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'Margaret of Winona': Artist, Sculptor, Professor |
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Horses in portraits? Sculpted horses? Paper ones that folks eagerly buy? Reproductions faithful to a horse's proportions and stylized ones that emphasize different qualities of a horse's nature? To many, this motif says “BVM Margaret Mear.” But Margaret's art is certainly not limited to one theme and certainly not to one medium. Her passion for art seems to have come into the world in 1945 when she did. “My early life! We lived on a farm and my grandfather raised horses. I didn't even know that there was such a thing as art but I did get clay out of the creek and made little dogs and cats and chickens. “I even made chalk out of the clay and drew on the side of our white house. I used crushed leaves for green and crushed flower petals for the colors. Grade school art was a disappointment—you had to stay in the lines and use only certain colors, but I did discover art supplies. “An uncle gave me my first set of real oil paints. When moved to Pontiac, Ill., I met the BVMs in the 7th grade at St. Mary's and met another phase of the art world in a program called something like ‘A Masterpiece a Month' where we received a small reproduction of a masterpiece to study. “Our high school didn't have any art instruction at all, but I did get encouragement from my friends and the local art club, but I also heard often, ‘Oh Margaret, what will she ever do to earn a living, all she can to is draw horses!'” This changed when, as a BVM scholastic and junior at Mundelein College in Chicago, Margaret enrolled in her first real art course. Taught by BVM Blanche Marie Gallagher, who “taught me almost everything I know” and has been a powerful influence. Margaret learned not only the fundamentals, the procedures and the spirit of true art, she also witnessed the finesse required to gently correct and guide students to draw from themselves the latent ability they may not have realized they had. Margaret has developed her own methods for this sensitive interaction; much of this delicate balancing act is her own wisdom as she teaches Drawing, Design and Sculpture at St. Mary's University in Winona, Minn., where she has been on the faculty for 31 years, half her life. Her career there has not been exclusively teaching but also using her talents to enhance the campus, indoors and out, with paintings and sculptures.
She received a lot of free advice about getting it out through her average size door, but she had measured well and kept the dimensions exactly, so when the men came to move it, they were skeptical and Margaret was ready. “Set him on his tail.” Frame and all squeezed their way out the door, through the narrow, twisting corridor and into the trailer to be towed to its new home on a lawn in St. Paul, Minn. Margaret learned welding as part of her graduate studies at the University of Idaho and it certainly has served her, and others, very well.
Margaret created both busts by modeling the clay from life, then transporting it most gingerly (one from Florida to Minnesota by air) to a special foundry where it was coated with a wax to create a shell that then served as the mold for the molten bronze. She also designed a memorial to five students who died in the Mississippi river several years ago. Looking forward to a summer of creating art—working six hours or more a day—Margaret will prepare for a faculty art show in January and a fall exhibit in Las Vegas, where a St. Mary's graduate has opened an art gallery and invited Margaret to submit works for an autumn showing. He will ship them from Minnesota, arrange for their display and return those that didn't sell, if any. How does inspiration come to an artist? Says Margaret, “It may come from your subconscious into your head or even come in a dream. Some inspirations work out, some seem worthy of the discard pile, and others begin in one direction and then the “idea light bulb” will pop on and something that seemed dull will be transformed into something far more satisfying. One psychological tactic Margaret uses with herself is to quit whatever she is doing “on a high note” so that she will be anxious to get back to it. Enabling students to develop their talents is a combination of suggesting, encouraging, coaxing and nudging. Then often the light bulb pops on, the students see success and are thrilled at what they have accomplished—all by themselves. Some students long to create works they can be proud of but are very hesitant to try. This, Margaret has discovered, is more likely the case with girls than boys, who sometimes think more highly of their work than is justified. One has to be a psychologist to give the right quantities of praise tempered with reality to draw the very best from students. Riding the “real thing”—a horse named Moose—helps Margaret relax from the tensions that come with life in a busy and sometimes stressful university situation, where she must balance her own need to create with her responsibilities as a teacher, instructing and guiding students as they create. About the author: Jean Byrne, BVM (Jean Francis) is a writer and researcher in the BVM Archives. Return to Table of Contents. |
One of these is an almost life-sized equine sculpture ( left), constructed on a heavy wire frame base, with an outer layer composed of welded steel plates that were intended to rust and did. Some time later, two women, both artists, admired that horse so much that they commissioned a similar sculpture, so Margaret spent another 300 hours and made a similar horse, in her studio no less. 
St. Mary's campus is also graced with some of Margaret's paintings in the entrance of the Fine Arts Building and two sculpted busts on campus—one outside Hendrickson Hall is of William G. Hendricksen, a most generous donor to the University over many years. The other, in the administration building, of is Christian Brother Charles Severin (right) who was a Professor of Biology at St. Mary's for decades.