Exhibit celebrates Mark Arts’ role in teaching art to Wichitans for past century

Babs Mellor started teaching art classes at the Wichita Art Association in January 1974 with the idea she’d stay for one year. While she was confident in her ability as a sculptor and had spent much time studying sculpting in Italy, the then 44-year-old’s teaching credentials consisted of reading a how to teach sculpting book in the month leading up to her first day.

“To make a long story short, I’m still there,” said Mellor, who turns 91 this week. Mellor is a professional sculptor known for representational bronze works commissioned by individuals as well as public art, the latest being the life-size bronze of ax-wielding temperance crusader Carry A. Nation installed in downtown Wichita in 2018.

Mellor is one of 15 current instructors at the regional art organization now known as Mark Arts who is showing artworks in the “100 Years of Instruction” exhibition that opened Friday and is on display through Sept. 19. In place of an opening reception, curators recorded a live video tour of the Gladys and Karl T. Wiedemann Gallery that can be viewed on the organization’s Facebook page.

Patrons also are encouraged to call 316-634-2787 to schedule a time to view the collection in person; Mark Arts is open by appointment only to limit the number of visitors inside the building at one time.

This is one in a series of special centennial exhibitions planned this year. The Wichita Art Association formed in November 1920, then became the Wichita Center for the Arts in 1990 and Mark Arts in 2016. In January 2018, the organization moved into its 40,000-square-foot Mary R. Koch Arts Center at 13th and Rock.

“100 Years of Instruction” celebrates the organization’s role in teaching art to Wichitans, first with volunteer instructors in the basement of the public library as early as 1922 and now through the School of Creativity that includes nine art studios, a culinary arts studio, a digital arts studio and a dedicated youth studio.

There are 85 works in the exhibition, about 60 from 15 current instructors and the remaining highlight past instructors with pieces pulled from Mark Arts’ Study Collection. The range of work spans painting, drawing, printmaking, metalworking, ceramics and sculpting.

Among the current instructors with a long Mark Arts tenure who have works in the exhibition is Roger Mathews, who taught his first jewelry class with the organization in the early 1970s. There were just three students enrolled but it was an influential roster: Mary Robinson Koch, Olive Ann Beech and Virginia Coleman. He owns Mathews Gallery and has exhibited in juried art shows across the nation along with teaching for the past five decades.

The list of past Mark Arts students who went on to become recognized names in the art world includes Tom Otterness, Dick Mason and David Salle. James Gross, whose abstract artworks are in several major collections including The Museum of Modern Art and the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, was first a student in the early 1960s and then returned as an instructor in the mid-1970s after earning a teaching degree from Friends University and two master’s degrees at Wichita State University.

“I would say I owe everything to those early days with the Wichita Art Association, which of course became Mark Arts,” said Gross, who has taught abstract painting at the center most years through the past five decades. “The seed for my career was planted on Saturday mornings as a scholarship student with instructors like Bill and Betty Dickerson, who were famous artists and we were lucky to have in Wichita.”

Mellor’s reluctant one-year commitment to Mark Arts in 1974 turned into nearly a half-century because teaching pushed her to continue learning and growing.

“I found that I loved my students and that to be a teacher you also have to keep learning so that you’re making the class interesting and challenging,” she said. “I went back to school every year myself and traveled to study with great artists. Some of the people that I have taught are now teaching, and it thrills me to know they are continuing to spread the word about how wonderful art is.”

Mellor’s class sessions have lecture, demonstration and critique components, plus at least two minutes of art history, “Because I am an art history lover and I think we need to know about the history of art to carry it on.”

Mellor decided to sit out the summer semester in light of continued COVID-19 concerns. She said it is the first time in 46 years that she’s missing a semester teaching at Mark Arts, which in a typical year rolls out classes on a quarterly basis. While she is creating art at her home studio, she looks forward to getting back to the classroom to see her students.

Mellor and Gross are scheduled for a joint exhibition that will be on display Dec. 4 through Jan. 22 in Mark Arts’ School of Creativity Commons. The long-time instructors are happy to be a part of Mark Arts’ first 100 years and expect the organization’s next century to be equally important to the community.

“This school has a great historic reputation that goes back to the 1940s when they started putting on national shows that New York reviewers would come here to write about for world magazines,” Gross said. “I’ve worked in some capacity with almost all the directors dating back to the ’60s, and I want to compliment the current director, Katy Dorrah, for extending that reputation. One hundred years from now, they’ll still be talking about Mark Arts.”