The Beauty of Their Worlds

By Norman Kolpas

Many pathways to learning await people who love fine art and want to understand more about the people who make it. Beyond museums, galleries, reading, documentaries and lectures, some of the richest opportunities to learn are, in fact, all too often hiding in plain sight: the historic homes and studios where artists of the past lived and worked.

Those of nationally recognized artists from Georgia O’Keeffe to Norman Rockwell, Winslow Homer to the Wyeth Family, are already well known. For fresh insights, however, consider visiting the three homes and studios featured here, which belonged to past artists of local or regional renown who merit more widespread recognition: Northern California ethnologic portraitist Grace Hudson, Indiana impressionist T.C. Steele, and New Mexico-based modernist painter and muralist Olive Rush.

Grace Hudson Museum & Sun HouseUkiah, CA(707) 467-2836gracehudsonmuseum.org

“For a smaller museum, we pack a pretty large punch,” says Alyssa Boge, curator of education and exhibits at the Grace Hudson Museum & Sun House. That impact certainly derives from the powerhouse of an artist celebrated here.

Painter Grace Carpenter Hudson (1865-1937) is known today for authentically portraying the lives of the Pomo peoples in and around her Mendocino County hometown of Ukiah, California, about a hundred miles north of San Francisco. But the artist’s talent first blossomed in her teens through studies at the San Francisco School of Design, and she gained early success as a magazine illustrator, while also painting landscapes, still lifes and portraits.

Grace’s marriage in 1890 to John Hudson, who had trained as a medical doctor before pursuing his passion for Native American ethnology, brought even greater focus to her art. In 1892, she painted LITTLE MENDOCINO, a portrait of a Pomo infant, which won acclaim at the 1893 Chicago World’s Fair and was widely reproduced in prints as well as sometimes flagrantly copied by other artists. On the back of that canvas, she inscribed the numeral “5”—noting it as the fifth of 684 paintings she recorded in her lifetime.

In 1911, the Hudsons commissioned and collaborated with local architect George L. Wilcox to design a spacious Craftsman-style redwood bungalow they called “The Sun House,” after a carved Hopi sun symbol that they combined with a Christian cross and displayed in warm welcome over their front door. The home included a generous sunlit studio for Grace and a smaller workspace for John, along with ample attic storage for his more than 30,000 Native artifacts. Many furnishings were custom-made, including a hat rack John built and a sideboard Wilcox fashioned as a housewarming present. After John died in 1936 and Grace the following year, Grace’s nephew Mark Carpenter and his wife, Melissa, lived there, and after he passed, she eventually sold the building and its contents to the City of Ukiah.

Today, The Sun House is the centerpiece of 4 acres of grounds. These also include The Wild Gardens, cultivated and maintained to teach visitors about Pomo culture and land management—featuring, says Boge, “many plants that either appear in Grace’s paintings or are used by the Pomo people for basketry or other purposes.” A museum, opened in 1986, includes an exhibit on Hudson’s life and career, with many original works, as well as historical displays on the Carpenter-Hudson family and an exhibition of Pomo basketry.

Another gallery offers changing contemporary art exhibitions of local interest, such as The Art of Wonder, through October 19, with works by 15 Mendocino County artists who aim to evoke awe; and “Mission Gráfica,” featuring 42 socially and politically relevant screenprints from the respected San Francisco print center of that name. Concludes Boge, “There’s always quite a lot going on here.”

T.C. Steele State Historic SiteNashville, IN(812) 988-2785indianamuseum.org/historic-sites/tc-steele

Through celebrating Brown County in south-central Indiana in his art, impressionist painter Theodore Clement “T.C.” Steele (1847-1926) transformed the region into an artistic haven still visited by plein air painters wishing to capture its lush rolling landscape. “While he might not be as well known outside of the state, Indiana artists definitely know him,” says Jessica Stephens, the State Historic Sites Program Manager and the Site Manager for the T.C. Steele State Historic Site, noting that “when the weather’s nice, we welcome artists to come and paint on the grounds”—which preserve his home, studio and other buildings on 211 acres.

Born in 1847 in the town of Gosport, near Bloomington, Steele showed an early talent for drawing. In his teens, he trained at art schools locally and in Chicago and Cincinnati, before launching his career as a portrait painter and eventually marrying his first wife, Libby. After having the first two of their three children, the family moved to Indianapolis. Then, from 1880 to 1885, through the supported of 13 patrons, they lived in Munich, Germany, where Steele studied at the Academy of Fine Arts and developed a love of plein-air painting. Returning home, he became the most prominent member of an association of Indiana impressionists known as the Hoosier Group. “He really found Indiana to be as beautiful as any place in Europe,” notes Stephens.

Libby died in 1899, and eight years later Steele married his second wife, Selma. In August 1907, on a hilltop amidst land whose farmers still lived mostly in log cabins, they moved into their newly built, high-ceilinged, four-room Arts and Crafts-style home with screened-in porches that vibrated in the wind, inspiring its name: “House of the Singing Winds.” Steele added a wing on the western side the following year as his studio—and, in 1916, built a separate barnlike studio nearby. “In the beginning, it was meant to be a seasonal home,” says Stephens. “But he loved Brown County, and eventually it became their full-time refuge.” Selma became an avid gardener, and some of her plantings still blossom there; in fact, one of the many Steele paintings on display is his well-known SELMA IN THE GARDEN. Other painters came, and some settled nearby—including Steele’s friend Gustave Baumann who, almost a decade before moving to Santa Fe, carved an apt old Welsh saying below the fireplace mantel: “Every morning I take off my hat to the beauty of the world.”

When Selma died, she deeded the entire property and its contents to the state as a museum. Today, visitors on regular guided tours see the home—and studio—much as it was when the Steeles lived there. This includes some 60 paintings in rotation from a collection of more than 350; original furnishings; book-filled shelves; and even Steele’s cigar butts on an ashtray in an open armoire. Says Stephens, “We really want people to feel when they enter the home like the Steeles just stepped out.”

Olive Rush Studio & Art CenterSanta Fe, NMoliverush.org

People browsing the art galleries along Canyon Road may hardly notice one specific humble two-centuries-old adobe dwelling. But now, that structure has been freshly opened to visitors as the Olive Rush Studio & Art Center, celebrating the life and works of one of the most original artists in Santa Fe’s history.

Olive Rush (1873-1966), born the fourth of a Quaker farming couple’s six children in Fairmount, Indiana, showed early talent for art. “Her parents supported that and sent her off at 16 to study art at nearby Earlham College,” says Liz Kohlenberg, Rush’s great-niece and board chair of the Olive Rush Memorial Studio Foundation. Earlham’s art department chairman encouraged her to head east, and Rush spent two years at the school of the Corcoran Gallery in Washington, D.C. From there, she worked as a commercial artist in New York City while studying at the Art Students League and painting on the side; and worked and studied six years at the Delaware art colony of famed illustrator Howard Pyle. She also traveled twice to Europe, returning first to care for her ailing mother until her passing in 1910; and then again in 1913, coming back before World War I.

In 1914, Rush and her sister joined their father on a trip to the Southwest. She adored Santa Fe and had a solo show at the Palace of the Governors. After Rush’s father died the following year, her oldest brother took over the farm and paid each sibling for their one-fifth share. With her money, Rush moved to Santa Fe in 1920 and bought her Canyon Road adobe. “It was four rooms, a dirt floor, no plumbing, no electricity,” says Kohlenberg. She updated and expanded the property, turned the main room along Canyon Road into her studio, and cultivated its garden. She also painted the interior walls with frescoes that helped establish her as one of the Southwest’s leading muralists—an endeavor for which she enlisted and trained Native artists. The home became an artistic gathering place. Kohlenberg notes, “She was known as the dean of Santa Fe women artists.”

Rush’s eclectic style reflected her broad-ranging interests. “We’ve got some 30 of her paintings at the house,” says Kohlenberg, “but you wouldn’t think they were by the same person. Some are abstract, some beautiful landscapes, and a lot are impressionistic or show an Asian influence. She said to herself, what’s important is not the style but the emotion you want to convey.”

When Rush died in 1966, she left her home to the local Quaker Meeting, which eventually outgrew it, moving in 2020. That led the family to reacquire the property and restore it as it was over half a century ago. The Olive Rush Studio & Art Center finally opened in April 2024, and docent-led tours, occasional art classes, and other events are available.

About the Author

Norman Kolpas, a longtime contributor to Southwest Art, has written more than 40 nonfiction books and thousands of articles on art, architecture, design, travel and food. He teaches in The Writers’ Program at UCLA Extension, where he was recognized as an Outstanding Instructor in Creative Writing. Norman lives in Marin County, California, just north of the Golden Gate Bridge.

This story appeared in the October/November 2025 issue of Southwest Art magazine. Subscribe today to read every issue in its entirety.

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