Mary Dill Henry, Love Jazz, 1965. Selection from the Mary Dill Henry Archive at Paul V. Galvin Library\u2019s University Archives and Special Collections, Illinois Institute of Technology. COURTESY HAUSER & WIRTH INSTITUTE<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\nHenry\u2019s archive reveals that she could draw exactingly detailed architectural sections and could tip landscape drawings into evocative abstraction with grace. Darms says she was attracted to this eclectic oeuvre because Henry was an artist that \u201ccomes to devoting herself fully to her practice later in life.\u201d The delay in development of Henry\u2019s own idiosyncratic artistic voice by the material necessities of commercial work and the gendered domestic responsibilities of mid-20th-century America is perhaps the most defining characteristic of her trajectory as an artist, but it also poses a very large \u201cWhat If?\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cHow did these mural and mosaic [projects] then inform her later practice?\u201d says Darms. \u201c[These] might not have happened if she\u2019d gone straight into the less commercial [work], where she could really explore her own desires more than her clients\u2019. If she would have been born later, she would have had more time to devote herself as a young person to her practice.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Henry\u2019s wide eclecticism was at least in part driven by the fact that her most productive years were spent hewing to the whims of the corporate commercial art world and limited in exploration by domestic responsibility. It\u2019s testament to her Institute of Design training and its medium-agnostic approach that she generated works dynamic and vigorous enough to make commercial utility and long-sought freeform creative pursuit shine equally as brightly.<\/p>\n\n\n\nPrev<\/button>Next<\/button><\/div>Henry with painting at SafeCo, 1997. Selection from the Mary Dill Henry Archive at Paul V. Galvin Library\u2019s University Archives and Special Collections, Illinois Institute of Technology. COURTESY HAUSER & WIRTH INSTITUTE<\/figcaption><\/figure><\/li>Mary Dill Henry working on HP murals, 1958. Selection from the Mary Dill Henry Archive at Paul V. Galvin Library\u2019s University Archives and Special Collections, Illinois Institute of Technology. COURTESY HAUSER & WIRTH INSTITUTE<\/figcaption><\/figure><\/li>Mosaic detail 1, HP Headquarters, 1960. Selection from the Mary Dill Henry Archive at Paul V. Galvin Library\u2019s University Archives and Special Collections, Illinois Institute of Technology. COURTESY HAUSER & WIRTH INSTITUTE<\/figcaption><\/figure><\/li>Mosaic detail 1, HP Headquarters, 1960. Selection from the Mary Dill Henry Archive at Paul V. Galvin Library\u2019s University Archives and Special Collections, Illinois Institute of Technology. COURTESY HAUSER & WIRTH INSTITUTE<\/figcaption><\/figure><\/li>Mosaic detail 1, HP Headquarters, 1960. Selection from the Mary Dill Henry Archive at Paul V. Galvin Library\u2019s University Archives and Special Collections, Illinois Institute of Technology. COURTESY HAUSER & WIRTH INSTITUTE<\/figcaption><\/figure><\/li>Mosaic detail 1, HP Headquarters, 1960. Selection from the Mary Dill Henry Archive at Paul V. Galvin Library\u2019s University Archives and Special Collections, Illinois Institute of Technology. COURTESY HAUSER & WIRTH INSTITUTE<\/figcaption><\/figure><\/li>Mural in HP Assembly Room. Selection from the Mary Dill Henry Archive at Paul V. Galvin Library\u2019s University Archives and Special Collections, Illinois Institute of Technology. COURTESY HAUSER & WIRTH INSTITUTE<\/figcaption><\/figure><\/li> <\/figure><\/li><\/ul><\/div><\/div><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<\/p>\n\n\n\n