LECTURE: I am a Harwood Steiger Addict | Cynthia deVillemarette

Join Cynthia deVillemarette for this presentation describing how a normal, everyday fabric collector became a confirmed Harwood Steiger addict. Told from the perspective of someone who loves Mid Century design, the Southwest and specialty fabrics, the process of identifying and acquiring Harwood Steiger fabrics will be explored. The features that characterize a Steiger design and the process of creating them will be touched on as the presenter describes her devolvement from enthusiastic buyer to full blown addict. Richly illustrated with many, many photo examples, the presentation provides a good basic inventory of the artist’s varied subjects and body of work. Mr. Steiger’s history in Tubac Village and his influence on the Santa Cruz Valley Artist Association will be discussed, as well as, his eternal influence in mid-century screen printing of fabrics.  Examples of the work will be on hand for examination and to punctuate the artist’s stunning results. deVillemarette is originally from New Orleans, where creative passion is a well known contaminant in the municipal water supply. Educated in California, she worked in the Washington, D. C. area for over twenty years as a marketing consultant and marketing executive, garnering numerous awards for creative marketing program design and product design.  Throughout her life two threads have bound her to continuous creative efforts: a dedication to the creative arts and a love of fabric. Now retired, Ms. deVillemarette is nearly a full time quilter and is developing a book on the textile artist, Harwood Steiger. She lives in Phoenix, with her husband, who seldom complains about her ever growing fabric collection. From the 1950s to the 1970s, “Steiger” was name associated with Southern Arizona fabric design. Harwood and Sophie Steiger ran the Tubac Steiger Studio, producing extraordinary silkscreen fabric design that would become synonymous with the Southern Arizona style in the post WWII era. Harwood Steiger was born in 1900 in Fairport New York.  His interest in art inspired him to enroll in the Rochester Institute of Technology to study painting, taking his first job as a colorist in a dye plant factory – an important moment that would impact his work later in life.  He then enrolled in the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts, taking every course they had to offer. After moving to New York in the 1920s to make a name for himself, Harwood was swept into the depression, like the rest of the country. Undaunted, the entrepreneurial young man opened his own art studio and began teaching classes.  Harwood met and married Sophie.