Exhibit Wall: Wall 8

City Lights, Laura Reilly, Oil on Canvas

Tent Revival, Lindsay Hand, Oil on Canvas

Artist Biography 

Lindsay Hand is a Colorado-based artist and forensic researcher. Her primarily self-taught journey has led her to exhibit oil paintings at galleries, history museums, and cultural centers across the U.S. Hand’s work delves into power structures and the human spiritual experience, often presented in collaboration with institutes beyond traditional gallery spaces.

Untitled, Claudia Lee (Yates) Bernd, Embroidery

Autumn’s Statements, Jeanette C. Ward, Embroidery

The City of the Dead, Laura Gilpin, Platinum Print

Artist Biography 

Laura Gilpin born on April 22, 1891, was the first child of Frank and Emma Gilpin. At the time, her father was a rancher on Horse Creek, south of Colorado Springs, and had to take Emma to a friend’s home in Austin Bluffs so she would be near a doctor when delivering Laura.

For her 12th birthday, Laura was given a Kodak Brownie Camera. This began her interest in photography which lasted her lifetime. Her mother sent 12-year-old Laura to visit Laura Perry, Emma’s closest friend and her daughter’s namesake, who lived in St. Louis. Perry was totally blind, and the two visited the St. Louis Louisiana Purchase Exposition, every day for a month, tasking Gilpin to describe in detail every exhibit at the fair. Gilpin later said “The experience taught me the kind of observation I would have never learned otherwise.”

Gilpin was educated in several eastern schools at the insistence of her mother. While in the East, Laura met Gertrude Kasebier, a famous photographer who later became Laura’s mentor and lifelong friend.

When Laura returned to Colorado Springs from her trips to the east, she often visited General Palmer, founder of the city. He would take her horseback riding, and on walking excursions around his home, teaching Gilpin about the plants, animals, and wildlife that they encountered.

In 1918 , while in New York, she became seriously ill during the influenza epidemic. Back in Colorado Springs she was nursed back to health by “Betsy” Forster who became her dear friend and companion for over fifty years.

Her continued study of photography took her to the Clarence White School in New York City where she developed her interest in expanding from art photography to commercial photography. It was here that she learned about platinum printing, which she would continue to work with the rest of her career.

Back in Colorado Springs, Gilpin joined artists associated with the Broadmoor Art Academy. She made her living during this period by printing platinum portraits of local people who preferred the lower cost of photographs to having painted portraits.

Her interest in making photographic books took her to the published study entitled “The Enduring Navaho” which won the Western Heritage Award in 1969, one of numerous awards given her in her later years. Gilpin died on November 30, 1979. In 2012, Laura Gilpin was inducted into the Colorado Women’s Hall of Fame.

Untitled, Anne Gregory Van Briggle Ritter, Watercolor on Paper 

Indian Paint Brushes, Alice Stewart Hill, Watercolor on Paper

Artist Biography 

In 1894, Alice Stewart Hill joined her family in Colorado Springs, having lived with them earlier in Pennsylvania and Wisconsin. Her father, George H. Stewart, was a judge. She arrived in Colorado with solid credentials in art, having studies in New York at Cooper Union’s School of Design. In her new Colorado home, she opened a studio offering classes in drawing, watercolor, and oil painting.

Colorado Springs was barely underway at the time, having been founded in 1871 by the railroad builder, William Jackson Palmer. Though Hill’s new home was still a frontier town when she arrived there, the largely monied and educated newcomers who settled the city were appreciative of art and culture. Because the city was new and small — hardly a city at all — its natural surroundings were unsullied. During mild seasons, wild flowers grew everywhere. Hill took notice, studied and recorded them in drawings, watercolors, and etchings. Her evolving plant expertise draw acclaim from profession botanists, including Asa Gray of Harvard, a leader in botany studies.

Hill’s flower illustrations appeared in several publications, among them Helen Hunt Jackson’s The Procession of Flowers in Colorado (1886). Tutt Library at Colorado College and the Denver Public Library have copies from the limited edition of 100.

Hill was married to Francis Hill, regarded as an “austere Englishman,” who founded the region’s Humane Society in 1896 and is buried at Evergreen cemetery in Colorado Springs.

Portrait of Mrs. Henry C. Fursman, Ida Lee, Oil on Canvas