Rowena Fry

Born in Athens, Alabama, Fry studied at the Watkins Institute in Nashville before coming to Chicago in the late 1920s.

From 1938 to 1939 she was involved as a muralist with the Works Progress Administration, producing work at Abbott Laboratories, Oscar Mayer, and the American Marietta Paint Company.

[2] For many years she shared an apartment with Natalie Smith Henry at the Lambert Tree Studios building, and Henry depicted her in the watercolor Rowena Washing Her Hair sometime during the 1930s.

[4] She died there, survived by two sisters,[5] and is buried in the town's Oak Ridge Cemetery; her grave marker gives a date of birth of October 27, 1900.

[1] A collection of the two women's papers was digitized by the Archives of American Art at the Smithsonian Institution.