Professor Emerita
Virginia Myers (1927-2015)
Virginia Myers died following a brief illness in Iowa City on December 7, 2015, at the age of 88. After receiving a B.A. degree (1949) in painting and drawing at the Corcoran School of Art and George Washington University, and the M.F.A. (1951) from the California College of Arts and Crafts, she came to Iowa City and the University of Iowa in 1955, unannounced, to study printmaking with master printmaker Mauricio Lasansky. Before being taken on as his assistant, she supported herself independently.
She received a Fulbright Fellowship to Paris in 1961, where she studied at Stanley William Hayter’s famed Atelier 17. She had the opportunity to stay on there, but Lasansky called her back to Iowa City to join the faculty as one of the pioneering women on the teaching staff. She remained for 50 years, until her retirement in 2012. Upon her retirement, she received emerita status in the School of Art & Art History.
Myers was a forerunner in the field of innovative intaglio, her medium of choice. She adapted the commercial process of foil stamping to the fine art studio. This required not only the development of a new technique but also the invention of a new device for the heated application of colored foils to paper surfaces. This she called the Iowa Foil Printer and she termed the process “foil imaging.”
She dedicated the last decades of her life to advocating for the unique reflective aesthetic of foil imaging as a new art form. Three books resulted from this campaign. The first, Foil Imaging: A New Art Form, published in 2001, introduced the process to the art world. The second (2006) made available actual editions produced by artists who learned foil imaging from Myers. Just days before her death, she sent to the publisher the completed manuscript of a third volume dedicated to foil imaging.
In the years just prior to her retirement she devoted much of her time to organizing the Iowa Print Group Archive initiated in 1945 by her mentor, Lasansky. This is a teaching collection of the prints made by School of Art & Art History printmaking students and visiting artists over the course of 70 years. It is a unique and invaluable teaching resource for printmaking students now and in the future.
Myers had more than 100 one-person shows and her work is included in collections at the National Museum of Women in the Arts, Washington, D.C.; the Toledo Museum of Art, Toledo, Ohio; the San Francisco Art Museum, the Nelson-Atkins Museum in Kansas City; and the Des Moines Art Center, Des Moines, Iowa. She received grants from the Fulbright Commission, the National Endowment for the Arts, and the Iowa Arts Council and, in 2009, she received the Excellence in Teaching Award from the Southern Graphics Council, the national professional organization of printmakers.
University of Iowa
The renowned printmaker, artist and inventor best known for her foil printing techniques and the Iowa Foil Press passed away on Dec. 7. She lived to see the University of Iowa dedicate a new collaborative project in her name, the Virginia A. Myers NEXUS of Engineering and Art opened in 2015 and puts into academic practice some of Myers’ life lessons. Myers came to Iowa City in 1955, studying under Mauricio Lasansky. She went to Paris on a Fulbright Scholarship from 1961-62 and then came back to Iowa to teach printmaking.
By 1986 she invented the Iowa Foil Printer, which allows foil stamping through a special double-sided heating process.
Myers was born in 1927 in Greencastle, Indiana, grew up in Cleveland and received her B.A. in drawing and painting from the Corcoran School of Art in 1949. She earned her M.F.A in painting from the California College of Arts and Crafts in Oakland.
Myers’ student and protégé Deanne Wortman is now the Director of the Virginia A. Myers NEXUS of Engineering and Art. Wortman learned of Myers’ death soon after it happened and said via email: “The next day I rose to one of the most magnificent sunrises I have ever seen. The whole sky was fiery in red and orange and pink. The light colored the fields and the trees. I had intended to visit her in the hospital that evening but got the word of her passing during the day. That evening was an even more magnificent sky of hot colors and clouds. I remember thinking that Virginia was ascending and foiling the sky as she went! I called out to her…..’You go girl! Bon Voyage! and vaya con dios!’”
Marita Clark is working on a book that will feature the last foil work by Myers.
She also had much to say about her collaborator:
“She was a brilliant and humble woman who masterfully embraced her purpose in life with utmost dignity and grace. She was so very appreciative of people who were interested in art, specifically a new Fine Art form, Foil Imaging, which she created, taught and introduced to society. She was the epitome of how to live life well, in the highest possible standard. Her light did not extinguish when she passed – it’s radiating through her foil imaging contributions!”
Little Village Magazine - Photo by Chris Mortenson