The Rock Island Argus and daily union. (Rock Island, Ill.) 1920-1923, 1922-05-20
Frederick Hask1n's Letter
,s,.@., cor-rrpoudnps
MATCHING THE RAINBOW

satisfaction that the old Aztec man
tie had given him. Eventually he
achieved his ambition.
The process, whether it includes
dyeing or painting with oils OF wa
ter colors. he guards carefully. He
explains that he has put not only
I his fortune but his heart and am.
bition into it. 1t was evolved on
of his own background and inter
ests, and the method as we'll as the
style of the art is therefore an ex-
preston of his own personality.
Mr.. Walters has had a varied ex-
perience with arts. He has been
violin student at Leipsic, a student
of painting at Munich and Paris
ard he spent some time at Oxford
delving into the classics and study
ing the life of the ancient Greeks
He invented a color organ to estab-
lish a note scale of warm and cold
colors, and this scale he later used
as the foundation of his Aztec color
work.
Most of the silks in his exhibition
are for wall draperies or scarfs
Long strips about 10 inches wide
and seven or eight feet long hang
on the walls. They feat in the
breeze from an open window and
the ripple makes the colors more
irridescent.
1t Differs from Batik.
Mr.. Walters explains that this
flowing of the coIors involves one
of his theories. He believes that
sharply outlined designs are not
suitable for textiles that are to be
draped or allowed to float, because
the design is lost or distorted when
the material falls in folds He be-
lieves that where folds form the
champ of decoration, the folds
ought to have free expression and
ought not to be intefered with by
hand designs, that the designs
should float into the folds. This IS
the reason of the shadoWy effects
It is not easy to describe any
thing so elusive as the colOrs in the
variegated hangings. Frederic
MacMonnies, sculptor of the Civic
Virtue statue which has so upset
New York, calls them a poet paint
er musicians vision of color adapt
ed to fabric MacMonnies added, in
a fight of poetic abandon, that they
reminded him of glitter and SHIN
mer and sheen OF dragon flies
wings and pale sun risings and
storm blown gardens"
There is one piece entitled Rain
bow" The long strip has at top
and bottom a shadowy green AMI
blue lake with slender reeds half
visible in the water. From these
cool colors the sky rises through
rainbow tints to a vivid orange sun
set, and the center of the scarf be
tween the two scenes is the con-
ventional rainbow curving across
the sky.
Morning Star" is a blending of
dark purple. green and blue sug
costing the sea at daybreak, lighted
only by one shaft of pale lemon
colored light. Summer" is silk
hanging with a background of sky
blue shading into rose. Delicate
yellow flowers bloom in the grass
at the foot of the piece, and above
a shingle branch of a budding tree
stands out against the sky.
What the artist considers his
masterpiece of textile decoration IS
great pink famingo poised
against an exotic tropical back
ground. The fiamingo appeals TO
Mr. Walters as the motif that IS
most beautiful and best adapted to
decoration in form and color. Much
as Whistler used a butterfly, Mr..
Walter uses a swiftly sketched PINK
f1amingo for his signature. With
his pink famingo, his rainbow
silks, and an alluring touch of mys-
terry, Mr.. Walters has become the
talk of the art colonies of New
York and Washington