials, look after them when you must, and spend more time admiring your summer garden than sweating in it.

It's time to select and plant perennials. There are so many from which to choose, but consider these below:

1. Whenever I think of the word perennial, another comes to mind--daylily (Hemerocallis). Although new hybrids offer the colors of the rainbow, I still prefer the older orange- and yellow-colored flowers. They look good in solid sweeps, mixed into borders, and grouped beside a garden pool. Many bloom for about a three-week period in summer, but you can select varieties that flourish from spring into fall. H. dumortieri flowers in mid-spring. H. fulva, or common orange daylily, lights up long summer days. H. altissima loves late summer and early autumn days.

You'll want to fertilize daylilies now. Choose a 5-10-10 or 5-10-5 to add to soil around established plants and water the mixture well. It's the time for gift-giving, too. Daylilies make great pass-along plants. Divide your bulbs and share life itself with friends and family.

2. Phlox (Polemoniaceae) gives you the blues—not the mood but the color.  They make wonderful border plants, trimming the garden like a beautiful lace of blue. Phlox comes in other colors, but I like to add this darker hue to my garden palette. Of course I'm partial to "Louisiana Purple (P. divaricata). It grows in good, deep soil and light shade, and blooms intensely blue-purple in spring.

3.As for coneflowers (Rudbeckia), I like Black-Eyed Susans (R. hirta). Get them started now, and they should bloom this summer. While they're short-lived as perennials (they last two years) they're worth the time for re-planting. Deer usually sniff these and move on.

--Kip Dehart, Landscape Director

visits of visually disabled people. The VSA office is housed on the same campus with the Louisiana School for the Deaf (LSD) and the Louisiana School for the Visually Impaired (LSVI). After meeting with Ms. Malveaux, we were informed that LSD high school students were staging an Elizabethan Festival, complete with costume displays and food samples, as a culmination of their study of Shakespeare. We were delighted to be invited to attend.

Of all the festival's displays and events, the production of "Romeo and Juliet," performed by deaf teenagers, made a lasting impression on me. I quickly noticed how quiet the student audience was as they sat in the auditorium awaiting the start of the play. Then I realized this was a typical teenage audience. They were chattering among themselves - in sign language. It was thrilling to observe the actors "getting into character" and expressing intense emotion while "speaking" with sign language. Throughout the performance, even though a verbal translation was provided, I felt a sense of frustration by my inability to "hear" and understand the lines that were being signed. The "backstage" monitor was a large screen television on which the script was projected. The actors kept up by watching the signing on stage and following the script on the monitor.

After our visit at LSD, we met with Anna Gayle, an LASVI art teacher, in her classroom. Ms. Gayle offered us a tremendous amount of information about specific materials, processes and procedures she has found to be effective in her career of working with visually disabled youngsters. Among her favorite supplies are scented markers (used to teach colors) and puff paint (used frequently to outline borders). She challenges herself to "think blind" every time she orders or shops for materials. She is constantly thinking tactile and "feel-able". Amazed at the art samples and completed projects we saw, Jen and I furiously jotted down ideas and examples as we moved throughout the art room.

Our Baton Rouge road trip greatly surpassed our initial expectations. We thought we'd merely gather information to help us in our project. We also returned feeling empowered, inspired, excited, capable and ready to take the next step. We feel confident and blessed to have met such professionals we may consult. They're also willing to offer suggestions, and cheer us on!! We know that in time our dream for this project will become a reality!

--Emily Meyers, Education Director

HINES: Months after I was home, if somebody walked up to me and hit me in the back I'd swing on them. I never did finish the swing, but I swung many a time and I was able to catch myself before I did. That's one thing I had to overcome. Another was nightmares. I had many nightmares along the line. First thing though, I had to stop using slang I was using.

INTERVIEWER: You tend to pick up some language, didn't you?

HINES: After I went back to work, I threw myself into my work. I didn't do anything but work until I was tired, just go to bed and go to sleep. I did that over and over for a long time, and of course, the edge just wore off. I need to make one statement. Back in the foxhole there in Germany I had a feeling I wasn't going to make it home. I asked the Lord, "If You let me get home, I'll serve You." So I came through it without a scratch. I was one of the thirteen from start to finish without a scratch, without being wounded or anything. I've tried my best to keep my part of the bargain.

He did. Mr. Hines dedicated his life to mission work with his church. He is among nearly 500 men and women from the Shreveport area who graciously gave their time to tell us their life stories of service and sacrifice. We're presenting these stories as part of our Oral History Project, an ongoing effort to interview veterans of conflicts from World War II to the present. We also continue to collect interviews from eyewitnesses to the civil rights struggle, pioneers of the energy industries, and those who created "the Shreveport sound" in music.

Click here to view additional photographs and to listen to the audio of the interview with Mr. Hines. If you or someone you know would like to share stories with us, please call (318) 865-4201, or contact ohp@rwnaf.org.

--Gary Ford, Staff Writer

Ozma of Oz was one of the thirteen sequels to L. Frank Baum's classic, The Wonderful Wizard of Oz (1900). The Norton has a later printing of the first Oz book from 1903, but possesses several first editions of various sequels, including The Land of Oz: A Sequel to the Wizard of Oz (1904), Ozma of Oz (1907), Dorothy and the Wizard in Oz (1908), The Road to Oz (1909), and The Emerald City of Oz (1910).

At forty-four, Baum was a financial failure, having tried and abandoned careers as an actor/playwright, general store proprietor, newspaper reporter and editor, and traveling glass and china salesman. Finally, he decided to try his hand at children's literature. He had his first success in 1899 with Father Goose: His Book, largely due to his partnership with innovative illustrator W.W. Denslow. With Denslow's touch, Father Goose united color, hand-lettered verse, and Art Nouveau drawings in gorgeous harmony, a feat he would reproduce the next year in Baum's The Wonderful Wizard of Oz. However, for the sequels, Baum chose Philadelphia artist John R. Neill, also a proponent of Art Nouveau, but more intricate and lyrical in his illustrations than Denslow.

Baum was also a staunch supporter of women's rights (his wife was a leading suffragette), and it should come as no surprise that all of the strong, game-changing characters in the Oz series are female. Even the better men, like the Wizard, Scarecrow, and Tin Man, are both limited and vacillating, while the most evil villain in the series is the Nome King, whose domain is industrial, regimented, and militaristic. Like many Populists, Baum was also an anti-interventionist. He worked on the last Oz book, Glinda of Oz, as World War I was raging. In it, he describes how Ozma, against Glinda's advice, intervenes in a foreign war between two equally unattractive kingdoms and comes to near disaster. He died shortly after completing the book in 1919 at Ozcot, his Hollywood home, just before his 63rd birthday.

Ozma of Oz is on display outside the Norton Library during the month of April.

--Everl Adair, Director of Research and Rare Collections

California coast, significantly added to the realism of his paintings. From 1964 to1989, Cost sold these exceptional works through his own gallery in Carmel, California. During that time, he also won the Franklin Mint Gold Medal Award for Distinguished Seascapes and was twice commissioned to produce covers for Reader's Digest in addition to serving as president of the Carmel Art Association. He passed away in 2002.

--Everl Adair, Director of Research and Rare Collections

After training with Thomas Eakins at the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts, Waugh (1862-1940) studied at the Académie Julian in Paris. A trip to the Channel Islands imbued him with his love of seascapes, as did his journey on to the coast of Cornwall. After the Royal Academy of Art rejected two of them in 1907, he returned to America where the same works met with acclaim. A later sojourn on the New England coast with his half-sister, also an artist, led to scenes like this one in which Waugh convincingly blends traditional academic technique with the painterly brushwork and focus on light and color typical of the Impressionists. Biographer George R. Havens suggests, "Whether it was a belated influence of impressionism, coming to surface suddenly after lying dormant through all these years, or only an instinctive mood of experimentation . . . he now began to work with a thick impasto and a full use of undiluted color which reflected the vivid impact of

these new scenes." Waugh's mastery of the varied colors, dappled light, and sense of motion of waves lapping the North Atlantic coast was so acute that the U.S. government called on his help to camouflage ships during World War I. Works like this one and two others in the Norton's collection, The Breaker Line and Seascape, grew in popularity until Waugh was occasionally producing as many as ten paintings a month to supply the demand.

--Everl Adair, Director of Research and Rare Collections

As we announced in our February newsletter, the Norton recently added to its collection An Oriental Beauty, a charming example of the late 19th century art movement known as Orientalism by Louisiana native Katherine Augusta Carl. Most people today think of "oriental" as a rather archaic adjective denoting the Far East, but to 19th century Western Europeans, it also applied to Muslim nations of the Near East, along with Greeks, Balkans, Jews, Eastern Orthodox Christians, and occasionally Russians. The diversity of their ethnicities and cultures provided exciting and varied imagery, well suited to both academic and Romantic styles.

Enormously popular throughout the Victorian age, the movement attracted major artists including Eugène Delacroix, Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres, Jean-Léon-Gérôme, Charles Gleyre, Walter Gould, Rudolf Ernst, Stanley Spencer, Edward Lear, and Henri Matisse.

Unfortunately, while many of these artists, like Carl, used "oriental" imagery to explore issues of color, line, and form while retaining ethnographic accuracy, lesser painters often employed the genre as an excuse for a condescending paternalism, racially bigoted portrayals, and even

semi-pornographic illustrations. In these works, inaccuracies were rife with regard to dress, cultural customs, and even architecture of the people and places depicted. Such uninformed sensationalism led critics and academics to turn against Orientalist art in the 20th century.

The concept of the movement as meretricious and insulting became the conventional wisdom with the 1979 publication of Orientalism, by renowned scholar Edward Said. A professor of English and comparative literature at Columbia University, Said analyzed the occidental response to Muslim civilizations and concluded that colonialism had led Westerners to relegate these cultures (often treated as a single culture, despite their diversity of custom and beliefs), to subjects of condescension and supposition. Rather than examining the active beliefs and practices of these peoples, Said believed, Western writers stereotyped them, indulging in obtuse ideas, like the notion that all Orientals are intrinsically wise or poetic or malevolent. While Said was speaking of literature and scholarship, other critics were quick to apply his criticisms to Orientalist art.

Through a recent re-evaluation of these works, however, the reputation and value of the best of them has increased as a result, making Orientalism one of the fastest growing segments of the art market. Many of the new buyers are Arabs, anxious to preserve accurate depictions of their pre-modern homelands. The Najd Collection, 150 of the finest of these works accumulated by a Saudi buyer, is one of the most important Orientalist holdings in the world. As is often the case with art, the worst works of Orientalism can force us to take an embarrassing look at our assumptions, while the best continue to open our eyes to beauty and ideas that we might otherwise miss.

--Everl Adair, Director of Research and Rare Collections

owners), we urge you to contact a professional appraiser through one of the following organizations:

American Society of Appraisers
555 Herndon Parkway, St. 125
Herndon, VA 20170
Phone: 703-478-2228
Fax: 703-742-8471
www.appraisers.org

Appraisers Association of America, Inc.
386 Park Avenue South, St. 2000
New York, NY 10016
Phone: 212-889-5404 ext. 10
Fax: 212-889-5503
www.appraisersassoc.org

Appraisers National Association
25602 Alicia Parkway - PMB 245
Laguna Hills, CA 92653
Phone: 949-349-9179
Toll free: 888-262-2535
www.ana-appraisers.org

National Institute of Appraisers (NIA)
73450 Country Club Drive #181
Palm Desert, CA 92260
Phone: 760-779-9736
Toll free: 800-676-2148
http://appraiseroffineart.com/pages/Home

It won't be free, but it might well be worth the price.

--Everl Adair, Director of Research and Rare Collections

Cropsey's Fish and Pork Chowder (Serves 6 – 8)
1/4 lb. salt pork, small diced
4 lb. haddock or cod (bass, catfish, or trout may also be used),
cut into bite-size pieces (bones reserved for stock, recipe follows)
1 small onion, small dice
1 celery stalk, small dice
1 carrot, small dice
2 tablespoons flour
1 quart fish stock
2 cups scalded half-and-half (modernized, Cropsey used whole milk)
2 large potatoes, medium dice
Salt and pepper to taste

Render salt pork in heavy-bottomed pan until crispy. Remove pork and drain. Add onion, cook until tender. Drain excess fat. Add celery and carrot. Add flour to make a blonde roux. Whisk in hot fish stock and half-and-half. Add potatoes, simmer until just tender. Add fish pieces and crisp pork pieces; simmer until fish starts to flake. Taste, adjusting seasoning if necessary.

For the fish stock:
Bones, head, and tail of a haddock (or other fish from for stew)
1/2 cup white wine
2 quarts cold water
2 onions thinly sliced
4 celery stalks, thinly sliced
2 carrots, small dice
1 bouquet garni (parsley and thyme stems, plus 1 bay leaf)
2 tablespoons black peppercorns
2 tablespoons kosher salt

Chop and rinse fish bones. Combine all ingredients and enough cold water to cover them. Bring to a boil and skim all foam. Reduce heat and simmer until liquid is reduced by half. Add water whenever needed to ensure all ingredients are covered.

Simmer for about 20 minutes more.

Allow to steep off the heat for 15 minutes. Using a ladle, hold back the bones, and strain through a fine sieve, leaving any "sludge" behind.

Information courtesy of Fedele, Frank, The Artist's Palate: Cooking with the World's Great Artists. New York: DK Publishing, 2003.

FIRST SATURDAY TOURS
Regularly scheduled tours are offered on the first Saturday of every month at 2 p.m. No reservation is required for these First Saturday Tours. Groups of 10 or more are asked to call ahead so preparations may be made to accommodate the group on these particular tours. All tours, like admission to the Gallery, are free to the public. The next First Saturday Tour, The Spring Walking Tour, will be on April 3rd at 2 p.m.

GROUP TOURS
Eighteen group tours are offered at the Norton ranging from the 19th Century French Art History Tour to the Cowboy Artists Tour. Group tours are available by appointment year-round for groups of 10-30 and last approximately 45 minutes.

OUTREACH PROGRAM
The purpose of the community Outreach Program is to take art and art education to people through interactive presentations. Community Presentations consist of PowerPoint presentations to civic groups and assisted living facilities.

For more information on the programs offered or to schedule a tour or presentation, click here.

SATURDAY SPEAKER SERIES
One Saturday each month, the Norton will host a local, regional, or national expert speaking on a variety of subjects in formats ranging from formal presentations to informal seminars to walking tours. Upcoming speakers will cover a broad range of subjects including gardening, popular literature and film, influential historical and cultural figures, musical history and interpretation, and food in art. All events are free to the public. The next Saturday Speaker will be Katherin Aulds on April 17th at 2 p,m. She will present Native American Artifacts in Works of the American West.

ORAL HISTORY PROJECT
The R.W. Norton Art Foundation is pursuing interviews with those who were involved in America's effort to win World War II, whether in the military or on the home front. Each interview will be digitally recorded by the Gallery to be stored and used for historical purposes, and each interview subject will also be given a copy of this recording to share and preserve his or her memories for family and friends.

If you are interested in participating in or would like more information about the Oral History Project, please click here.

SUGGESTIONS AND IDEAS?
To offer us feedback or to suggest what you’d like to see in upcoming issues, please click here.

GALLERY LOCATION AND HOURS:

4747 Creswell Avenue
Shreveport, LA 71106
318-865-4201
www.rwnaf.org
Tuesday through Friday 10 a.m. to 5 p.m.
Saturday and Sunday 1 to 5 p.m.
Closed Mondays and National Holidays

Copyright © 2010 by R. W. Norton Art Gallery