Found one

Had it not been for the ward building where the painting "Not Alone" covered the entire front wall and where I attended church from the age of about 6 to about 14 I could have grown up in Pocatello and never heard of Minerva Teichert.

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So why put this on my blog today? Well yesterday I visited the LDS Church office building at the south end of the valley. I went to the room on family search and found a large Minerva Teichert painting on the wall. Not the whole wall but pretty big so it was interesting to see the painting in a larger size.

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Minerva Kohlhepp Teichert was born in Ogden, Utah in 1888. Later her family moved close to Pocatello Idaho where she grew up and graduated from Pocatello High School She did leave home at 14 years old and worked as a nursemaid for a family in San Francisco where for the first time she saw museum art and attended some classes at Mark Hopkins Art School. She later returned and graduated from High School. At age 19 she scraped together enough money to go to Chicago where she studied at the Chicago Art Institute. Later she went to New York to study but eventually came back to marry Herman Teichert a cowboy and strong church member. She painted a "Book of Mormon" series, covers of LDS magazines, lesson manuals, the World Room in the Manti LDS Temple, and has paintings displayed at the Museum of History and Art in Salt Lake City and was exhibited in the Immigrant Receiving Station of Ellis Island. Referred to as a Feminist she made an impact with her art. She died in 1976.

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One of her best known works is the image of Mary Fielding Smith with her son Joseph F. Smith crossing the plains with their ox cart. To the right of the image is the spiritual guardians that protected them on their journey to Zion, hence the title "Not Alone". The painting was dated 1847 to represent the time of migration. This shows Teichert at her best as she portrays the tremendous faith and courage of the pioneer women.