Housewife's Broom vs. Painter's Brush

Profile on Art: Barbara Ziembo

Housewife’s Broom vs. Painter’s Brush

Memphis Press-Scimitar, Friday, May 16, 1969

Barbara Ziembo has a particularly feminine problem—how to be an artist and a wife at the same time.

“Art is a hard field for a girl to fit into, unless she is not interested at all in things most girls are interested in,” said the young, red-haired painter.

“Painting messes up your house. The whole place smells bad. You get turpentine smells in the food.”

“To me, I would rather be a housewife than a painter. I didn’t realize it until it came about. My teachers tried to tell me in school, ‘You’ll get married and not go on with painting,’ but I said, ‘No, no.’ Then I met Dan.”

She and her husband moved to Memphis after they graduated from the University of Illinois four years ago, Barbara with a bachelor of fine arts and Dan with a master’s, both in painting and printmaking. Dan teaches printmaking at Memphis State University and Barbara manages the art supply store at the Memphis Academy of Arts.

But turpentine smells, paint mess and housewifery notwithstanding, Barbara couldn’t quit painting. Out came the oils. The results are in her first Memphis show, now at the Memphis Athletic Club, 5111 Sanderlin.

Even the show itself shows influences of the wife-artist dichotomy. “I’d rather have everything neat in my house before I start painting. That’s the reason I have only painted part-time. And that’s why there are so many small canvases in the show—so I would have time to get them finished.”

Her subjects reflect the natural house-and-family orientation of a woman. There’s her husband’s straw hat lying on a brightly colored afghan, a Christmas dinner scene with the family around the dining table, a potted plant, the house next door.

“In art school, every group of seniors paints the same way. When I was at Illinois, we were all doing six-foot, splashy paintings of nudes. I’m about as familiar with a roomful of nude people as I am with Argentina. But I painted that way,” she said.

“After school, I tried to pick up where I left off. I stretched up big canvases in the middle of the dining room. But I realized there was no connection between my experience and what I was painting. I had to start finding out what I really knew best. For two years I dashed about, trying to find what kind of image to use. Last year, things started to jell. I found that things I am familiar with are the images I can handle.”

She pained a gray, china elephant, bowl of apples, a bride and groom toasting each other with champagne. “Why try to find something terribly sophisticated to make into a work of art? Why not find something very corny and make it into a work of art? It represents the majority, something you are in constant contact with, not what’s set up as the ideal.”

In addition to the tub between keeping house and painting, Barbara had the other problem that faces most students. “When you’re a student, you’re a star. You have all these people who care about you, who pat you on the back. All of a sudden, nobody cares. You have to look into yourself and find out what you have to work with.”

This fall, she plans to give up her job at the Academy and start taking portrait commissions, a pursuit that hopefully will satisfy both the wife and the artist. “It will give me some kind of stimulus and it doesn’t take too long. I can get a portrait done on a good weekend.”

“I’ve always done portraits of friends and given them away, but I’ve never tried to do strangers before. I’ll make sure they’ve seen my other work and won’t expect a little pastel, sweetsy thing, that they’ll expect something a little gutsier with more paint pushed around.” Two portraits in the show—one of her husband and one a self-portrait—reflect her quick, vigorous style with heavy use of paint, capturing a likeness but not with meticulous precision.

Her future in her dual pursuits concerns her—as it has many other female artists. “I know I don’t have the drive Dan has. He comes in every night and works late. I can’t do it.”

“But I really care about it. I respect art enough that I don’t want to do bad things. At times, I pack everything up and say, “I respect painting too much to do it badly. Then I see an art show and I drag it all out again.”

“I’m not going to be able to do it every day, but I’m not going to be able to put it away completely because I care too much about it.”

“I hope there will come a time when I can work at it steady, but I know very few women who have been able to.”

“It is very frustrating.”