Frances Myers

1936 Racine, WI - 2014, Madison, WI

Myers, a Racine native and UW-Madison graduate, grew up in the shadow of Frank Lloyd Wright’s Johnson Wax building and it influenced her work. One of her early accomplishments was a folio of aquatint abstract etchings based on Wright’s buildings.

Preferring the aquatint etching process, Myers executes non-linear forms and tonal gradations of light and dark while integrating shadows with the images. She has stated, “I don’t want to invent a building, I want to bring new life to a building.”  Following meticulous preparation involving a series of photographs and sketches, she creates the copper plates that are inked and printed in stages to achieve the final result. During a long career, her work incorporated a wide variety of printmaking techniques, including relief, photo-etching, and mixed media processes.

After studying at the San Francisco Art Institute, Ms. Myers transferred to the University of Wisconsin, Madison where she was a student of the well-known printmaker, Alfred Sessler.  After earning an MA, then an MFA in 1965 from UW, she went to England the following year to lecture in printmaking at the College of Art and Design in Birmingham and St. Martin’s School of Art in London. She taught printmaking at the University of California- Berkeley, Mills College in California and, since 1975, at the University of Wisconsin-Madison where she advanced to the position of Chair of the Graphics Department.

Her work is represented in numerous national and international museum collections. She participated in prestigious print exhibitions, received two National Endowment for the Arts Fellowships and was a fellow of the National Academy of Design in New York. Myers worked at her studio on the farm near Hollandale, where she lived with her husband, printmaker Warrington Colescott.

While first known as a printmaker, Myers expanded her work into digital photography and video. Her work is in collections including the Chicago Art Institute, the Chazen Museum of Art and the Madison Museum of Contemporary Art, the Victoria and Albert Museum in London and four museums and collections in Washington, D.C., including the National Museum of American Art. She twice received National Endowment for the Arts fellowships.