William Lawson Paintings in Art Collected by Ken and Gaynell Collier-Magar

Yellow House and Garden by William Lawson

A Yellow House to Catch the Eye.

On Audubon Avenue south of Washington Street in the heart of Irvington, at number 218 on the west side of the street, is the home of longtime residents Ken and Gaynell Collier-Magar. 

Ken, recently retired, practiced law for many years and Gaynell is a former landscaping company owner and currently instructs yoga at the Irvington Wellness Center.

Gaynell's landscaping background is apparent in the beautiful and organic design of her gardens which surround the home on all sides. The house itself, a pale yellow Dutch Colonial Revival trimmed in white, has yet another attractive feature – the large and inviting front porch.  

Some history of the house, built in 1909, was provided by Dr. Victor Vollrath, when he knocked on the front door, some years ago, announcing to Ken and Gaynell that he used to live there. In fact, his family owned the place for fifty years.

As a child born in 1916, it was the only childhood home he'd ever know, growing up there with his large family. In the neighborhood, Victor was first exposed to the practice of medicine when, still a boy, he ran errands for a doctor living down the street. Doc Walter Kelly who served patients in that home-office around the corner, inspired young Victor to become physician himself. 

On that day he knocked on Ken and Gaynell's door almost a lifetime later, Dr. Vollrath presented them with a photograph of his family in front of the house circa 1920. 

The Vollrath family looks south from the walkway leading to their front door in the photo. Mom has the newest baby in her arms. The four boys, each a head taller than the next youngest, in front of their mother. Victor, the youngest boy standing, was at the fore. The father's pride is apparent as he stands by his family's side, one hand in pocket, one smoking a cigar. A couple door doors down to the north, the wall of a neighboring building – that is, The Snug today.

The Vollrath Family, 218 S. Audubon   c. 1920

The photograph hangs just inside the front door of the Collier-Magars. It is not alone, that image of the front yard of the yellow house, many paintings are close at hand. The house and yard, with its history of that moment frozen in black and white, would find the true color of summer and a garden at the end of artist's brush. 

A Closed Down World and Open Garden.

In 2021, the world was gripped in a stifling COVID lock-down. But in the out-of-doors, a fresh air and a freedom called. People jogged, people rode bicycles, people walked their dogs. 

William Lawson did what he normally does. He worked outside, as an artist painting pictures at his easel.  En plein air, it is called. Meaning 'in the open air,' before his subject. His subject one day was the yellow house.

Lawson painted 218 S. Audubon undetected by the Collier-Magars. The street scene painter of Irvington  was not known to them at the time. It was either spring or summer when he painted the picture, as the blue sky has fair weather clouds and the leaves on the trees are green.  He painted from the sidewalk just north of the house and he peers over a high hedge onto the house from a slight angle. 

The Yellow House - 218 S. Audubon by William Lawson

The gambrel roof, the white gable end and the dentil molding on the yellow house center the focus in the picture. Of playful note, is the string of Tibetan prayer flags. They stretch across, just below the porch roof, bleached from the sun.

The painting was not to go totally unnoticed though, as a friend and neighbor of Ken and Gaynell stopped to chat about the picture with Lawson still at the easel. And as it turns out, Lawson presented the painting to her with instructions to give to the owners at a later date. 

About a year later,  the 22nd Annual Irvington Garden Tour in 2022 was taking place on a sunny Sunday afternoon in June.  William Lawson was painting in the alleyway between the same yellow house and the home just to the north. The emphasis of subject of that new painting was actually the flowery hedge of the next door neighbor's yard, but during the event, which included the Collier-Magar garden as a featured stop on the tour, Lawson was to meet Ken and Gaynell for the first time. 

They would learn of the earlier painting of their own house that day, which was still in possession of the friend and neighbor. But soon after, they would receive it, and they would commission their own Lawson painting. A vibrant and overflowing view of Gaynell's south side-yard garden at its peak season. Another commission would follow of the front yard garden, also in full bloom (top of page). 

The Yellow House Side Garden by William Lawson

The three paintings of the yellow house, together and united like siblings, in Ken and Gaynell's family of artworks. They share a family resemblance;  bright yellow walls, white trim and sunlit gardens.  The paintings would be the foundation of their growing collection of William Lawson works.

A Front Porch View and Wider World.

In the spring of 2021, as the pandemic lingered, William Lawson took up residence in a second-story apartment atop the old drug store building on the southwest corner of Audubon at Bonna. From this central vantage point in Irvington, he would continue creating paintings. His primary direction, as always, was as a plein air painter. The drive of his focus was often overlooked scenes in Irvington and around Indianapolis.

Now living on the same block as the Collier-Magars, he was invited one day, as he returned to his apartment with easel on his back, to join a group on the front porch amid cigar smoke, cognac and conversation. Lawson accepted the invitation and was to return often to join in the always changing cast of neighbors, friends and family, and even passers-by, in the shade of the yellow house porch.

Lawson would paint a scene right from the porch called Old Storefront on Audubon which Ken and Gaynell would acquire. The subject is the old business buildings across the way. 

Old Storefront on Audubon by William Lawson

They would also visit his studio apartment to look at his other works created in the neighborhood, around Indianapolis and even his earlier years spent in Seattle. They would collect his piece View from Desolation Peak, a mountaintop scene in Washington State of a fire watch mountain top made famous by Jack Kerouac in his novel Desolation Angels. The painting shows the golden scrub of vegetation underfoot on a mountain slope with a few skinny evergreens. It looks out to a distant lake and cascading blue hills beneath towering clouds and diffuse sunlight at the horizon.

View From Desolation Peak by William Lawson

Two Indianapolis pictures they would collect are Bridge Over White River, a palette knife oil painting showing the stone arches of a downtown bridge with the new Mariott Hotel breaking the line of sky in the background. And Old Northside Alley, a painting of a favorite motif for Lawson, the urban alleyway, this time in fall. The orange leaves of trees add further color to the central focus, the contrast of a red garage against the green one behind. 

Bridge Over White River by William Lawson

Ken and Gaynell would acquire neighborhood scenes from Lawson's studio including Houses on Whittier, a picture of three mutely-hued homes in shades of white, gray and pink, aside each other in deep angular profile. There is an abundant punctuation of blooming sunflowers and hydrangeas in the foreground.  

Rooftops in Winter - Irvington by William Lawson

Another picture with subtle hues of white, gray and brown – of snow covered roofs and bare trees – in the scene, Rooftops in Winter – Irvington. Its color, a green house, and in the distance, a yellow one, and blue, possess the promise of a coming spring despite the grip of a monotone winter.

In the scene Irvington Railroad in Autumn, the harmony and chaos of color changing is balanced by the precision of the receding railroad tracks and color of the gravel bed.  

Irvington Railroad in Autumn by William Lawson

Cezanne and the Quiet Lives of Apples and Pears.

Although primarily a painter of the out-of-doors, Lawson does studio work as well. His inspiration lately is Paul Cezanne and that artist's still lifes of fruit. Lawson has created numerous small painted studies, preparatory collages, and most recently, larger format paintings that study solidity, color and form.

Still Life with Apples, Pears and an Orange by William Lawson

The Collier-Magars have collected several works from this series, including small paper collages that serve as the first studies for Lawson's most recent larger paintings. And also the smaller paintings; Still Life with Pears and Still Life with Apples, Pears and an Orange.

Of particular interest, related to these still lifes and Cezanne, is a unique Lawson in their collection, Cezanne's Studio. The small picture is a vibrant homage to the master's last workspace in Aix-en-Provence, France. It shows fruit and tablecloth, and an actual statuette and earthenware that populated many of Cezanne's paintings. 

Cezanne's Studio by William Lawson

That Never Ending Spark of Inspiration.

Lawson's friendship with his neighbors, Ken and Gaynell Collier-Magar, and their patronage of his work, began on a sidewalk, then an alley, and finally on a front porch. A porch in Irvington that has inspired Lawson to paint scenes of Irvington while standing in its shade. A porch where Tibetan flags murmur quiet prayers for peace, inspired by the wind.  

Lawson was the inspiration for Ken Collier-Magar to take up the brushes again, after many years, and create a painting. His small study, loaded with primary colors, Amalphi Coast, is a painting of a place so stunning and beautiful, so universally appreciated, that the stretch of southern Italy's coastline is UNESCO listed, as of global significance.

Amalphi Coast by Ken Collier-Magar

Maybe not as renowned, or as universally accepted, are the many sights and scenes of Irvington, Indianapolis and Indiana that appear on William Lawson's list of places. His list of railroad tracks, alleyways, rooftops and bridges is a list preserved in oils and protected on canvas. It is a list he has created over his first thirty years of painting. 

The most recent entry on the list that Ken and Gaynell have collected is his View from Highland Park, painted this past fall. 

The scene is from the Holy Cross neighborhood on the city's east side. It captures the glow of a maple in October, and the tip of a green house and its red chimney, jutting in the sky.  A sky that is shared by high-rises, a church steeple and electric poles. A blue sky, and sidewalk, green grass...the inspirations go on an on.

View From Highland Park by William Lawson

Mark Diekhoff, January 2026 

Thanks to Ken and Gaynell Collier-Magar and William Lawson for sharing details and images about the history of the collection 

Dedicated to my brother Edward, who has concluded his career as a physician of many decades with his retirement today. 

M.D. 1/2/26 

The material used in this article is being used under the fair use provisions of copyright law. The content is being used for educational purposes only, and all rights to the original content are held by their respective copyright owners. We do not claim ownership of any copyrighted material used in this work.

127th Annual Exhibition of Indiana and Ohio Artists

St. Joseph's, Terre Haute, Michael Neary

Granddaddy of Indiana Art Shows in Richmond.

From the roots of a mostly self-taught group of artists in the Richmond, Indiana area from about 1870 onward, the Richmond Art Association was formed in 1896, and two years later, in 1898, this organization would establish an annual exhibit of Indiana artists. It has expanded to include Ohio artists over the years, and includes both advanced and amateur award divisions. 

The Indiana State Fair has hosted arts and crafts exhibits and competitions for over 170 years. The participation of Indiana's professional contemporary artists in the event have waxed and waned over the many decades, with the first half of the 20th Century being arguable to most relevant  period in which the exhibit stood as an equal pillar and mainstay with other annual events in attracting the state's best talent, including professionals, to its exhibition halls.

Other Indiana-related annual shows have come an gone. The 'Grand Circuit' rotating and traveling show of the Society of Western Artists. The original showcase for the works of the artists who would become known as the Hoosier Group, the annual exhibition had an eighteen-year  run from 1896 until 1914. 

The Indianapolis-based Annual Exhibit of Works by Indiana Artists was held from 1908 through 1969. Originally held as an annual event at John Herron Art Institute, it became a biennial event at the Indianapolis Museum of Art in the 1970s until its last iteration, the 70th Indiana Artists Show in 1985.  

The newer old kid on the block, is the Hoosier Art Salon, which began in 1925 and was held at Marshall Field & Company in Chicago. It would move to Indianapolis for the 1942 show, and continues with the 101st Hoosier Art Salon being hosted by the Indiana State Museum last August.

Annual shows of the Indiana Artists Club,  began in  1917 and continued for many years at revolving locations such as the Union Trust Building and Spinks-Arms Hotel. It moved to L. S. Ayers and Company from 1935 -1989. After two years at University of Indianapolis, it has continued from 1992 to the most recent 93rd Annual in 2025 at Newfields (formerly IMA). 

Irvington Artists, later called the Irvington Group, held annual exhibitions in the east side community of the same name from 1928 through 1937. 

Two other exhibitions in Indianapolis that were held more than a few years failed to develop generational staying power. They included the Indiana Directions (and later Indiana Directions and Regional) held as a biennial from 1976 through the early 2000s at the Indianapolis Art League (later the Indianapolis Art Center), and the Indiana Arts Competition hosted by American States Insurance from 1987 through 1995. 

Another local art event and competition began in 1994 when Phil Campbell, artist, and owner of Hot House Gallery, started Masterpiece in a Day. The outdoor event began its run at the Faris Building and its environs and moved to Fountain Square and the Murphy Arts Center in the early 2000s. It continues to this day.

Harrison Center in Indianapolis has presented annual 'color-themed' shows every December since about 2002, with its latest, Golden Ticket, just ended. And the Indianapolis studio gallery run by Justin Vining has recently presented the Sixth Annual Vining Gallery Invitational at its East 10th Street location.

It is clear that a sustained duration of 127 years running for the Anderson show, hosted now by the Richmond Art Museum, is an amazing feat in the annuls of Indiana art history. 

Past and Present, Spread Over Four Rooms. 

The permanent collection room of the Richmond Art Museum (RAM), certainly sets a high standard of artistic achievement. William Merritt Chase's, Self Portrait (in the 4th Avenue Studio), is a glory to behold. He is a magician not only with paint but also bare canvas. And he portrays not only himself, but every painter, standing aside a blank canvas waiting for something to happen.  That moment at the start of a new work, is captured in the picture. It looks like maybe he used that bare space to clean off his brushes, and yet, the promise of those haphazard marks are just the first steps of any masterpiece. It is a picture, both inside and outside the picture, of an artist assured, aside the task at hand.

Amazingly, not to be outdone, is the museum's spectacular new acquisition,  Emma B. King's, Pic-a-Back. The canvas exists out of time, out of genre – outside any art movement – in a timeless moment of sunlit beauty –  in a real, yet dreamland, world.  That such a thing could have occurred or been imagined, let alone painted with such mastery, is beyond words. 

The room is loaded with great art and artists from the permanent collection, too numerous to describe in this preface.  Suffice to say, they will whet the appetite of the eyes, to see more wonderful things in the adjoining rooms and hallways of the 127th Annual show.

Landscapes Abound.

The Lake I Grew Up On, Justin Vining

The Lake I Grew Up On, by Justin Vining, is a large brooding landscape dominated by the inky waters of a large lake beneath a dramatic display of clouds and sky. With night fast approaching, the water appears choppy, but maybe it is reflecting the dark and turbulent spectacle above. The last mute pink and yellow daylight slips down at a horizon, ringed by a thin back-lit strip of land – the intermediary between lake and sky. That narrow band of terra firma is crammed with specks of bright yellow cast from windows of the numerous homes that hug the shore and stare at each other across the waters.

A Hint of Autumn, Donna Shortt

Donna Shortt has two contribution that display landscapes of a similar mood; darkness and water in one and twinkling light and night sky in the other. Her award-winning A Hint of Autumn is a pocket of wooded deep shade at the foot of a creek that trails away toward fewer trees and a brighter light. The green and gray of the scene shows just a few spots of orange-changing leaves almost too slight to notice, so subtle is their hint.  Her other piece, Community Stars, has a night sky so thickly populated with faraway planets and suns that the little domestic village beneath is like some faraway outpost, some western remote beneath the Milky Way. With our local light pollution, we rarely get our skies so full of stars.

Staying on the subject of dark, brooding and somber landscapes, are the two submissions of Curt Stanfield and one by Ray Hassard.  Stanfield's vertical Dawn's Embrace shows the winter beauty of high horizon sunrise in golden pink tones above and through a web of bare and skeletal branches of scrub and a bed of bright blue snow. One cannot argue with the prettiness of the moment, but somehow it seems a scene, in orange and blue, seen before on postcards in Florida. Those dawn or dusk photos, substituting beaches for the icy sand of Indiana winter.  

Solitude, Curt Stanfield

Stanfield's other picture,  Solitude is altogether more effective in portraying a frozen moment less seen. Shades of grayish white and whitish gray, make up the land and the sky of this picture. The precision and geometry of its square shape are accentuated by the minimalism and simplicity of the subject matter. The straight lines of pole and thinner wire, of muted horizon and diagonal and dormant vegetation. A wedge of lifeless woods, in dark winter brown. The painting lives up to its name.

Ray Hassard's Soggy field is also a nearly monochrome. He paints a wide, flat, green-gray field of muddy grass.  Large pockets of standing water reflects the severe winter sky off its puddles. One feels a chill and wet feet when looking at the picture. 

Less moody, are David M. Seward's two pictures. This artist was seen recently in the Hoosier Salon in Indianapolis with two landscape paintings of innovative composition. His submissions here are less so, but still effective in their ability to capture and direct the viewer's eye into the heart of his landscapes with his use of light and brushwork. The greatest contrast of light and dark and the most detailed strokes of paint exist together to create his centers of attention. They are offset from the actual center and balanced by the other elements he captures in the scene to direct movement. 

Afternoon Barn, David M. Seward

Afternoon Barn has a heave and a ho of pond and hedge to zigzag toward the white of cloud and black of a shady soffit on the side of the barn.  Bonita Springs Parking has the shade of three tree trunks, two of which out of frame of the painting, running in a parallel diagonal to the white sun soaked bark of a tree thrust forward from the shady roots near its base.

Less moody still, and more playfully vibrant, are two city scenes by Michael Neary. Painted in the gregarious greens and cumulus whites of high summer, his paintings display the most idiosyncratic brushwork of any landscapes in the show.  Entirely effective in capturing his scenes, the brushwork appears energized and excited. Both Gowyn's Back Yard and St. Joseph's, Terre Haute (top of page) exude an  intensity that vibrates. 

Both paintings possess a lovely clutter of domestic or civic deferred maintenance; overgrown grass, sagging sidewalks, crumbling curbs. Two light posts in the St. Joseph's picture lean away from each other in the foreground, while the twin church steeples in the background, seemingly of firmer foot, point straight as arrows, side by side, toward the sky. 

In the amateur division, four pastel by two artists showcase the differing temperaments of their creation. Betty Knapp's two pieces, Birch Gateway and Winter Surprise, depict intimate and seasonal corners of nature where trees dominate traditional impressionist compositions. Elisabeth Von Der Lohe in her two works reveals a nature more roiling and majestic. Her technique, not an impression, but a tangible reality, almost photographic.  The tumult and crash of a rocky coastline in Crushing Waves and the sublime merger of lake, trees and sky in Summerpeace. 

Two prize winners in the division are similar works by Victoria Pope and Jenelle Burris. Both western redrocks, of needles or spires. Pope's Bryce Sunrise and Burris' Garden of the Gods paint with pastel or oil, well known and loved park vistas, rock formations as they mingle with the sun.

Figures and Portraits.

Rope Swing, Brookville, Mark Van Buskirk

Back to the Advanced Division, Mark Van Buskirk's ambitious, large oil, Rope Swing, Brookville, merges landscape with  a multitude of figures. The young men and mostly women, in bathing suits,  dispatch from their kayaks and canoes at a riverside and gather at the base of an epic tree trunk.  The technique in the application of paint, the hues chosen – the result is a hazy mythology, as opposed to a snapshot narrative. Huge dollops of pure pigment in the canopy of leaves and sky. 

A simple scene of young people swimming and having fun on the river. But captured at the moment between on the river and swinging in the air. The figures climb carefully over tree roots and muddy banks in single file. NPCs in their anonymity, no one is the hero yet. They could be anyone standing in line, backsides and bikinis, seeking to up the thrill.

A prize winning portrait, The Break of Day, by Dianne K. Porter, could almost be surrealism. The profile of a bearded and bespectacled older man, in a loose and wrinkled flannel robe, stands in profile to meet a full face of sunlight from an out of view window. The background is a featureless and of total black. The dreamlike part is the gnarled bare branches of what looks like a walking stick tree between the man and the window. Almost like wisps of steam off his coffee cup. But whatever it is must be off to the side, because it casts no shadow across him whatsoever. 

There is something about a coffee cup. John Hrehov's Morning Nancy (Indianola) is in interesting composition that merges portrait, genre-scene, landscape and still life. An amalgam of uncomplicated lines and shapes, and restrained color fields. Even the flowers that dominate the right side of the picture do so with perfect manners. As a whole, it reminds of the symbolic emotion of Emile Bernard and his Brittany simplifications with Paul Gauguin.

The Gift of Seeing, Stephanie Spay

Stephanie Spay paints a woman holding a coffee cup in The Gift of Seeing. She conjures the woman standing amid a dissolving space of orange gown, gray floral wallpaper and diffuse natural light. What the woman sees is open to interpretation. The gift the artist sees is clearly shown.

Stephanie Paige Thomson paints portraits and figures in a recognizable way. Her Portrait of Mark Burkett won a 4th Prize overall award in the 101st Hoosier Art Salon in August and has been acquired by RAM and hangs in their collection room currently. 

Old Friend, Stephanie Paige Thomson

She has two works in the the current show, including Old Friend, that like the Burkett piece is a no-nonsense portrait head within a sketchy, unfinished background. Her method preserves the early brushstrokes and empty canvas that provided the foundation for the finished likeness –  her seated figure The Old Ways Endure has the same sketchiness. The manner highlights the painted portrait subject to be sure, but seeing all three works together, their overtly similar technique makes them less individually memorable.

Subtle Stare in Secondary Harmony, Erin Smith Glenn

Erin Smith Glenn's award-winning Subtle Stare in Secondary Harmony is a head portrait with a simple background created in colored pencil. Here, again, the relatively empty background surrounding the space of the head. But the background space is colored in a shimmering gold. A young woman looking forward through creased eyelids with her stare. The face has silvery highlights on forehead, eyelids, nose, cheekbones and lips that mimic the glimmer of the woman's earrings. The silver and gold are a stunning décor. The emotion portrayed is as subtle as the stare veiled through almost closed eyes, and the dare of the piece is left to the viewer. 

The Merit Award winning portraits and figures in the amateur division  are Anna (Connection) by Anna Marcum and Love Everlasting by Jessica R. Maxwell.  

Randy (Devotion), Anna Marcum

Perhaps Marcum's more visually lively piece did not win an award but does delight the eyes. Her Randy (Devotion) is a large, vibrant head and shoulders portrait. The busy geometry of a plaid shirt, the astonishing abundance of a bushy blonde beard, and a bright salmon colored stripe that divides the background, all vie for attention at once. Like Randy in the painting, I smiled amid the colorful mayhem.

Still Lifes, Florals and What May Be Conceptuals.

Samantha Haring's two pastel still lifes are quiet and modest. Each portrays a single object on a brown clothed table against a white wall. The scenes are enmeshed in a tan monotone, warmed by hits of orange. Etched shows a mason jar and Seasoned a rumpled brown bag. Folds, textures, shadows and highlights invite close inspection. 

Aaron James Pickens has also created a still life in shades of beige and brown with Dried Corn – June 10th 2025. The flame-like shapes of dried husks provide the matter for the subject of the picture's exercise in painting jagged shapes.

Two interesting floral compositions by Leslie Shiels are exhibited. In Plain Sight shows a robust bouquet of burgundy, yellow and pink. Birds perch among the woody stems also in the arrangement, in a perspective that teeters from on high, looking down on the birds in the foreground from above, to straight on with the birds in profile at the top. The flowers survive the hidden pivot, as do the birds, without rustling a feather. 

Palekeet Trio, Leslie Shiels

Her other floral, Palekeet Trio, depicts a jar of cut sunflowers, three large conch shells and two birds. The layout of the painting is like an Italian altarpiece, with transcendent sunflowers at the epicenter, attended by open winged birds that hover like cherubs overhead. The conch shells gather at the foot of the painting like weeping women with their sounding of the sea. The color and energy lean Rococo, though, with its pastel shades of pink and yellow and blue. 

What to make of the two works by Constance Edwards Scopelitis? They are from an ongoing series called Recovery Blankets. Precise colored pencil drawings of striped and rumpled blankets draping atop wood panels. There must be a concept behind their obsessive assemblage of imagery and title. They all are named after 1960s pop song hits. Here she presents Brown Eyed Girl (inspired by Van Morrison) and Dead Flowers (inspired by the Rolling Stones). 

The blanket colors often relate directly to the song titles. The meaning of the Top 40 oldies, the incessant stripes and the wooden squares though? 

Maybe there is a basis in some personal memory or loss, some echo of connection or triggered emotion.  Or perhaps the specific nostalgia of the components were more randomly chosen, post-meaning – a sentimental tip of the hat to the machine-like efficiency of the 60s pop art minimalists, with their neon lights and crumpled cars. 

Mark Diekhoff, December 2025

The material used in this article is being used under the fair use provisions of copyright law. The content is being used for educational purposes only, and all rights to the original content are held by their respective copyright owners. We do not claim ownership of any copyrighted material used in this work.

Carpenter Realtors East Irvington Now Showing Art

Vermont Farm, Frederick Polley

 

The Rich Costello Collection and Carpenter East Gallery in Irvington

The First Friday art and culture walk in Irvington on December 5 included an introduction to an amazing personal collection of works by historical Irvington and Indianapolis artists, as well as a companion show of contemporary area artists at a new art venue in the heart of Irvington. The exhibit continues its display and can be viewed at the location of the Carpenter Realtors East Irvington branch office (Carpenter East) on Washington Street, right between Jockamo Upper Crust Pizza and Sahm's Tavern and Sports Bar.  The art space is hosted by art collector and Carpenter East branch manager, Rich Costello. 

The most numerous artworks that make up the current display are by Indianapolis artist, Frederick Polley, a favorite artist of Mr. Costello. 

Many other well-known Irvington and Indianapolis artists are also included, such as Hoosier Group painter William Forsyth and his artist daughter Constance Forsyth, both longtime residents of Irvington at their former family home at the corner of Washington Street and Emerson Avenue. 

Wayman Adams and Edmund Brucker, both well-known and respected portrait painters from Indiana, can also be seen with major works in the exhibit.   

Collection Contains Many Impressive Works.

My Mother, Edmund Brucker

Greeting your eyes upon entering the Carpenter East, is the large portrait, My Mother by Edmund Brucker. The skill of this well-known artist and long-time Herron School of Art instructor is apparent immediately. The hands and face of the sitter, the countenance portrayed, are captured with care, and obvious technical dexterity. The blue background and gown convey the scene in a peaceful calm that contrasts with the warmness of the flesh-tones. A  remarkable realism is achieved, particularly in the rendering of the aged hands.

The piece is presumably a portrait of the artist's own mother, given the title. Brucker himself would have been about 70 years-old at the time, so if the sitter is indeed his mother in her nineties or thereabouts, she is quite stunning for her age.  

Brucker entered a very similar portrait, called Matriarch (1982), in the 69th Indiana Artists Show at the Indianapolis Museum of Art, held in June through August, 1983. 

Matriarch, Edmund Brucker, 1982

It is same sitter, seated and similarly dressed in both paintings. The pose is the the same – a diamond shape created with her head, arms and hands.  The Carpenter East picture is a three-quarter sideways view, whereas the IMA picture is more facing frontward. It may be that the Carpenter East painting is the superior of the two, with the mystery of the mother's glance looking somewhere out of the picture frame, portraying a a wistful contentment. The IMA exhibit piece, which won an award in the show, portrays a downward resignation, seen in the averted eyes of the matriarch. 

Couple, Wayman Adams

Another terrific piece in the Carpenter East show is Couple by Wayman Adams. The huge canvas  depicts  an early 20th Century couple, the lady dressed in a pink short sleeve and the man in a gray suit and blue dress shirt. They share a place next to each other in the intimacy of  a wood backed davenport whose curving sweep dominates the painting's foreground. 

Their bodies are perpendicular to the viewer, although not in profile, as they each look over their right shoulder to face the viewer, eye to eye. Wayman's bravura brushwork is on full display, the whole picture over. The most detailed care, in his signature way, in capturing their faces. 

This painting also has a twin of sorts. This time in the Richmond Art Museum collection – the painting The Love Seat, c. 1930, also by Adams. The pair in that painting could almost be the same two in Couple. 

In the Richmond picture, both their bodies and their heads have a more formal pose, facing ahead in the composition, as opposed to the dynamic twist of the Carpenter East painting.

Much smaller, but no less remarkable in the Carpenter East show, are several graphite drawings by William Forsyth. One is of an elderly lady, possible the artist's mother, showing her in a pose similar to both Brucker paintings; seated with  hands in her lap, and forming a diamond shape. This lady looks down, eyes averted as well, with somber expression, as Forsyth sketched away.

The intimate studies of a newborn baby nursing, shows Forsyth perfecting the baby's head in three tries, and capturing, in two separate sketches on the same page, two distinct gestures of the child's arm while feeding. One grasping toward the mother, and one less restless, relaxing downward.

Frederick Polley – Artist and Artworks.

An example of Frederick Polley Indianapolis Star page

As mentioned, Frederick Polley is well represented in Costello's Carpenter East exhibit. 

Frederick Polley lived both in Irvington and then a home studio at Paradise Hills on the city's north-east side. He taught in the art department at Tech High School for about twenty years, and later at Herron. About his early years and first artistic inspiration, we can refer to an newspaper article and interview appearing in an expansive Indianapolis Star Sunday magazine article by Aletha V. M'Naull, on January 4, 1925. 

Ms. M'Naull describes her rebuffed attempts to obtain an interview of Frederick Polley.  The subheading to the article described the state of Polley's career – Local Artist's Work Appears in Large Publications and Wins Prizes in Some of Best Exhibits Conducted in the United States. And it adds, by way of further introduction to the readers,  that, 

“Mr. Polley's drawings are appearing regularly on the page opposite the editorial page  of The Sunday Star.” 

The writer quotes Polley's self-deprecating manner when she first contacted him for a talk, 

“I am just working and am busy, but there really is nothing to tell about.”

Polley remained elusive, but she presses him further, prompting him to add,

“There is practically nothing to say.  I am putting all my spare time evenings and holidays working on some things that interest me very much, but that is all there is to it.”

Ms. M'Naull would eventually wear Polley down, and get him to speak a bit about himself and his origins of his career,

“I got my 'big lead' in a small prairie town in Illinois, where I was stationed as a telegraph operator...a sketch artist came to the town...and got...a special...edition of the...newspaper. This edition was profusely illustrated with pen and ink sketches of the station, the elevator and the prominent department stores of the town...”

Polley is presumable referring to the prominent local landmarks such at the railroad station, grain elevator and so on. He adds,

“These sketches were a revelation to me, and I found that I could sketch the buildings around me with ease and some grace. The local printer soon after gave me my first commission to draw a commercial illustration, a label for a cigar maker. I was a full-fledged commercial artist and decided that my goal was finally illustrating.”

Flatiron Building, center left, by Frederick Polley in The Star

The rest, they say, is history, as the Carpenter East show will attest. It contains original graphite drawings by Polley that were reproduced in the pages of The Star, as well as etchings, a large selection of original holiday cards of his unique and hand-made design, and original landscape paintings, several of which are on display.

The collection has the original graphite drawing of New York City's Flatiron Building that was printed in the paper in the pictorial accompanying Ms. M'Naull's article referenced above.  

Two paintings of Polley's Paradise Hills property are in the show; Paradise Hills – Polley House  and Paradise Hills – Polley House Rooftop. 

Paradise Hills - The Polley Home Rooftop, Frederick Polley

Paradise Hills refers to a large barn and parcel of land that the artist purchased in 1927, in an area just north of Fort Benjamin Harrison today. At that more rural time, the property was described as “three miles from Castleton and about five miles from Millersville on the Dandy trail, and about twelve miles from Monument circle,” according to a December 4, 1927, Indianapolis Star article with accompany photo spread.

Paradise Hills would first become the location of his studio and exhibition space, and then, some time later, his home.

Frederick Polley and his Paradise Hills Studio, c 1927

The paintings show the home and its red roof from different viewpoints on the property, both of which accentuate the hilliness of the locale.  Polley, even in the early days after the purchase of the property, would begin holding exhibitions of his work in the barn. 

Polley's inaugural open house at his new Paradise Hills studio

It should be noted that Polley also maintained an Irvington residence at the time, and would exhibit in nine of the Irvington Group shows from 1928 through 1937.

Artist Returns, Frederick Polley

Interiors and Exteriors – New Nicole Meisberger Photographs.

Carpenter East is also presenting area artists on a long wall opposite the historic collection. In the current show, three artists have work; David Lee, Nicole Meisberger and Eduardo Quixchán.

Nicole Meisberger has provided an artist statement explaining her work. She presents a series of interesting photographs from her new portfolio of Interiors and Exteriors around town. Her images run the gamut, from extravagantly baroque, to sparse – almost monotone – and banal. They are all interesting. 

Also of local interest, Meisberger's past projects are Irvington-centric.

The Inspired By series contained her image Nighthawks, derived from the source Edward Hopper painting.  Her image was shot in Irvington, with Irvington artists serving as models for the people in the painting. And Meisberger contributed to previous projects of specific note; the books 24 Hours in Irvington and Irvington Noir.

Mark Diekhoff, December 2025

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