Partner
Amanda K. Hebeler,
Ramona
Solberg
Queer Places:
Harvard University (Ivy League), 2 Kirkland St, Cambridge, MA 02138
E Eighth Av, Ellensburg, WA 98926
(between C Street and N Wildcat Way).
Sarah Spurgen Gallery, 400 E University Way, Ellensburg, WA 98926
Harlan Cemetery
Harlan, Shelby County, Iowa, USA
Sarah Spurgeon (October
30, 1903 - October, 1985) moved to Ellensburg, WA, from Iowa in 1939 and joined the art department at the college the same year. She took a hiatus from her work at Central Washington College of Education during World War II when she went to work for Boeing as an artist. Following the war, she returned to Ellensburg and continued as a professor until her retirement in 1971.
“The Lavender Palette: Gay Culture and the Art of Washington State” at the
Cascadia Museum in Edmonds was a packed art show and a powerful history
lesson. Museum curator David F. Martin put together artwork by dozens of gay
men and women who often, just a few short decades ago, had to hide who they
were in order to express themselves artistically. The exhibit closed on
January 26, 2020. The featured artists included Edmonds native Guy Anderson, illustrator
Richard Bennett,
Ward Corley,
Thomas Handforth,
Mac Harshberger,
Jule Kullberg, Delbert J. McBride,
Orre Nelson Nobles,
Malcolm Roberts, potter
Lorene Spencer,
Sarah Spurgeon,
ceramicist
Virginia Weisel,
Clifford Wright, and also one-time Woodway
resident Morris Graves,
Leo Kenney,
Mark
Tobey, Lionel Pries,
Leon Derbyshire,
and
Sherrill Van Cott.
Edna May "Sarah" Spurgeon was born in Harlan, Iowa, where her father was
a successful businessman and partner in the Trans-Mississippi Grain Elevator
in Galva, Iowa. She graduated from Galva High School and then attended the
Universitv of lowa, where she received her bachelor of arts degree and
certificate of education in 1927 and, in 1931, a master of arts degree in the
combined fields of graphic and plastic arts and in art history. Her thesis was
titled "Decorative Figure Arrangement (a painted thesis)."
At the
university, all four of her primary instructors were women: Ellen Thornberg,
Irma Bratton, Catherine McCartney, and Alma Held.
Spurgeon continued her
education at Harvard University under a Carnegie Fellowship for two summers in
1929 and 1930. At Harvard she attended one of the country's earliest museum
studies programs under Paul J. Sachs. Around this time she also
attended the Grand Central School of Art in New York, studying with George
Oberteuffer and with George Bridgman, known for his
expertise in life drawing.
She then went on to teach at the University of Iowa
for four years. During her time there she exhibited her oil paintings in
national and regional exhitions including the Corcoran Gallery, the Kansas City
Art Institute, and the Joslyn Museum in Omaha, Nebraska as well as winning
several regional awards. In 1933, Spurgeon attended the Chicago World's Fair, A Century of Progress
International Exposition. It was there that she first saw the paintings of
Thomas Hart Benton, whose work she admired and was later influenced
by, especially in the use of tempera as an artistic medium.
Her work was
noticed by famed Iowa artist Grant Wood, and he hired her to
assist him, along with other talented young artists, to create a series of
murals for the Iowa State University library in Ames, Iowa, in 1934. The
murals were commissioned under the Civil Works Administration as part of
President Roosevelt's emergency employment New Deal programs. She also modeled
for a few of the female figures in the murals. As she recalled, "All the boys
put on jeans and I had an apron made out of old-fashioned dark blue calico... Most of the people on the project were men. In fact I don't recall another
woman besides myself being there in Iowa City."
In a 1964 interview recalling
her time with Grant Wood she stated: "He was sort of chubby and colorless in
appearance and a very quiet, very gentle person. His suggestions I'm sure were almost
always well received because he was aggressive in his promotion or criticism."
Many of the techniques that she learned from the senior gay artist she
continued to use in her own work and imparted to her students. One of the visiting artists invited by Wood to view the
progress of the murals was Jean Chariot, an extremely talented
muralist, who had worked primarily in Mexico and was admired and encouraged by
Diego Rivera. Chariot's interaction with Spurgeon and the other young artists
also made a lasting impression on her.
She told her interviewer, "I've lost
Grant's recipe for priming and I wish I hadn't, because it was brilliantly
white. I've never found anything to equal it. It was composed of zinc white
in a powder form. Then it involved ammonia, and it was USP ammonia; it wasn't
household ammonia, it was the pure quill. This was all put together hot...
So, that was one thing I learned—the mechanics of preparing a canvas. And that
stayed with me. I have my students do that now. I don't have them buy a
ready-prepared canvas. I have them build their own stretchers and put the
canvas on, and then prime it. I feel that that [mural] experience was a very
valuable introduction to the technology of painting. It meant a lot to my
teaching, to my students. They get a lot out of that actual physical contact
with the dimension and the size. Long before they paint on it; and I find
that's one of the best rounte into
composition. it's a more natural route into composition than the design
route." Following her experience with Wood, she produced her own mural, a
mar of Iowa City for the University Demonstration School that covered two
walls measuring approximately 22-by-8 feet.
In 1935, Spurgeon
was hired to teach English at Buena Vista College in Storm Lake, Iowa. The
school was only eighteen miles from her parents' home and both were suffering,
from serious health problems that concerned her. At the time, the school had
no art department and she endeavored to start one. She became the only faculty
member of the department and struggled to establish it, even doing some of the
construction work for making the gallery into a space for exhibiting art.
Since there were no funds available from the school, she used her own money to
purchase basic art supplies for the students.
In I939, Spurgeon moved to
Ellensburg, Washington, to accept a position in the Art Department of Central
Washington College of Education (now University). Around this time she began
using Sarah as her given name, although she never legally changed it. In 1942
she took a two-and-a-half-year leave of absence to work for the Boeing Company
as a production illustrator on the B-17 and B-29 aircrafts. She had attempted
to join the military to serve in the war but was rejected. In Seattle she
joined Women Painters of Washington and became involved in their exhibitions
and lectures.
After the war, she returned to Ellensburg and resumed her
position at the college. Sometime in the 1940s Spurgeon met fellow CWCE
professor Amanda K. Hebeler, who had joined the faculty in 1924.
Hebeler had earned her BS and MS degrees from Columbia University, with graduate study at Yale and
the University of Southern California. Director of the College Elementary
School from 1929 until 1956, she was actively involved in numerous
educational and cultural organizations in the region. She was professor of
education from 1935 until her retirement as professor emeritus in 1960. In
1963 the school was renamed the Amanda Hebeler Elementary School (later named
the Washington Center for Early Childhood Education). The school was closed in
the spring of 1981. Today, Hebeler Hall at the university is named in her honor.
In 1954, Spurgeon painted a large modernist mural for the Ginkgo Petrified
Forest Museum now known as Ginkgo Petrified Forest Interpretive Center near
Vantage, on the Columbia River. She designed and executed the twenty-foot-wide
interior mural, while architect Lionel Pries designed the exterior decorations
at the entrance to the building. The petrified forest was discovered in 1931
by a fellow CWCE faculty member, geologist George F. Beck, whom she later
memorialized in a portrait now in the university's collection.
After the mural was
completed, she and Amanda spent three summer months in 1955 touring various cities in Italy.
Spurgeon went on to be a major force in the university's art department,
and was a beloved teacher even though some of her students whimsically
referred to her as "the general" for her strict professionalism. Her influence
was acknowledged by her students in 1959, when the staff of the university's
yearbook, the Hyakem, dedicated the book to her, stating, "Even more than a
teacher is probably the best description that could be written of Miss Sarah
Spurgeon, associate professor of art on Central's faculty. Even more than a
teacher, a true inspiration to her present and her former students in this
artist and art educator... And, too, we want to dedicate our 1959 annual to
this teacher who, no matter how busy she is, always makes it a point to have
plenty of time, ample time, to listen with real understanding and sympathetic
interest to a student's problems, troubles, joys, sorrows, successes ...
dreams."
Her life partner, Amanda, passed away in 1969, and Spurgeon
retired in 1971. A final tribute came in 1978 when Central Washington
University celebrated the dedication of the Sarah Spurgeon Gallery with an
exhibit featuring fifty-five of her former students.
Her last years were
plagued with poor health, and she relied on former students and friends to
assist her, especially the prominent regional artists Jane Orleman and her
husband, Richard C. Elliott. Spurgeon passed away in October 1985, surrounded
by loved ones and in the arms of her intimate friend, jewelry artist
Ramona
Solberg.
Spurgeon's mural for the University of Iowa as well as
her mural and decorative work for the Ginkgo Petrified Forest Museum have
been destroyed.
Neither Sarah's nor Amanda's obituary contained any mention of
the other's name.
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