I was born in Brooklyn. My parents were immigrants and expected that here in America, their children, two girls, could and would go to college. My sister went to Brooklyn College and I went to art school. My first class at Pratt Institute, which I attended much too young (both my sister and I graduated high school at age 16) was a life class. The nude model made me so happy; I was really an artist.
A 19-year-old graduate, I started my artist career at Gimbels (remember Gimbels?) doing humorous line drawings for editorials. Onward and upward to CBS, New York Times, Columbia Records, etc., the Art Students League, Cape School of Art. I traveled in Europe, became a professor/chair at Fashion Institute of Technology, and in between I married a wonderful man and had one child.
I finally got a bachelor of arts degree, went to Columbia, New York University, and En Sorbonne, and decided to write. I quit the Fashion Institute of Technology, won a few literary magazines prizes and a fellowship, had a few excellent agents, and never got a book published.
We moved to New Jersey, traveled to other continents, and then my wonderful husband died. My daughter married and I have a granddaughter. All this is not exactly sequentially presented and a lot is left out, but here I am, having just finished writing and illustrating a 98-page book and surviving Covid and a sequestered life.
I wanted, when I got old, to have achieved wisdom. Well, no, but a friend talked to me about “the wisdom to be happy.” I do like that. I have good friends, and now I very much look forward to more at Ethical Culture.
Ruth Golian