What a year+ it has been here on earth. I am writing this in July 2021 as life emerges from the Covid-19 pandemic, and as I reflect on where I want to spend some of my personal time going forward. How many of us have been asking ourselves existential questions these last months about where we spend our energy, where we want to cut back, or where we want to plant seeds to grow? “How we spend our days, is how we spend our lives” wrote the author Annie Dillard. My days are most often spent thinking about my professional work at the Portland Art Museum, where I serve as the Director of Learning & Community Partnerships. It’s a wonderful job with amazing colleagues. On a very good day, I get to think about art and I get to work closely with artists. I am grateful. And yet this last year has been incredibly tough. We’ve laid off incredible staff and done our best to keep the museum afloat. We will keep going… We will keep trying to do better.
This brings me to this post. Lately, I have been thinking a lot about “Project Elsie Lower Pomeroy” and I deeply want to keep it going and to keep trying to do better. There is so much potential in sharing the story of Elsie, whose life and work is begging to be known by a wider audience (and I have SO many ideas on how to do that). As I think about where I want to put more energy, it will be right here. I can’t promise that anything I write will be poetic or pithy but I hope it will be a window into an artist’s life and time.
I have done an okay job of posting on Elsie’s Instagram page @elsielowerpomeroy this last year +. I am hoping that if you are reading this you have also followed along there. We have 98 whole followers, thank you very much. If you haven’t followed please pay it a visit. I may try to transfer some of the content from there, over here. In particular, I am excited to share the recent publication of An Illustrated Catalog of American Fruits & Nuts: The US Department of Agriculture Pomological Watercolor Collection (Atelier Editions, 2021). A first of its kind, this book gathers a rich selection of images from the USDA Pomological Watercolor Collection where from 1886 to 1942 a stable of a few dozen artists, including a small number of women, painted the fruits and nuts of a growing American agricultural landscape. Elsie painted for the USDA when she was in her early 20s and a student fresh from the Corcoran School of Art in Washington D.C. Elsie is one of 9 artists featured in the book. I just received my copy of this beautiful publication and I will plan to write some posts about it as I make my way through it, Until then, maybe get your own copy or see if your local library is willing to carry it. It was recently written about in both The New York Times and The Washington Post so it seems to be making an impression.