Leo and I were born in 1933, eleven days apart, 3,000 miles apart on opposite coasts, and from different worlds. Leo was black; I was white—at a time when it was illegal to be together in many states.
From the time we were young, we both knew we wanted to be artists although we didn’t actually know what that meant. My parents supported and encouraged me even though girls were not encouraged to have careers at that time. Leo’s parents were not too eager to encourage Leo because they couldn’t imagine he could make a living as an artist. Fortunately, Leo’s father had an artist and poet friend, Mr. Vollman, who saw Leo’s talent and encouraged him.
We met in 1953 at Parsons School of Design and that is where our story begins.
Our relationship at Parsons started as competitors, admiring each other’s work before we actually met. I started a semester later than Leo. I saw his work pinned up on the wall on my first day and knew this was serious competition. Leo later told me he saw the piece I had on my desk and felt the same way. We were majoring in advertising and had the same classes. By the second year, our friendship became more serious although we tried to hide it, not knowing if we could be expelled, or worse, but before long the other students knew. To our relief we were not confronted in any way about our relationship, although one of the instructors told Leo he would have a problem being hired and another instructor told me he didn’t like to teach talented girls because they just got married, so it was a waste of time teaching them. That didn’t discourage either of us.
Our classes consisted of advertisement assignments, life drawing, design, silk screen, photography, and type design. Parsons concentrated on the creative part of illustration. There were no business courses. We were told we would learn the business side when we got our first job. Business and art were like oil and water, not mentioned in the same sentence in the ’50s.
When we graduated from Parsons, Leo easily found a job at a publisher for a men’s magazine, and I got a job at an advertising agency. Nine months after graduation, we decided to marry despite discouragement from friends on both sides. Leo’s parents were accepting but worried that we would have problems; it could be dangerous for their son. My mother was not enthusiastic but tried to be accepting. My father had died before I got to Parsons, but I believe he would have been supportive.
Our first apartment on 106th Street and Second Avenue was a railroad flat, three rooms plus a bathroom—an eat-in kitchen, a middle room, which would normally be a bedroom, and a living room. The rooms were small, about eleven feet by twelve feet. The middle room was smaller since the only closets in the apartment were in that room. The middle room became our studio. It barely held our two drawing boards and taborets that contained our supplies. The living room included a convertible couch that opened into a bed.
I quit my job to become a housewife. Leo kept his job but brought extra work home from the publisher that I worked on with him. After almost a year, Leo was not happy with the nine-to-five routine or commuting on the subway and wanted to freelance. I agreed. Unfortunately, we didn’t have the savings to support that decision and the next few years were difficult. With a weekly salary we could budget the money for rent, food, and travel. Freelancing was actually starting our own business. Since we had taken no business classes on keeping accurate records or how to negotiate, we learned the hard way. There were times in those early years when we forgot to bill for a job we had done, or worse still, billed for a job twice—which was especially hard, also embarrassing, when the client discovered the error and asked for the money back after it had been spent. When a job came in, we accepted it, and when the finished art was done and delivered we waited, sometimes for two weeks, to hear if there were any changes before asking how much we would be paid. Clearly not good business sense. I’m happy to see art schools now include business in their curriculum.
At first, when we made an appointment with an editor or art director, one of us would take the portfolio in. If they gave us work, we finished the pencil drawing, then the other one took it in for approval before starting the finished art. We made sure they knew we were interracial, hoping to avoid any uncomfortable scenes. Other than a few jaws dropping, or surprised expressions, there were no unpleasant occurrences in the publishing world. We never knew if we didn’t get a job because of who we were.
Now that we were freelancing, the steady weekly paychecks no longer came in. There could be weeks or even months between jobs or checks. We made appointments with advertising agencies and publishers to show our portfolio. The portfolio had mostly original art with only a few printed pieces. It consisted of everything from type design to full-color magazine illustration. We were unknown. The reaction was either “I like your work, come back when you’ve had more experience” or “There are too many styles and techniques here. You should have a specific style so it is easier for us to think of you when we are looking for an artist.” We solved the portfolio problem by making three portfolios, one for magazines, one for book covers and book design, and one for album covers. We also called ourselves Studio Two for a while hoping that clients would accept the various styles and techniques, thinking there were others in the studio as well.
In the late ’50s when we began our career, there were no personal computers, no internet, no cell phones, no websites. It was a different world. It was important to be in New York, where most of the advertising agencies and publishers were. Also, there was no FedEx. Today, an artist can work from anywhere in the country.
There were times freelancing when we had no work, when the cupboards were bare, and no checks were due. Once we were reduced to biscuits and tea for breakfast, lunch, and dinner for three days. During these early times, Leo’s father, who owned his own truck, would “drop by” on his way to a delivery to bring a bag of groceries or something he had made for dinner the night before. He had been a chef in the West Indies, and he made some delicious food. Leo’s father also asked Leo to help him with a delivery sometimes and insisted on paying him for the day. We never asked his father for money, but he must have known we could use his help. Only after work was coming in steadily, we noticed “Pop” wasn’t dropping by with food anymore and then we realized what he had been doing. My mom was working to support herself after my father died and wasn’t able to help.
Those days were hard but endurable, knowing there was a goal and a reason for the sacrifices. If we hadn’t had the Dream, it would have been much harder, and we might have given up and gone back to staff jobs. When we had steady work, we looked back on those days fondly and felt grateful Leo’s dad was there when we needed the help.
When there were more published pieces in the portfolios, clients could see we were reliable and experienced and gave us more work. Remembering the hard times, we took everything that was offered from type design to textbook work, book jackets to album covers. We managed to overcome the client’s objections to our many styles and techniques; in fact, I think that was why we were offered such diverse assignments. If the client asked for a particular style, we considered their request but if we felt another style worked better, we did what we felt was best. Once the client saw the finished art, they often said, “That’s just what I wanted,” even though it wasn’t what they’d suggested.
Techniques and style were our way of expressing graphically what we wanted to say, much like words are to a writer. Why would we want to limit ourselves? We experimented with techniques and mediums, some we had never done before. We worked with all the usual materials as well as clay, marbleizing, carving in wood, we developed a stencil technique we called frisket, used melted wax, and even did a cover in crewelwork. We also tried working on many surfaces, including paper, wood, silk, plastic, canvas, and acetate. Experimenting with materials was stressful but exciting, even when things didn’t go as planned. The disasters taught us to be flexible and inventive.
One example of that is when we were given a map to illustrate for Time Life’s series on the Great Ages of Man. It was a map showing the cradle of civilization. We decided to do it in clay on a base of wood. We nailed chicken wire to the wood to hold the clay. The map was completed. It was due the next day, so to speed up the drying of the clay we warmed the oven, turned off the heat, and placed the map in the oven overnight. The next morning when we opened the oven door, the map had cracked into many, many pieces. We were in shock. We had to call the art director. We told him things were going well but we needed a few more days. Happily, he agreed to give us a little more time. Now we had to figure out how to save the job. There was no way we could remake the map. We took the pieces off the wood, carefully cutting the wire, keeping the pieces in order, then gluing them back together onto the wood. When it was done we filled in some of the cracks but found that the cracks made the map look more ancient so we left some. We hadn’t planned for cracks, but in the end the map was even better.
Flexibility was important when working together and as illustrators. Being flexible was a learning experience over time. Being competitive, we knew having separate careers would be a problem, so we thought it would be safer for the marriage to join talents and work together. At first, when we discussed what we had in mind for a job, we might agree verbally but when one of us started the drawing, the other was surprised because they’d envisioned something different. We realized each of us had different pictures in our minds even though we were agreeing. That could lead to an argument. To solve that problem, we made small thumbnail drawings while we were talking, to show what we were thinking, which helped. Our final drawings, to size, were detailed, not sketches, so we both had a guide to follow when passing the work back and forth. Even with the detailed drawings, changes happened when the image was traced down for the finished art and the painting began. When we passed the art back and forth, we learned to accept what was done when we got it and to continue from there instead of trying to change it back to our own vision. Over time we developed trust and the process became smooth, so we rarely disagreed about the work in the later years.
The advantage of working together was a second pair of eyes. When something wasn’t going right, the other could take the work with fresh eyes.
Working at home in our studio, we were more isolated than if we had a staff job. In the late ’60s, after a little over ten years of freelancing, we joined the Graphic Artists Guild. That was an education in the business of being an artist, finally. We learned that we should be selling the use of our art but not the original. In 1901 the founders of the Society of Illustrators had gone to court to fight for the right to get their originals back from the client and they’d won, but by the time we graduated from art school in the ’50s that knowledge was lost. Many clients kept the work. The guild campaigned against work-for-hire agreements that freelancers were asked to sign. Work-for-hire meant that any company that hired us owned the artwork even though we weren’t an employee with any benefits. Legally, if an artist is a hired employee of a company, the company owns whatever he or she creates, and in return the employee gets benefits that include things like vacation with pay, retirement benefits, etc. So, for almost fourteen years we had not even asked for our original art back.
The Graphic Artists Guild, or GAG, also published the Pricing & Ethical Guidelines Handbook, or PEG. The PEG had information about how to negotiate, ethics for the artist and the client, pricing, contracts for artists, and other helpful information for freelancers. The guild still produces the handbook, and it is available on the internet now.
The fact that we could get our art back was important. When starting out we had no idea our art was worth anything. As we developed a reputation and became known, our art had value and collectors began to purchase our work. That made a huge difference in filling those gaps when no checks were coming in.
Not long after we joined the Graphic Artists Guild, we joined the Society of Illustrators. It was formed to promote and exhibit the art of illustration; it included lectures, educational programs, and juried competitions. It was also a social meeting place for artists where we met and made new friends and compared experiences with clients and prices for work. Being members, we also learned more about the business of illustration, and we were no longer so isolated. In 1981 the society was established as a museum.
We had been working for about twelve years and were established when we were asked to teach illustration at the School of Visual Arts. It was the late ’60s during the psychedelic period. We heard about classes where students were drawing on long sheets of brown paper and then wrapping themselves in the paper, or students were asked to sit and stare at another student as an assignment. Weird conceptional assignments that had little technical information. We wanted to teach materials and technique. The head of the department felt that concept was more important—that once an artist had an idea, they would find a way to express that idea. We prevailed and taught the basics. We taught for seven years. Our classes were full because the students were hungry for practical information.
We taught two days a week but spent the day before preparing the lesson and the day after recovering, so, in reality, we were spending four days. At that time work was coming in steadily and we were working day and night, sometimes all night, to meet deadlines.
We contemplated starting a studio but didn’t want to be managers or involved with the business side of running a studio. We were happiest sitting at our drawing boards doing the work, so, we finally gave up teaching, but we were the better for the experience.
Starting out, we could never have imagined the career we had. Because we were freelancing, we had accepted whatever came to us, which led us on a path that we could not have planned. Every new job was different with new challenges, new problems to solve, and it was never boring. Our stubborn refusal to specialize opened us to many different assignments for young adult and adult book covers, magazines, textbooks, album covers, and posters. Eventually, in the later years, we became known mostly for children’s picture books and our science fiction work.
Our preference of subject matter was fantasy, myth, and science fiction rather than technical subject matter. Technical illustration was a challenge and was rewarding, but fantasy, myth, and science fiction gave us more freedom to create and invent characters and worlds. Children’s picture books gave us many pages to tell the story. We imagined what happened between the lines of the manuscript and even added our own statements. An example of that is Why Mosquitoes Buzz in People’s Ears. The West African tale was an animal story. All the animals played a part, but we noticed the antelope only had a small part, he was only sent to fetch another animal. We decided to make him more important, showing him on several pages smiling out at the reader and on one page he is up front and center. Also, there is a little red bird watching the play on every page, an observer like the reader, and on the last page when the story is over, she flies away. She was not in the manuscript. As long as we were true to the manuscript, there was opportunity to add our little side statements.
In 1977 we were awarded the Caldecott Medal for our illustrations for Why Mosquitoes Buzz in People’s Ears. We had to give an acceptance speech at the American Library Association’s annual conference that summer. This was a new experience, speaking to hundreds, if not thousands. Even if Parsons had offered public speaking, we most likely would not have taken it, believing we would never be speaking to audiences. Now we found ourselves traveling around the country speaking, usually with a slide presentation, at bookstores, libraries, and universities.
During speaking appearances, we were often asked how we worked together. We never divulged our process because it was divisive. In any case, passing the work back and forth made it difficult even for us to know who had done what. Some people asked, how could we give up our individual identities? Our identity was what we called “the third artist,” which created something that was different from what we would have done separately. We were one artist.
It was not so unusual for artists to work together. In school we admired Alice and Martin Provensen’s work, a husband-and-wife team. In art history we learned that many artists had studios with assistants who painted backgrounds, drapery, or were specialists that painted the architecture. Those artists included Michelangelo, Rembrandt, and Rubens. In our times, one good example is Jeff Koons.
Our son, Lee, worked with us on many assignments as he grew older. We hoped he would be an artist, and we encouraged him, giving him his own drawing board and art materials when he was very young. Later he took classes at the Art Students League, School of Visual Arts, and New York Academy of Art. His interests were in painting, sculpture, and jewelry. He preferred fine art rather than illustration, although he could have been part of the third artist if he wanted. We also felt grateful we were able to raise Lee ourselves, since we were working at home.
Looking back on our career, we were lucky to have worked at home doing what we loved. It wasn’t always easy, but it was rewarding, challenging, even with moments of euphoria, when everything was going smoothly. We often heard the statement that art is fun. Maybe to preschoolers who had no limitations, no manuscripts to interpret, no research, or those annoying deadlines. The closest we got to “fun” was near the end of a job. In the beginning, there was the anxiety of looking at a blank page and wondering what we were going to do. During the process if problems came up, we had to solve them. It could be fun when all we had to do was refine details, add highlights, and we were ready to say, “It’s done!”