{
"data": {
"id": 171326,
"accession_number": "2014.147",
"share_license_status": "Copyrighted",
"tombstone": "Teasel and Seeds, 1958. Dorothy Rutka (American, 1907\u20131985). Color lithograph; sheet: 38 x 48 cm (14 15/16 x 18 7/8 in.); image: 29.5 x 39.5 cm (11 5/8 x 15 9/16 in.). The Cleveland Museum of Art, Bequest of John Bonebrake, 2014.147",
"current_location": null,
"title": "Teasel and Seeds",
"creation_date": "1958",
"creation_date_earliest": 1958,
"creation_date_latest": 1958,
"artists_tags": [
"female",
"May Show",
"Cleveland Institute of Art (alumni)"
],
"culture": [
"America"
],
"technique": "color lithograph",
"support_materials": [
{
"description": "wove paper",
"watermarks": []
}
],
"department": "Prints",
"collection": "PR - Lithograph",
"type": "Print",
"measurements": "Sheet: 38 x 48 cm (14 15/16 x 18 7/8 in.); Image: 29.5 x 39.5 cm (11 5/8 x 15 9/16 in.)",
"dimensions": {
"sheet": {
"height": 0.38,
"height_inch": 14,
"height_inch_fraction": 0.9375,
"width": 0.48,
"width_inch": 18,
"width_inch_fraction": 0.875
},
"image": {
"height": 0.295,
"height_inch": 11,
"height_inch_fraction": 0.625,
"width": 0.395,
"width_inch": 15,
"width_inch_fraction": 0.5625
}
},
"state_of_the_work": null,
"edition_of_the_work": "32/40",
"copyright": null,
"inscriptions": [
{
"inscription": "Below image, in graphite, lower left corner: Teasel and Seeds 32/40; lower right corner: D Rutka Kennon",
"inscription_translation": null,
"inscription_remark": null,
"sortorder": null
}
],
"exhibitions": {
"current": [
{
"id": 301486,
"title": "The May Show: 40th Annual Exhibition of Works by Cleveland Artists and Craftsmen",
"description": "The May Show: 40th Annual Exhibition of Works by Cleveland Artists and Craftsmen. The Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland, OH (organizer) (May 14-June 22, 1958).",
"opening_date": "1958-05-14T04:00:00"
}
],
"legacy": []
},
"provenance": [
{
"description": "John Bonebrake, Cleveland, OH, given to the Cleveland Museum of Art",
"citations": [],
"footnotes": null,
"date": "?-2014",
"sortorder": 1
},
{
"description": "The Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland, OH",
"citations": [],
"footnotes": null,
"date": "2014-",
"sortorder": 2
}
],
"find_spot": null,
"related_works": [],
"former_accession_numbers": [],
"did_you_know": "Rutka sometimes crumpled the paper that she worked with to rid it of its pristine appearance.",
"early_education_description": null,
"artlens_description": null,
"description": "Dorothy Rutka\u2019s commercially successful works featuring seeds in transit defined her later career. In a 1958 interview, she described the importance of paying attention to small parts of nature that many people ignore. Here, she placed maple seeds at soaring angles to convey their exhilarating travel on a breeze. Instead of presenting them as plant matter littering the ground, Rutka depicted the seeds as figures leaping across the paper, imbuing them with humanlike vitality.",
"external_resources": {
"wikidata": [
"https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q80081547"
],
"internet_archive": []
},
"citations": [
{
"citation": "Dorothy Rutka Entry Card to 1958 May Show. Cleveland Museum of Art May Show Records, Cleveland Museum of Art Archives.",
"page_number": null,
"url": "https://archive.org/details/CMAMS11776"
}
],
"url": "https://clevelandart.org/art/2014.147",
"images": {},
"alternate_images": [],
"creditline": "Bequest of John Bonebrake",
"image_credit": null,
"sketchfab_id": null,
"sketchfab_url": null,
"gallery_donor_text": null,
"athena_id": 171326,
"creators": [
{
"id": 15415,
"description": "Dorothy Rutka (American, 1907\u20131985)",
"extent": null,
"qualifier": null,
"role": "artist",
"biography": "Although active as an artist in Cleveland through the 1980s, Dorothy Rutka is best known for her sobering Depression-era intaglio prints depicting social ills. Born and raised in Grand Rivers, Michigan, Rutka moved to Ohio to attend the Cleveland School of Art. She graduated in 1929 with a specialization in portraiture and did additional course work in the Huntington Polytechnic Institute. She married Jack Kennon, political editor for the Cleveland News. In 1931 she toured Europe for seven months. In the early 1930s she worked as a writer and illustrator for the Bystander and in 1936 was part of the Cleveland graphic arts project of the Works Progress Administration. She joined the Cleveland Artist\u2019s Union and the American Artists\u2019 Congress. In Cleveland she showed at the Ross Widen Gallery, the 1030 Gallery, and the Art Colony (1940s\u201350s). She also exhibited frequently in the May Shows at the Cleveland Museum of Art (1929\u201366) and in exhibitions in New York, Philadelphia, Dayton, Brooklyn, and Washington, D.C. In 1960 she married Philip Porter, who was named executive editor of the Plain Dealer in 1963. They were killed by an unknown intruder in their home in Shaker Heights, Ohio.
Transformations in Cleveland Art. (CMA, 1996), p. 235
Biographical information exists in the Cleveland Museum of Art Archives.",
"name_in_original_language": null,
"birth_year": "1907",
"death_year": "1985",
"use_in_caption": true,
"include_extent": false,
"weight": 1
}
],
"legal_status": "accessioned",
"accession_date": "2014-06-02T00:00:00",
"sortable_date": 1958,
"date_added_to_oa": null,
"date_text": "1958",
"collapse_artists": false,
"on_loan": false,
"recently_acquired": false,
"record_type": "object",
"conservation_statement": null,
"has_conservation_images": false,
"cover_accession_number": null,
"is_nazi_era_provenance": false,
"impression": null,
"alternate_titles": [
"Thissel and Seeds"
],
"is_highlight": false,
"updated_at": "2026-08-03 14:26:06.126000"
}
}