Currier Museum of Art - Mary Scheier

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Mary Scheier
20th - 21st Centuries Ceramicist
American, (1908–2007)
Mary Scheier was born Mary Goldsmith in 1908 in Salem, Virginia. She attended local schools before going to New York City to study art at the Grand Central School of Art, the Art Students League, and the New York School of Fine and Applied Art. In 1930 she traveled to Paris to complete her education; after her return to the United States, she worked at odd jobs for several years before receiving an appointment as director of the Big Stone Gap and Abingdon Art Centers, art galleries in Virginia established under the Works Progress Administration (WPA) Federal Art Project.

Mary met her husband to be, Edwin Scheier, while he was serving as field supervisor for the Federal Art Project in Kentucky, Virginia, and North Carolina; the couple married in August 1937. Shortly after their wedding, the Scheiers resigned their positions with the WPA and became traveling puppeteers. A few months later, Ed took a job as director of the Anderson County Federal Art Center in Norris, Tennessee. While living in Norris, the Scheiers began to work with clay at the Tennessee Valley Authority Ceramic Laboratory. They established their own pottery first at the art center and then in the town of Glade Spring, Virginia. In 1940 the Scheiers won second prize at a national pottery exhibition held at the Syracuse (New York) Museum of Fine Arts. Not long afterward, they were offered teaching positions at the University of New Hampshire, where they remained for much of their active careers. Over the next two decades, the Scheiers won numerous awards and prizes for their work, which appeared frequently in museum exhibitions. In 1948 they staged their first retrospective at the Currier Museum (then Gallery) of Art.

Beginning in the late 1950s, the Scheiers spent long periods in Mexico, where they developed an interest in native weaving techniques. Ed began to make oil paintings and, in the 1960s, wood carvings as well. During this period Mary stopped making ceramics as the physical strain became too much. The Scheiers continued to live in Mexico until 1978, when they moved to Green Valley, Arizona. Mary died in May 2007 at the age of ninety-nine, followed less than a year later by Edwin’s death in April 2008.

The Scheiers’ significant contributions to American studio pottery have been widely recognized. During their lifetimes the couple received several notable distinctions, including honorary fellowships in the American Craft Council, honorary membership in the National Council for Education in Ceramic Arts, the Charles Holmes Pettee Medal of the University of New Hampshire, and a joint retrospective at the Currier Museum (then Gallery) of Art.

References

Currier Museum of Art. “The Currier Opens a New Exhibition A Tribute to Mary and Ed Scheier, Acclaimed Studio Potters.” Press release. June30, 2008.

Komenecky, Michael K. American Potters: Mary and Edwin Scheier. Manchester, NH: Currier Museum of Art, 1993.

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