White-line woodcut, 1933. Signed, titled and dated in pencil. Signed "Grace Martin Frame" Grace Martin Taylor's married name.
Grace Martin Taylor (Frame) (1903-1995) was born in Morgantown, West Virginia, and was the younger cousin of Blanche Lazzell. Grace enrolled at West Virginia University in Morgantown, However, she was not pleased with the studio arts at the university, so she began supplementing her art education in 1922 at the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts with Arthur B. Carles and Henry McCarter.
Taylor accepted Blanche Lazzell’s invitation to visit Provincetown in 1929. During this time, she became proficient with the white-line woodcut. She joined the American Color Print Society as one of its founders and was also a member of the Woodcut Society based in Kansas City. In 1933 one of her woodcuts, “Studio Window,” was nominated by the Printmakers Society of California as one of the Fifty Best Prints of the Year.
Although she made periodic visits to Provincetown, most of her life was spent in West Virginia. She taught art education for more than forty years at Mason College of Music and Fine Art, becoming president of the College.
She was a highly regarded printmaker, painter, and educator, and was recognized in 1988 by the National Museum of Women in the Arts in Washington as a pioneer of American abstraction.
