Give her wings to fly

Artist Judi Geer Kellas discusses one of her unfinished works featuring Crystal Cole, the first woman inducted into the Tuskegee Airmen.

Celebration of women aviators will display in Abbey gallery

By Dan Madden

When artist Judi Geer Kellas first encountered Amelia Earhart in the pages of history her heart was filled.

It quite overflowed when she followed her newfound passion and learned of the pioneering aviator’s many sisters in flight. On Nov. 2, 1929, 26 women met and chartered an international organization of women pilots known as the Ninety-Nines, a group that thrives to this day.

The Ninety-Nines are sponsoring a display of Kellas’ “Celebration of Flight: Women in Aviation” series in the St. Benedict’s Abbey Gallery that began June 20 and will end July 19 at the conclusion of the Amelia Earhart Festival. Display hours will be Monday through Friday from 10 a.m. to 4:30 p.m. and Saturday and Sunday, noon to 4:30 p.m.

Asked in 2000 to direct and juror an art show in Atchison on the 100th anniversary of Amelia Earhart’s birth, Kellas agreed, but admits it was just another job, and Earhart was just another person from history.

“I didn’t know any more about her than the average person,” she says.

But as she began to pour over historical accounts of the famous aviator in preparation for the gig, her eyes were opened to a new hero, and though she didn’t know it yet, a new artistic passion.

“Amelia was amazing,” she recalls. “There was so much more to her than the publicity. She cared about people. Her mantra was, ‘Never give up.’ She was not into money except to feed her habit, which was planes.”

Kellas remembers painting a black and white photo of Earhart in a flight suit. She decided for no particular reason to paint the suit yellow. Later, she was told that the suit Earhart was wearing in the photograph was actually yellow, a favorite color of the pilot, and the color of the women’s suffrage movement.

It wasn’t long before Kellas was exchanging phone calls and letters with members of the Ninety-Nines. Her artistic juices flowing, she began asking permission to paint their portraits into her work.

Kellas’ mixed media work is a series of collages that feature one or more often several heroines from the history of aviation. Earhart is of course the subject in several pieces, but so also is Olive Ann Beech, the first lady of aviation, cofounder of Beech Aircraft Corporation; Louise Thaden, who set a women’s endurance record for staying aloft 22 hours and set a light airplane speed record of 109.58 miles per hour in 1936; Baroness Raymonde de Laroche, the first woman to earn a pilot’s licences; Bessie Coleman, the world’s first licensed black aviator; Fay Gillis Wells, the pilot and journalist who died in 2002 at age 94 with only one regret—never having the chance to be an astronaut; and Patty Wagstaff, the stunning beauty who has dominated the world of aerobatics. One

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