My Watercolor Paintings and Stony Creek Library

This below is my watercolor called Refreshing Day in Stony Creek: a slice of water and sky and land, that appeared in the summer group show of local artists at Willoughby Wallace Memorial Library in Stony Creek, Connecticut. Long Island Sound has a remarkable array of small islands: the Thimble Islands, right opposite the site of Willoughby Wallace Memorial Library, a library which houses a lovely gallery specifically for art shows like this.

How my life aligned itself with Penn Station at one time...

I found an article today about plans that New York City is contemplating: to enhance the current incarnation of Penn Station by improving and enlarging its lower levels where Long Island Railroad commuters struggle with its current limitations. I will post some pictures of the magnificent original Penn Station, a sculptural wonder of glass and iron, which someone decided should be torn asunder in order to replace it with a huge and ordinary building. The terrible days began exactly when I was commuting to my first job in New York as they began knocking down those huge stone columns that held the whole place so perfectly.

It would have been in 1962 when I first began to commute daily to New York City. I had graduated from Pratt Institute in Brooklyn in 1961, commuting daily from Long Island to Brooklyn for four years. And after graduating from Pratt, I took courses at a business school in New York City, learning something called Speedwriting, and typing...I quite liked it. Following that, I found a job I also quite liked: Simplicity Pattern Company.  Simplicity's offices were on two floors of a tall building right alongside Altman's department store. I still felt myself to be an artist, but something about the regular world of business and commerce was easing to my mind. But this also had much to do with what occurred just then: something so unexpected happened to my older sister Cynthia: after years of intelligent schoolwork in high school, four more years at Barnard College where she majored in Art History, and years' long study of ballet, at which she was considered very gifted, she developed something pretty terrible: schizophrenia. A world changing event for herself, and for all of us in the family. And that had a lot to do with my ease and comfortableness in going in every day to work in a regular and predictable world. Though I was not overwhelmed with interest in fashion, I did like my job as Secretary to the Fabric Editor, Norma...I liked them all: Norma, her Assistant Editor, Nancy and the other member of our staff, Judy: so agreeable that I found going to work to be a kind of balm to soothe the sense of worry that hung over our family. The four of us often ate lunch at our desks from local coffee shops.and laughed a lot. Down one hallway was the advertising department and down the other, a host of stylists who came in to our office daily and frequently to browse through file upon file of all the current fabrics that the garment industry was purveying that season. Will write a little more about this world up ahead...

Meanwhile, here are several archival photos of Penn Station: