Betty-Ann Hogan

STORY

I was brought up in Astoria, NY by my mother and my mother’s sister, Aunt Stella,

I can’t remember a time when I didn’t want to draw or paint.

My mother loved music and studied voice at the Curtis Institute of Music in Pennsylvania. She wanted me to love music as well.  She saved money and bought me a piano.  I took lessons. I had to force myself to practice. I hated it. My piano lessons did not go well.

What did interest me was the courtyard entrance to our apartment building.  In late morning on a sunny day, the light and shadows transformed this ordinary courtyard entrance into something I found so interesting. Every time there wasn’t school, I would go out and sit on the steps to study the light and shadows. I was about 9 or 10 years old.  In the back of our apartment building there was a garden. I loved looking out of the window at the garden. There were so many shapes and colors.

My mother and Aunt were worried about me. They thought I was lonely and had no playmates. But I was enjoying myself and found the shapes, colors, light and shadows endlessly interesting. I think art supplies would have been a better choice than a piano.

My Aunt Stella was a baker.  She could bake the most complicated of pastries without any of our modern appliances.  My mother went to work and Aunt Stella stayed home and was as good at domestic activities as Martha Stewart.  She once knocked a wall down herself in the apartment to improve the kitchen space. She painted the apartment herself because she didn’t like how the landlord did it.

My mother worked in Bloomingdales in the undergarment department.

All the women, at that time, who had mastectomies would come to my mother because she was so good at cheering them up. She would tell them” of all the things G-d gave you two of and you had to give one up, which one would you choose, your eyes, legs, feet, arms or a breast.” They would laugh and feel better.

I got the idea from my mother and aunt that my gender was something that I was, but did not totally define me. Women were as capable, smart and talented as anyone.

In the fourth grade when I was 9 years old, the teacher showed us a mural done by her former student, a young girl named Susan.  The mural was Susan’s idea of an Eskimo village. The teacher asked if anyone in the class could replicate it because it was falling apart.  I raised my hand and said I’ll do it.  She looked askance at me.

I didn’t care what she thought. I knew I could do it.  I did do it and the teacher was surprised and happy. I was a sensitive kid and cared what others thought of me but I never cared what anyone thought of my ability to do art.

After doing that mural in school, I asked my mother for art supplies. She bought them for me but didn’t think much about it.

From then on, I spent most of my free time drawing and painting. I said goodbye to piano lessons. In middle school I was in a class for artistically talented kids. It was then I decided that I wanted to go to the High School of Music and Art.  I needed to develop a portfolio, so I went to Pratt Institute Saturday classes. The world of art started to open up to me. There were other kids like me!

I prepared my portfolio and I did go to the High School of Music and Art, for art.

I loved it.  I still keep in touch with some classmates who are painters. My mother insisted that at college I major in education and minor in art so that I could become an elementary school teacher. She said it was important that a woman be a teacher so that she could have afternoons and summers free to be a wife and a mother. Her plan did not work out exactly.  I went to Queens college, majored in art and minored in secondary education. I wanted to teach art in High School.

In my junior year of college, I attended The Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture in Maine. It was an experience beyond my wildest dreams.  In the fall, my art teachers at Queens College suggested I go to the New York Studio School. I did go after classes at Queens College and I loved it.

When I graduated from Queens College, my mother said I had to go to work and get a job. I applied for a job at my alma mater High School of Music and Art, teaching art. I got the job and it was wonderful. After the school day, I attended classes at the Studio School.

One summer I went out to Aspen Colorado to The Aspen School of Contemporary art.

I spent the whole summer painting. Painting was now part of me.

A few years later, I got married, had a baby, and during his nap time I did art in my house, small pieces.  I got excessed from teaching because of budget cuts.  So, I was a stay at home mom and painted almost every day.

One summer my husband, baby and I went out west to New Mexico. I actually met Georgia O’keeffe at her house. What an experience that was. She gave me one of her elk horns that I still have.

As my son got older and went to school, I got a studio in Long Island City which had no heat in the winter!!! Luckily, I found out about PS1 and applied. I was accepted and it was amazing. I met so many women artists there.  When our year at PS1 was over, we decided to rent a 10,000 sq foot loft in Long Island City. We divided up the space and built individual studios. We named ourselves Independent Studios 1 (IS1). We were the first cooperative artist studios in Long Island City.

Long Island City, at that time, was mostly industrial with buildings not more than a few stories high.  The sky was wide open. We had huge windows and beautiful light.
I had that studio for almost 30 years and I really developed as an artist.

I started having one person and group shows. I was a member of two cooperative artists galleries, with one person shows regularly.

At that time, I started making large pieces and I got pretty good at carpentry.  It never occurred to me that I was limited by my gender. I went to local lumber yards for wood, bought a table saw, and a mitering saw. I framed my own pieces and laminated some on wood with PH neutral wallpaper glue, but I needed heat to seal it.  I remembered my mother told me that when one is ironing something delicate, put a sheet or cloth over it.  That’s what I did. I ironed my work to seal it. Those pieces are fine to this day. Thanks mom!!

My mother taught me by example to rise to the challenges that life presents. I never thought that I was unable to do what needed to be done based on my gender.

Then 9/11 happened. People got scared of living in Manhattan.

Long Island City being so close to Manhattan became prime real estate for development.

Slowly it was developed with tall apartment buildings, fancy, hip restaurants, and organic food markets. Rents started to skyrocket, and the owner of our building decided to sell in 2010.

We had to move out!  Moving out of my studio was so hard. I sorted through thirty years of work and life. I decided since I had the space in my house, to work at home.  My work is of more intimate subjects so being at home is fine with me.  I get to live with and see the work all the time.

I am so glad to be a part of the New York Society of Women Artists and to do this narrative. It was important for me to do it. I saw how my gender does not consciously play a part in my work and if others think a certain subject matter is feminine, the next question should be “Is it a good, well done, professional piece of art?” I think our identity as artists should come from the work we do and nothing else.