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Harriet Mendenhall Rein was as multifaceted as the batik artwork she created.

Peel away one layer and a new dimension, texture or color appeared.

Rein was a master of batik, and the Arizona desert was her muse.

"I want you to see what I see and maybe even feel how I feel about it," she wrote in the brochure for one of her gallery showings. "Beauty of line, color and form is to be expressed and shared, to be communicated beyond the level of words."

She also shared her husband's interest in restoring antique autos and attending car shows. The couple enjoyed traveling the world, Rein snapping photographs that would inspire future art projects.

For nearly 60 years, she was an active member of the Philanthropic Educational Organization Sisterhood, which promotes educational opportunities for women.

And, a fan of literature, she started a book discussion group 25 years ago when she and her husband moved to Tucson. Harriet spent countless hours pouring over books to develop a reading list of two a month for the group, which met every four weeks, September through May, for the last quarter century.

"She kept telling people it's not a book-review group, it's a book-discussion group," said Joe Rein, Harriet's husband of nearly 60 years. "The discussions really were very lively."

On Sept. 12, the "Good Books — Good Talk" discussion group gathered for its first meeting after summer hiatus. It was the only meeting its founder missed in 25 years.

Harriet Rein died July 7 after a six-year struggle with breast cancer. She was 79. A memorial service for the artist and mother of three will be at 1 p.m. Oct. 7 at Rincon Congregational United Church of Christ, 122 N. Craycroft Road.

Harriet Mendenhall was born in Peoria, Ill. After she graduated from Indiana's DePauw University with degrees in art and literature, she worked in a Chicago advertising studio as a fashion illustrator. When she married Joe Rein in 1949, the couple moved to the Chicago suburbs and Harriet became a stay-at-home mother while maintaining her freelance illustration business, teaching art in public schools and giving private art lessons.

Rein had never had any formal training in batik when she taught a workshop on the ancient art form, which requires the application of hot wax to light-colored fabric before dipping it into cold-water dye. The characteristic "crackle" appearance of batik occurs when the wax cracks and dye creeps in. A successful batik artist must think through the project before starting. For each color, the waxing and dying process is repeated until the design is complete. Then the wax is removed by ironing the fabric sandwiched between paper towels.

Often batik images have the soft, fuzzy edges of a dream spilled onto fabric. Rein's work had the precision, refinement and distinctive colors rarely seen in the art form.

"She was a master at her craft," said John McNulty, retail manager at the Tucson Museum of Art, who knew Rein for 25 years.

"She got the very subtle nuances of the shadows in her plants or her architecture. They were exquisite pieces of art."

Rein's batiks have been displayed in galleries throughout the United States.

"They are just exquisite because they are so elaborate. I never could understand how she can put all that in with just dipping," said Alla Jablokow of Chicago, who was a friend of Rein's since the 1970s, when they were part of the LaGrange Art League. "The design was so intricate it just bowled me over every time I saw them. A lot of people don't understand how difficult that medium is."

Not only was her friend a great artist, Jablokow said, but she was a dedicated member of the art organizations to which she belonged. That dedication continued when Rein joined the Tucson Handweavers and Spinners Guild in 1998.

"Over the course of those years she was a teacher and a mentor, a cheerleader and a dear and caring friend," said Lura Moore, guild president. "Her greatest joy in creating things is her batik."

Rein did take a detour now and again to express her creativity through different mediums. She developed a successful T-shirt line that involved creating a base pattern on a color shirt by spritzing it with bleach, then painting a design on top of the bleached constellation.

"Many of us in the guild have our Harriet T-shirts," Moore said. "I have four."

The guild has created a prize in Rein's name — the Harriet Rein Excellence in Surface Design Award — that will be presented to an artist next spring at the state conference in Tucson.

"Harriet had such talent and enthusiasm," Moore said. "She really filtered that through to all of us."

Find a photo gallery of this Life Story at azstar net.com/slideshows