This biography from the Archives of AskART:
| A WPA designer, illustrator, and painter, May Blos, whose proper name
was Maybelle, was born in Sebastopol, California, and graduated from
the University of California, Berkeley. She then traveled in
Europe on a scholarship, which took her to Munich where she studied
with Hans Hofmann and Moritz Heymann. In Munich, she met her
future husband, artist Peter Blos, whom she married in 1930. She
studied briefly in Paris, but in 1931 returned to the United States
fearing the rising effects of Nazism in Europe. The couple lived
at her family's ranch near Sebastopol, and then moved to the Berkeley
and Oakland areas.
In 1936, she began her career as a WPA
designer and illustrator for the National Park Service and also did
works for government sites in the West. Between 1936 and 1938,
she did paintings at Tumacacori National Park, Arizona; Rocky Mountain
National Park, Estes Park, Colorado; and Coronado National Memorial in
Hereford, Arizona. On these and subsequent trips with her
husband, she did crayon landscapes of Arizona Indian country, including
Hopi Butte, Kayenta and Wild Ruins. She also did a series of
sketches, 100 completed drawings of early California Native American
ceremomonies, and watercolor sketches of Arizona wildflowers.
From
1940 to 1941, she was with the Civilian Conservation Corps as a
researcher in Glacier National Park. In 1941 until her retirement
in 1968, she was a scientific illustrator for the University of
California at Berkeley, and did illustrated articles and books for the
Botanical Gardens, and Museum of Vertebrate Zoology, Paleontology and
Seismology. She continued to provide illustrations for various
publications until 1978 including for E.R. Hall's Mammals of Nevada and the Cactus and Succulent Journal.
She
had only a few exhibitions including at the University of California,
Berkeley; Hunt Botanical Library; and Canessal Gallery in San
Francisco; and the Oakland Museum.
Blos died on October 20, 1991
in a fire that swept through the Oakland hills when she refused to
leave her home. "She walked back into her home, bolted the door
and chose to perish with all the treasures and memories of 60 years of
marriage." (Hughes, 116).
Source:
Marian and Phil Kovinick, Women Artists of the American West
Edan Hughes, Artists in California, 1786-1940
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