Dori Hutson, 96, Artist
Bill Schenley
http://www.denverpost.com/Stories/0,1413,36~11777~2166673,00.html
Artist Dori Hutson, who died at age 96 on May 16, was
immensely versatile, successful in both commercial art and
fine art.
She was chosen as one of 50 artists represented in a 1997
exhibition at the National Museum of Women in the Arts.
She also illustrated and published a wry book on privies and
outhouses and could kill rattlesnakes by whipping them with
the buckle of her horse's reins, a skill developed as she
was growing up on an Eastern Plains homestead.
Doris Carr Hutson was the youngest of five children born to
parents who ran a farm near Wiggins. The family had a modest
cabin supplemented by a sleeping tent. They heated water
over a wood-burning stove for their weekly baths.
At age 15, her family sent her to Denver after discovering
that she was in love with a local farm boy. Two years later,
she married Howard Hutson, whom she met through her piano
teacher.
In 1930, she enrolled at the Denver Art Institute. After
graduation, she began working as a freelance artist, fitting
assignments between caring for her four children. She
established a local reputation among department stores for
her pen-and-ink wash drawings of leather accessories.
At the time, department stores hired artists to sketch
dresses, suits and other merchandise. Staff artists, as
Hutson said, "didn't want to fool around with accessories."
"I always liked to draw the different textures - crocodile
and alligator, suede and faille and kidskin," she recalled
in a 1997 Denver Post interview. "I loved doing the detail."
Some admirers thought the best example of Hutson's
attentiveness was expressed in the painstakingly singular
Battenberg lace alphabet she rendered in pen and ink as a
tribute to her mother, who designed her own tatting
patterns.
Hutson favored innovative clothing considerably more casual
than the severely tailored suits that were trendy during her
career as a commercial artist. She designed most of the clot
hes that she and her children wore, sewing whimsical outfits
that daughter Holli Thompson described as "about six months
ahead of the trends." She once modified her daughters'
petticoats for Christmas by sewing bells to the hems.
In 1965, Hutson shifted from newspaper freelance work to
form Dori Originals, a gift card business, with pen and ink
sketches of Colorado landmarks and mountain scenes.
"It was high time tourists had an opportunity to see
something truly made in Colorado," Hutson said tartly in a
1967 Denver Post interview. "So much of what I saw on gift
counters was pure junk or could be found in other parts of
the country."
Her sketches included Colorado churches, the Tabor Grand
Opera House, the Molly Brown House, the Teller House in
Central City, the Air Force Academy chapel, the Maxwell
House in Georgetown, the Maroon Bells and Mount Sopris.
Hutson handled every aspect of her business. Instead of
farming out the merchandising and deliveries, she packaged,
sold and delivered cards from her Mount Vernon Canyon home.
In 1996, Hutson wrote and illustrated "Hidden Assets:
Stories Behind the Throne," a droll history of outhouses and
privies. When publishing houses turned down the manuscript,
she published it herself, eventually creating a website, now
defunct, to promote the book and her greeting card line.
She continued painting scenes of Colorado and the West,
including a stately depiction of some hikers all but
eclipsed by the towering walls of Canyon de Chelly National
Monument. Her 1969 painting "Canyon Walls" was chosen for
the 1997 "From the States" exhibit at the National Museum of
Women in the Arts in Washington.
A Colorado committee from the museum chose Hutson to
represent the state, saying her "passion, her spirit and her
determination epitomize the pioneer heritage of Colorado and
the complex social challenges faced by women artists then
and now."
For her part, Hutson said she was sorry that she didn't have
"a good painting of Colorado" for the exhibit.
"But I've sold or given away so many," she explained. "We
thought this one would be a representative of the miles of
canyon lands in Colorado, and the Native American influence
from centuries ago that influences today."
Hutson's personal life and career faltered when her husband
died in 1993, and she underwent cataract operations. As her
eyesight deteriorated, she stopped painting for a while.
Eventually she rallied, choosing large subjects for the
finely detailed motifs she liked best. Her last painting was
a watercolor still life of a flower bucket.
"I can't do the portraits any more really," she said then.
"I can't get the features right."
By the late 1990s, Hutson's eyesight was all but gone. She
turned from painting to working with clay, combining it with
costume jewelry for what she called "crude but fun" art.
Survivors include two daughters, Hillary Hutson of Golden
and Holliday Thompson of Denver; two sons, Howard C. "Hadie"
Hutson of Denver and Hal Hutson of Grand Junction; nine
grandchildren; nine great-grandchildren; and two great-great
grandchildren.
The family suggests memorial donations to the Colorado
Talking Books Library, 180 Sheridan Blvd., Denver, CO 80226.
A celebration of her life will be held June 6 at a location
to be announced.