Some Memories of Mary Giles

The work of Mary Giles, using the traditional basketry technique of coiling, evolved from small vessels to multi-part works of great sculptural complexity. During years of work, she pushed the boundaries of basketry into fiber sculpture. She was a leader in her field. Whatever the form, her work was always defined by demanding craftsmanship.

As an architect, I am concerned with form, both natural and manmade. Manmade forms are created through a variety of means that we call craft. For centuries, both art and architecture have shared a concern with craft. Artworks were often commissioned for specific architectural spaces. In the Renaissance, altars and paintings were as much crafted as painted. Architects, painters, and craftsmen were rigorously trained within their respective fields. Making things correctly and well has a long and distinguished history. That tradition does continue today.

Memory jars have long intrigued me. Each jar is encrusted with items from a particular person’s past. Each of the items or fragments evokes a specific memory of that person. The elements are brought together with some concrete or glue.

Here are some memories that I have brought together of the artist/ craftsman Mary Giles. She was my wife.

Men

The question Mary was most frequently asked was, “Why do you so often use figures of men in your work?” Mary would answer, “Men, for better or for worse, have been important in my life.”

Her father was a very loving and supportive parent. An outdoorsman, he built a cabin for his family on a rural lake north of St. Paul, and as a child, Mary spent her summers there. She learned much from her father about nature and it would be a continuing influence throughout her life.

She married an athlete, a good-looking former football player. He took a position with the May Company in St. Louis where Mary became an art teacher. That marriage ended unhappily, as did a subsequent relationship. Thereafter, she embraced greater independence. Because Mary was very pretty, she continued to be pursued by men, and she continued to enjoy their company but with new limits. When I first met Mary, I was definitely in pursuit.

At that time, she was making baskets covered with hammered metal and capped with a collar made of small fiber men, all anatomically correct. They were gathered so close that they appeared as a fringe. I told a good friend who was the art critic for the St. Louis Post Dispatch that the figures were just used decoratively. “Oh yes,” she said, “I have always thought of men that way." Perhaps Mary did, too. Men were attractive, fun, and sometimes useful. They embellished her life.

Figure 10: Mary Giles, 60 Men Purified, 1989, Waxed linen, iron wire, and paint, 3 1/2 x 13 3/4 x 12 1/4 inches, Racine Art Museum, Gift of Helen Gabriel, Photography: Jon Bolton

Mary also responded to the graphic power of the male image in early art, such as the petroglyphs of the Southwest, aerial views of prehistoric land art, and the rudimentary figures of Native American baskets. She used similar representations of men on her baskets. Sometimes they were made with the bodies of the men created as part of the coiling process but with the arms and legs added as three-dimensional elements. Some baskets were supported by the legs of the figures. Later, this idea evolved into totems with coiled bodies, the legs as part of a supporting armature, and the arms as free elements. She made over fifty totems! They were small and large, singular and in pairs. They were embellished with everything from puka shells gathered at the beach, to all sorts of metal elements both found and individually made by Mary.

For a 2007 exhibition, she made a piece with individual male figures made of wrapped wire placed directly into the wall. That work, over fifteen feet long, included literally hundreds of figures. I told her that I thought it was very interesting, that it gave her work a new scale, but that it would never sell. She received commissions in St.Louis, Chicago, and Washington, DC for site-specific installations. Later, she transferred the idea to panels. She continued to experiment with those ideas throughout her career. Everything sold! She generously never mentioned my prediction.

The panel figures were used as marks or cyphers—graphic representations commenting on population growth, settlement, and immigration. The male image was no longer about power. It was useful to her in other ways.

Place

As with many artists, Mary’s early work was experimental, using various forms and materials. As this was happening, she gave herself a sabbatical from teaching and went to Florida for a year of scuba diving. The forms she saw in the sea inspired her and led to a series which was her first consistent body of work.

Every summer during her break from teaching, Mary would go to the Minnesota woods and stay at a family cabin. She loved being in nature and it was there that she produced most of her early work. Her father gave her porcupine quills he had collected and thought she might use. She made a number of pieces using those quills.

Figure 11: Mary Giles, Reflecting Mesa, ca. 2000, Waxed and dyed linen, tin-coated copper, copper, and iron, 11 x 18 1/2 inches diameter, Racine Art Museum, The Cotsen Contemporary American Basket Collection, Photography: Jon Bolton

One of those works was seen by Jack Lenor Larsen, the legendary fabric designer, collector, and promoter of both traditional and contemporary craft. He purchased it for the Erie Art Museum. It appeared on the cover of American Craft magazine. That was the beginning of national recognition for Mary’s work.

After Mary and I met, we went to Santa Fe for five consecutive summers. Santa Fe became very important in our lives. Mary was deeply influenced by New Mexico’s landscape. Often, while driving, she would have me stop the car so she could get out and photograph the profile of a particular mesa. We also visited a number of Native American archaeological sites. Mary started producing works which referenced the forms of mesas and kivas, as well as the graphics of petroglyphs.

When I retired, Mary wanted us to make Minnesota our primary residence so she could be near her family. She found a house in the woods on the bank of the St. Croix River near Stillwater. The house had a fantastic location with a sweeping 180-degree view of the river. Mary worked in the front of the house so she could see it. Living on water is fascinating. The light constantly changes and, on the river, there are the reflections of the opposite bank. Mary used the river reflections, the changing light, and the shadows of the trees on the bank as sources for many of the pieces she created there.

That house had a great setting but was a bit small, so we built an addition with a master bedroom and studio for Mary. Minnesota is a glacial area and during the excavation for the foundation of the addition, the back hoe would bring up huge boulders. Mary loved the forms of those rocks. Sometimes the boulders would split when they dropped from the backhoe. She found these split boulders particularly exciting. Thus began a group of works in which a larger form was created of several parts. Mary used contrasting materials, one to cover the outside of the larger form and another for the “split” that ran through it. They could only be understood by walking around them as new parts and new views of the inside space were revealed. Those pieces pushed the vessel-based idea of basketry to a new sculptural level.

The underwater world Mary explored while scuba diving, the Minnesota wilderness, the landscape of New Mexico, the changing light and reflections of the St. Croix River, and the split boulders all influenced Mary’s work. Sometimes, the influence was rather direct. Sometimes, it was subtler. But, as the place in which she lived changed, Mary’s work changed.

Material

Mary was a very tactile person. Surfaces were of great interest to her; the bark of trees, moss growing on stones, the undulations formed in sand by the receding tide, weathered barn wood, and rusted metal. The character of much of her work was determined by the character of the materials she used. Prior to making a piece, she might make trial samples to understand the surface an individual element would produce when used in repetition.

Materials were frequently ready-made. They might be as simple as a small bundle of linen thread or wire. She also used unexpected found materials such as puka shells, plant tagging sticks, and metal washers. But, most surfaces were created from materials Mary made herself. She hammered out wire so that it became flat and formed elements evoking scales or feathers. She made wire spirals which she hung on threads that were reminiscent of bark. Although the form of one work might be similar to another, the character of its surface defined its individuality.

Figure 12: Mary Giles, Quill Medallion, 1986, Waxed linen and porcupine quills, 2 x 7 inches diameter, Racine Art Museum, Gift of Jim Harris, Photography: Jon Bolton

One summer while at the cabin, preparing for a show, Mary ran out of a light color of thread. She had a quantity of a dark thread so she tried bleaching to achieve the lighter color. It didn’t work. But she saw the lighter thread, the bleached thread, and the darker thread together and was inspired to create a piece that made a blended transition from the light to the dark. It was an exciting discovery! She decided to try to achieve the same “blend” with metals using copper, torched copper, and steel. These pieces, born of necessity, were the stars of the show and it was an area Mary would continue to explore throughout her career.

In her later work, Mary frequently created compositions that incorporated pieces of found materials. For instance, sheets of rusted metal would be combined with areas formed by her wrapped wire figures. Or, she might collect driftwood at the beach and saw it or utilize a natural flat side to mount it on the wall as a shelf supporting a grouping of her coiled pieces. The natural shape of the shelf and the profile of her forms would be in dialogue. At other times, she created a shelf with a high back which formed an environment for her work. These shelves could be made of weathered wood, rusted metal, or stainless steel, depending on the material used in the pieces placed upon them. The relationship between the material of her individual works and the character of the shelf were essential to both the overall composition and its enhanced visual impact. Mary was very aware of the character of various materials. She responded to it in nature and it was a major consideration in her work.

Work

Mary was an art teacher in a suburban St. Louis public school district. At one point, because of her own interest in weaving, she decided she wanted to teach it to her students. She soon realized that even the simplest looms were expensive and could not be shared. So, she chose to teach another fiber technique, basketry. The process proved to be too slow for young people. They preferred clay. Mary, however, found that she loved the process and started making baskets herself. As her interest and skills grew, she took workshops from a number of leaders within the field: John McQueen, who created basket forms from non-traditional materials; Jane Sauer, who created small non-functional sculptures using the traditional technique of knotting; Dianne Itter, who emphasized simply made units used in repetition; and the jeweler, Mary Lee Hu, who introduced Mary to the use of metals. Influences from all of these would be explored and expanded throughout her years of work.

While teaching, Mary would come home to her apartment, fix a simple supper, and go to her studio–– a converted second bedroom. She would work on her baskets every evening. On weekends, she would take her anvil to an exterior basement stair and hammer her metals, choosing the afternoon to be the least disturbing to her neighbors. While weekends were for prepping materials, evenings were for production. She loved nothing more than making her art.

Figure 13: Mary Giles, Soft Quill Totem, 1987, Waxed and dyed linen and porcupine quills, 13 x 4 inches diameter, Racine Art Museum, Gift of Barbara S. Rosenthal, Photography: Jon Bolton

Figure 14: Mary Giles, Fading Rhythm Totem (recto), ca. 2000, Waxed anddyed linen, iron, tin, and copper, 71 1/4 x 12 x 9 inches, Racine Art Museum, Promised Gift of Jim Harris, Photography: Petronella J. Ytsma

Figure 15: Mary Giles, Fading Rhythm Totem (verso), ca. 2000

When we met, Mary allowed me one date each weekend. Any other free time was used for making her art. After she retired and we were married, I assumed that I would get more time with her. Wrong! The extra time was spent in her studio!

Mornings were the best time for Mary. It was when she would plan, when she would make decisions, and when she would look at the progress of a piece. She worked until noon. In the afternoons, she would run errands, work in the yard, or the garage, or the workshop. After dinner, she would return to the studio. Evening work was limited to production, not decision-making. If we had to go somewhere, whether a short or long trip, I always drove. It was not a masculine thing. It was because Mary always brought along something on which she could work. She worked everywhere. She completed many of the totem bodies in our car!

Basketry techniques are time-consuming. However, during the time required to make one piece, Mary would be thinking about the next. She often said, “I can’t wait to finish this so I can start the next one.” At certain intervals, always to remain a mystery, Mary would announce that she needed a new direction. Perhaps she was simply finished with a certain idea or perhaps she wanted to work on something different. Sometimes, the new direction might be a variation of something she had previously done. Sometimes, the new thing might solve a problem such as how to create a piece of greater size. Sometimes, the new thing was just that, new. Mary worked every day on her artwork.

Figure 16: Mary Giles, Kiva Gathering, 1992, Waxed and dyed linen and copper, 2 1/4 x 15 inches diameter, Racine Art Museum, Promised Gift of Johnson Bank, Trustee of the QTIP Trust for William B. Boyd u/a Karen Johnson Boyd, Photography: Jon Bolton

Vacations were an exception. They were scheduled and when on vacation, Mary did not work on her sculpture. Afterward, it was best to stay out of her way because she wanted to make up for lost time.

Our January stay in Costa Rica was different. Although Mary did not work on her fiber sculpture, every day she would go to the beach with two bags, one for trash and one for treasure. By the time we left, the beach would be clean and the treasure would be transformed into small compositions. Before departing, she would hang a show of those works in the condo, invite friends, and donate the proceeds to save the turtles. Remaining pieces would be brought home to be installed in the garage. The garage was Mary’s domain. She covered its walls with natural specimens, found objects, and her Costa Rica constructions. This installation constantly evolved. She loved changing and recreating the environment in which we lived.

I have always heard that artists “have to make art.” I did not understand that because, in my view, artists followed the Renaissance model and went to their studios like others went to the office. It was work. Once I met Mary, I understood. Her work defined the rhythm of her life. It was essential to her being. It defined who she was.

Mary’s work was constant. Its evolution was mostly formed by artistic issues; but changes in her life also produced changes in the work. The two were intimately interrelated. Her work was consistent, all encompassing, and included both continuity and change. Mary was a true artist.

—Jim Harris, Architect, Associate Professor Emeritus and former Associate Dean, Washington University School of Architecture, St. Louis, Missouri; Art Critic, St. Louis Post Dispatch, St. Louis, Missouri