Arizona Sketch Book-Mathilde Schaefer.

arizona sketch book

EXPRESSION IN THE PLASTIC ARTS

Photographic studies by Claude Bate of Bate Studio

MATHILDE SCHAEFER works with strong, firm hands in wood, bronze and stone and finds in these mediums a vehicle of expression that to her is the most satisfactory manner of telling a story with honesty and simplicity. A resident of Arizona since May, 1935, Miss Schaefer has, despite her youth, years of interesting experience and experimentation behind her, and those years were marked with struggle and the uncertainty of the true artist attempting to find herself and her work. A native of New York, Miss Schaefer lived in New York, Tennessee and in Chicago before coming to Arizona. She studied music, attempted writing, devoted considerable time and effort to Little Theatre work, and had a brief career as a professional dancer. Studying decorative design at the Chicago Art Institute, it was there that she discovered that the plastic arts held for her the satisfaction and fulfillment that she did not find in music, literature or the stage. She studied privately in Chicago under several sculptors and was finally apprenticed to Raoul Josset, the great French artist. She assisted him in the execution of various sculptures for the Chicago World's Fair and also participated in other architectural commissions. Feeling that her work needed a wider background of understanding and knowledge, she studied briefly in Berlin.

She returned to Chicago from Berlin where she secured the commission involving the design and execution of the sculptured entrance gates to the Katherine Legge Memorial in Hinsdale, Ill. Upon completion of this commission, Miss Schaefer decided that a month's rest in Arizona was due her after her most arduous labor at the Legge Memorial. Perhaps it was spring in Arizona, or just Arizona! She fell in love with the state and here she lives and works today. She says: "When I came to Arizona, it was with the intention of remaining a month. Now, four years later, I am still here and here I will remain. I found that for me it is the ideal place to live and work." She lives in Scottsdale, where a sprawling adobe house is her home and studio. All of Arizona is her domain and the lonely Indian reservations which extend for broad and remote miles throughout the state are her classrooms.

"Indians," she says, "had always interested me, and for several years I have dealt with them almost exclusively in my work. I felt that an honest interpretation of the Indian has been lacking in the plastic arts a false, over-sentimentalized and romantically misinformed attitude being most common. I am trying to tell the story of the various tribes of Arizona in a straightforward way. The tremendous drama of the once reigning peoples and their human struggle to adjust themselves, since the arrival of the white man had altered their ways of life: this to me was something that could and should be told in sculpture. The physical, spiritual and mental differences between the various tribes are of tremendous interest to me, and frequent trips to the reservations are a source of study and inspiration."

For the most part, the work of Mathilde Schaefer is direct carving in stone and wood. "For me," she says, "the fullest sculptural expression comes out of direct contact with the final medium. Modeling holds very little interest for me. The use of local materials to me is of great importance, and the search for suitable stone and wood is a constant adventure. I try to keep my work moderate in size, for I feel that the place for it is in the home and for garden decoration." And so in bronze, and brown walnut, and in faint yellow canarywood, and in redwood and in rough tufa stone does Mathilde Schaefer mould her impressions of the Indian peoples of this state. Her work is honest and true and simple, and in it is portrayed with feeling the simplicity, the struggle for adjustment, all the features and traits of her Indian subjects. The sorrow and suffering and privation and struggle of the Indian peoples-these have all found expression in the plain lines in the wood and stone and bronze creations of Mathilde Schaefer. In her work you will find much of sadness and sorrow and despair for these came to the Indian with the turbulent centuries. Can you honestly interpret these peoples by effacing the marks of those centuries?

Arizona Sketch Book is pleased to show some of Miss Schaefer's work. "Navajo In Sandstorm" was exhibited at the San Francisco Museum of Art, 1939, and was awarded honorable mention. "Hopi Maiden" has been purchased by Wesley Peters of Taliesin Fellowship. "Maricopa Girl" was exhibited at the Denver Art Museum, the Chicago Art Institute, and the New York World's Fair. . . . . . R. C.