Vintage “The Garden Club Luncheon” by Mary Jane Oshier NWS Original Watercolor Painting

Art is 27 x 30” Working together as well as independently, Ed and Mary Jane Oshier enjoyed a long and distinguished career in the enamels field. While producing work in other media including watercolor for Mary Jane and ceramics for Ed, their enamels – whether abstract or figurative – are among their strongest and most powerfully engaging artistic statements. An early work by the Oshiers was featured in Designer Craftsmen U.S.A., an immensely influential exhibition organized in 1953 by the Brooklyn Museum. Among a small handful of contemporary enamels chosen for the exhibition, the piece was called Nun Trio and it depicted three nuns playing musical instruments – a harp, a mandolin, and a horn. In 1959 their work was also included in the seminal exhibition Enamels at the Museum of Contemporary Craft in New York. A sprawling celebration of the medium, Enamels traced the history of enameling while also presenting some of the most significant work being produced at the time. The Oshiers were represented in this exhibition by four works – a 30 inch high fountain and several practical and elegant forms of hardware – a drawer pull, a door pull, and a knob. The prominent orchestra conductor Leopold Stokowski saw their fountain in the 1959 show and sent them a letter praising their work in the following terms: “I found the delicate sounds of the dripping water delightful.” After inquiring about the possibility of commissioning a second piece, he closed his letter saying: “Thank you for the pleasure I had in seeing and hearing your imaginative fountain.” Two collaborative pieces by the Oshiers were featured in the 1954 National Ceramic Exhibition at the Everson Museum of Art in Syracuse and Mary Jane’s independently-produced enamels were also chosen for Ceramic Nationals in 1962, 1964, and 1966. Ed Oshier’s independent work, an ashtray decorated with the image of a rooster, was chosen for the Decorative Arts and Ceramics Exhibition at the Wichita Arts Center in 1952. Similarly, Ed Oshier’s work was selected for the Ceramic Annual at Scripps College in Claremont, California in 1961 and 1963 and Mary Jane’s work was chosen for that same show in 1961. Ed Oshier received both his B.A. and his M.A. from the University of Denver. Mary Jane studied art in high school and married Ed immediately after she graduated. According to their daughter Manet, it’s likely that Mary Jane developed further as an artist in the early years of their marriage learning on her own and under Ed’s instruction. Manet also observed that by the time Ed received his M.A., Mary Jane had chosen enameling as her preferred medium. Pickup category timeslot {A}