Evelynne Bernloehr Mess Daily

(Jan. 8, 1903 – Jan. 9, 2003). Painter-printmaker Evelynne Bernloehr met George Jo Mess at the Herron School Of Art, and they married in 1925. They moved into a new bungalow in the recently annexed Indianapolis neighborhood of Broad Ripple, which Evelynne would occupy for 77 years.

An etching demonstration at Herron in 1924 inspired Evelynne to teach herself the art from a manual and to pull her first print in 1928 on an abandoned commercial press, which the Messes soon purchased. She received her only formal training in etching at the Ecole des Beaux Arts at Fontainebleau in France during the summer of 1929.

She exhibited nationally and advanced printmaking in Indiana by organizing the first exhibition devoted to the subject at the Woman’s Department Club in Indianapolis in 1934. Later that year she formed the Indiana Society of Printmakers, which for the next 20 years under her stewardship was the first and only consistent outlet for the state’s printmakers.

In 1935 she taught her husband the painstaking process of etching in tones (aquatint), and his prints gained national eminence within the year. Thereafter Evelynne turned her attention to painting, lithography, and her duties as a perennial officer in the Indiana Federation of Art Clubs and the Indiana Artists Club among others.

In 1941 the Messes bought a farm in Brown County as a weekend getaway and summer school, where Evelynne taught painting and etching even beyond George’s death in 1962 and throughout her remarriage from 1969 to 1974 to Edward Daily.

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