By 1990, Mary Snyder Behrens and her husband moved from Ohio to Iowa, where the latter had grown up. In the following year, they bought a house and five acres of land in a rural surounding. The change from urban life to that of living remotely required years of adjustment.

By the artist’s own assessment, among her most powerful pieces were some of those that came about while living in the country. There, at last she had sufficient space to produce large-scale, rough-hewn artworks that categorically fall between painting, collage, fiber art and sculpture. 

These larger works were housed in box-like, encased wooden frames (somewhat like “shadow boxes”), and were typically referred to in exhibitions as mixed media or assemblages. Inside were dimensional found components, arranged to be compatible with stained and inscribed surfaces. 

These works came about in part because their century-old farm was strewn with buried metal junk—rusty hinges, screws and nails, machine parts, barbed wire, broken tools, and the mummified traces of long-dead wild creatures. 

graphite-inscribed surfaces with areas covered with fabric. These are in turn accented by found components such as rolls of toy-gun caps, a metal hinge, exquisitely-patterned feathered darts, and squarish scraps of metal. The general feeling of the work is one of disciplined dynamic, not unlike her earlier series that alluded to kimonos. A factor enriching these pieces is the presence of gestural markings, always peripheral, that are purposely distracting and seem on the brink of emerging.

A second large-sized series, called the American Canvas works, began in advance of 2001. Some of them date roughly from the time of the “Nine-Eleven” attacks (November 11, 2001).

One of those animal remnants was the skeleton of a barn swallow, which became a component in one of her works. As is true of any old building site, items of this kind wash up during heavy rains, and however many one picks up, there are always more to find. She used found fragments of this sort in artworks that were as large as 80 inches (tall or wide), and in countless smaller pieces as well, some measuring less than 6 inches.

Behrens’ largest pieces from these years included two groundbreaking series. The works in the first of these series, dating from 1999, were 48 inches wide. One of these, titled Patience, is a diptych comprised of two canvas areas within which are juxtaposed 

Yet, despite the series title, if these works are somehow “about” that sudden and shocking event, it was probably not intentional then. More likely these are emotionally linked to a lingering grief for her father, whom she was close to, and who died much younger than expected in 1995.

Mary Snyder Behrens, American Canvas 015 (2002). Mixed media. 5.5h x 4w.

Right

Mary Snyder Behrens, American Canvas II (2001). Mixed media. 48h x 30w.

Far right

Mary Snyder Behrens, American Canvas III (2001). Mixed media. 48h x 30w.

Below

Mary Snyder Behrens, American Canvas IV (2001). Fiber. 48h x 30w.

In contrast with the ambiance in some of her previous pieces, those in the American Canvas series tend to be raw and eccentric, even outrageous in certain respects. They are reminiscent of “cabinets of curiosities” or Wunderkammers. They are museums of mind and emotion, and, specifically, archives of the artifacts that come to surface on the farm. In some sense, given her strict Roman Catholic upbringing (an age-old source of tension between her father and her), they call up the tradition of relics, perhaps the bones of the saints of the farm. 

In one work in this series, titled American Canvas III (2001), one of the central components is the heavily rusted blade of a lawn mower. On some level (whether conscious or not), this work may have been a veiled response to an incident on the farm, in which a washed-up rock or metal scrap (it was never found) was propelled by the blade of a lawnmower, ricocheted off a building, and struck her husband in the face, resulting in the loss of an eye.