Two etchings by Chicago Artist and Dancer Mary Ray Gehr (1910-1997). From the “Bali Series” c.1974.
Colored etching on white wove; signed, numbered, and titled in pencil. These prints are part of a series completed after MS Gehr returned from her travels in Bali. Gehr was a well-known Chicago artist, children’s book illustrator, printmaker, and dancer.

Labeled as ”Tanah Lot 5/24 Mary Gehr Leaves from a Balinese Sketchbook." and "Campuan 5/24 Mary Gehr."
Each print 3" X 3.75”.
Excellent condition with small areas of hinge tape residue from previous matting. Not framed.

Tanah Lot is a rock formation off the Indonesian island of Bali. It is home to the pilgrimage temple Pura Tanah Lot (literally "Tanah Lot temple").

Gunung Lebah Temple,
Campuhan, Ubud, Indonesia.

From the Chicago Tribune, 11/21/1997 by Kenan Heise:
Mary Gehr, 87, a Chicago artist and former professional dancer, has had more than 50 solo exhibitions at galleries and art museums around the world. As a young dancer, she had a featured role in the original "Frankie and Johnnie," a landmark American ballet choreographed by Ruth Page. In 1986, the A. Montgomery Ward Gallery at the University of Illinois at Chicago exhibited a retrospective that showed the breadth of her work.

Commenting on her retrospective, the late Tribune art critic Edith Weigle wrote, "There is not a dull item in the entire collection. This artist's color is unfailingly intriguing. Combined with her fine sense of design and her great individuality, the result appeals both to the eye and the imagination."

She illustrated more than two dozen books, mainly for Children's Press, several of which she wrote. A 1963 Tribune article described her work as "rhythmically satisfying with considerable dialogue between light and form."

Biography.
She traveled around the world, learning skills, and often using what she saw as the subject for her art. Her batik work, for example, showed special techniques for creating art on fabric that she learned in Bali. She also specialized in intaglio, becoming recognized as an eminent practitioner of this form of art in which images created by impressing, engraving or etching figures in stone or other hard materials so that a one-of-a-kind relief can be made from it. She was commissioned to produce pieces for the Art Institute of Chicago, galleries and private collections. After attending Smith College, she danced for four seasons with the Chicago Opera Company and then for three years with the Ruth Page-Stone Ballet.