Sophie and Harwood Steiger

Like Thomas Hart Benton, who also summered on Marta’s Vineyard, Harwood’s artistic style was on the forefront of the Regionalist art movement.

In 1938, Harwood received a commission from the Section of Painting and Sculpture and completed a mural for the post office in Fort Payne, Alabama.

[3][4] Harwood’s Martha’s Vineyard summer studio drew students from all over the country,[5] including an attractive young schoolteacher named Sophie, an artist in her own right.

Her art reflected this interest – plants and flowers were a central theme of her painting, utilizing watercolor to create delicate washes of tone and depth.

In 1956, after a trip through northern Mexico, the Steigers fell in love with Arizona, and built a home and studio in Tubac, a small village 45 miles south of Tucson.

These new functional works reflected both Harwood and Sophies’s artistic interests – dozens of fabrics were decorative abstractions of botanical themes, others ruminations on desert animals and cactus.

Although the studio closed in the 1980s after Sophie’s death, their influence is still present, not just in the tablecloths, curtains, dresses, and upholstery that sprinkle the interiors of houses throughout Tucson, but in a rich sophisticated style that continues to express the vision of post World War II southern Arizona.

[9] The Steiger silkscreens are now part of the permanent collections of Pima Community College in Tucson, Arizona and the American Textile History Museum in Lowell, Massachusetts.