“Sculpture, in Canada, is something one backs into while viewing paintings.”
“I remember a young woman saying that,” said Frances. “She was writing a thesis on sculpture.” Frances shook her head. “A real winner she must have been.”
Frances was not alone in her exasperation. The Girls would repeatedly say to anyone, whether they were listening or not, “For God’s sake, look at sculpture!” Frances Loring, whose work is most certainly contemporary, nevertheless had a jaundiced view of modern sculpture, and considered much of it “adult kindergarten work.”
Academic training formed Loring and Wyle, and at the risk of being considered old-fashioned, they followed the academy’s artistic preoccupation with anatomy in their work. Old-fashioned? As Florence Wyle said, “No good work is old-fashioned.” Frances Gage agreed. Why should some artists be considered old-fashioned simply because they observe a discipline as basic as anatomy?
Now, in the spring of 1953, came the culmination of the relationship begun by OCA instructor Ruth Holmes’s simple introduction of Frances to the vet Edith Williams, followed by Edith’s introduction of Frances to the sculptors Loring and Wyle — The Girls — and the subsequent artistic, sculptural, and social relationship forged between Frances and the two sculptors. And thus, finally, to the day when The Girls approached Frieda Fraser on the subject of Frances Gage.
“They spoke to Frieda,” said Frances, “pointing out that I had a modest talent as a sculptor, but needed further training. Frieda was quite wealthy, through her own work and family money, and she agreed to finance two years of study for me at the Art Students League in New York City.”
And so it happened. Dream-like, New York rose in Frances’s mind. Later that year, in the fall of 1953, she turned her steps south, steps on a journey that would take the rest of her life.
The alleyway leading to the street was dark now. The berm rising beside the shack cast the entire area into deep shadow. The late January evening settled over the woman who still stood in the shack’s doorway. An icy breeze ruffled the light brown hair across her brow; she felt the cold, and shivered.
Time to go. For a moment a smile touched her face as she glanced inside the door, at this … this appalling shack. This incredible, disreputable, rat-infested … glorious shack.
If I had known, she thought, her mind far away, if I’d known then what I know now. No, it wouldn’t have changed anything. Not a thing. I’d do it all again, a hundred times over.
She shook her head. The thoughts of that time … so many years ago it seemed; was it only four?! She smiled again at the memory. Oh the bliss, the unmitigated bloody joy of that time, when New York was just a month away. The unbelievable wonder of it all. And the year in Paris that followed. That priceless time: the excitement, the learning, the exultation when I succeeded; the depression and sense of inadequacy when things went wrong; the challenges; and when I won, the feeling of triumph, almost sublime, of having the world, the whole world, in my hands.
Such wonderful years.
And now?
She pulled her cardigan closer against the cold. Turn off the heater, she thought. Time to go home to bed. Time enough to worry about tomorrow when tomorrow comes.
But, ah — she paused a moment more — those years in New York … in Paris …
ON BOARD THE NIGHT TRAIN bound for New York City, Frances gazed out the window and felt slightly miffed that her first sight of the American northeast should be shrouded in darkness. Albany was behind her; ahead, New York. The ambivalence she had felt in Toronto — the security of the known and the insecurity of the new and unknown — was a thing of the past. She felt the excitement of a new life, poised on the threshold of it, boldly knocking on the door.
“I went directly down the Hudson River, which was very exciting, even though I couldn’t see anything. Still, the exhilaration was there, and the impatience to arrive, to see this great city.” She couldn’t afford a sleeper — she wouldn’t have been able to sleep anyway — so she sat up all the way, staring out the window. There had been a mix-up at the border, a problem with her visa, but that was eventually resolved. This was an illustration of a problem that Frances encountered throughout her life: she seemed incapable of travelling anywhere without encountering confusion, or getting lost.
“Trains, buses, and boats never seemed to be where they were supposed to be!” On the rare occasion when she caught the right train, she’d end up in the wrong compartment or the wrong seat. Indeed she would often find, in the end, there was simply no such train at all, and in the small hours of the morning, as the cleaners pushed their brooms across the empty station, they would see the solitary figure standing by her suitcase beneath a dim light, waiting for the train that would never come.
By the time she arrived in Grand Central Station she was awed by the incredible size of the city. At a time when Toronto’s population was only slightly more than 600 thousand, New York City was home to eight million, and Manhattan Island alone had a population of two million.
Frances took a taxi directly to the YWCA, hoping they would have room for her. They didn’t, but they did have a list of people willing to accept roomers, and in this way she met Mrs. Berkovitz.
She was scheduled to see Mrs. Berkovitz the following day, but first things first: “Went to the Art Students League on West 57th Street, just east of 8th Avenue, and registered for Monday. It gave me a strange feeling. The atmosphere was like OCA in Toronto.”
Frances stayed overnight in a nearby hotel until she got settled in with Mrs. Berkovitz. “The hotel maids didn’t have watches. They opened my door to look at my clock!” How odd, she thought. You’d think in a sophisticated city like New York they’d be able to afford wrist watches.
A dark and dingy elevator delivered Frances to Mrs. Berkovitz’s apartment which was situated on 56th Street, close to 8th Avenue. “It was within easy walking distance of the Art Students League, less than ten minutes. I was a good walker in those days, so I walked back and forth all the time.” Frances’s room looked out onto a blank brick wall. Not very inspiring. But there were compensations, not the least of which was Mrs. B. herself.
“Mrs. Berkovitz was a real education,” said Frances. “She liked to have a non-Jew in the house to turn on the lights on Fridays, because her religion did not permit her to do it. The first night, she took me walking along the East River, and every time I remarked on something she would say ‘Honey, dat’s New Yoik.’ Mrs. Berkovitz was very proud of New York.
“She and her daughter were wonderful,” said Frances. “Strangely, Mrs. Berkovitz’s chief pleasure was watching Bishop Fulton Sheen on television. This was the first television I had seen. It was a colour set, and Bishop Sheen was splendid in his red robes. She thought that was wonderful entertainment!”
Mrs. Berkovitz’s daughter Sondra worked for a Broadway play producer, a Canadian named Whitehead, and it was through Sondra that Frances frequently got press seats for Broadway plays that she never could have otherwise afforded.
“October fourth. First Sunday in New York. All alone. Except for a man who tried to pick me up while I was sketching in the Central Park Zoo.” After that brief “romance,” she strolled down Fifth Avenue to Central Park South. “While waiting for a traffic light on Fifth Avenue, a toothless old lady gave me her life history.” A lifetime in a New York minute.
In the southeast corner of Central Park, facing Fifth Avenue, was the zoo, a favourite sketching place for Frances. “It was wonderful because you could get within a few feet of the animals.”
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