doilies, which we sold to a fancy store.” The store burned, and she returned to school to“ quickly” finish a BFA in visual art and costume design, and an MFA in what became installation art.
Her humor, ambition, and fearlessness are all apparent in her description of her final project:“ For my thesis exhibition I wrote a faux Victorian murder mystery called Lust at Fox Gorge and built the setting in the university gallery— five rooms and a garden with a working fountain.“
During the years she was out of school,“ women had become accepted as artists and art students. When I started college, there was no place for women in the art world.” While in Columbus, Ohio( her degrees are from Ohio State University) she worked in Ohio State’ s costume department and in costume design for Opera Columbus. She moved from Ohio to Philadelphia, Pennsylvania where she was a commercial wardrobe stylist,“ the most lucrative job I’ ve ever had. It was exhausting.”
In 1982 she was a winner of The Rome Prize( hers was in Visual Arts), which is awarded annually by the American Academy in Rome to thirty emerging artists and scholars,“ who represent the highest standard of
excellence in the arts and humanities.” She eventually settled in New York, where she became the Curator of Furnishings of the privately owned New York Tenement Museum on the Lower East Side, ranked number 28 of 1,626 things to do in New York City on the Trip Advisor website.
“ I was charged with doing the research— what was the right thing for the family to have for the different time periods and different countries of origin.” She also had to provide detailed justifications for each purchase for each of the seven apartments and one saloon she ultimately decorated. There were no collections to draw on. She calls
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May / June 2015 • Our Brown County 57