The article below was published in The Press, Valley North Edition [Forest Park, OH] March 26, 1975
written by Nancy Taylor, Community Editor.

.......

ART SHOW GOES ON AFTER HER DEATH

“OFFICIALLY, SPRING CAME TONIGHT” is the title of the collage in his wife’s collection viewed by the Rev. J. Richard Glatfelter. The works of Mary Ann Glatfelter are on display through April 5 at Promenade Gallery in Kearney Arts, Promenade Shopping Center. Mrs. Glatfelter, a forest Park resident of eight years, died shortly after she agreed to her first showing of her works. Rev. Glatfelter said the collage was done almost exactly a year ago. (Taylor photo)

In the days before the gallery opening, the Rev. J. Richard Glatfelter and his family were doing many of the things they would’ve done if Mary Ann were there.

They were packing pictures, hanging them and preparing for the March 21 opening of a show of 38 of Mary Ann Glatfelter’s acrylics and collages at the Promenade Gallery in Kearney Arts, Promenade Shopping Center.

But they were doing it without Mrs. Glatfelter, a Forest Park resident of eight years who died Feb. 25 after a brief illness. According to her husband, the pastor at Winton Forest Church Center, she had refused several opportunities for one-or two-person shows during the last several years. But she had been talking to Joyce and Bill Kearney about one for quite awhile and had committed herself to the show four days before her death.

Her family decided to go ahead with the show, “because she would’ve wanted it.”

The GLATFELTERS’ daughter, Holly Burns, is a commercial artist in Orlando, Fla., now. Rick is a teacher at Colerain Junior High. “It was kind of tough, parting some of the paintings,” Holly said. “There won’t be any more. We kept some of the favorites, but this is what she wanted to do.”

Holly can see her mother’s artist influence in her own life. “I was never allowed to paint by number or to trace,” she says with a smile. “And I always had a pencil and paper put in my hands when I wasn’t busy.”

The Rev. and Mrs. Glatfelter’s trips to florida in recent years “profoundly affected the subject material as well as the feeling in much of her recent work,” Rev. Glatfelter said.

Mary Ann Glatfelter was an artist. But she didn’t go for the “razzle dazzle” of openings, her husband said. Joyce Kearney looked at the works ready for Friday night’s opening and said of the late artist, “she was so modest about her work. We have people come in here who try to push off their work when it’s no good. But here as a talented artist.”

MRS. GLATFELTER also wrote poetry, and several of her Haiku are displayed among the works on the gallery walls:

“Tiny fireflies caught in the
willow branches like
burning love-tears.”

Rev. Glatfelter prepared the notes for the gallery opening. Mrs. Glatfelter’s development began as “a 15-year-old with a good sketching hand,” he wrote.

She learned “careful brushwork and copying in oils” in her hometown of York, Pa. Her work was influenced by moves throughout the United States – a collection of impressionists at the Buffalo, N.Y., museum; the National Gallery and private collections in Washington, D.C.

“SHE BECAME a self-disciplined reading, painting student, changing styles and experimenting with different media,” Rev. Glatfelter wrote. The years 1957-61 were the only school related training of her career, through commercial art certification with the Famous Artists, Westport, Conn.

She worked with water color, ink and wash, and spent a year working on the Japanese Sumi technique. Her water colors were handled by private galleries in Allentown, Pa.

With a move to Cincinnati in 1966, she was the student of Paul Chidlaw until 1972, working with acrylic and “developing as a colorist and abstractionist.” Before her death, she had been working in her home studio with acrylic and collage and “absorbing: the art philosophy of Robert Motherwell.

“CONTANT INQUIRY and disciplined reading were the secrets of the development of her 30-year career in painting,” Rev. Glatfelter wrote. “Mary Ann applied the technique of method acting to her painting, immersing herself in the thought and life of a particular artist for a period of time until she could paint in his or her role… extracting the usable essence of each artist which could be blended with the mind, hand and eye of Mary Ann to finally product what became her own expression and style.”

Mrs. Glatfelter’s work will be displayed at the Promenade Gallery at Kearney Arts through April 5. The gallery is open Monday through Friday 11 a.m. – 5 p.m.

The show is the first of a series of exhibits of Cincinnati artists’ work scheduled for the gallery.