Studio Loja Saarinen Weaving Room Ceiling Murals

The weaving allegories and border elements by Katherine Sibley McEwen were painted directly onto the ceiling of the former Studio Loja Saarinen Weaving Room — now the studio of Elliott Earls, Artist-in-Residence and Head of the 2D Design Department at Cranbrook Academy of Art.

Katherine Sibley McEwen (1875-1957) was raised with her siblings Alexandrine and Kenneth by their great-aunt, Sarah Sibley. Both Katherine and Alexandrine received art education at the Detroit Art Academy (held at the Detroit Museum of Art) where they met Mary Chase Perry among others.

Katherine soon became heavily involved in the art scene in Detroit. They were charter members of the Detroit Society of Women Painters and Sculptors (1903) and exhibited with the Society annually. Katherine was a founding member of the Detroit Society of Arts and Crafts (DSAC) in 1906. In 1911, Katherine McEwen designed and executed a Zodiac mural for the exterior west wall of the newly constructed DSAC building on Watson Street. As part of the society’s Costume Department, Katherine helped produce over 300 costumes for the “Cranbrook Masque,” and designed many of the masks. Katherine made masks for the DSAC’s Little Theatre productions, and designed and painted numerous backdrops for them. Katherine also contributed to exhibition design at the Michigan State Fair (1916), spent a summer in Maine painting landscapes (1917), exhibited batiks at the Architectural League of New York (1920) and at the Detroit Institute of Arts (1921), and was a member of the American National Society of Mural Painters.

Katherine McEwen’s work can be seen throughout the Cranbrook campus. In 1915 she decorated the interior of Brookside Cottage, which had recently been converted from a pump house to a small residential cottage; the interior of the Meeting House (now part of Brookside School) in 1919; exterior decorations at Brookside School (1923); Christ Church Cranbrook frescoes (1925-1928); Studio Loja Saarinen ceiling (1928); and the design of all of the paintings in Cranbrook School’s Junior Dining Hall (1929).

Leslie Mio
Associate Registrar
Cranbrook Center for Collections and Research
June 2022