About the Author

I can't remember when I first knew I was an artist, because it was something that happened gradually.I grew up in Glencoe, Illinois. My father was a professor at Northwestern University. My mother was a writer. We spent summers on an old farm in Weston, Vermont. My first art teacher was Churchill Ettinger, a Vermont artist who showed me how to visually transfer and translate the world before me to my paper. I can't remember how long I studied with him but by the time I entered college, I knew that art would be a focus in my life.Since both of the colleges I attended were liberal arts schools, the courses offered were in the fine arts. No one talked about commercial art. It was considered a waste of one's talents.I didn't think much about all that then. I just took courses: life drawing, painting, printmaking, ceramics. I even made sculptures out of car parts. Nothing I tried felt quite right. I knew I was an artist but where did I fit? After college, I married, and my husband Stuart and I settled in New York City. I decided to find a job using my artistic talents. After a number of interviews, I contacted Charles Halgren at Caru Studios and discovered that he hired artists to illustrate textbooks from time to time. That sounded like the perfect job for me, so I called him every two weeks for the next nine months. Finally, a new biology book came in and I was employed to do pen and ink illustrations for it.I stayed at Caru for Five years. It was a wonderful time. The studio employed thirty artists, photographers, draftsmen, and even typesetters (This was before computers, and type was set by hand.) . I learned all about the commercial side of art and discovered what a fascinating world it was.Then my husband and I moved back to the family farm in Weston, Vermont, and took over a construction company. Our move came at a time when I was beginning to feel a lack of growth in my work. I'd done illustrations for all kinds of science texts and was uncertain what to do next. So I was enthusiastic about our move and our new business. I did some office work and architectural design work and drafting, and we raised two children.However, as time went on, I needed new challenges. Somehow I was off the track. When my second child entered first grade, the time had come to quit my job and return to school. At first I thought I would become an architect. I was good at architectural design and as an architect I could continue to contribute to our business.I looked around, found the Boston Architectural Center and went down for an interview. While I was visiting a class on that first evening, I realized very suddenly (it was like being hit by lightning) that it was not architecture that I wanted to study, it was illustration. So my search continued, but now I was looking at art schools.I enrolled in two schools, the New England School of Art and Design and the Art Institute. By taking classes at both, I was able to

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