Wave Songs: Terry Parmelee’s Works of The Eighties

WAVE SONGS TERRY PARMELEE’S WORKS OF THE EIGHTIES

TERRY PARMELEE Essay by Stephen Westfall March 26 – May 12, 2022

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Detail: Terry Parmelee, Orions Belt, 1981 ©️ Terry Parmelee

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Wave Songs: Terry Parmelee’s Works of The Eighties

by Stephen Westfall

This exhibition of abstract paintings by Terry Parmelee is an occasion to marvel over how those artists obscured by exclusionary and unconscious biases are being rediscovered, often to our enrichment. Parmelee is now ninety-one years old, and her story is one of a patient development of abstract art with Symbolist overtones, strongly articulated against the male focus of the Washington Color School. Parmelee’s parents forbade her from concentrating on art while she attended Washington University in St. Louis as an undergraduate in the late 1940s.

However, she did take a print class and earned her MA from American University in Washington, DC. Following her studies, a three-year sojourn to Japan in the late 1950s led Parmelee to work with the woodblock print master, Un’Ichi Hiratsuka. Upon her return to the United States from Tokyo, she began to experiment with abstraction by just painting lines. As Parmelee subsequently said of that moment, “I never looked back“. (footnote 1)

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Photography by Zinnia. ©️ Terry Parmelee

In 1966 Parmelee engaged in a crucial stretch of private study with the great American woodblock printer, Carol Summers. Summers’ method of saturating his rolling landscape designs in jeweltone inks and letting the material blot into the paper beyond any drawn edges moved his printmaking into the realm of painting. Working through this key influence, Parmelee produced 122 original prints, which were eventually published in her catalogue raisonné form in 2003.

Parmelee’s paintings from the mid-1960s are hard-edged and mandala-centered, where saturated color of mineral clarity is laid in a mother’s matrix of overlapping circles. By the early 1980s, which is the core period to which this exhibition is devoted, Parmelee pushed the visual organization of herabstract imagery into undulating bands bathed in chromatic light.

(footnote 2)

While Parmelee regularly exhibited her prints, galleries that represented the graphic work were reluctant to exhibit her painting. In the decidedly masculine world of the Washington Color School, it seemed printmaking was a natural reserve for women artists. In 2022, we now find ourselves confronting painted works that should have fairly been seen forty or fifty years ago.

Terry Parmelee Prints 1966-1999.

A Catalogue Raisonne ©️Terry Parmelee

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The paintings from this era of Parmelee’s efforts impel consideration of the role motif plays in abstraction. In the visual arts, a motif is defined as a design or a pattern. In music, it is a brief succession of notes, producing a single impression. We wouldn’t recognize a motif if it bit us on the nose, unless it was, in fact, repeated.

As the lifeblood of motif, repetition is essential.

Whether it be a syncopated ostinato, a sine wave, a deviation, or a suggestion of signification, each register evolves through repetition. Of course, the dynamics of rhythm are discerned in this stream where marks are evidence of kept time. When combined with color, rhythm is what brings the silent, objectively delimited image to the threshold of music.

This is particularly true for the synesthete, which most artists probably are, where a ritual is sung, so to speak, in ways as much as it is seen.

In her central series of paintings on canvas and paper dating from 1980 – 1981, Parmelee develops extended variations of sinusoidal swaths coupled with ellipses and circles. Often, though not always, the traffic between these forms is dense enough that it seems the sine waves are created by the twisted elliptical chains and wobbly strings of decentered circles, as in Orion’s Belt (1981) or Sun Daze (1981).

Yet, with careful looking, we can watch things sort themselves out through the horizontal intervals the artist establishes in noting uniquely insistent time sequences.

Detail: Terry Parmelee, Rose, 1968 ©️Terry Parmelee

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The rise and fall of Parmelee’s looping motifs suggest russet-red mountain ranges backlit by a setting orange sun (Venezia (1981) or bright light filtered through an aqueous bluegreen spilling from the pipeline of a cresting ocean wave (Close Encounters (1981)). In the lower half of Sherbet (1981), sinuous forms recall the Vitruvian scroll, also known as Running Dog Pattern, which is found in the Roman Composite Classical orders dating to the fifth century B.C. Overlapping color patterns likewise leap forward to conjure twentieth century works

by Arthur Dove and Paul Klee, where the natural world passes through a linguistic turn. Parmelee’s color animates the structure of these swinging shapes, suggesting scent, sound, and touch, early mornings, limpid afternoons, and sultry evenings, but also immersion in tidal flows of sparkling water and ascension into ethereal spaces of weightless hue.

While Parmelee is understood as a secondgeneration Washington Color School artist, her work is more modest in scale and is carried along by a strong current of protomodern stylization. This brings it closer to the roots of easel-scaled early twentieth century abstraction than to classical postwar painting.

Still, in the idiosyncratic regularity of her patterning, there is a hint of the systemic art with which the Washington School found itself intermittently aligned. In making a related argument, Frank Stella, no stranger to the sweeping arc, stated in his book Working Space that rhythm is a fundamental building block of advanced painting. (footnote 3)

Detail: Terry Parmelee, Close Encounters, 1981 ©️Terry Parmelee

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Detail: Terry Parmelee, Boysenberry Sherbet, 1981 ©️Terry Parmelee

Parmelee exploits this idea in spades, on her own terms, and in her own voice. It’s in looking neither backwards or forwards that Parmelee is found as very much of a particular moment, which is ongoing, and becomes wholly present as an artist and as herself. As much as this work resonates with the concerns of other artists, it stands as a steadfast reflection of particular worlds wholly devised as a uniquely personal vision. In their elemental presence, Terry Parmelee’s celebratory pictures resemble the work of no other.

1. From a phone conversation with the artist, February 2022.

2. (Terry Parmelee Prints, 1966-1999: A Catalogue Raisonné) 3. Frank Stella, Working Space, Harvard University Press, Cambridge and London, 1986, pg. 82

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the Works

Installation view: Terry Parmelee’s Works of the Eighties.

Terry Parmelee Buddhist Paradise , 1980 Signed and dated verso Acrylic on linen 60 x 66 in 152.4 x 167.6 cm

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Terry Parmelee Orions Belt, 1981 Signed and dated verso Acrylic on canvas 31 x 38 in 78.7 x 96.5 cm

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Terry Parmelee Bay Pebbles, 1981 Signed and dated verso Acrylic on canvas 50 x 42 in 127 x 106.7 cm

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Terry Parmelee Sun Daze, 1981 Signed and dated verso Acrylic on canvas 50 x 42 in 127 x 106.7 cm

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Terry Parmelee Boysenberry Sherbet, 1981 Signed and dated verso Acrylic on canvas 34 x 34 in 86.4 x 86.4 cm

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Terry Parmelee Close Encounters , 1981 Signed and dated verso Acrylic on canvas 32 x 40 in 81.3 x 101.6 cm

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Terry Parmelee Daybreak, 1981 Signed and dated verso Acrylic on canvas 36 x 45 in 91.4 x 114.3 cm

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Terry Parmelee Roller Coaster , 1981 Signed and dated verso Acrylic on canvas 32 x 38 in 81.3 x 96.5 cm

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Terry Parmelee Untitled, 1981 Acrylic and pencil on paper 22 x 30 in 55.9 x 76.2 cm

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Terry Parmelee Untitled, 1981 Acrylic and pencil on paper 22 x 30 in 55.9 x 76.2 cm

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Terry Parmelee Untitled, 1981 Acrylic and pencil on paper 22 x 30 in 55.9 x 76.2 cm

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Terry Parmelee Untitled, 1981 Acrylic and pencil on paper 30 x 22 in 76.2 x 55.9 cm

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Terry Parmelee Untitled, 1981 Acrylic and pencil on paper 22 x 30 in 55.9 x 76.2 cm

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Terry Parmelee Untitled, 1981 Acrylic and pencil on paper 22 x 30 in 55.9 x 76.2 cm

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Terry Parmelee May Day IX, 1985 Signed Monoprint 11 x 15 in 27.9 x 38.1 cm Edition 1 of 1

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Chronology 1929 The future artist was born December 5, 1929 in Madison, Wisconsin to Augusta Martin Schreiber, age 21, an undergraduate student, and Theodore Schreiber, age 33, a graduate student at the University of Wisconsin. Having recently emigrated(in 1923) from Bonn, Germany, the doctoral candidate had married the “first generation” German-American collegian on March 15 of that year. The first of their three children, known as Terry since the age of eleven, was named Theodora Lilian after her father and after her mother’s sister, Lilian Martin, respectively.

(Terry’s aunt was known as L. Barbara Maxant after her marriage.) The list Schreiber child was expected to be a boy and to be named after his father. However, when a daughter appeared, the couple changed their name choice, Theodore, to the feminine, Theodora.* The maternal grandparents, Amalie Keth and Bruno Martin had both immigrated from Germany in the early twentieth century, and then met and married in New York City in 1905.

1950 After completing first semester final exams in her junior year at Washington University, Terry Parmelee transferred to the University of Kansas at Lawrence, dropping pre-med and choosing a new major in zoology. Since her parents had moved back to Wichita, Kansas in 1948 she was eligible for the in-state tuition allowance. The following summer, in 1949, Terry Parmelee went to Quantico, Virginia, as a member of the U.S. Marine Corps ”Platoon Leaders Class, a college students” officer candidacy summer training program. At the University of Kansas she took her first oil painting ling class as an elective. There she also had the benefit of an outstanding economics teacher, Professor John Ise. He may may have been instrumental in her being elected to the Phi Beta Kappa honor society in 1950. Terry Parmelee graduated with a B.A. degree in June, 1950.

1955 In the fall of 1955 Terry Parmelee began taking wood block printing lessons from the distinguished Japanese artist, Un’Ichi Hiratsuka, at his home studio. Moreover, since she was greatly impressed with both his work and his dedication, she was able to convince fellow board members of the College Women’s Club that they should sponsor an exhibition and sale of contemporary Japanese prints in lieu of their former fund-raiser sales of a Club cook book. Thus, the viewer-buyers had first choice of the exhibition prints and the artists were acknowledged and paid well, with a modest commission allocated to the Club. The first exhibition in the spring of 1956 was held at International House and was a great success, as it continues to be.

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The Club also asked author Oliver Staler to help persuade established artists groups to enter the show and arranged as well to sell his book Modern Japanese Prints at the exhibition, with a percentage of the sales price going to the Club. This print show is still major annual event in Tokyo. On February 19, 1956 the Parmelee family was increased by the birth of a son, William Foster Parmelee, also at Tokyo Army Hospital. He soon became known to the family as Billy.

1966 In the summer 1966 Terry Parmelee went to Paris and in July studied woodcut with Carol Summers, an American artist, at the Center for American Students and Artists. In August in order to work on etchings she rented studio space in Paris at “Atelier 17”, the well known studio school of artist-teacher William Stanley Hayter. During this time the Parmelee children went with their father to spend the summer at his parents’ summer cottage at beautiful Ontario-onthe-Lake in Ontario, Canada.

1967 Terry Parmelee began teaching art and the history of art part-time at the then all-boys Episcopal High School in Alexandria, Virginia, while taking comprehensive exams at American University for the master’s degree in painting, which was awarded in 1967. Episcopal Headmaster, Richard Thompson, asserting a bit of affirmative action, made her the first art teacher and the first woman teacher on the regular faculty there.

1968 Selected group exhibition: Corcoran Gallery of Art, Area Artists Show, juried; 1967, Spectrum Gallery, Washington, DC “Four Artists” paintings.

1969 Pratt Graphic Center, New York, NY, silkscreen printing, summer.

Publication of woodcut print “Moon Harvest”, 1969, edition of 100 at IGAS International Graphic Art Society.

1972 Selected group exhibition: “Creative Washington Artists Today”, Corcoran Gallery of Art, Washington, DC and Six Southeastern Museums, juried.

Selected group exhibition: Hom Gallery, Bethesda, MD, “Women in the Arts”.

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1974 Solo exhibition: Apogee Gallery, Princeton, NJ, prints.

1975 Selected group exhibition: McLean Gallery, McLean, VA, prints with potter, Hunt Prothro.

Selected group exhibition: Athenaeum Museum, Alexandria, VA “Washington Color Prints”, invitational.

1976 Publication of color woodcut print “Ixtlan”, 1976, edition of 100 at Associated American Artists Gallery, New York, NY. Selected group exhibition: “Washington Area Printmakers, “Selections from Original Print Calendars”, National Museum of Women in the Arts, Washington, DC. Selected group exhibition: Studio Gallery, Washington, DC “The Great Bi-Centenniel Rip-Off”, juried; Foundry Gallery, “Up the Monument”, print show, juried.

Selected group exhibition: Washington Women’s Art Center, “One for One”, paintings, invitational.

1977 Solo exhibition: Galeria d’Arte Davanzati di Susan Loeb, Florence, Italy, paintings.

Solo exhibition: Madams Organ Art Cooperative, 2318 18th St. NW, Washington, DC, paintings.

Selected group exhibition: Athenaeum Area Show, Alexandria, VA, juried.

1978 Solo exhibition: Annhurst College, South Woodstock, CT; Goshen College, IN, prints.

Selected group exhibition: “Washington Printmakers”, Jane Haslem Gallery, juried; 45

Selected group exhibition: Washington Women’s Art Center, 1821 Q St. NW, “Printmakers Show,” juried.

1979 Publication of color woodcut: “Khartoum”, 1979, edition of 100 at Associated American Artists Gallery, New York, NY.

1985 Solo exhibition: Washington Printmakers Gallery, Washington, DC, monoprints.

1993 In September 1993, the Jane Haslem Gallery mounted a large exhibition of Terry Parmelee’s 1970’s prints and 1990’s paintings, called “Flight of Spirit”. The paintings described in abstract terms the experiences of being in a sailboat at sea out of sight of land and allowed her to incorporate as well the pure white of the canvas into the compositions of her previously dense color works. In contrast to the bright and colorful paintings of this period, however, she continued working on a series of “black” prints, woodcuts having to do with sea and landscape themes.

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1995 Selected group exhibition: ”First International Ukrainian-American Graphics Symposium”, Brama, Kiev, Ukraine.

Selected group exhibition: “Artist Reflects Society, American Prints: Last Half 20th Century”, Jane Haslem Gallery.

Selected group exhibition: “Global Focus: Women in Art and Culture”, Fourth World Conference on Women, Beijing, China.

2003 A prints catalogue raisonne was published under the sponsorship of the curator of prints at Georgetown University.

2005 Design competition winner: art work to commemorate the 75th anniversary of the National Symphony Orchestra, Washington POST, March 10, 2005, p. 05. Winning painting “Symphony” incorporated into promotional materials for 2005-2006 season.

2006 Solo exhibition: Daryl Reich Rubenstein Gallery, Sidwell Friends School, Washington, DC, paintings and prints.

2016 Selected group exhibition: ”Color in Relief: Woodblock Prints from Origins to Abstraction” Fairchild Memorial Gallery, Lauinger Library, Georgetown University, Washington, DC, print.

Selected group exhibition: “Road to Vermont”; 2017-2003, Jundt Art Museum, Spokane, WA.

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Selected Bibliography Terry Parmelee Prints 1966-1999, A Catalogue Raisonne with Commentary by the Artist, 2003 compiled by the author, with Foreward by Joseph A. Haller, S.J. privately printed. Parmelee, Terry: “Color Abstraction” (article), Washington Print Club Quarterly, Washington, DC, Winter issue, 1981-82, p. 14-15.

Washington Print Club Newsletter, Cover, 20th Anniversary issue, print, “Formalities”, 1984 and Quarterly cover 1995, Fall issue, print“Nessie Sighting” Washington Project for the Arts 20042005 Artists Directory, Corcoran Gallery, “Remembering 9/11”. Parmelee, Terry: “Eighteen Years of Selecting Cover Prints”, Washington Print Club Quarterly, Fall issue, 2003.

Reviews of area artists’ shows printed in area art publications Washington Print Club Quarterly, EYE WASH, and KOAN (Ken Oda Art Newsletter), last two now defunct, and Journal of the Print World.

Reviews: Joan Root, review of show “Flight of Spirit” by Terry Parmelee ,1993 at Jane Haslem Gallery, Washington, DC, Journal of the Print World, Fall 1993, page 53. Willem de Looper, review of show “Flight of Spirit” by Terry Parmelee, in “Eyewash” Washington Metro Artists’ Newspaper, September, 1993. Ann Zahn, review of “Flight of Spirit” by Terry Parmelee, Washington Print Club Quarterly, Fall 1993. Parker Agelasto: review of book “Terry Parmelee Prints, 1966-69, a Catalogue Raisonne with Commentary by the Artist”, Journal of the Print World, Spring 2004, page 39.

Public Collections Corcoran Gallery of Art. Georgetown University, Lauinger Library.

Washington University, St. Louis, MO. Washington Post Company.

First National Bank of Chicago.

International Business Machines.

Smith, Kline Corporation.

CODEX Corporation.

National Gallery of Art Library of Congress, posters.

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Smithsonian American Art Museum.

National Museum of Women in Arts.

University of Delaware United States.

Information Agency.

United States Dept. of State.

Transcontinental Gas Pipeline.

Airline Pilots Association.

Connecticut General Life Ins. Co. Jundt Art Museum, Spokane, WA. John F. Kennedy Center, Washington, DC.

Published on the occasion of the exhibition WAVE SONGS: TERRY PARMELEE’S WORKS OF THE EIGHTIES March 26-May 12, 2022 Edited by Luis Pazo and Victor de la Cruz Essay © 2022 by Stephen Westfall Design by Victor de la Cruz Printed by MIXAM, Illinois, Chicago Artwork photography by Gregory Staley Cover: Untitled, 1981, (detail), acrylic and pencil on paper We would like to thank Stephen Westfall for the contribution of her insightful essay. We are especially grateful to Michael Zahn, Michael Abrams, and Terry Parmelee for their unwavering support in the production of this exhibition.

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