Lillian Scalzo Memoir - University of Illinois Springfield

Lillian Scalzo
A: Twenty-one.
Q: Nineteen twenty-one. And then how many years did you study at the
Art Institute?
A: About two years there.
Q: And did they have a formal kind of curriculum or did you go like
eight hours a day or what was the arrangement?
A: This is a very formal school. You went everyday from nine in the
morning till four in the afternoon. And in the morning you did nothing
but draw from the model and in the afternoon was a11 different kinds of
techniques; like pen and ink and watercolor. The first years you mostly
did drawings and your second year you went into watercolor and oil. But
every year your morning classes were always drawing from the model.
Q: From a live person?
A: Live. Oh, yes.
Q: Now, was the two-year period the accepted course of study where . . .
A: Oh, yes, this is the accepted course.
Q: So after two years you in effect graduated from that.
A: Well, I didn't really graduate but we didn't go back because my
cousin had graduated in her music as far as she wanted to go and she
commenced teaching. And then we would go to summer school every summer.
Q: In Chicago?
A: In Chicago.
Q: I see. So when your cousin finished you and she came back to Springfield?
A: Yes.
Q: Okay. When did you start painting or when did you decide you had an
interest in art?
A: I guess not until I went to school. I didn't like music. It was to
=--it was real hard work and I wasn't good at it so I asked if I could
go to the Institute instead of studying music. So they let me. And
that's the only thing [that I decided], but never decided really, that I
was going to be an artist.
Q: One of the articles that 1 read said that you sold a painting at the
age of sixteen. Do you remember that? That that one was the first one
that you sold?