Mary Sully

Mary Sully (1896–1963) was a Yankton Dakota advocate artist. Her perform was largely nameless until the yet to be 21st century.

Sully is best known today for colored-pencil triptychs and "personality portraits" which often depicted celebrities such as Amelia Earhart, Gertrude Stein, and Greta Garbo. Using abstract forms and symbols coupled with rich and mesmerizing colors and symmetry, many of her panels appear considering a kaleidoscope. Her designs draw from and incorporate eternal Native American designs — specifically Navajo textiles or Plains parfleches, painted rawhide containers — while also aligning later the Art Nouveau and Bauhaus movements. Although she was nimble in the yet to be decades of the 20th century bearing in mind Native American art and Art Nouveau were making a parallel climb into mainstream Good art exhibitions, Sully was considered lawless in marrying these two genres.

Susan Mable Deloria was born to daddy Tipi Sapa (Black Lodge), or Philip J. Deloria, and mom Mary Sully. She is the great-granddaughter of 19th century American portrait artist Thomas Sully, from whom she took her name. Her sister, Ella Cara Deloria, was an anthropologist once whom she traveled extensively throughout the United States, visiting many Native communities and observing the art that was a part of their daily lives. She next spent much of her period in New York City, taking inspiration from the thriving art scene there.

Sully was raised in the Episcopal faith as her daddy was a minister. Her familiarity and experience bearing in mind religion is depicted in several of her works. Sully died upon August 29, 1963 in Omaha, Nebraska.

Sully worked largely in triptychs, three-paneled pieces. Some of these triptychs were "Personality portraits" of celebrities or extra public figures, animating the personality of the individual whom they depict through the use of abstract symbolism and a continuous color palette that creates cohesiveness accompanied by the three panels. Kagawa is an example of one such portrait, which portrays Toyohiko Kagawa; a Japanese social reformer and Christian missionary. A large purple cross is depicted in the first panel, and the design surrounding it suggests endeavor and dimension. The second (center) panel is a kaleidoscopic reformation of the first, and appears as even if elements of the first panel have been zoomed in to focus on, and contracted in a symmetrical pattern involving three rows of seven oval shapes amid brusque angles. The third panel recalls designs from the first and second, such as crosses and circles, but in a conventional Navajo style; a type of design often seen in Navajo textiles or Plains beadwork. It can be surmised that Sully quite purposefully incorporated okay Navajo design elements taking into account Christian imagery. Curator Jill Ahlberg Yohe says of Sully's symbology: "Christianity was imposed on Dakota and Lakota people, so a lot of time-honored practices were banned, but if you could superimpose them upon Christianity, you could subvert that system and still maintain a lot of standard practices". This can after that be qualified in Sully's triptych, "The Indian Church".

In 2019, Sully's great-nephew, Philip J. Deloria, published a folder exploring Sully's vivaciousness and art, Becoming Mary Sully: Toward an American Indian Abstract. Three of Sully's artworks were chosen for inclusion in the art show “Hearts of Our People: Native Women Artists,” at Minneapolis Institute of Art.