About a dozen pieces by Dorothy Gillespie are displayed in Fort Wayne Museum of Art’s sculpture garden.

A sculpture by Dorothy Gillespie stands as an example of her use of colors and lightweight materials.

“Exuberance,” a sculpture by Dorothy Gillespie, stands on display at Fort Wayne Museum of Art.

65 Colors on Pick Up Sticks, a sculpture by Dorothy Gillespie, stands on display at the Fort Wayne Museum of Art sculpture garden

April 23, 1979: Artist Dorothy Gillespie stands outside what is now Arts United Center. Her art was being exhibited at the center as well as Fort Wayne Museum of Art, the Allen County Public Library, Fort Wayne National Bank and Lincoln National Life.

“The Three Maypoles of the Jaguar,” an oil on canvas piece by Alice Barber, is part of the “Peer and Patron” exhibition on loan from the Dorothy M. Gillespie Foundation.

“Peer and Patron” includes “Lincoln Center Print” by Nancy Graves, which is on loan from the Dorothy M. Gillespie Foundation.

About a dozen pieces by Dorothy Gillespie are displayed in Fort Wayne Museum of Art’s sculpture garden.

A sculpture by Dorothy Gillespie stands as an example of her use of colors and lightweight materials.

“Exuberance,” a sculpture by Dorothy Gillespie, stands on display at Fort Wayne Museum of Art.

65 Colors on Pick Up Sticks, a sculpture by Dorothy Gillespie, stands on display at the Fort Wayne Museum of Art sculpture garden

April 23, 1979: Artist Dorothy Gillespie stands outside what is now Arts United Center. Her art was being exhibited at the center as well as Fort Wayne Museum of Art, the Allen County Public Library, Fort Wayne National Bank and Lincoln National Life.

“The Three Maypoles of the Jaguar,” an oil on canvas piece by Alice Barber, is part of the “Peer and Patron” exhibition on loan from the Dorothy M. Gillespie Foundation.

“Peer and Patron” includes “Lincoln Center Print” by Nancy Graves, which is on loan from the Dorothy M. Gillespie Foundation.

Examples of Dorothy Gillespie’s work have been on display in the yearlong “Garden Party” outdoor sculpture exhibit at Fort Wayne Museum of Art since June.

That exhibition will be joined this weekend with several more pieces of Gillespie’s work and about 60 pieces she collected by other artists before her death in 2012.

“Peer and Patron: Selections from the Private Collection of Dorothy Gillespie” opens Saturday and continues through Nov. 13. It includes three of the artist’s works that are part of the museum’s permanent collection and about 60 works by other artists, including Robert Motherwell, Helen Frankenthaler, Keith Haring, Robert Rauschenberg and Louise Nevelson.

Gillespie lived in New York from the 1940s to 1980s and was part of America’s modern art scene, collecting work by friends and acquaintances that are now well-known names in the art world.

In April 1979, Dorothy Gillespie was in the city as artist-in-residence at Fort Wayne Museum of Art. 

This isn’t the first time Gillespie’s work has been on display in Fort Wayne. In 1979, she was artist-in-residence at Fort Wayne Museum of Art and pieces of her work were displayed at the museum (then in the West Central neighborhood), the Performing Arts Center (now Arts United Center), the Allen County Public Library, Fort Wayne National Bank and Lincoln National Life.

In an April 27, 1979, story by Roxanne Mueller in The Journal Gazette, Gillespie said she preferred to let her art speak for itself.

“What we do is there for anyone to see,” she said. “I sometimes think that the artist is no more than the brush or the paint. Something flows through them to the canvas. The artist is merely the conduit – the thoughts come from some other place.”

Gillespie’s works on display now at the museum are playful – full of color and movement, made with painted metal and pipes. She saw her pieces as symbolic of joy and childhood, says Jenna Gilley, associate curator of exhibitions.

Gilley wanted a mixture of colors and types as examples of Gillespie’s work for “Garden Party.” The exhibit includes large totems, smaller metallic sculptures and “crawling” pieces at ground level. Gilley’s concept for the exhibit is to display them like exotic flowers, intermixed with planters and vegetation.

“Gillespie was really instrumental in public art and bringing art off of the wall and into environment,” Gilley says. “And she really made her pieces interact with the environment.”

Gilley says Gillespie never really wanted fame the way some artists do, but “Garden Party” and “Peer and Patron” show not just her own artistic prowess but also the type of work she appreciated from other artists. The curator sees it as a unique opportunity to display an artist’s work and collection side-by-side.

“It’s kind of a portrait of her in a lot of ways,” Gilley says. “I hope that people can see how the other people in the room have influenced her work and how, vice versa, some of her thing found its way into their pieces.”

Gillespie was also a supporter of women’s rights and women in the arts. In the 1979 Journal Gazette story, she said that because of the bias against female artists, one had to be a superstar to succeed.

She saw a movement spreading across the country that was upgrading the image of women artists, but she said sexist myths still prevailed in some areas.

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“We recognize female authors. It might be because authors need no large space to create,” she said. “The female artist must get away from the home environment to create. I myself had to get rid of the mentality that men are better and more accomplished. Women are supposed to help other people. I’ve been programmed to do that, to help others first.”

Gillespie helped establish the Women’s Interart Center in New York and was adamant about including women artists in her private collection, Gilley says. Almost 50% of the artists in the collection are women.

The sculptor never wanted help from men in creating her own work, Gilley says. She used aluminum for many of her works because it was lightweight. She could bend it herself, unlike a material such as steel, which is what her male counterparts were using. And she kept doing it that way until she died in her 90s.

“She was really a powerhouse,” Gilley says. “And was a really big champion for people like herself, who were a female artist and they wanted to get into this male-driven world.”

Gilley will give a Curator’s Tour of “Peer and Patron” at 12:15 p.m. Oct. 16.

Reader Engagement Editor Corey McMaken is a Fort Wayne native and has been with The Journal Gazette since 2004. He writes about arts, entertainment, food and area history. He also works with social media, newsletters and other digital projects.

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