 Good afternoon, everyone. Welcome to Cooper Hewitt Smithsonian Design Museum. My name is Kim Robledo Diga. I'm the Deputy Director of Education here. We had another, this is actually our fourth of five hidden figure programs. We had one this morning, which was Dorothy Livas, which was fantastic. This program is on Trudy Garamon-Prez and Lynette Sheeling, Breaking Boundaries with Design. This project has received funding from the Smithsonian American Women's History Initiative. The goal of these suite of programs is to bring light to previously under-recognized American women in design represented in Cooper Hewitt's collection. Today's program is three-part. There'll be a talk and an intimate collection viewing with Sarah Vazina, a graduate student in the History of Design and Cultural Studies program here at Cooper Hewitt, and hands-on workshop led by artist Elizabeth Castaldo on the back. So we're going to have a nice suite of programings to really learn about these two designers in very different aspects. But before we get started, I wanted to look forward and share a few upcoming exhibitions at Cooper Hewitt that further the conversation on this untapped or hidden figures theme. The first is Contemporary Muslim Fashion, opening February 28, 2020, and then we also have Willie Smith Street Couture, opening March 13, 2020. Both exhibits explore culture, identity, and design through fashion. So without further ado, let me introduce you to welcome up Sarah Vazina. Thank you, Kim, for organizing this program and for all your help over the past few months. Thanks also to the collection manager Kimberly Randall and curators Gregory Herringshaw, Emily Orr, and Susan Brown for showing me a great number of textiles, wallpapers, and archival items, and for sharing their knowledge with me. I'm very happy to talk to you today about two amazing women who seem to live and breathe art and design. In my research about Trude Guermin Prey and Lynette Shee Line, I found myself continually amazed and inspired by these two prolific designers. Both women were born in 1910 and passionately dedicated their lives to their creative pursuits. Weaver Trude Guermin Prey is on the left measuring threads in preparation to war per loom. On the right is freelance designer Lynette Shee Line in her California studio, meticulously working out a design for one of her distinctive botanical inspired textiles or wallpapers, often completed with her signature stamp designed by Lynette. These women were very serious about their work. For Lynette, a wild night on the town typically involves sketching with her weekly Friday night art group in Mill Valley, California. Here is Lynette in the center, hard at work with a furrowed brow surrounded by her local community of artists with whom she participated in exhibitions and demonstrations at local art fairs. I want to give you a little background on the early lives of these two women. This is Trude Born Gertrude Jalowicz in Germany in 1910. This is a photo of her at age 19. Trude was educated in Germany and grew up in an artistic Jewish family. Her father was a musicologist and conductor, and her mother was a voice teacher and book binder. Though Trude herself did not study at the Bauhaus, several of her teachers were Bauhaus trained. And during college Trude developed a lifelong love of weaving which eventually brought her to Sweden and Finland to study this ancient craft. Weaving eventually drew her to the Netherlands and finally to the United States where she ultimately settled in California. Trude was very cosmopolitan with a strong affinity toward modern Bauhaus philosophy and aesthetics. In contrast to Trude's very international upbringing, Lynette Sheeline was a true Californian through and through. This is Lynette's 1928 yearbook photo from Berkeley High School. She is 18 years old here. Lynette was born in Northern California and her father was a merchant in the Bay Area. Growing up she spent her time in and around San Francisco and at her family's Northern California Ranch. The landscape of California, the colors, hills, flowers and sunshine all had a major impact on Lynette's textile and wallpaper designs. Even after she moved to New York in the 1960s, her vivid designs seemed to shout, you can take the girl out of California but not the California out of the girl. What was Trude up to after completing her studies in Europe? In 1934 she moved to Holland and began working for a commercial weaving studio called Het Papier. Here is a photo of her at work on a loom there. This experience further honed Trude's understanding of technical weaving patterns and structures and she also became savvy in working with clients on their designs. It was during this time in Holland that Trude met her first husband, Paul Germanpre. He was a Bauhaus trained photographer who started an advertising agency in Amsterdam in 1934. This is a photo of Trude taken by her husband Paul in his studio. As the Nazis gained power the agency closed and Trude was forced into hiding as she remained in Amsterdam during the war. Trude's parents had already left Europe in the 1930s to teach music at the experimental Black Mountain College in North Carolina. Meanwhile at this time in sunny California the vibe was more optimistic compared to the darkness that had descended upon Europe. Though California like the rest of the United States have been deeply affected by the depression, thousands of people found jobs working on government projects such as the building of the San Francisco Oakland Bay Bridge and the Golden Gate Bridge pictured here under construction. Both were completed by 1937. These bridges were a symbol of modern living and artists like Lynette Schielein began incorporating images of this new modern lifestyle into their designs. On the left is the cover of the November 1936 issue of Sunset Magazine featuring drapes by Lynette. Her drapes incorporate flat graphic depictions of the newly opened Bay Bridge along with seagulls, buildings and waves. A view of the bridge outside the window complements the modern furnishings. Her two fabric swatches on the right are similar in style to the drapes on the cover of Sunset. They depict bay side scenes like a lighthouse emerging from the hills, boats, buildings and the Bay Bridge. The red, white and blue swatch also pays tribute to the United States with its patriotic color scheme. To celebrate the completion of these bridges, the Golden Gate International Exposition was held in San Francisco in 1939. On the left is the catalog for the Decorative Arts Exhibition that took place at the fair. And this show was curated by Dorothy Liebes, who this morning's program focused on. Lynette Schielein exhibited three of her textiles there. The printed textiles on the right were both made the same year as the fair and they give us a sense of what Lynette was making at this time. The center panel is titled Ranch and it is a landscape with clusters of trees and layers of hills. Perhaps it portrays the Schielein family's own ranch in Northern California. The textile on the far right is called Egyptian Garden. We'll actually see it in person today. Here are suburban folks gardening in their casual California sportswear. The design uses simple geometric forms in the style of ancient Egyptian wall painting. And this paired down style was also embraced by modernism. In the period leading up to World War II, Lynette worked at Luma Handprints, a textile screen printing factory in San Francisco. Here is a fabric of chickens of various shapes and sizes that Lynette produced for Luma. The two smaller images are details of the playful patterning used in this design. On the left is an advertisement that shows a chair upholstered in this fabric and matching drapes. This print was available in 10 different color combinations and I would love to see these chickens in a dazzling rainbow of colors, especially on my chairs and sofa. Lynette's work with Luma ended when the U.S. entered World War II. She got a job at a shipyard and moved to Marin County. After two years of working for Marin Ship, Lynette established her own design studio in Mill Valley. What effect did the war have on Truda's life? Well, besides going into hiding during the war, Truda's husband Paul was tragically killed in 1944 while fighting in the Dutch resistance. Truda remained in Amsterdam for a few more years. In 1947 Truda's father died. He had been teaching at Black Mountain College in North Carolina where Bauhaus weaver Annie Albers taught weaving. Annie Albers invited Truda to substitute teach for her while she went on sabbatical leave. Truda left Amsterdam and joined her mother and sister at Black Mountain to teach weaving. These photos of Truda are from this period and when Annie Albers returned from sabbatical, Truda stayed on to teach with her until the weaving program ended in 1949. While at Black Mountain, Truda produced her first textile graphic weavings in 1948. Using the design drawing for leaf study shown here on the left as a guide, Truda incorporated this design into her tapestry by painting it directly onto the warp threads prior to weaving the piece. A detail is on the right. Equal attention is given to both the vertical and horizontal threads. Traditional tapestries typically obscured the vertical warp thread, but there is a modernist focus on showing the structure and form in Truda's work. While at Black Mountain College, when the weaving program at Black Mountain College ended, Truda moved to Northern California. She joined her former college classmate and Bauhaus train ceramicist Marguerite Vildenhayn at the Fond Farm workshops. It's pictured nestled in these hills. Truda also met her second husband, John Elcesser, here and they're in the photo on the right. This design drawing in tapestry, another example of Truda's textile graphic weavings called Our Mountains, was made in 1971. Here Truda combined the California landscape with the profile of her face and her husband John's face. Their profiles form the mountains in this artwork and notice how the image changes when the watercolor is translated into a weaving. There's a looser quality in the work on paper, but more intricate texture in the tapestry. And this is a detail of one of Truda's painted textile with a barely there metallic weft. The focus is really on the painted warp threads. And where did people encounter Truda and Lanet's designs? Well in California it was on the cutting edge of mid-20th century modern design and exhibitions and magazines like California Arts and Architecture promoted the California look. Here's an issue from 1940 of California Arts and Architecture that featured Lanet's textile depicting stylized pairs of horses running through a forest of fantastical trees. The magazine eventually dropped California from its title and Truda's weavings as well as her philosophical thoughts about weaving were featured in Arts and Architecture in 1949. In 1955 Truda and Lanet exhibited works together in a show called California Designed. On the left is Lanet's wallpaper, pomegranate and pineapple, manufactured by Kotzenbach and Warren. On the right is a rug woven by Truda. This is the first show of its kind to travel around the United States promoting California design. It included approximately 325 items all made in California displayed in home-like settings. Lanet's designs translated well into both textiles and wallpapers. She often repeated motifs but arranged them in different ways for different purposes. On the left is Lois and William Kotzenbach's book, The Practical Book of American Wallpapers from 1951. This page includes a palm design by Lanet. On the right is another palm print, a fabric manufactured by Jofa. Lanet was able to create great depth in these bright naturalistic designs. Lanet's fabric on the right, called Sales, was manufactured by Prince Unlimited. It repeats so many layered sailboats that it forms an almost abstract geometric pattern. On the left is a more open and airy design for wallpaper called Yacht Harbor, manufactured by Kotzenbach and Warren. A 1951 article in the New York Times included this wallpaper and stated, scenic patterns are becoming increasingly popular to supply the view in a room not naturally endowed with one. Lanet certainly provided rooms with interesting views by way of her wallpaper designs. She produced a wonderful series of tree murals for Kotzenbach and Warren. This one on the right features palm trees and is dated 1952. On the left is Lanet's sketchbook from a trip that she took to Hawaii. It is filled with watercolor sketches of countless flowers and trees. These sketches served as inspiration for her commercial designs. It seems that she was always thinking of her next design even while sitting on the beach in Hawaii. Here are two more of Lanet's innovative tree mural designs. On the left is pine tree and on the right is pepper tree. I highlighted the top of the pine tree mural with a dotted line to show you the ceiling paper portion of the design. The ceiling paper could be custom cut and used to decorate the ceiling or extend the tree along the walls to surround the room to create a sort of canopy. This is Lanet's bay tree design and you can see how the ceiling paper was used to extend the tree around the room. I think it's a bit odd that the base of the tree trunk is floating off the floor. It seems that someone could have planted a foot or two down onto the floor but to each his own. I should say to each her own. It's interesting to see the different ways people installed these tree murals. I came across several instances of the bay tree design in newspapers and magazines. Lanet was often not credited in these articles and a few times men were praised by name for their creative innovations and the way they hung the tree murals even though it was Lanet's idea in the first place. In the center photo you see Lanet standing in front of her bay tree. On the right is a page from Town and Country magazine from October 1954 titled Portraits and Backgrounds. The spread featured well-dressed women all going by their husband's names posing in various interiors. Here is Mrs. Miguel Acoca with Lanet's bay tree wallpaper and I feel as though this is actually a portrait of the tree with the woman off to the side almost starting to fade into the background. It struck me how important it was that Lanet as a freelancer was always able to stamp her name on her designs and she refused to be anonymous or to fade into the background. She put her name on her work wherever she could and I found evidence that she copyrighted many of her designs. Here is a collage of selvedge edges printed with her name and I get such a kick out of seeing all these together. Trudy also made her voice heard with her published writings about weaving. Again she was very thoughtful about her craft. In a booklet from a 1953 arts festival in San Francisco Trudy wrote, At the loom we coordinate body motion and thought placing thread to thread in a fashion which links them into new life of fabric. And remember this is also not her native language. So she was a good writer I thought. Here is Trudy teaching a haystack mountain school of crafts in Maine the summer of 1956 and a detail of one of her weavings which you will see today upstairs. As a teacher Trudy made a huge impression on weaver K Sakamachi a former student and very successful weaver. Here is Trudy at the loom with K looking on with a smile and I have a short video clip of K Sakamachi talking about studying with Trudy. It's from KCET in California from their art bound series. Let's see if it works. It wasn't until the summer of 1954 that I got to study with Trudy German Prey. She was such an extraordinary teacher. The way she taught she had a thinking. She would talk about a so-called a primitive weavers who worked on backstrap looms about being one with the loom. Her interest in the development of abstract form is something that comes through Trudy German Prey who was actually in hiding during the war and then fled to the United States and she had actually trained with a Bauhaus weaver. Trudy taught us how to do double weaving and then I tried a piece in nylon monofilament of which lengths were given to me. I put the monofilament on the loom and tried my double weaving and by golly when I cut it off the loom I had a monofilament hanging. Trudy taught her students about the formal structure of weaving including double weave technique. This is when two clots are woven at once on the loom and are structurally connected depending on how they are woven. On the left is Trudy at the loom next to her colorful silk space hanging called Banner from 1962. On the right is Keisei Kamachi at the loom next to her more biomorphic monofilament weaving called Nagare 7 from 1970. Trudy also experimented with word hangings that incorporated symbols and texts. Notes to John 1 and 2 made in 1966 were exhibited in the show Objects USA an exhibition of crafts that opened at the Smithsonian American Art Museum and traveled across the USA and Europe. Throughout her career, even as her weavings were considered part of the burgeoning fiber art movement, Trudy Gariman Prey continued producing designs for industry as well as commissions for various clients. Here are a few designs that she completed for synagogues in California and the Midwest. These are all works on paper. Trudy designed this Hebrew inscription for the art curtain of Beth Aum Synagogue in Los Altos, California. It is dated 1968 to 69. Among the Hebrew letters and symbols of Jewish life, you can see two hands which seem to reference hands raised in a traditional priestly blessing. The hand gesture also entered popular culture in the 1960s in California when Leonard Nimoy's character Spock on Star Trek was filmed performing his live-long and prosper Vulcan salute. Here is the same design of Trudy's in woven form installed at the synagogue. Back to Lynette. Around 1960, Lynette moved to New York and designed this Delphinium mural on vinyl. Lynette always kept up with design trends and she easily embraced the bright, bold colors of the 1960s. The image on the right is from Lynette's archive and I love how this woman is dressed to match her groovy wallpaper as she's such a fashionista. I love it. Lynette's giant poppy's wallpaper of 1966 was perhaps her boldest and brightest design. I wonder if Lynette designed this in New York while longing for her home in California. It's so warm and full of life. And in 2011, the Los Angeles County Museum of Art exhibited both Trudy and Lynette's textiles in an exhibition called California Design 1930 to 1965. Here is Lynette's piece on display. That is Egyptian Garden. We'll see this later. And also Trudy Garamon-Prey's art curtain trial for Road of Shalom, which is a synagogue in San Rafael, California. And we'll see this as well. These were two books that came out with that exhibition and if you're interested in this topic, they were wonderful with lots of information about California design at this time. And I want to end with a 1974 quote of Trudy's. This is near the end of her life as she died in 1976. I could relate to it today and maybe you will too. She writes, I would just like to know one thing. Why is it that this present generation is so hip on crafts? I see in weaving a very, very ancient technique. Perhaps involvement with this helps to offset a crazy world. These ancients survived. Maybe that is reassuring. Thank you.