Dorothy Houts

DOROTHY HOUTS (1897-1985)

Painter and teacher, Dorothy Houts was born in January 20, 1897 in Parker, South Dakota.1 She graduated from Iowa State Teachers College (now the University of Northern Iowa), which she entered in 1916, in Cedar Falls, after which she taught art in Hampton, Vinton and Cedar Rapids.3 After studying commercial art for two years at the National Academy of Arts in Chicago where she was a pupil of Audubon Tyler, she returned to Cedar Rapids. By 1938 she was teaching art at Roosevelt Junior High School. She retired in 1961.4 In the summer of 1943 she studied painting with Marvin Cone at Coe College.5 Ms. Houts also started the art department for Ambro Advertising Agency in Cedar Rapids where she worked for four years.6 Ms. Houts exhibited her painting at the Iowa Art Salon in 1932, 1934, 1935, as well as in local colleges and universities, including Ames, Iowa City and Mt. Vernon.7 She exhibited at the Little Gallery in Cedar Rapids and worked with Grant Wood on the WPA for a short period.8 She also illustrated books, including a beginner's guide to the piano, written for children by her sister Eleanor. Her work was included in (George B.) Bridgman's Fifty Best Figure Drawings.9 In the summer of 1938 Houts went on a sketching trip through the southwest, painting under the direction of Henry Varnum Poor, director of the Fine Arts Center at Colorado Springs.10 She also traveled to Santa Fe and Taos, setting off daily to paint carrying her folding stool, portfolio and water jar. In Taos she painted a portrait of a Native American named Joe Sunlightening, for which she asked him to wear an Indian chieftain's headdress. The resulting watercolors were exhibited upon her return at the Cedar Rapids Art Association.11 Houts died in 1985 at her home in Cedar Rapids.12 She bequeathed much of her work - drawings and watercolors - to the Cedar Rapids Museum of Art.13 She also made a substantial financial bequest for the establishment of an endowment at Coe College in support of the music department, in honor of her sister who taught music there for 27 years.14

Endnotes

1Alumni Office, Coe College, Cedar Rapids, Iowa. I am grateful to Jean Johnson, Director of Alumni Programs, for fielding my queries.

2Ibid.

3Obituary, unidentified newspaper clipping, 1985, provided by Cedar Rapids Museum of Art. Sean Ulmer, Curator of Collections and Exhibitions at the Museum, generously provided materials from their artists files.

4Roosevelt Junior High School, Cedar Rapids, IA.

5 Coe College Records, via Jean Johnson, Alumni Office. Houts took Painting I with Cone.

6Zenobia B. Ness and Louise Orwig [hereafter Ness-Orwig], Iowa Artists of the First Hundred Years, Des Moines: Wallace Homestaed Company, 1939, p. 106. Obituary (fn.3)

7Ness-Orwig.

8Ibid.

9Ibid.

10"New Mexico Exhibited at Gallery," unidentified newspaper clipping, hand-dated December 18, 1938. Coe College.

11Ibid.

12Obituary (see fn. 3)

13Conversation with Sean Ulmer, Curator of Collections and Exhibitions, Cedar Rapids Museum of Art, Nov. 15, 2011.

14"Houts Bequest Establishes $180,000 Endowment," unidentified clipping, Artist File, Coe College, Cedar Rapids, IA.