0.36 Stella sullivan, b. 1924

Teachers and colleagues

I knew from the time I was four that I was going to be an artist, and I considered myself an artist then. I never had very much formal training when I was young, but I did get introduced to people with my mother and she would take me to visit the artists. I ended up taking classes from MacNeill Davidson, which she taught a lot of the important artists in town. [This was] around year ten, somewhere in there. Mother took me over to Grace Spaulding John’s studio and I met Miss [Ruth]Uhler and Grace, and we had tea. I saw a fair amount of Grace over the years and another time mother took me by Mrs. [Emma Richardson] Cherry’s house where she was having a portrait class out of doors.

My parents used to take me to all the openings at the Museum when I was little and that’s where I first remember seeing Gertrude Levy; we didn’t know each other then or anything—I was just aware of her. She also was a friend of one of my mother’s really good friends.

Then later I went to the Museum school and studied. When I was taking these classes in high school, Jack Flanagan

In ’50 and ’51 I went to the Art Students’ League [School of Detroit Society of Arts and Crafts] up there, and then to Cranbrook—and I was there until I graduated in 1954. So I was in and out of town on holiday during those years. There were plenty of times between the end of the summer semesters and the starting of the winter sessions, so I was still pretty much in touch with things that were going on [in Houston].

Naming names

I remember in the 50s—even earlier than that maybe—the Contemporary Arts Museum was downtown. And the first time I ever saw a real live Van Gogh was at the one-man show of Van Gogh that they had. The other was a Calder show.

Ava Jean Mears was the secretary of [CAM]—Ava Jean and Herb Mears of course were just wonderful people. And Alvin Romansky was really active in all the things, CAA and the Museum, and he gave his collection of prints to the Museum. He was just a lot of fun; always enjoyable to be with—but he was from an older group.

One of the nice things about the CAA at that time is that it was a volunteer organization, and all the people who wanted to went and volunteered, [doing] something relative to art whether they were artists or not. The artists got so many opportunities through that, and experiences. It was really wonderful: Everybody knew everybody and got to be friends, you know, for life.