Artist, graphic designer
(1939– )
Our apartment faced south. It was the last house on the Grand Concourse so we could almost see downtown. I just somehow knew in my heart that where I lived was really special because I said, “Dear God, thank you so much for making me be born in the Bronx in New York and not in Kansas.” I had no idea why I chose Kansas. I hadn’t even seen The Wizard of Oz at that point, and I knew nothing about tornadoes.
We’re Sephardic Jews so we come from a close-knit family of uncles, cousins, whatever. My father came from Turkey and my mother was born in Egypt but her family came from Greece. The cooking, Passover, everything was different from the Ashkenazi Jews from Eastern Europe. My parents spoke the antique Spanish from 1492. Ladino. That wasn’t for us to learn, but for them to tell secrets.
We lived in a two-bedroom apartment. My younger sister and brother and I shared one bedroom and my parents had the other. I would stay up late doing my art homework in my parents’ bedroom. I had a little corner there with my table and my chair. I’d put my pads and my T-square underneath the table and I would work all night. I don’t know how they managed. My father was a postman and got up early in the morning while I would be up all night with my light on, when they were going to bed. By the time I was about ten I knew that I was going to be an artist.
My parents were traditional, but they trusted me. I mean, I knew how to get pregnant, and I knew that I wasn’t getting pregnant. I didn’t want to have kids. I wanted to have a career. I remember when I was fifteen, I was figuring out my future and I was sitting there thinking, Okay, I’m fifteen and I have to finish high school and that brings me up to sixteen, and then I want to go to college, which my father was against. He said if I was too smart, nobody would want to marry me and then, at twenty-five, my face would crack and I would be a toy in every man’s arms. “Dad, maybe one day I will get married, but not now.” I don’t think my mother had dreams for me. I was always pretty self-directed, so if she had a dream for me, it would be for me to be happy. And I was happy, so she got her dream.
When I was fourteen, I had an epiphany. I was ice skating at the Wollman Rink in Central Park with my friend Vivian, whose mother had breast cancer and had one breast removed. She kept the falsies in a shoe box in the apartment. Vivian and I put on her mother’s falsies to look older. We were fourteen and we looked sixteen. I guess it was the end of the day, when the ice was very uneven, because my skate got caught in a rut and I fell. I heard my leg go boop, and it broke. I used to call it “my lucky break.”
I was in the ninth grade and I had to get home instruction. I had Mr. Stonehill for three hours a week for academics, and then I had Julie Mahl as my art teacher. She was the one who encouraged me to go to a specialized art school, like the School of Industrial Art. She loved the work that I did. She used to tell my mother I was a sponge. I just soaked up everything. She told me something, and then I did it, so I felt very empowered. I finally learned how to learn, academically.
Before I broke my leg, I wasn’t really a great academic student at all. Somehow learning escaped me. I was always a dreamer. If I got a seventy-five in class I’d be happy, but it eroded my confidence. The one-on-one was very good for me. With Mr. Stonehill, I learned how to pay attention. I learned how to learn, and I liked it. Heaven forbid. I liked school! Because of the tutors, I knew I could be a better student.
I also never felt very popular in middle school. Because of my upbringing, I wasn’t allowed out that much so I wasn’t integrated into a social group. Everyone was out after school, making friends, but my family was more strict. I said to myself, when I go to high school, I’m gonna completely change myself and I’m gonna go with the crowd I want to be with. That’s what I did. That was my epiphany. I was going to like myself better.
You know, I was an artist even then. I was really the same person as I am now. When you’re young, you think you’re gonna change when you grow up. Somehow you think you’re gonna be different. When I was ten, I thought, What am I gonna be fifteen years from now? And at twenty-five, I used to think, I wonder what I’m gonna be like when I’m forty? I was exactly the same. Now [in 2012] I’m seventy-three. I’m exactly the same. I’m not any different than when I was younger.