{"id":27006,"date":"2014-11-06T00:12:30","date_gmt":"2014-11-06T06:12:30","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/?p=27006"},"modified":"2018-11-27T09:23:50","modified_gmt":"2018-11-27T15:23:50","slug":"artist-profile-blanche-p-wilson","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/artist-profile-blanche-p-wilson\/","title":{"rendered":"Artist Profile: Blanche P. Wilson"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"blanchewilsonblog\"<\/a><\/p>\n

<\/a><\/p>\n

Blanche Wilson may be the oldest working artist in Utah. As she prepares to celebrate her 92nd birthday this month, she\u2019s busy taking down a show at Weber State and moving into a new home in Orem where she\u2019s setting up a printmaking studio. And since she suffers from macular degeneration, she\u2019s also struggling with what it means to be a \u201cworking\u201d artist.<\/p>\n

Wilson\u2019s first artistic struggle, at least the first she can recall, was how to depict a croquet wicket. The Salt Lake native, born Blanche Petersen, was sitting in the lawn of the home in Pocatello, Idaho, her family had moved to when she was 2. With her favorite medium of the time, crayon, the pre-schooler had scribbled a large expanse of green on a sheet of paper. But her emerging talents were stymied when she looked at the white plastic hoops embedded across the lawn. She went to her mother for help, and then her father, but neither had the answer. \u201cSo I just drew some squiggle things. To me it looked just fine. That was the first time I can remember really trying to create something.\u201d<\/p>\n

What her mother and father might have lacked as art instructors they made up for as supportive parents. \u201cThey paid for lessons [Wilson also plays the violin] and bought materials and were always encouraging me to keep working,\u201d she says of them. When her father had one of her early pieces professionally framed and hung it in the living room, it was a very encouraging sign, if also somewhat daunting due to its prominent place.<\/p>\n

First in Pocatello and later in Portland, where the family moved when Wilson was 8, the budding artist spent all the time she could drawing and painting. At a time when public education provided art classes through elementary, middle and secondary school, she had plenty of opportunity to practice and develop her skills. \u201cI learned early that it\u2019s like anything else, like the violin. You had to practice to get better.\u201d She always had a sense that she would be a professional artist. While the friends she had grown up drawing with chose more practical studies in college, Wilson studied art, first at Marylhurst College, a Catholic women\u2019s school in Oregon, and then at Brigham Young University.<\/p>\n

World War II was driving the economy when Wilson graduated from college, so her later artistic pursuits took a practical turn. She began drafting for the military in Portland, then moved to Washington, D.C., where she worked for the Navy\u2019s dazzle program. First developed in World War I, \u201crazzle dazzle painting\u201d as it was known, was a camouflage system designed to make targeting ships more difficult (it looks like a mix of cubism and op-art, and Picasso claimed cubism was its inspiration). Wilson\u2019s task was to draw the various craft and then turn the drawings over to commercial-artists-turned-commisisoned-officers, who would experiment with different designs. \u201cThey were done in colors of the sea,\u201d she says. \u201cThey had blues you couldn\u2019t believe.\u201d<\/p>\n

In D.C. she married David Jay Wilson, an Ogden native who had served in the Marines, and after the war they returned to Utah. When they started having children, Wilson\u2019s pursuits, like many women of the era, became more domestic than professional. Pencils and paints never left her hands, however. \u201cI drew pictures of the house across the street, and of the ironing board with an iron on it. If I saw a plate with a fork on it, I would draw that. I would just draw anything.\u201d This included anyone she could get to sit still long enough for a portrait: her children, unknowing sitters in the pews on Sunday, and friends coming for a visit. She recalls one neighbor boy, about 11 at the time, who came to the back door and asked Wilson if she would paint his portrait so he could give it to his mother as a birthday present. The boy\u2019s confident offer to pay her \u2014 \u201cI have 12 dollars,\u201d he said \u2014 won her over. He eventually became her son-in-law, so both the portrait and the money have remained in the family.<\/p>\n

While she was still raising her children (five girls, one boy), Wilson returned to school and earned a teaching degree from Weber College (now Weber State University) in 1966. Soon after, she was asked by the superintendent of the Utah Schools for the Deaf and the Blind to substitute at the School for the Blind for the spring term. She enjoyed the experience so much she took classes all summer at BYU to learn how to work with blind students and returned to the school in the fall. She remained for 21 years, working with small groups of grade-school kids who were either blind or visually impaired. Because an advanced degree meant a better salary, she also enrolled in a master\u2019s degree program at BYU. Her choice to study art might seem ironic, considering her pupils, but she was able to bring her training into the classroom (she also taught swimming, cooking and other non-academic subjects). The students would work with clay, wire, wax and other 3-D materials. \u201cThere were two or three kids that got pretty good at making heads,\u201d she recalls. \u201cThe interesting thing was their ears were usually huge . . . I guess, you know, their learning is mostly vocal, so the ears become very important.\u201d<\/p>\n

For part of her master\u2019s curriculum, Wilson enrolled in a printmaking class at the University of Utah. With the help of Bob Kleinschmidt and other professors, she became enamored of woodblock prints. \u201cI never felt competent with my painting,\u201d she says. \u201cMy woodbocks always won prizes but my paintings never did. So it made me like woodblocks better.\u201d<\/p>\n

In the \u201970s, after completing her degree, things began to take off. She found representation with Phillips Gallery and her work became known to a larger audience. \u201cI had some shows and people started buying my work and I thought, \u2018This is what I always wanted.’\u201d<\/p>\n

Wilson says she is attracted to the complex nature of woodcuts, to the need for planning and attention to detail. Black-and-white prints are fairly easy to compose, but prints with five or six colors require planning and multiple blocks. First she\u2019ll create small sketches to try out compositions, experimenting with shapes, darks, lights, thick and thin lines. Then she chooses the colors, buys the pine blocks and begins the process of separating colors into individual blocks.\u00a0 \u201cThe drawing and painting talent is not in your hands,\u201d she says \u201cit is in your brain. Our brains take in the information, and we use the information to guide our hands. When I am in the process of designing a new print, I have mental images that seem to insist on being chosen.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cUsually what I do is just out of my head,\u201d she says. She might collect source material with a camera or sketch pad, but then arranges things the way she wants them. She likes strong contrasts, and is attracted to buildings because one plane of the structure is always in stronger light than the other. In her work you\u2019ll also find strong verticals, like lampposts and trees, silhouetted against a brighter background.
\nShe has completed over 100 prints (which means she\u2019s stored up hundreds of blocks). Many of the scenes are from around Ogden, which she has called home for half a century. Whether it\u2019s a scene of the local canyons or mountains, the old buildings on 25th Street, or nearby Willard Bay, these prints have garnered her a loyal following in Ogden.<\/p>\n

Traveling abroad has also inspired her work, and she\u2019s completed scenes from Iceland, New Zealand and Greece. \u201cIt\u2019s surprising what you\u2019ll see when your mind is saying, \u2018Now what will make a good woodblock?’\u201d<\/p>\n

In 1987, she illustrated a book, with Karen P. Jensen, titled\u00a0Just Because I\u2019m Blind<\/em>, featuring 16 8\u2033x8\u2033 prints showing the joyful lives of blind children. Her prints have won several awards. In 2009, \u201cI Remember\u201d won a merit award at the LDS International Art Competition.<\/p>\n

This image, of a graceful woman who was Wilson\u2019s neighbor and a desired subject for years, is the last large work she completed. She\u2019s still energetic and her hands, she says, are doing fine, but her eyesight has begun to degenerate. As colors faded and lines blurred, she trained a friends and fellow artists, Pam Kirch and Lynette Oberg, to help her pull her prints. She\u2019s saved all of her blocks and only pulls a print when needed. So while an edition might be planned for a dozen or more, she\u2019s only pulled a handful from most.<\/p>\n

Wilson has survived two husbands (after her first husband died she married longtime friend, Dr. M. Paul Southwick), and has remained busy drawing countless portraits of her ever-expanding brood of grandchildren and great-grandchildren. This fall she decided to leave Ogden, to rent a home next to one of her daughters in Orem. The home\u2019s decorations, those of a couple that is currently in Mexico but plan to return, are slowly being replaced with her own prints. Another daughter, Anne, has moved in with her, and Wilson is training her as her studio assistant. They are working to match colors of a print done of a restaurant in New Mexico. It was used for the establishment\u2019s menu, but now they want additional copies to offer for sale.\u00a0\u00a0 She was recently invited to teach her printmaking techniques to the students at Weber State, and exhibited her work alongside theirs in an exhibit at the student union that comes down this week.<\/p>\n

So she may be slowing, but Blanche Wilson certainly hasn\u2019t stopped. \u201cThis is what I\u2019ve always wanted to do. And I want to do it as long as I can,\u201d she says. In her mind, she\u2019s still composing. When she talks about a scene she saw, a flash of bright green vegetation against the blue-gray of sagebrush, and describes the composition and what she would do with colors, you get the sense that she can already see it completed in her mind.<\/p>\n

World War II was driving the economy when Wilson graduated from college, so her later artistic pursuits took a practical turn. She began drafting for the military in Portland, then moved to Washington, D.C., where she worked for the Navy\u2019s dazzle program. First developed in World War I, \u201crazzle dazzle painting\u201d as it was known, was a camouflage system designed to make targeting ships more difficult (it looks like a mix of cubism and op-art, and Picasso claimed cubism was its inspiration). Wilson\u2019s task was to draw the various craft and then turn the drawings over to commercial-artists-turned-commisisoned-officers, who would experiment with different designs. \u201cThey were done in colors of the sea,\u201d she says. \u201cThey had blues you couldn\u2019t believe.\u201d<\/p>\n

In D.C. she married David Jay Wilson, an Ogden native who had served in the Marines, and after the war they returned to Utah. When they started having children, Wilson\u2019s pursuits, like many women of the era, became more domestic than professional. Pencils and paints never left her hands, however. \u201cI drew pictures of the house across the street, and of the ironing board with an iron on it. If I saw a plate with a fork on it, I would draw that. I would just draw anything.\u201d This included anyone she could get to sit still long enough for a portrait: her children, unknowing sitters in the pews on Sunday, and friends coming for a visit. She recalls one neighbor boy, about 11 at the time, who came to the back door and asked Wilson if she would paint his portrait so he could give it to his mother as a birthday present. The boy\u2019s confident offer to pay her \u2014 \u201cI have 12 dollars,\u201d he said \u2014 won her over. He eventually became her son-in-law, so both the portrait and the money have remained in the family.<\/p>\n

While she was still raising her children (five girls, one boy), Wilson returned to school and earned a teaching degree from Weber College (now Weber State University) in 1966. Soon after, she was asked by the superintendent of the Utah Schools for the Deaf and the Blind to substitute at the School for the Blind for the spring term. She enjoyed the experience so much she took classes all summer at BYU to learn how to work with blind students and returned to the school in the fall. She remained for 21 years, working with small groups of grade-school kids who were either blind or visually impaired. Because an advanced degree meant a better salary, she also enrolled in a master\u2019s degree program at BYU. Her choice to study art might seem ironic, considering her pupils, but she was able to bring her training into the classroom (she also taught swimming, cooking and other non-academic subjects). The students would work with clay, wire, wax and other 3-D materials. \u201cThere were two or three kids that got pretty good at making heads,\u201d she recalls. \u201cThe interesting thing was their ears were usually huge . . . I guess, you know, their learning is mostly vocal, so the ears become very important.\u201d<\/p>\n

For part of her master\u2019s curriculum, Wilson enrolled in a printmaking class at the University of Utah. With the help of Bob Kleinschmidt and other professors, she became enamored of woodblock prints. \u201cI never felt competent with my painting,\u201d she says. \u201cMy woodbocks always won prizes but my paintings never did. So it made me like woodblocks better.\u201d<\/p>\n

In the \u201970s, after completing her degree, things began to take off. She found representation with Phillips Gallery and her work became known to a larger audience. \u201cI had some shows and people started buying my work and I thought, \u2018This is what I always wanted.’\u201d<\/p>\n

Wilson says she is attracted to the complex nature of woodcuts, to the need for planning and attention to detail. Black-and-white prints are fairly easy to compose, but prints with five or six colors require planning and multiple blocks. First she\u2019ll create small sketches to try out compositions, experimenting with shapes, darks, lights, thick and thin lines. Then she chooses the colors, buys the pine blocks and begins the process of separating colors into individual blocks.\u00a0 \u201cThe drawing and painting talent is not in your hands,\u201d she says \u201cit is in your brain. Our brains take in the information, and we use the information to guide our hands. When I am in the process of designing a new print, I have mental images that seem to insist on being chosen.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cUsually what I do is just out of my head,\u201d she says. She might collect source material with a camera or sketch pad, but then arranges things the way she wants them. She likes strong contrasts, and is attracted to buildings because one plane of the structure is always in stronger light than the other. In her work you\u2019ll also find strong verticals, like lampposts and trees, silhouetted against a brighter background.
\nShe has completed over 100 prints (which means she\u2019s stored up hundreds of blocks). Many of the scenes are from around Ogden, which she has called home for half a century. Whether it\u2019s a scene of the local canyons or mountains, the old buildings on 25th Street, or nearby Willard Bay, these prints have garnered her a loyal following in Ogden.<\/p>\n

Traveling abroad has also inspired her work, and she\u2019s completed scenes from Iceland, New Zealand and Greece. \u201cIt\u2019s surprising what you\u2019ll see when your mind is saying, \u2018Now what will make a good woodblock?’\u201d<\/p>\n

In 1987, she illustrated a book, with Karen P. Jensen, titled\u00a0Just Because I\u2019m Blind<\/em>, featuring 16 8\u2033x8\u2033 prints showing the joyful lives of blind children. Her prints have won several awards. In 2009, \u201cI Remember\u201d won a merit award at the LDS International Art Competition.<\/p>\n

This image, of a graceful woman who was Wilson\u2019s neighbor and a desired subject for years, is the last large work she completed. She\u2019s still energetic and her hands, she says, are doing fine, but her eyesight has begun to degenerate. As colors faded and lines blurred, she trained a friends and fellow artists, Pam Kirch and Lynette Oberg, to help her pull her prints. She\u2019s saved all of her blocks and only pulls a print when needed. So while an edition might be planned for a dozen or more, she\u2019s only pulled a handful from most.<\/p>\n

Wilson has survived two husbands (after her first husband died she married longtime friend, Dr. M. Paul Southwick), and has remained busy drawing countless portraits of her ever-expanding brood of grandchildren and great-grandchildren. This fall she decided to leave Ogden, to rent a home next to one of her daughters in Orem. The home\u2019s decorations, those of a couple that is currently in Mexico but plan to return, are slowly being replaced with her own prints. Another daughter, Anne, has moved in with her, and Wilson is training her as her studio assistant. They are working to match colors of a print done of a restaurant in New Mexico. It was used for the establishment\u2019s menu, but now they want additional copies to offer for sale.\u00a0\u00a0 She was recently invited to teach her printmaking techniques to the students at Weber State, and exhibited her work alongside theirs in an exhibit at the student union that comes down this week.<\/p>\n

So she may be slowing, but Blanche Wilson certainly hasn\u2019t stopped. \u201cThis is what I\u2019ve always wanted to do. And I want to do it as long as I can,\u201d she says. In her mind, she\u2019s still composing. When she talks about a scene she saw, a flash of bright green vegetation against the blue-gray of sagebrush, and describes the composition and what she would do with colors, you get the sense that she can already see it completed in her mind.<\/p>\n

\n
\n
\"\"<\/a><\/dt>\n<\/dl>\n
\n
\"\"<\/a><\/dt>\n<\/dl>\n
\n
\"\"<\/a><\/dt>\n<\/dl>\n
\n
\"\"<\/a><\/dt>\n<\/dl>\n
\n
\"\"<\/a><\/dt>\n<\/dl>\n
\n
\"\"<\/a><\/dt>\n<\/dl>\n
\n
\"\"<\/a><\/dt>\n<\/dl>\n
\n
\"\"<\/a><\/dt>\n<\/dl>\n
\n
\"\"<\/a><\/dt>\n<\/dl>\n
\n
\"\"<\/a><\/dt>\n<\/dl>\n
\n
\"\"<\/a><\/dt>\n<\/dl>\n
\n
\"\"<\/a><\/dt>\n<\/dl>\n
\n
\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Blanche Wilson may be the oldest working artist in Utah. As she prepares to celebrate her 92nd birthday this month, she\u2019s busy taking down a show at Weber State and moving into a new home in Orem where she\u2019s setting up a printmaking studio. And since she suffers […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":27007,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_piecal_is_event":false,"_piecal_start_date":"","_piecal_end_date":"","_piecal_is_allday":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[17,14],"tags":[2126],"class_list":["post-27006","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-artist_profiles","category-visual_arts","tag-blanche-wilson"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/11\/blanchewilsonblog.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"publishpress_future_action":{"enabled":false,"date":"2026-06-07 06:16:03","action":"change-status","newStatus":"draft","terms":[],"taxonomy":"category","extraData":[]},"publishpress_future_workflow_manual_trigger":{"enabledWorkflows":[]},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27006","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=27006"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27006\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":40430,"href":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27006\/revisions\/40430"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/27007"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=27006"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=27006"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=27006"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}