Irvington Artist Alson E. Wrentmore – A Life of Religion, Politics and Art

(no title given), A. E. Wrentmore, 1953

Arrival, Education and Extant Works.

Alson E. Wrentmore was born in 1872 near Cleveland, Ohio. As a young man, he would graduate from Hiram College in Northeast Ohio, and then study at the University of Chicago. 

His obituary in The Indianapolis Star on August 13, 1959, explains the middle years of his life before his arrival  to the Indianapolis area,

“(Wrentmore) held pastorates in Indiana, Illinois, Ohio, Michigan, Kansas, and Oklahoma...and spent about ten years as an evangelist in the Central States.

He later served as school superintendent at several northwestern Indiana towns and wrote seven books on English which were widely used.

(He was)...an outspoken foe of intemperance, and served as a president of several organizations, including The Landlords and Tenants League, The American Property Owners and Christian Dry Crusaders.” 

As he was nearing age fifty, in December 1920, Wrentmore bought a house in Irvington on the east side of Ritter Avenue north of University Avenue. 

From about 1925 to 1929, part-time, he would pursue a master's degree from Indiana University, Bloomington. 

Within a year of earning that degree, as he approached age sixty, he would begin pursing state-wide political office seeking election to the office of Superintendent to Public Education on the third party ticket, the Prohibition Party, in 1930. 

We learn Wrentmore was also an artist, when he entered and was accepted for exhibition at the 24th Indiana Artists show at John Herron Art Institute in 1931. 

Other Irvington and Indianapolis artists who were in that year's exhibition, many of whom have been covered elsewhere in this blog, are Simon P. Baus, Constance Forsyth, William Forsyth, Marie Goth, John Wesley Hardrick, Cecil Head, Emma B. King, Dorothy Morlan, Isaac Lane Muse, Frederick Polley, Robert Selby  Oakley E. Richey, Elmer Taflinger, Lucy M Taggart, Clifton Wheeler, Hilah Wheeler and Charles Yeager.

Old Sugar Camp, A. E Wrentmore

Wrentmore's picture in the 24th annual show is not described in the press at the time. However, we do know that he was also represented in the 25th Indiana Artists exhibit the very next year, 1932, because a photograph of his actual painting (and its reverse side label) can be viewed on Ebay, where the work is offered for sale. 

The Old Sugar Camp depicts a winter landscape scene of a rudimentary A-frame shelter at a work site at a wood's edge. 

A  dormant field stretches beyond the encampment to a faraway white farmhouse on the horizon. 

The drab color scheme is the maybe the point of the painting –  depicting what? – maple sugaring and a hint of sweet warmth in the dead of winter? 

Another painting by A. E. Wrentmore can be found online. (image top of page) 

Untitled, it is described as dated (and purchased) 1953, and shows a bend of road or river, you be the judge, in the fall colors of a hilly landscape. 

The painting, if the date is accurate, was painted when Wrentmore was past 80 years old, and displays a more dreamy, folky style than the earlier work. 

Politics, Painting, Tragedy and Poetry.

Wrentmore was a man of many passions, as newspaper coverage attests over the following decades of his life. 

Prohibition Party politics was a focus his entire time in the Indianapolis area. He continued to run unsuccessfully as a candidate for U.S. Senator in 1932, Indiana Secretary of State in 1934, U.S. Congress in 1950 and Indiana Superintendent of Public Instruction in both 1956 and 1958. (The last campaign being just one year before his death.)  

In the 1940s, Wrentmore's shared  passions of politics and painting were joined by poetry. 

The Indianapolis Star reports in January 1945 that he gave a talk as a member of a group called The Poet's Rendezvous, to others in the group of  40 poets from counties around Indiana,  on “the choice of poetic words.”  The same event featured Miss Florence Marie Taylor speaking on “correct rhyming.”

A September gathering of the same group, affiliated with the Indiana Federation of Poetry Clubs, was held at the Indianapolis YMCA, and featured  a  portrait of the group's president, Miss June Winona Snyder, painted by A. E. Wrentmore.

A later annual convention of the group held that year at the World War Memorial Building in Indianapolis, featured another talk by Wrentmore, titled Sources of Inspiration for Writing Poetry.

That Wrentmore continued painting can be surmised more from public notice columns in the local papers than from seeing examples in exhibitions reported at the time. He rarely is at auction or hanging in museums today. 

Wrentmore's death was announced with the obituary on August 13, 1959, mentioned above.  He died at his longtime home in Irvington on Ritter Avenue where “he maintained a studio for landscape painting ” according to The Indianapolis Star.

Just a month later, in September, auctioneers L. C. Chandler and Marley Neal would hold a sale of “all oil paintings by Mr. Alson E. Wrentmore, deceased,” along with frames and other furnishings from his studio. The public auction was held September 30, and the terms were cash.

As a historical Irvington footnote, a tragic event in Wrentmore's life is that his daughter would lose her life at the hands of her husband in 1932, around the time of  the elder Wrentmore's U.S. Senate campaign and exhibition at the Indiana Artists shows. 

Both his daughter and son-in-law were former Irvington residents who had relocated to Illinois to pursue teaching careers. 

The sensation of the murder, arrest, trial and sentencing would fill the pages of Illinois and Indiana papers over the following months and year. The effect of such a monstrous occurrence on his art and poetry remains unknown and unreported in public sources of information.

Mark Diekhoff, July 2026

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.

Peg Fierke Art – Part Five

Double Silt Experiment, 2000, Peg Fierke

A Tribute to the World.

Peg Fierke's mature career works, most all, are inspired by a natural environment.  An environment of interrelation and interconnection.  A colorful, beautiful tapestry of pattern and form.  She will never tire of its complexity, We see a delight captured by her eye, and woven into her images. Neither brevity nor boredom are ever contained in her work. 

Often her drawings, prints and paintings are almost entirely abstracted from the nature of their origin though. Symbol is devoured by suchness, label by layers.  

Small things are shown large. Things are displaced and move here to there. Scattered things come together. Gathered things split apart. Things multiply or simplify. 

Dimensions collapse, eons of time become instant, before and after are marginalized, the now is the moment of her works. 

Evolving Emphasis.

The December 28, 1989 North Vernon (IN) Plain Dealer previewed an upcoming exhibition in Columbus, Indiana for the following weeks. The short article explained,

“The Indianapolis Museum of Art – Columbus Gallery presents ...Artists Who Are Women...

The show includes a selection of contemporary paintings and sculptures...(that)...emphasize the many ways in which women have expanded the traditional imagery of contemporary American art. 

The exhibition is curated by Holliday T. Day, IMA curator of contemporary art... ”

The article describes some of the artists and the expanded themes,

“Works by Miriam Schapiro, Joyce Kozloff and Lynda Benglis emphasize the role pattern and decoration in art. Paintings by Hollis Sigler and Darinka Novitovic explore the power of personal dreams, while the works by Vija Celmins, Daisy Youngblood, Jackie Ferrara and Peg Fierke explore interior life in a more meditative manner.” 

The Columbus (IN) newspaper, The Republic, ran a review and story on February 8, 1990, that mentions Peg's Fierke's contribution as one of the highlights, specifically an untitled work from 1989 described briefly as a charcoal “scribbling of lines and shapes.”

Just a month later, and continuing that spring, a barrage of newspaper articles would cover additional exhibitions and a symposium on women in the arts and related subjects taking place in Indianapolis.

Marion Garmel in her Brush Strokes column in The News was the first to provide background for the various related events, on March 29, 1990. It all began with the death of an artist, as she explained,

“Sylvia Kolyer was an East German refugee who came to Central Indiana in the 1970s and decided to pursue a career in art...(She) ...graduated...from the Herron School of Art...in 1981.

(She)...shared a studio for awhile in the Morris Building (later known as the Faris Building) before Kolyer's husband was transferred to (Kansas), where Kolyer promptly enrolled in the University of Wichita to work on a master of fine arts degree.

Then she was dead. At age 45, in 1986...(possibly) caused by the toxicity of the art materials she used.” 

The Garmel article discusses how Kolyer overcame various obstacles related to being a mother and wife, and a student and artist, raising two young children and living in small town Indiana. Nevertheless, she was able to carve out a niche, to make room, to follow her dream of a fine arts career. 

Kolyer had tasted success and made friends while in Indiana despite the brevity of her stay.

The article quotes Linda Haas, director of women's studies at IUPUI, about the genesis of the planned tribute exhibition for Kolyer and related events,

“...Sylvia herself obviously touched a lot of people very deeply while she was here. 

Some were collectors of her art. Some had her in class. She left such an influence on them that they were happy...(to organize and present the events)...as a testimonial to her and to Indiana women's contributions.”

Garmel elaborates on the various events planned,

“Somewhere along the way, the planning committee decided that instead of simply having a Kolyer memorial exhibit, they would turn the whole thing a celebration and serious study of women artists.”

A solo show of Kolyer's painting would be held at the Executive Conference Center at IUPUI.  

Border Crossing: Indiana Women and Art, a juried exhibit of work by present and former Indiana residents would be held at Gallery of Frame Designs on Massachusetts Avenue, and would include work by Kolyer and 17 other artists. 

Women artists on the planning committee excluded themselves from the Border Crossing show. But many were gathered in a show called Indiana Women Artists: An Invitational Show at Editions Ltd. on the north side. 

Since Peg Fierke was on the planning committee, she was represented in the Editions Ltd. show.

Finally, author, artist, teacher Suzi Gablik would be a keynote speaker at the symposium and discuss her two books; The Re-enchantment of Art and Has Modernism Failed?

Additional speakers presented talk topics including; Is There a Feminist Aesthetic?, Women in the Arts Curriculum, Making Art a Priority in Our Lives, Collecting, Exhibiting and Selling Women's Art in Indiana, and Women Weaving Visions: Women's Art as Spiritual Transformation. 

In a Weekend Section front page feature by Steve Mannheimer, in the April 6, Indianapolis Star, he reviews the Border Crossing show and also discusses author Gablik's views about an evolving art worldscape at the time,

“Gablik, in a telephone interview from her home in Virginia, said that her main thesis is that modern culture is 'moving out of the modern industrial era into an ecological era.'

That move is accompanied by 'a shift in world view that is basically going to affect our whole values system.'  and which will highlight the fact that our culture has 'no collective project.'

Gablik said that the past few decades have witnessed the 'breakdown of the model of the artist as a solitary hero working outside of society.' That stereotype was 'transformed into the model of the professional artist getting his slides and CV...in order to attract curators and critics.'

Gablik offers the next step that evolution: Artists who embrace 'compassionate action that intervenes directly into the world and helps to heal it.' ”     

On April 11, in The News, Marion Garmel reviews Indiana Women Artists: An Invitational Show which was also curated by Holliday T. Day. 

Peg Fierke was invited and participated in the exhibit, about which Garmel writes,

“Peg Fierke's intriguing tear-shaped patterned paintings, where larger and larger patterns emerge from the divisions in the smaller ones.”

(A large charcoal drawing from around this period is below)

Cytophenocrysts, 1991, Peg Fierke, charcoal

On April 22, Steve Mannheimer's column in The Star would cover the same show. Although he does not discuss Fierke's work with specification, he does write her paintings and those by other artists in the show “...offer solid, thoughtful, emotionally resonant experiences.” 

For the duration of the 1990s and forward, Fierke would continue to exhibit and also act as a curator and juror for shows and lecture on art.  

This latter period of her career, although less easy to follow in an ever diminishing art coverage in newspapers, is where her current retrospective exhibition picks up, showing many works from about 1995 through the 2000s.

An Unfinished Retrospective.

A survey of art produced over the career of the late Margaret D. 'Peg' Fierke is currently on display in the Marsh Gallery at Herron School of Art and Design. 

Evidence of Things Unseen shows a variety of techniques, primarily drawing, painting and printmaking. The exhibition statement that accompanies the show emphasizes not only her art and its influences, but also the artist and her association as a teacher of printmaking at Herron for nearly four decades. To quote the statement directly,

“This exhibition offers an opportunity to encounter both the remarkable body of work she created, and the lasting impact of a life dedicated to curiosity, experimentation, and creative inquiry.”

The show is limited to works that were in the artist's studio and estate, so it does not include any works borrowed from public or private collections. Perhaps a more comprehensive Peg Fierke retrospective will be organized in the future to include some of her remarkable works owned by Newfields and other private and public collections. 

(Fierke's beautiful painting What Goes Around is in the Richmond Art Museum collection, image here) 

It would be amazing to see more of the large colorful paintings and early works on paper, and sculptures, described in the art press over the years. 

Until such time, we must relish what is presented in the Herron Galleries show.

It includes an assortment of sketches, doodles, and more refined drawings, as well as etchings and mixed media works – presented loose and unframed on low display tables in the center of the room. 

Among the items are the original copper plates, first engraved then etched, for Module/Mass (discussed earlier) and the beguiling Asymmetrical Self, 1999, now in the Newfields collection (see here).    

Besides the stunning color in the painting Double Silt Experiment (top of page and discussed below), the exhibit is a study in monochrome, showcasing many large graphite and charcoal works, including  Monads and Antinomy, both charcoals from 1995, and the massive undated horizontal, Rock Wall #1, pencil and charcoal. 

As previously mentioned, these are mostly pieces from Fierke's latter career from about 1995 forward. Three large works from the 2000s are astonishing in the ornate complexity they possess. Bone-like forms and outright partial skeletons are intrinsic to these pieces. 

Double Silt Experiment (detail), Peg Fierke

Double Silt Experiment, 2000, oil on canvas, seems to imagine life preserved, or at least the wonder of its essence captured and contained. 

It's not fossilization, but reorganization – experimentation. 

A large, dispersing rib cage form hangs suspended in sedimentary layers of green and brown. Is Fierke showing her own experiment? Or referencing the genesis of life itself from an intelligent design of clay and bone? Or something more personal, and individual to each viewer?

Maine Triangle, 2006, projects its masts upward amid a charcoal mosaic of organized chaos. Everything is everything is everything, we don't know why. 

Maine Triangle, 2006, Peg Fierke

A mystery of bones and a hand waving from the dark of a shelter or a boat. Some compartment of man-made straight lines, anyway. The world outside is of interrelated completion, primordial and whole.   

With the the large charcoal drawing, Fusion of Two Low Entropy Systems, 2006, Fierke seems to return to her earliest imaginings of a paradox or riddle, at least in the title. The name seems akin to her quirky early works which combined organic things with sterile industrial environments. 

Fusion of Two Low Entropy Systems, Peg Fierke

But then again, she always had a way with names.

It may be as simple as charcoal, the medium, and bone, the subject. Two stable substances that left on their own will remain as they are for a long time. Fusion is the action, the catalyst, the process. Fusion is the alchemy, the roll to the rock.    

One thinks, in looking at Peg Fierke's works and walking around her show, that she was a melder and a merger. Like Mother Nature, a consummate multi-tasker. Her many things of earth are stacked together, compressed together, on the surface of her pictures. Often  we don't know what we see, other than marvelous color, movement and form. With an infant's eyes, we wonder.

Beauty, for her, the flow of grain on wood, the bones within a skeleton. Allusions to other patterned mysteries like the pull of gravity, the effect of magnetism on iron shavings or a rainstorm's vibrating ripples on water. Universal multitudes, or separate things together, sublime. 

Her artworks are like the layers of of the earth that preserve a whole history of vibrant living in their rocky remnants.  Her works too, serve as record and mirror her many interests and fascinations. From spontaneous and joyful experiments to a tough virtuosity earned by a devotion to hard work, and everything in between. Its all there.

We see, lines and marks first noticed, then chosen, and put to paper. Finally, fully arranged, and look, they're alive. 

In Peg Fierke's work we see an artist with the intelligence of a lab technician, with with the eye and song of a poet, with the heart of healer and the stamina of a Marathon runner.  Breathing in, breathing out, one step then another, 26 miles later, voila...

(Title not Available) - postcard detail, Peg Fierke
from the exhibition Inside/Outside, 2016
Shircliff Gallery, Vincennes University

Mark Diekhoff, July 2026

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.

Peg Fierke Art – Part Four

Face Gut Rhythm, 1989, Peg Fierke

World View Mirrors.

Peg Fierke would continue to create art and exhibit often during the latter 1980s and all through the 1990s and beyond.  In might be said, that in these years, the second half of her career forward from about 1985 on, she would create the works that are most signature of her name and art today.  

Works from this period possess a timelessness devoid of fad or fashion. Fierke has developed an organic intricacy all her own – regardless of medium – paint, graphite or ink.

Concurrent to her artistic evolution, the first rumblings of tectonic movement in the local art scene and the overall art world in the upcoming years and decades are first sensed, we imagine, and then seen. 

Issues-oriented art exhibitions and related symposiums would continue to register and occur with greater frequency in the local scene.

From about 1985 onward, exhibitions to draw attention to dangers of nuclear proliferation, the need for environment protection, the long overdue equal representation of women and minorities in the arts and other pressing issues were held at various venues in the city, both in private galleries all the way to the Indianapolis Museum of Art. 

Perhaps new ideas would not necessary triumph over earlier approaches. Not at first. But the ideas would at least get their foot in the door, and once inside, make their presence heard. 

A 1986 show would introduce Indianapolis to the eye of Holliday T. Day, the first curator of contemporary art at the the Indianapolis Museum of Art.  She would curate the show, the 6th Indianapolis Art League Regional exhibit that fall.

Marion Garmel would cover the show in her September 25 Brush Strokes column in The Indianapolis News. The writer first discusses the parameters of the show, and then adds some of observations, as well advising of the prize winners, as follows, in part,

“The Art League Regional is open to artists residing within a 250-mile radius of Indianapolis, but is advertised mainly to area universities and art schools. 

That accounts for its trendiness and also, in a way, for its warmed-over New York look. Too many of the paintings smack of the East Village, say, or are bogged down in art history.”

Garmel cites a couple of works as examples of the type she characterizes in a somewhat dismissive way. The writer seems a bit at odds with the curatorial taste of Ms. Day, as she leads her article with those remarks, but does not really explain these feeling with any detail. 

Garmel does mention additional award winners such as  third prize for Eric Schuster's Figure with Carpet, and merit awards for and untitled figure-based oil by Ed Sanders and “Peg Fierke...for Octopus, an obsessively painted large oil of repeated dot-filled ovals.” 

The reader is left to wonder of all the works shown which ones Garmel considered warmed-over, bogged down, or something else altogether.

Just a couple of months later, Fierke along with Indianapolis painter Lois Main Templeton, would exhibit paintings at the Wilson Gallery of the Krannert Fine Art Center of Anderson College in Indiana. 

Here and There, Peg Fierke

Fierke is described in the preview/press release that appeared in the Anderson Daily Bulletin, December 7, 1986, as follows,

“...Fierke...believes an artist's work reflects his or her world view and serves as a mirror to help direct ...growth and change...

Fierke tries to use very few boundaries in her work. She works with a flexible means of expression to accommodate natural deviations and imperfections. Fierke's work also reflects a great amount of spontaneity, which comes as a result of the process of doing rather than preconception.”   

The article contains an image of Fierke's large oil on canvas included in the show, Here and There, and another blurb a few days later included an image of her oil painting, Huston St., also in the show.

Huston St., Peg Fierke

The following year, a show Peaceworks was mounted at Ruschman Art Gallery on Massachusetts Avenue. An Indianapolis News article on April 8, discussed the exhibit,

“Peaceworks (is) an exhibit dealing with the nuclear arms issue...Mark Ruschman, owner of the gallery, is donating space for the exhibit.

The hope is to raise $10,000 toward expenses of the June 28 Indianapolis Concert for Humanity at the Circle Theatre.

The concert itself is a donation and time and talent by central Indiana classical musicians in support of Indianapolis Nuclear Weapons Freeze and Indianapolis Physicians for Social Responsibility.”

Over 25 artists participated, including Peg Fierke.

News writer Garmel would again cover Peg Fierke the following year in her column of May, 20, 1987. The writer reviewed her two-person show with Karl F. Michel on Mass Ave at the time. She writes,

“431 Gallery, the 'alternative space' artists-cooperative gallery...continues to be the least polished of gallery spaces (on Massachusetts Avenue). But its current show of pastel drawings by Karl F. Michel and oil paintings by Peg Fierke...is one of its strongest. 

Fierke, who puts great dabs of paint all over her canvases, has moved from tiny leaf-like ovals to explosive patterns of large sail-like forms converging on one another.”

The following year, 1988, would bring three important exhibitions for Fierke in Indianapolis and the surrounding area.

Marion Garmel would again be the art columnist to cover the first show in question from that year, July's Omnibus Exhibit at Herron Gallery. Her July 14 column explains the rationale for the show, 

“Robert Roman, who has been temporary director of the (Herron) gallery and recently became permanent, decided that it would be beneficial for gallery-goers in Indianapolis to see how their own artists compare with artists in other parts of the country.

He also thought it would be nice to see a 'body of work' by each artists. Since most newcomers have yet to build a 'body of work,' he settled on established artists in 'mid-career.' ”

Artists from outside the area included Millie Wilson - Los Angeles, Herman Costa - New York and Barry Hehemann - Chicago and Rebecca Krinke - Boston. Area artists included Carl Pope, Ellie Siskind and Peg Fierke. 

Garmel considered the show as among the best in Indianapolis that year, and began her review generally speaking and then specifically about Fierke,

“It's an extremely strong exhibit, with as many different styles and visions as there are hours in a day.

The Indiana artists hold their own very well, thank you.

Most exciting is Peg Fierke...whose expansive canvases are ordered with patterns and lines and leaf shapes through which organic, growing forms emerge. With titles like Opulent Entropy and Spiral Jungle, they throb with color and life.”

The 34th Annual Drawing and Small Sculpture Show was presented at Ball State University a month or so later.  Artists from over 40 states entered for consideration of inclusion in the show, and twenty artists were chosen from the almost 400 entries by juror Charlotte Kotik, curator of contemporary art at the Brooklyn Museum in NYC.

Behavior Sediment, Peg Fierke

Fierke was among the twenty, and an image of her large oil crayon work, Behavior Sediment, from the show, was printed in both The Indianapolis Star on September 11, 1988 and Arts Indiana magazine in the October 1988 issue.

Another important exhibit to end Fierke's exhibition year in 1988 was the Indiana Directions '88 show at the Indianapolis Art League's Churchman-Fehsenfeld Gallery that fall.

It was again Marion Garmel who was to cover the show in the local press, and her article appeared in the September 28, Indianapolis News.  The show was a first for the venue, and Garmel explains the inception's conception in the opening lines of her article,

“The Indianapolis Art League had the great idea of stepping in when the Indianapolis Museum of Art dropped its big Indiana Artists Show by staging and Indiana Artists Show of its own. 

But the Indianapolis Art League is not the Indianapolis Museum of Art. It has neither the prestige, the space, nor the resources. 

So Indiana Directions '88, the competitive exhibit for Indiana artists...is a very nice but sparse show...”

Fierke was included, as were Omnibus artists Carl Pope, Pamela De Maris, and Ellie Siskind – and others including Mae Engron (covered elsewhere in the blog here), Ed Sanders (with his painting Torso, covered elsewhere in this blog, here), Valerie Eickmeier for her sculpture, Shark's Tooth, and James Wille Faust for his Best of Show award winner, Illusionist.

Garmel referred to Fierke's work only briefly under a section of  “familiar” works near the closing lines of her review, providing the name of Fierke's piece in the show, Radiomordmous. 

On the Side of Art and Earth.

The next year, Peg Fierke would move from 431 Gallery to a new art enterprise, Goldberg & Feldman Fine Arts, located on the city's north side. Her first show there, High Tolerance for Ambiguity, would be reviewed by Marcus Chandler in The Indianapolis Star, October 8, 1989.  In the review, Chandler also reviews the latest, then current, iteration of the Omnibus exhibit at Herron. 

Chandler contrasts the two exhibits, in so far as artistic motivations inherent in the artworks produced and shown, 

“All in one unsettling afternoon, I traveled...from one end of the artistic spectrum to the other, as I visited the Omnibus '89 exhibition and Peg Fierke's exhibition of paintings and drawings...

The 10 artists exhibiting...(in Omnibus '89) are highly intellectual and, for the most part, deadly serious painters, sculptors and photographers. Each of them uses his or her work to express a point of view.

Fierke, on the other hand, paints pictures that are beautiful. For her, art is an end unto itself. Fierke's paintings and drawings are not vehicles for expressing ideas.”

Thinking about the contrast he experienced, the writer goes on to explain his point of view, regarding the current contemporary art milieu. 

“Suggesting that someone's paintings are 'merely' aesthetically pleasing is damning criticism in many art circles. Art which is not coupled with a message is not 'serious,' so say some critics.

The energy and excitement Fierke invests in her paintings and drawings reveal commitment and purpose on a much higher plane than the high-minded sloganeering and posturing that all too often propels self-proclaimed 'serious art.' ” 

That Chandler is enthusiastic about Fierke's techniques and results is obvious, as he continues,

“Fierke creates frantic energy and movement in her paintings, a feat...challenging in abstract painting. 

She uses an elongated oval...to form patterns.  The repetition of the small figures and the slight differences among them makes her paintings appear to vibrate, often accelerated by Fierke's masterful sense of color.”

He describes two paintings in greater detail, Spiral Jungle and The Ritual, then sums up his observations about the lack of narrative in Fierke's work, despite some occasional referential imagery, observing,  “...it is clear that Fierke is not suggesting a narrative line or trying to drive home a point.” 

Chandler's remarks about Fierke's work and motivating factors seem valid. It's easy to recognize her and her generation as being a part of that mid-Century movement of artists in our city for whom abstraction was a respected foundation of an evolving modern art. The beautiful art for art's sake approach we see in not only Fierke, but Terry Steadham, Steve Redman and James Wille Faust, for examples, who also came of art school age in the '60s.

But back to Chandler and his article, he proceeds to write of the bi-polar shock at seeing Fierke's show first, and then the Omnibus exhibit, on the same afternoon,

“Leaving Fierke's visual playground for the Omnibus exhibit...is like leaving the arms of a sensuous lover to join William F. Buckley's Firing Line.

(In Omnibus,) One is assaulted on all sides by artists with an urgent story to tell.” 

Power Box, 1989, Peg Fierke

Chandler's review is especially helpful in covering Fierke's work in the late '80s, in that time of shifting tastes and oppositional forces in the overall art world. By way of his colorful criticism, he simplifies a nuanced amalgam of major trends and forces affecting the art world of the time to a mere couple of players, two easily understood factions. To a bout or contest, a war of wills, between archetypal energies, as he lays out – the lover and the fighter.  

A contest for, a conquest of, the hearts and minds of artists' brains, galleries' walls and the awestruck applause of the  audience, from that time until today. 

Indeed, as early as the following year, 1990, such a tussle would play out in a series of art shows and a symposium of talks and presentations that would explore these issues of art in great detail in our city, as we shall see in Part Five of this series to follow.  

Also in Part Five, Peg Fierke's later years as an artist through the lens of her current retrospective exhibit at Herron Galleries is discussed. The show has many examples of her work from the 1990s and 2000s and portrays  the substance of Fierke's lifelong efforts – her many years teaching, her lifetime of learning. Her career of creating her Evidence of Things Unseen.  

Mark Diekhoff, July 2026

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.

Peg Fierke Art – Part Three

Module/Mass (detail), 1984, etching on paper, Peg Fierke

Troy Wasn't Built in a Day

Maybe there is likely a natural evolution of a creative spirit, a maturation, that arrives around the time of mid-career. When the first experiments are over but their lessons have been learned. By which time accolades and innovation are accepted as a part of the process as opposed to means to an end.    

As the 1970s were ending, with the next decade on the horizon, the art of Peg Fierke would begin a transition away from a vantage point of a surreal observation, an almost clinical depiction of the quirks and qualms of life, toward a viewpoint less apart and looking, and more at one with and being. 

Ideas of cross-hatching and the many steps of a marathon, and of personal life, would come more to the forefront of her thinking and appear in her artworks. 

Fierke's first inklings of this change are noted by writer Marion Garmel in her review of Fierke's new work exhibited at a 2-person show, along with Robert Eagerton, at Herron Gallery in 1977. 

In her November 9, Indianapolis News column, the writer observes,

 “Miss Fierke('s)...etchings, colored-pencil and ink drawings, and one large oil are filled with organic, vegetable-like forms in surreal juxtaposition.”

Garmel is describing in this line just a portion of Fierke's works in the show, works that emphasize earlier directions. The writer also notes a new direction for Fierke, in many other pieces,

“Most recently, the artist has moved into color(,) and a kind of wispy, coloring book style dominates her drawings. There is little of the old geometry from which she once constructed three-dimensional environments based on her drawings, but there is a great sense of motion in these new works.”   

Over the following couple of years, Fierke would be involved in numerous activities, both art and otherwise, as noted in the local newspapers. 

In 1978 , she would participate in a Herron Gallery theme show called Chairs. 

Cursory newspaper coverage of the event advised readers that the show of artworks was by Herron students and faculty. The only artist mentioned by name in a February 25 blurb was Fierke, about whom was written “...some marvelous prints by Peg Fierke in which chairs float in space, straddle each other and serve as hanging lines for underwear and seats for grass.”

Related to her life outside of art, Fierke was a volunteer and member in various outings for the Central Indiana Bicycling Association around that time.

Fierke would participate in Roadshow '79 the following year, in what is described in the Indianapolis Star, on July 15,  as an exhibit “of works on 40 billboards throughout Marion County sponsored by the Indianapolis Art League.”   

That same summer, Fierke would be in the group show of local, national and international artists at  Indianapolis Museum of Art, called Contemporary Prints and Drawings by Contemporary Women. The other local women also included were Samia Halaby, who studied at Indiana University at Bloomington, and Martha Slaymaker, a former Indianapolis resident then living in Albuquerque, NM. The more widely-known participants included Alice Neel and Helen Frankenthaler.

Fierke would cap off the '70s, and perhaps an era of her earlier style, with two important shows in the 1980;  a smelly opus of a surreal swan song first, and then the show at the dawn of her new and percussive age of many marks.  

Starting with the first show, in February of 1980, as part of the annual Herron faculty exhibit, Fierke presented her installation/sculpture, Waitin' On Summer.  

I have already covered this artwork, and Marion Garmel's impressions of this thoroughly post-modern Fierke in the prior piece about Steve Mannheimer here.  

But for purposes of understanding this period in Fierke's career, and her art influences at the time, a second look at Garmel's column is helpful.  It quotes Fierke, in her own words,

“Sometimes art seems irrelevant to the rest of your life. I was thinking of the recent Joseph Beuys exhibit in New York. It was so strong because his life is so much a part of his art. It seems important to make other things important to me part of my art.”  

Garmel further writes, explaining,

“Miss Fierke is an avid gardener and various parts of Waitin' On Summer had hung in her backyard since they were first exhibited, in an entirely different manner, at Editions Ltd. Gallery. The seed box, for example once hung from the ceiling and had giant seed pods attached to it. Later it sat in a dead tree in Miss Fierke's backyard, as pictured in a photograph that accompanies the piece.” 

Garmel again quotes the artist,

“It has deteriorated greatly since and that is part of the idea of the piece. The generative notion, of life and growing organic matter. Time goes on. Things change.”

By that November, in a show of pen and ink drawings, it seems Fierke's time had come for things to change.  Marion Garmel, always aware of Fierke's exhibitions and vigilant in covering her career arc, devoted a column of Brush Strokes to the show. 

Held at the Jewish Community Center in Indianapolis, the exhibition was reviewed in the November 1, 1980, Indianapolis News.  The column opens with the line, “No one can accuse Margaret “Peg” Fierke of standing still.”

Garmel goes on describe Fierke's award winning days, reputation and past work, from Grass in 1972 to the most recent Waitin' On Summer, from earlier that year. Garmel then describes a change,

“Now Miss Fierke has taken a new turn. Peg Fierke: Recent Works...is an intriguing show of pen and ink drawings and paintings in which surrealist space and displacement of objects  no longer plays any part.

Indeed, the drawings and paintings all seem to tell little stories in images derived from the artist's current concerns – jogging, bicycling and gardening. More interesting yet, perspective and attempts to create illusion of three-dimensional space have disappeared. All the works are surface pieces, done with a cover of cross-hatched lines that make the images appear to pop out and recede from behind a theatrical scrim.”

Garmel then quotes Fierke directly, from remarks the artist gave at the show's opening,

“In school you are always taught the most contemporary ways of printmaking...But I would go up to the Art Institute (in Chicago) and look at the old prints and love the things the old artists did, the crosshatching, the patterns formed. By manipulating the direction of the stroke you could bring out different things. It's a nice way to get transparencies.

Then I found I could get the same effects of obscuring and transparency with color.”   

Garmel continues her own observations, in response to Fierke's comments about technique, 

“(Fierke) has always been more a technician than a storyteller. Yet the works in this show are almost little autobiographies. It is easy to see what the artist's life is like. She's a dog owner, likes farms and farm animals, runs, bicycles and loves to garden. 

There is a even marriage between life and art in the way these new works are constructed.” 

And along those lines, she quotes Fierke again,

“I think the meticulous mark-making is a lot like running a marathon. The careful buildup, the training – one step at a time, one day at a time. When you run a marathon you don't run 26 miles at once, you run one step at a time.”

In December, some of the same works were shown at Herron and reviewed by Elizabeth Willis-Sowards in Arts Insight magazine. Willis-Sowards also describes the autobiographical nature of many of Fierke's latest images, such as of “the artist's dog, Otto, and wooden protective structures from her garden.”

She further describes the effects of Fierke's new techniques,

“Space and perspective are...multifaceted and complex in Fierke's works. Subtle layers of transparent space , as found in The Wrench or the Troy Bilt painting, juxtapose in the exhibit with drawings like Otto's House which seems to have countless vanishing points, yet remains cohesive.”     

Mid-career Milestone.

The 1980s would bring recurring Herron faculty exhibits every couple of years to showcase Peg Fierke's developing mark making. 

In 1981, her Line of Scrimmage series, a suite of pieces, is described by Garmel in The News as

“a line of hair-width pencil marks snakes like an S, circles like an O and divides like a zipper in 15 panels.” 

Following the progression, in an October 14, 1983, review of the then current Herron faculty show, Garmel describes Fierke's work that year,

“Peg Fierke, who in the past has gone from crisp, linear surrealistic graphics to found-object sculptures, has changed again. Here she is showing heavily painted canvases where each dense stroke is like a feather on a bird.”

By 1985, Peg Fierke will be showing at the new 431 Gallery on Massachusetts Avenue, and it will be a new writer that will review her show. Marcus Chandler, writing in The Indianapolis Star  on March 17, 1985, in a column headlined, Peg Fierke's repetitive patterns are hypnotic, begins the review, in part as follows,

“Peg Fierke is a paragon of compulsion. In her paintings, drawings and prints exhibited at the 431 Gallery...she ceaselessly repeats a single small form. 

With the exception of just two drawings, all of her works are completely covered with elongated ellipses, each approximately the size and the shape of a guppy, each dotted with a dollop of color.

Schools of ellipses are arranged in some of the works as swirling abstract images and in others as recognizable shapes.”  

(An etching on paper from this period, Module/Mass is on current display in the Peg Fierke retrospective exhibit in the Herron Galleries, Evidence of Things Unseen. The show also contains the engraved copper plate used to create that print - see image at top of page)

The writer discusses what he considers the particularly strong works in the show,

“The best paintings in Ms. Fierke's exhibit have a similar hypnotic power, such as On A Roll wherein the gentle flow of countless ellipses creates flower like images. The artist elegantly employs the essential ingredient of hypnosis: repeated suggestion.”

 

Marion Garmel would cover the same show in The Indianapolis News. In her column headlined A kaleidoscope of art appearing March 8, 1985, she writes,

“You might not think much could be made of a thin leaf shape in varying colors but Peg Fierke, in her recent paintings at the 431 Gallery ...would prove you wrong.

Miss Fierke...has been through a number of stags in her career, from the deftly surreal drawings that won her acclaim in the early 1970s to the organic “growing” constructions that she displayed in Herron faculty shows two years ago. 

Now she has turned to painting and a virtuoso turn it is. Seventeen works, mostly paintings, are in her one woman show, all based on the same idea: an oval leaf form repeated hundreds of times across a canvas, sometimes with thick outlines, sometimes with paint-daubed bodies and sometimes with little eyes so that they look like swarms of fish.”

In the thoroughly descriptive and informative column, the writer discusses the chronology of the works, the gallery layout, and a few paintings in particular,

“...Fish Eyes, with its pink eyes in purple fish, looks like fish eyes before you read the tile. On A Roll, which sold at the opening for $1500, has a sunburst effect, in oranges and greens, like a hundred bird feathers proudly spread...

...by far the best is Constancy of Change, selling for $2000 and worth every penny of it. Here the  leaf shapes are outlined in thick yellow with some white space in between, and, as the leaves touch and don't touch across the canvas, a wonderful organic pattern appears. It gives you the feeling of floating in space.”

That fall, Garmel would cover the Herron Faculty Biennial Exhibition in her News column on October 25, 1985. Fresh off her 431 Show, Fierke continues to deliver beautiful artwork, as the writer describes,

“Peg Fierke's The Blood of Others, in her current style of overall painting, is a large canvus full of eyes in which, at strategic points, the paint drips down like tears. It is one of the finest things she has ever done.” 

If Fierke had been peddling her bike toward the top of a hill, perhaps she'd reached some sort of summit by that point. Or if peddling in the desert, some sort oasis or fountain had been found. One thing is clear, she had not strayed far or often, if ever at all, from her road of discovery.

A marathon route, although perhaps preset and known at the outset, is challenging by way of duration, through its pounding pavement.  It presents its own kind of mystery –  Will I make it? –  in every one of its thousands of strides. 

A bicycle ride on an Indiana country road presents adventure at every 90 degree turn. Sometimes the tidy scheme and utility of a farm layout with its fields and buildings, sometimes the shimmering oceans of leaves of growing corn in the wind. If not summer, the winter trees, and the bifurcation of naked branches, like river deltas reaching in the sky. 

In Fierke's work the 431 Gallery Show in 1985, we see a mid-career change of route. A new path underfoot, fresh gravel for the bicycle wheels. Something new is growing in the garden, and we shall see something new in the rhythmic strata of Fierke's work to come, something of a wood-grain flow will come to fruition in Part Four. 

Photo of Peg Fierke in 1982, Indianapolis News

Mark Diekhoff, July 2026

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