“Through these many years of search and research I have come to believe that doing art is a response to one’s inner sensibilities. Though I work in several media, drawing is the unifying factor in all of my work. I respond to humans, horses, and hills since they have those wonderful lines that are pleasing to the eye, and they symbolize the things I want my art to say.”

— Marilyn Hoff Hansen

A viewing of Marilyn Hoff Hansen’s art at the Idaho State University Oboler Library illustrates Hansen’s artistic statement. The title of the exhibit is “Daughters of Eve,” and the “wonderful lines” primarily celebrate the beauty of the female form. The cast stone reliefs including “The Gathering” and “Eve Plucking” (fruit) recall the Elgin Marbles — panel sculptures taken in 1812 from the Parthenon, a marble frieze temple on the Athenian Acropolis dedicated to the goddess Athena. Hansen has her own contemporary goddesses, however, from dressed and undressed women astride horses to a dark woman sitting sideways on a red lion to everyday women captured in charcoal (Vickie) or watercolor (Andria). Hansen’s “line” is always there, a captured motion leading the observer’s eye. The exhibit includes oil and acrylic paintings, a sculpture of a woman giving birth, and two welded steel figures: Bella Abzug and Blue Lady.

Marilyn Hoff Hansen is a native Idahoan with a Bachelor of Fine Arts from the University of Colorado and has been a working artist for many years. She credits her mother, Onita, and an aunt, Helen Hoff Aupperle, for inspiring her early interest in the arts. Idaho Falls residents can see her life-sized sculpture on the library grounds showing a boy and his two dogs, a memorial to Wilson Rawls, author of “Where the Wild Fern Grows.” She has exhibited at the Smithsonian and built snow sculptures for the Olympics in Canada. She was married to the late Reed Hansen.

On a recent afternoon, I had a chance to take a tour of the exhibit with the artist while her male companion, Monte Later, shot photos of the work. Hansen obviously loves her art and enjoys discussing it.

I was interested to know about the cast stone figures which begin as clay figures forming a mold for cement.

Among the many depictions of women in action, there was a lone nude male, his back to the viewer, whom Hansen joked was “eye candy for women,” but the strong lines indicated a latent power that transcends mere eye candy. Regarding something to please the eye, Hansen has four “golden girls” in various states of contemplation. These striking women are covered with a gold patina created by removing burnt umber oil paint from a gold surface by means of wiping — “a kind of the reverse of painting,” said Marilyn Hansen. “It’s a technique of my own devising,” added the artist. These portraits come close to pop art but with a serious subtext, unlike exploitative paintings of women one finds in a cowboy saloon.

There is a sense of an artist connected to myths with the acrylic portrait called “Where the Power Is” showing the back of a nude woman holding a Minotaur sized bull literally by the horns. If I had to pick a favorite, it would be “Eve Astride,” showing a rearing horse and rider with faces turned in the same direction. I particularly like the simple purity and expressive facial features of the charcoal drawings.

I highly recommend this exhibit, which ends on June 30. With “Daughters of Eve” and the recent production of “Shakespeare in Love,” it’s exciting to see the university bringing provocative art to its students.

Michael Corrigan of Pocatello is a San Francisco native and a retired Idaho State University English and speech communication instructor. He studied screenwriting at the American Film Institute and has authored seven books, many about the Irish American experience.