by Steven Carlson, Curator.
Welcome to another EFFIEgram tracing the art and life of Arizona’s earliest Impressionist desert landscape painter - Effie Anderson Smith (1869-1955).
In this Issue - 4 Places in Arkansas - as we take a quick look back at our series of Arkansas Exhibits that began exactly one year ago on September 15, 2023.
Prelude to Arizona Life
Before Effie’s arrival in Arizona, where she lived and painted for more than half a century, she spent her formative years in Southwest Arkansas. There she was born, began drawing and painting, graduated from high school and college, became a school teacher, and married. After several painful losses, including the sudden death of her husband Willie from tuberculosis just 3 months after their wedding, Effie eventually decided to leave Arkansas in late 1893 as a young 24 year old widow. She had been teaching school for over two years at that point, so being able to support herself independently somewhere new was virtually assured. And the exotic desert landscapes of the west could provide great potential for new artistic inspiration.
She first settled near family in the New Mexico Territory. And within a year of her arrival in Deming, Effie was again engaged to be married. She had met a man - a young Scottish immigrant - who hoped to seek his fortune in the mining industry. He was Andrew Young Smith, and with him Effie was about to begin a completely new adventure - in the Arizona Territory - starting with her wedding at the Bessemer Hotel in the booming mining town of Bisbee on August 1st, 1895.
No trace of Effie ever returning to Arkansas has yet emerged in our research or in any family memories. And as far as we know, no public exhibit of Effie Anderson Smith’s art had even been presented anywhere in her original home state either.
So, in the fall of 2023 - one hundred thirty years after Effie departed from the depot in Hope, Arkansas on a westbound train - we were finally able to bring Effie’s extraordinary desert impressionist landscape art back to where her artistic journey began in the Arkansas countryside.
In fact, in an odd twist of fate - that original depot where Effie left for her westward journey more than a century ago became our host for one of our 4 art exhibits celebrating Effie’s 150th birthday (pandemic delayed but not denied, ultimately!).
Hope
Today it is no longer called Hope Station - but Arts Station - a community gallery and home to the Southwest Arkansas Arts Council. Executive Director Jennifer Block made our 3-day exhibit in Hope a truly special and memorable experience as we reconnected Effie with the town and community that gave rise to Effie’s earliest art works and the core values that come with growing up in a small town like Hope in the mid- to late 19th century.
My thanks to all of our host galleries and museums in Arkansas who - after many scheduled exhibit dates followed by cancellations due to pandemic restrictions - still had the patience and EFFIE-thusiasm to keep trying - and 2 1/2 years after I first proposed this, we all made the calendar work and the exhibits became a reality!
A special THANK YOU AGAIN to YOU if you were one of those wonderful folks who stepped forward and made a contribution to our EFFIE ARKANSAS EXHIBITS tour, enabling us to share Effie’s art with an entirely NEW AUDIENCE.
If you missed out on that, you can see our schedule of the exhibits from last year on our website EXHIBITS page and a variety of photos from all 4 exhibits on our EFFIE in ARKANSAS photos page at Google Photos. And, you can help us by making a contribution to support our future exhibits on our secure website here…
Nashville
I was equally thrilled to open our exhibits tour in Nashville at the Elberta Art Center (the name refers to the peaches once grown there) on September 15, 2023 for three days - getting us off to a great exhibit tour start and fulfilling my dream to bring Effie’s art back to where it all began. The Center’s Director, Cindy Petty, believed in this project from the start, and warmly welcomed us into her exhibit space where she personally has shared her gifts as an artist and musician through her private and group painting classes and piano lessons for many years. As Effie was also a pianist and art teacher I am sure she would be pleased to know someone with similar talents and a passion for teaching stood ready to welcome Effie’s art ‘home’ to Nashville - at long last.
Arkadelphia
For the better part of the next 3 weeks we had the pleasure of exhibiting in what felt like our home away from home - the Arkadelphia Arts Center, thanks to the support of the Clark County Arts and Humanities Council and their President, Claudia Beach.
The Arkadelphia Arts Center is in a beautifully converted former movie theater and the various alcoves have been thoughtfully redesigned for community art exhibits by local artists, as well as room for classes and gatherings. Arkadelphia was the birthplace and home of Effie’s first husband Willie Spencer, and a place where Effie spent one fateful summer after his death, pondering her future while living with her late husband’s family who operated the Spencer House Inn. The distractions of a new family and the constant parade of guests in and out of the Inn probably provided a welcome opportunity to socialize while technically still in mourning, and allowed Effie some time for reflection and travel to Tennessee to meet more of the Spencer clan, before making the ultimate decision to rededicate her life to teaching, at least for the immediate future. It seems she was still planning to stay close to home at this time.
We don’t know how much painting Effie did in Arkadelphia - but it certainly provided a respite before the next chapter of her life fully unfolded as a young widow in 1891.
Historic Washington
Next we were off to Historic Washington for the 3rd of our Arkansas Exhibit Tour stops, for 3 days of exhibiting and a talk in the historic and beautiful 1874 Courthouse.
NOW - I have been accused of many things in my life, but never had I been told I was exhibiting a strong case of EFFIEthusiasm until last year. This was first diagnosed by Melissa Nesbitt, Archival Manager of Southwest Arkansas Regional Archive (SARA), just down the street from the old Courthouse. Apparently, it’s VERY contagious! We had hundreds of folks visit our various exhibits in Arkansas. And as luck would have it, our first day of exhibiting in Historic Washington coincided with their annual open house to home-schooled kids and their parents - so we had over 700 visitors seeing Effie Anderson Smith’s paintings and learning of her story and Arkansas roots on the day we opened in Washington on Friday, September 22nd.
Special thanks to Curator Josh Williams at Historic Washington for making Effie a part of the Brushstrokes from the Heart exhibit, featuring historic women in art from Hempstead County, which is closing this month after a full year on display - including some prints of Effie’s most iconic paintings.
Special thanks go to the Southwest Arkansas Regional Archive Foundation, the Ross Foundation, and several generous major donors whose funding made our exhibit in Arkansas possible.
If you’ve never been to Historic Washington to see all the beautiful architecture of this quaint 200 year old historic town (celebrating its bicentennial in 2024!) and it’s natural surroundings - you’ll feel rewarded for making the journey. And you don’t need to be a historian to visit Southwest Arkansas Regional Archive. You’ll find plenty of help from Melissa Nesbitt and team for your genealogical pursuits.
Photo & Video Highlights of Our Arkansas Exhibit Tour
We’ve put together some photographic highlights of our 3-week Effie Arkansas Exhibits Tour in 2023 and you can see it on our Effie in Arkansas exhibit photos page. You can also enjoy a Virtual Walking Tour in our Arkadelphia Exhibit on our Effie YouTube Channel.
Thanks again to everyone who supported our Effie Arkansas Exhibit Tour in 2023. We couldn’t have done it without your financial contributions.
If you’d like to support our future exhibits and conservation work to preserve Effie Anderson Smith’s impressionist desert art from Arizona and beyond - please visit our DONATE page here…
NEWS about our NEXT EXHIBIT - November 29, 30 & December 1 in DOUGLAS:
Studio 917 Gallery will be our host over Thanksgiving Weekend this year as we link up with 917 and other Douglas galleries to present an Effie Experience over 3 days.
We will be displaying 15 of Effie’s most iconic impressionist desert landscapes at Studio 917 starting Friday afternoon, November 29th.
Some of the paintings we will exhibit have never been seen before publicly - or at least not since they were created decades ago. Others have not been on display since our early Effie exhibit back in 2012.
Douglas historian Cindy Hayostek and I will be offering a walking tour to these other galleries - all within a couple blocks of our larger exhibit at Studio 917 and we will also pass by other sites in Douglas that were important to Effie’s life and artistic journey during her final years as an active artist, and the decades before when she lived in Pearce but came to Douglas by train or car on a weekly basis.
Douglas is a natural midway stop on the ‘Effie loop’ if you’d enjoy a leisurely day trip - or better yet - a 2-day drive around what Effie called her Desert Paradise in Cochise County (with stops in Tombstone, Bisbee, Douglas, Pearce and Willcox). If you’ve had your fill of Thanksgiving turkey or ham by the weekend, I can tell you from personal experience Effie’s art and Mexican food in Douglas make a harmonious combination.
More on our Effie Experience Weekend in Douglas in our next two EFFIEgrams.
In our October EFFIEgram we will explore…
EFFIE and the ELECTIONS of 1933-35.
YES - we will get political here - at least historically - because Effie was very involved in campaigns for the causes and the PEOPLE she believed in - and as we shall see - Effie was not averse to crossing party lines to support and campaign for a friend. In the 1930s it was her longtime friend Isabella Greenway - founder of the Arizona Inn where Effie presented two of her most successful exhibits in Tucson - and later - Greenway was elected Arizona’s first female congresswoman. It’s a story of women helping women - with art in the mix - and strong Cochise County connections.
Please visit our Effie channels on YouTube, Facebook and Instagram as well as our website at EffieAndersonSmith.org.
Thank you for your interest in the Dean of Arizona Women Artists, Pioneer Painter Effie Anderson Smith (1869-1955).
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