Fort Wayne’s Artlink Gallery is featuring a retrospective on the work of local artist Betty Fishman. The exhibition includes dozens of works in all sorts of media, painting, printmaking, charcoal, even jewelry, all by one of the most influential artists, art teachers, collector and restorers in this corner of the Midwest. It’s a showcase of a life in art that began when the artist was a very little girl helping her grandmother hook rugs.
“And she'd get these big burlap pieces and she'd say 'Betty Gray, draw me a picture!'” Betty says, “so I'd draw the picture and she'd hook the rug!”
In her Fort Wayne studio Fishman’s artistic versatility is in full bloom as she glides effortlessly from one medium to the next. First, a little beadwork, then to the painting table to touchup a watercolor. It’s a flexibility derived from many years of practice and study. Betty began college at Ohio State studying home economics. When Pearl Harbor was attacked she left college to work in a munitions plant, married a bomber pilot who flew off to war and never came back. Betty remarried, had children and returned to school, this time to study art at the fabled Fort Wayne Art School, whose instructors still influence much of the local art scene.
“They really influenced dozens, hundreds of students that are still out there, still working,” Betty says. “And some of them are teachers of teachers of teachers in some cases.”
Since retiring as an East Noble art teacher herself Betty has served as director of Artlink, served on boards of numerous art institutions, continued as an art appraiser and restorer and, of course, as a prolific artist. At somewhere in her mid-80’s Betty Fishman says art has kept her mind fresh and engaged.
“Intellectually you have to be interested in the world that goes around and art will do that. I’ve had a wonderful life; I've enjoyed it all the way. Hasn't always been easy but its been a good life.”