Daisies

Caladium Leaves

Retha Mason

in mid-career  

Iowa Artisans Gallery features watercolors by Retha Mason, April 20 – May 30. Mason’s show coincides with Older Americans Month (May), first designated in 1963 as a way of celebrating the accomplishments of our senior population. Mason’s numerous talents as a musician and composer, artist and academic, are striking. A nonagenarian who passed away in November 2005, Mason was a recent Iowa City resident who also spent much time in Tucson, Arizona. Her watercolors center around botanical themes and compositions, sometimes arranged as a design instead of simply a tabletop portrayal, as well as landscapes. Her work was exhibited in the American Southwest, Wisconsin, as well as locally in Iowa City.

Mason received Bachelor’s and Master’s degrees in music from the University of Chicago in 1938 & 1945. She taught college level music, humanities and art history at the Chicago City Colleges until her retirement in 1977. While at the Chicago City Colleges, she founded the educational programs for the Chicago Symphony Orchestra and the Lyric Opera of Chicago.   She played harpsichord with the Chicago Chamber Orchestra. With her husband Robert, she operated a well-known summer children's camp in Wisconsin. One of the couple’s most well-known young campers was columnist George Will, who contributed a memoir of that experience for her memorial services.

When she and her husband moved to Tucson, AZ, she took watercolor lessons from Cherry Murray.  She became so intrigued with this medium that she concentrated solely on this and on composing music.  She had many showings of her art in Southwest Wisconsin and in Tucson where she also had her music played by members of the Tucson Symphony Orchestra.  In recent years, Mason moved to Iowa City to be near her daughter, Vicki Lonngren. Mason left a large body of visual art as well as musical compositions; a sampling of her watercolors is currently on display.

Bougainvillea