Art Students League New York

Happy 55th Anniversary to my mom and dad who met at the Art Students League in NYC during the 1950's! They loved this school (isn't it charming?) and the unique opportunity it gave them to study with the masters of their day in an open studio format. (Many years later I took advantage of this system with classes at the Denver Art Students League putting in long hours of Life Drawing.) My parents have fun stories about the art debates with friends that were informally held in a local cafeteria over dozens of tall iced teas everyday. My mom was always the only female present. She would get swept up in the heated discussions and she learned as much there among her fellow students as she did in class. After the ASL, my dad went on to be fashion illustrator for Bergdorf Goodman and art director for the now defunct department store Seidenbachs in Tulsa, OK. My mom went on to share an art studio with several other artists in Greenwich Village to further her studies. She also did some illustrations on the side, and briefly started an art publishing company with my sister and I in the 1980's. My dad gave it all up to live in the West. He became a "dirt peddler" (selling mountain acreage)... And the rest is history.