PORT ANGELES — Studio Bob will host the Dorothea Morgan Memorial Art Show from 5 p.m. to 8 p.m. Saturday.
The free, all-ages art show will feature music by Tin Sandwich at the studio at 118½ E. Front St. in Port Angeles during the Second Saturday Art Walk.
The show will continue on Sunday from noon to 3 p.m. Studio Bob has beer, wine, ciders, soft drinks, coffee and snacks available for purchase.
Morgan, who was born in 1925 and died in 2019, began having one-woman shows as far back as November 1979 at Peninsula College. She taught classes for Peninsula College at that time, being the first teacher in the area to do Plein-air classes with her students. Some of the classes were offered through the parks.
She was well known both on the North Olympic Peninsula and in Alaska for her work with children. After finishing her Montessori training via Oxford University, Morgan ran nine Montessori schools while teaching 40 pre-schoolers in her own model classroom and trained Montessori teachers through the University of Alaska, according to a press release.
Dorothea Morgan.
In 1982, Morgan, who never stopped learning, received her master’s of fine arts from the University of Guanajuato in Mexico, where she lived for two years and relearned her native tongue.
She worked in oils, watercolors and etchings, and also was an iconographer and quilter, all of which will be represented at the June Second Weekend Art Opening.
Morgan was born in Barcelona, Spain, to a Spanish father and a German mother. After her family was forced to flee Spain during the Spanish Civil War, her early schooling and art training was in Nürnberg, Germany, where she danced in the ballet corp of the Nünberg Opera.
From an early age, she had to make all of the stationery and cards for her family. In addition, because the times were so hard, she would decorate bookmarks for the Confirmation classes, wedding announcements and certificates, birth announcements and anything else that was required. To expedite these endeavors, her mother bought her a new set of colored pencils every year.
When Morgan moved to the United States in the mid-1940s, she brought this European art medium with her and was probably the first serious artist to have a major show in ink and colored pencil, according to the release.
Her first show in the U.S. was in Springfield, Mass., in 1947 and was completely sold out. Decades later, other artists joined her in this medium. She was one of several artists featured in the Berol Company book; Berol Pencils purchased two of her pieces.
Morgan “has not only shown in many parts of the United States, but she has guided the next generation of artists wherever she has lived,” according to the release.
She has been juried into the NW Watercolor Society, the Women Painters of Washington and the NW Print Council.
Her philosophy: ‘To work with love in one’s heart is an artist’s mission, to help make the world a better place. I work to make people happy and am delighted if, through my work, my paintings and drawings, the capacity for enjoying God’s handiwork is made a little larger for the beholder. To see the world, to see our surroundings and look into our inner world with fresh eyes, this is a wonderful experience — an experience I work to share with my fellow humans.”
For more information or to contact Studio Bob, email [email protected], call 415-990-0457 or visit https://studiobob downtownpa.wixsite.com/studiobob.
