The Boathouse by Eileen McGuire

If there is one person who deserves to wear the mantle of muse to the staff of The Current, my vote would go to Mrs. Roberta Stevens, head of the Monastic Library. Whether it be for the bibliographical advice which Bobbie imparts, or for the clues she passes along on to help us identify campus artists and artworks, historical documents and photographs, anecdotes and esoterica and ephemera, her unfailing detective work and kindness are unmatched. Most recently she has been scanning and sharing paperwork from decades ago which relate to our Artist of the Abbey for October, Eileen Farrell McGuire (1920-2016). Eileen’s career at Portsmouth began in the 1970’s as secretary for the school’s Alumni Association, later she became the assistant to the head of school, Fr. Leo Van Winkle, and ended up serving under six more school heads after him. She is said to have “retired” in her early nineties by that point, to assume the role of Administrative Assistant to the Abbot.

Eileen McGuireAlthough born in Providence, the family moved to the Boston area where her father, Daniel, worked at The Globe. Young Eileen skipped grades 3 and 5 but eventually continued on to high school. After her father’s death when she was 16 years old, she became the family’s breadwinner in order to support her mother and two sisters. According to her family, she had been accepted to the Rhode Island School of Design but deferred her entrance allowing her instead to take classes for a time at a secretarial school. This course of study served her well in later years at Portsmouth. Once at RISD, she met her future husband, Donald T. McGuire who, like other young men during the wartime years, lied about his age to enlist in the U.S. Army, as did his brother. Donald excelled in figure drawing and eventually became a graphic designer.

Over coffee on a recent fall morning, many of these intimate family details were shared by Eileen and Donald’s two daughters, Ellen Nannig and Margaret “Meg” McCafferty, and Meg’s daughter, Philippa “Pippa” McCafferty ’09. It soon becomes evident that the “art” gene clearly runs through the McGuire family line. Veering off the topic at hand of their mother’s art, opinions were expressed in all directions, especially on the wholesale loss over the years of classic examples of European furniture design, roomsful in fact, consigned to the town dump merely to make way for the new. “Muzz” (as the kids called Eileen; dad was “Dado”), “was always humble, an aesthete, always looking around at people, things, colors – very visually-driven.” She “loved [artist Mark] Rothko...and color!” During her years in the school, Eileen “loved making connections and getting to know the students,” according to her daughters. “She was very big on education for children, gave them notebooks. Every summer, kids had a small cup on which she wrote their names and, after asking about their ‘theme’ that year, drew a picture on the cup for them, for example, a horse and a jockey.” She was always involved in the “signature” boards created before graduation by a senior student and signed by every classmate, then framed and displayed in the main lobby of the Administration Building.
“27 August ‘04” by Eileen McGuire
(presently hanging in the Cortazzo Administration Building)In her final retirement spent at home, she enjoyed sitting in the big picture window in the dining room of her house, overlooking the Bay towards Prudence Island, and painting the scene in all seasons, finding new ways to represent nature’s color combinations using her pastel crayons. It was a change from the days when she kept a permanent art studio set-up in the back of her hatchback car, allowing her to pull over at any given moment to capture a scene or a ray of sunlight which had caught her attention.
The Abbey Grotto by Eileen McGuireThe McGuire name continues to be well-known and ever-present on campus. The fine arts department at Portsmouth Abbey School is overseen by the current Head of Visual Arts, Mr. Mark Nadeau. He and his students create their work mainly in or near The Donald T. McGuire Fine Arts Center, a magnificent three-story barnlike structure on the lower campus. Dedicated in 2001, it is named for Eileen’s late husband, Donald, who was the Head of the School’s Art Department at the time of his death in 1986. An accomplished artist himself, RISD-trained like his wife, he will be featured in these pages in the coming months. Recently we wrote about the sculpture by Gilbert A. Franklin (1919-2004) sited on campus next to the McGuire Center in the year of his death. Titled Polytropos, its commissioning and placement on campus came about through the encouragement and advocacy of Eileen.
Hanging Rock (in Middletown,
Rhode Island) by Eileen McGuireExamples of Eileen’s colorful works on paper are displayed in several offices on campus and in local homes. Aquidneck Island locales are the subject of one series, primarily landscapes with glimpses of the bay or the ocean in the distance. After Eileen’s death, her family presented these as framed gifts to friends and colleagues. A striking pen-and-ink drawing of the circa 1865 Boat House is on an office wall in the Cortazzo Administration Building. The artwork has the feeling of having been completed in one sitting on the rocky shore of Narragansett Bay at low tide looking north. Although undated, we might presume it to be pre-1995, the year of the structure’s restoration, given the missing window panes.
Br. Joseph Byron’s rosary,
a gift of the McGuiresIt’s possible that the McGuires may have collaborated on some artwork. One piece of particular interest is a small rosary given to Br. Joseph Byron. The small contemporary crucifix was carved and cast by Donald, with the beads of polished black onyx, separated by six silver beads. In late September, as this overview of Eileen McGuire’s life and work was coming to completion, Bobbie checked in with a final thought about her friend which helps to put this story into perspective. She wrote, “Eileen arranged to have a school library materials ‘fund’ for books and media on art to be set up years ago. Income derived from the fund is used each year. At the present time it has over 300 hundred items in the collection. All are book-plated.” This is just one example of how the artistic legacy of the McGuire Family continues to enhance our lives each day.

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Brother Sixtus Roslevich, Director of Oblates at Portsmouth, provides readers of The Current with this monthly series on artists affiliated with our community.