Glen Helen

Agnes Mills

This composition is likely an image of Glen Helen preserve in Yellow Springs, OH; specifically, of the Riding Centre located in the southwest section of the park. The founder of the Riding Centre, Louise Soelberg, was a former Modern dancer and dance professor at Antioch College who, after a back injury ended her career in 1959, opened the therapeutic horseback riding organization. Still in operation today, it provides affordable lessons in equestrian skills to children, Antioch students, and people recovering from physical and mental injury or challenge.

It is very likely that, through Agnes Mills’ extensive work with the dance world, the two artists were friends or acquaintances. Mills may have visited Soelberg at the Riding Centre and created this haunting image of silhouetted horses and a rider traversing through a dark forest, the textured trunk of a large tree in the foreground. The center is bordered by the forested grounds of the preserve.

Painter, printmaker, and sculptor Agnes Eunice Mills was born in New York City in 1915. A prolific multi-disciplinary arts, she specialized in dance subjects and imagery pertaining to the arts. She worked in the Long Island/New York City area for most of her career, eventually moving to Florida.

Mills was a graduate of Pratt Institute and Cooper Union Art School, and was associated with the Bauhaus, Social Realist, and Abstract movements. She worked for the WPA early in her career, becoming the youngest instructor in the Federal Arts Project along with fellow artist Ruth Gikow. She studied under Alexander Calder, Louise Nevelson, David Siqueiros, Hans Hoffman, Stanley William Hayter at Atelier 17 in New York, Krishna Reddy, and many other leading printmakers and painters of the time.

For 25 years she served as resident artist for the Alwin Nikolais Dance Company, and several other dance companies hired her to sketch their rehearsals. She was a member of the Artists Union and was Co-Chair for the committee for public use of art. She published the Index of American Design for the Library of Congress.