08/11/2024 9:09 AM

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Adorn your Feelings

Grandchildren honor Mary Sherwood Wright Jones with art display at The Works

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Anne Sherwood Pundyk and Michael Kennedy are honoring their grandmother Mary Sherwood Jones Wright with the "Permission to Create" exhibit at The Works public art gallery in Newark.

Anne Sherwood Pundyk and Michael Kennedy are honoring their grandmother Mary Sherwood Jones Wright with the “Permission to Create” exhibit at The Works public art gallery in Newark.

For Newark’s fearless female pioneer of American Modernism, nothing could match the freedom of breaking rules and working independently.

Mary Sherwood Wright Jones (1892-1985) earned fame as the illustrator of a children’s educational magazine, My Weekly Reader, drawing graphics and pictures for 35 years. She once said, “it felt good to paint a large, colorful mural with nobody telling me what to do,” referring to a private commission project for a school in Baltimore, before she began her publishing career.

Her words are revived and paraphrased by her granddaughter, Anne Sherwood Pundyk. Pundyk and her cousin, Michael Kennedy, are the artists currently on display at The Works public art gallery in Newark. Their exhibit, “Permission to Create”, honors Mary Sherwood Jones Wright by combining some of her early, never-before-seen paintings with modern work by Pundyk and Kennedy, who remember their grandmother as an inspiring role model. The exhibit is on display until April 3.

“She was a full time artist and professional illustrator in a time period when that was unusual for women,” said Pundyk, a New York City-based painter. “She was a role model for us.”

As children, Pundyk and Kennedy would spend time with their grandmother at her “fairy-tale” house in Newark on Granville Street, where she gave them permission to create.

“She shared her creative process with us. We would watch her draw,” said Pundyk, “always without judgment, it was pure fun. She gave us this very secure feeling about being able to express ourselves.”

“It was a week or two of just playing, experimenting,” added Kennedy, who grew up in Newark and lives in Granville today. “She didn’t judge, she didn’t tell us what to do––just do whatever you want. Be creative. For many Licking County residents, she created a safe environment to pursue art.”

The Newark home on Granville Street where Mary Sherwood Wright Jones allowed family and others to experiment with art.

The Newark home on Granville Street where Mary Sherwood Wright Jones allowed family and others to experiment with art.

“(The house) was in our family for four generations. It never changed, nothing ever changed,” recalled Kennedy.

“The Works is a place to teach and learn about art,” said Janice LoRaso, Executive Director. Always free and open to the public (during business hours, Tuesday to Saturday from 9-4:00), the art gallery at The Works is intended to spark interest in art exploration for visitors of all ages.

Kennedy sits on the Board of Directors for The Works, and has been dedicated to his vision of enhancing access to art and technology in Licking County:

“It’s been a mission for me to find ways to support my community with the arts,” said Kennedy. “We have an incredible history connecting art and technology, here. Louis Sullivan, considered the father of American architecture, built one of his most important buildings downtown. And Sullivan inspired [the revolutionary architect] Frank Lloyd Wright.”

Kennedy studied fine arts at Ohio University, taking after his grandmother. Halfway to earning his degree, he faced pressure from his father to focus on a “more practical” career. He became a graphic designer and creative director, and spent his entire professional life designing catalogs and products.

“I was researching color trends, and how to place products on certain pages so they’ll sell,” said Kennedy. “And I loved my work, but after 35 years, I finally got to the point where I wanted to do something for myself.”

His abstract paintings and black and white photographs reflect the attention to detail that enabled a successful design career; his paintings appear abstract and chaotic but follow patterns grounded by color compatibility. They’re often contained by elaborate, Gilded Age frames from the Victorian era, which contrast with his natural canvases painted with fresh and unrestricted movements and remind him of important moment of time in the history of American art: the end of the era of late realism and impressionism and the start of the early modernist movement – the time his grandmother was painting in New York City.

“I started breaking the rules and looking at the world in a very modern way. Just like my grandmother did, I forged my own way,” said Kennedy.

Mary Sherwood Wright Jones was a fifth-generation resident of Licking County. The Wright family arrived in 1805 from Granville, Massachusetts, and founded Granville, Ohio.

Despite her ties to the Midwest, Wright Jones was determined to pursue painting in New York City, which was not typical for women in the early twentieth century. In 1913, she enrolled at Parsons, then called the New York School of Fine and Applied Art, before spending a year at the Art Students League. That year was also the first year in which Modernist art from Europe was brought for display in the United States.

As one of relatively few women able to travel and study art in New York, Wright Jones was also exposed to a new school of artistic thought. Although she was not able to create a self-sufficient career as an independent artist, she started by doing something for herself, according to Kennedy and Pundyk, before returning to Newark in 1924 to start a family and a career as an illustrator.

Some of her early paintings and drawings were never put on public display before, now visible at “Permission to Create” in Newark.

Newark's Dr. John Louis A. Mitchel Portrait (1921) by Mary Sherwood Wright Jones

Newark’s Dr. John Louis A. Mitchel Portrait (1921) by Mary Sherwood Wright Jones

Pundyk moved all around the country growing up, but always felt grounded in central Ohio. In New York City, she’s spent over 30 years as an artist. Combining geometry and color with “the play of chaos and order,” she says, allows her to explore the canvas and express herself. She keeps her stained, cropped, and stitched canvas “unstretched” because she doesn’t want to be confined by the edges of a frame.

“When I start painting, I don’t know how big it’s going to be, and what shape it’s going to have. I want it to stay in this fluid state.”

In a couple of her works on display in “Permission to Create”, Pundyk uses overlapping circles and flashpoints of color to create a sense of perpetual motion, with meditative qualities.

Like her cousin, Pundyk did not always feel understood as an artist. But she learned to overcome her feelings of doubt:

“Within the realm of creating art, I was certainly speaking a different language [than my parents]. Everyone wants to be loved, everyone wants validation and acknowledgement, but you shouldn’t be changing what you do in order to seek that out. The best art doesn’t use validation as a guideline.”

“It can be a twisting and turning road,” she said. “There’s no guarantee there will be a receptive audience. You’re doing it, creating art, for yourself.”

Now, Pundyk and Kennedy are creating art to share with the Newark community.

“I took a tour where Intel is going to be building this plant. I think there’s this kind of ‘can-do know-how’ quality of practical innovation that’s always been part of this area,” said Pundyk. “I remember hearing about Licking County as a center of American values. Obviously we have the resources, but it’s really the people and the mindset.”

“It’s really happening. I think Licking County is really happening,” said Kennedy. “It’s a great community. They deserve this moment.”

This article originally appeared on Newark Advocate: Grandchildren honor Mary Sherwood Wright Jones with art at The Works

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