The findingDulcinea Blog

Georgia O'Keeffe and Using the Web to Discover the Early Work of an Artist

Recently, while writing a profile of the great painter Georgia O'Keeffe, I came across a number of interesting details of her life and career. In doing research I learned that in order to have a visual timeline of her career and to keep the prices and demand for her work high, O'Keeffe kept or bought back more than half of all the 2000 or more paintings she created in her lifetime. She also appeared in art exhibitions for which she was not the artist, but the subject; her husband Alfred Stieglitz was an art gallery owner and photographer, and did a series of photographs featuring O'Keeffe (even a few nudes) during their marriage.

Although perhaps most surprising to me was that O'Keeffe did not always paint the forms for which we know her today. The stark white bones contrasting with the desert sky and the colorful over-sized insides of flowers were done in a style that O'Keeffe didn't adopt until she was nearly 40, but those paintings were so overwhelmingly popular that they have somewhat overshadowed her early work.

O'Keeffe's early work was of a more abstract nature. From about 1915 until the mid 1920s, O'Keeffe drew and painted images that expressed a view of the world in stark contrast to the almost photographic paintings of her later years. It was an early series of her charcoal on paper drawings (that were an abstract exploration of line and shape) that first caught the eye of then gallery owner Alfred Stieglitz. The Georgia O'Keeffe museum notes that O'Keeffe was ahead of her art colleagues of the time with her interest in abstract work, just as her ultra realistic more famous paintings would show the world another innovative view later on.

One of the great advances in technology over the last decade is the increased availability of online multimedia, such as images and videos. This allows users to not just read about artists, but to experience their work. At the Georgia O'Keeffe Museum Web site you can look at examples of her work from different eras in her career, including her abstract period. You would be hard-pressed to encounter many of these pieces in real life.

And if you'd like to visit the work of other well-known artists online, see our article about virtually visiting museums.

Haley Lovett

Audience Development

Musings on Math

For a long time, I loved math. In sixth grade I joined Mathletes, played the “whadyouget” game after every test, and my favorite part of my day—aside from recess—involved sitting in a group rolling a die and playing some obscure game where you added, subtracted and multiplied.As a freshman in high school, I helped with the measurements when we built what we hoped would be the world’s largest Icosahedron. We made a T-shirt of the blueprint. I wore it.

Today, however, I place myself squarely in the camp of women who’d say they aren’t good at math. Naturally, I was fascinated by a study saying that elementary girls scored lower on math tests after spending a school year with female teachers that were anxious about math.

Now, I know that a single case can’t negate a study and that’s not what I’m arguing. I don’t remember which teachers taught me math in elementary school or even if they were good teachers. It’s possible that they were nervous or uninspired. But the math teachers that I do remember were all women and they were, for the most part, bright, fun, confident women who LOVED math, and wanted to share that passion.

Still, at some point in high school, I started to believe that I wasn’t good at math. And while I don’t blame my teachers—though my freshman year teacher was by far the best—I do hold our society somewhat responsible. I know, blame society. That’s like blaming oxygen. But it’s true. Girls are taught that they excel at language and writing, while boys excel at math and science.  And even though statistics have begun to disprove this idea, the truth never came fast enough for some of us. At some point, like a lot of women I know, the thought that I would never be good at math wormed its way into some cranny in my brain, embedded itself, and then decomposed, bits of itself living on beneath the surface.

So, what happens when you don’t believe you’re good at something? You stop trying. And you’re never going to be good at something if you don’t practice at it. Ask Michael Jordan. Ask Norah Jones.

I chose another path. I became fascinated with language, enamored with books, and authors—all of it. That became my thing and I don’t regret it. But who says you can’t have more than one thing.  Teachers, encourage your students, all of them. If you're weak in a subject, practice. Get help. And don't ever let them think, it's because you're a woman.

Shannon Firth
Senior Writer and Audience Development Coordinator

Women Firsts in 2008

As most of us know, Sarah Palin and Hillary Clinton were big achievers in 2008. But there are many other women from around the world who set milestones this year. FindingDulcinea teamed up with WowOwoW, otherwise known as The Women on the Web, to profile 20 such women, including Olympic swimmer Dara Torres, New Hampshire's first female senator Jeanne Shaheen, Clinton, Palin, and 16 more. 

Visit WowOwoW's photo essay to see pictures and learn essential facts about the women.

Visit findingDulcinea's special section, 2008 Firsts for Women, to learn more about each of these women's lives and how they achieved their unique accomplishments.

Liz Colville

Senior Writer

Audience Development