Art in the Park co-founder dies
Helen Garrett painted scenes for Hallmark, was original member of Lawrence Art Guild
As a young girl, Helen Garrett knew she would dedicate her life to art.
She worked painting scenes for Joyce Hall, the founder of Hallmark, in the 1930s, but she longed for more recognition.
Back then, the only art shows were regional ones in Kansas City and Wichita. They featured tough competition.
Garrett had a nugget of an idea that evolved into Art in the Park, a juried event that still showcases local artwork every May in South Park.
Garrett, 94, a longtime Lawrence resident, died Thursday at Baldwin Care Center.
“She said, ‘I want to be hung before I die,'” said Joyce Schild, who expanded Garrett’s idea and founded Art in the Park in 1962. “In other words, she wanted to be ‘hung’ in an art show.”
Garrett became a founding member of the Lawrence Art Guild, which planned the first Art in the Park show.
Though Art in the Park may have left a lasting impression on the community, it was just part of Garrett’s life surrounded by art.
“It was just one of those things she did,” said Linda Wright, Garrett’s oldest daughter, a Baldwin resident.
Garrett manipulated oils, watercolors and pencils well into her 80s, producing hundreds of works throughout her life, Wright said. Then when arthritis prevented the precision she needed to sketch out her visions, she applied her creativity toward arranging flowers.
As a young woman in the Depression era, Garrett developed thrifty habits. But she used her creativity to turn ordinary items into unique works of art: dolls for her children were made out of bleach bottles and luxurious hats from folded papers, Wright said.
Even family vacations allowed time for Garrett to sketch her surroundings, Wright said.
Though Garrett was a homemaker, she painted commissioned works. The Baldwin Library displays her painting of the valley below Signal Oak. Several others, including a painting of the old Fraser Hall before it burned, still hang on the Kansas University campus. Her husband, Richard, was an architectural engineering professor there.
In the 1980s, Garrett spent months embroidering and sewing intricate designs into four cloth banners for the First United Methodist Church in Lawrence. One, an Easter banner, will hang Monday during her funeral.
“Her whole life was art,” Wright said.