Thursday night in the Carnegie Library Museum saw a special event, hosted by Hometown Heritage and Iowa State University’s Brunnier Art Museum, in which art historian and curator Lea Rossen DeLong discussed the life and work of Des Moines artist Amy N. Worthen, who specializes in the centuries old art form of printmaking and engraving.
Worthen — an author, curator and art historian as well as artist — is widely known for her scholarship and creative art. Over the course of her 50-year career, her works have been shown in museums throughout the U.S. and Europe, including the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, the Smithsonian in Washington D.C. and the Boston Museum of Fine Arts.
Rossen DeLong, who was introduced by Adrienne Gennett, assistant curator of collections and education at the Brunnier, spoke about the materials of Worthen’s art, in which she carves designs into a metal plate that is then covered with ink and run through a high-pressure printing press. The image from the inked, carved plate is transferred onto paper.
DeLong also touched on Worthen’s interests in architecture and history and how they blend with fantasy and humor, as in her in which animal skeletons climb a grand staircase. Worthen is well known for her print series on the Capitol Building and Terrace Hill in Des Moines and others that focus on nature and Venice, Italy, the artist’s second home.
Worthen’s travels influenced her artworks, said DeLong, who also touched on aspects of the artist’s Iowa upbringing as influences on her art.
DeLong’s Worthen lecture complements the Brunnier’s current exhibition, “The World in Perspective,” which shows Worthen’s works from her childhood up through today. It follows last year’s successful Hometown Heritage-Brunnier Art Museum partnership in the year-long exhibition of the works of Gary Ernest Smith in Ames and Perry.
Dr. Alissa Whitmore is the Hometown Heritage research associate.
