Dorr Bothwell: In Her Minds Eye

Nearly 20 years in the making, Dorr Bothwell: In Her Mind's Eye features more than 100 works spanning six decades of Bothwell's artistic practice and representing the breadth of her oeuvre. Focusing on her paintings and prints while also highlighting her work as a West Coast designer, the exhibition includes paintings, drawings, prints, ceramics, textiles and selected ephemera, demonstrating the artist's lifelong creative practice and her independence as a creative force. The heart of the exhibition is Bothwell's trajectory from the American West Coast's Surrealist milieu, where she worked alongside Lorser Feitelson and Helen Lundeberg during the WPA years, through an increasingly independent course of Symbolist-inflected figuration, landscape abstraction, and color screen printing. In Her Mind's Eye also marks the first time Bothwell's role as a designer and cultural educator is presented in full: ceramic editions for Catalina Pottery by Gladding, McBean; sketches related to Notan: The Dark-Light Principle of Design, the influential primer she co-developed with Marlys Mayfield; and textile works and drawings produced during her extended stays in Samoa, West Africa, and Southeast Asia. Through the breadth and variety of work on view, Dorr Bothwell: In Her Mind's Eye positions Bothwell as a singular and continually evolved artist whose practice crossed disciplines and challenged conventional categories. The great range of works presented in the exhibition reflect a sustained engagement with experimentatio, abstraction, and the imaginative possibilities of visual form. Dorr Bothwell (1902-2000) studied at the California School of Arts and Crafts and the San Francisco Art Institute. Her contributions as an educator include co-authorship of Notan: The Dark-Light Principle of Design (1968, with Marlys Mayfield), a text that remains in active use in design classrooms today. Bothwell's work is held in numerous public and private collections across the United States. Dorr Bothwell: In Her Mind's Eye is co-presented by ArtCenter Exhibitions and the Frances Lehman Loeb Art Center, Vassar College, where it will be presented June 18 – September 19, 2027. The exhibition is co-curated by Julie Joyce, Director, ArtCenter Galleries, and Mary-Kay Lombino, Deputy Director and the Emily Hargroves Fisher '57 and Richard B. Fisher Curator at The Loeb. The exhibition represents over 20 years of discussion, research and planning in association with the trustees of the Dorr Bothwell Estate and with the assistance of many of her dedicated friends and associates. The exhibition will be accompanied by the first monograph and solo exhibition catalogue devoted to Bothwell, co-published by Hirmer in June 2027. Featuring a complete biography, new photographs of her work, and commissioned essays by the exhibition curators and writers Michael Duncan, John Murphy, and Juliette Theureau, the book will provide an illustrated overview of the artist while also contextualizing her work among the histories of California and American art. The exhibition is made possible with support from the Terra Foundation for American Art. Additional support was provided by the Pasadena Art Alliance.