definitely feel is a step in the right direction!”
Zorach agreed. “Good work, and well carried out! In art,” he stressed, “you must not do what someone else thinks is good and right. You must listen, and then make your own decisions as to what is right for you.”
Hovannes, too, appeared to like what she was doing. “Good day,” she said with satisfaction. “Started my seventh life figure. Seems to be going okay.” Then, once more, the agonizing slide down to uncertainty and loss of conviction. “Lack of energy throughout. Wish I could learn to think, damn it. I guess one is born with an IQ. Or without one.”
Then up again: “Both figures are coming along well. Went all out and bought some tools. They’re expensive, but lovely.” Then down: “I seem to be awfully low on energy. Don’t know what is the matter. Wish I could do more, but don’t feel like it.” Then up: “Zorach liked my afternoon figure! He said it would take subtle handling. I know I can do it!”
Hovannes was also delighted with her morning figure, and had it photographed. Frances took the photos home, and with a certain pride, showed them to her landlady.
Mrs. Berkovitz looked at them critically. “Will you be getting your instructor to sign a certificate to say you really did these?” Then she realized she was veering away from the really important information. “When you go back to Canada, how much money will you be able to make?”
Later that afternoon, back at the school, Frances sat back and felt that it had been a fairly good day in most respects. “But I’m absolutely beat by four-thirty. Should get a shot of something to put in my coffee.”
The last weekend in November was spent with Mary King in New Rochelle, a restful Thanksgiving and a welcome break before Christmas. “Beautiful day. Sawed wood, pruned bushes. Ate too much, bad night, will I ever learn?”
Back in New York she balanced her budget. “Very much in the red, but I’ll clear that up with more casting for the other students.” Her Toronto patron had financed her time in New York, but the grant wasn’t quite sufficient for all her needs. “I did a lot of casting for my fellow students. They were all very rich, and they didn’t know how to cast. Thanks to my years at the Ontario College of Art, I did, so it was to my financial advantage to do it for them, and I became a very good caster! I could finish a mould in an hour. One would think the students had never seen a proper mould! I got offers right and left. Everyone was suddenly asking my advice on casting. I cast a head for eight dollars. Eight dollars was nothing to them, but it was really welcome money for me.”
To supplement her grant and extend her time in New York she decided to economize on meals. She switched to dog food. “It was only twenty-five cents a can, and I could get three meals out of it.” Over the months, she would augment her meals with dog food for weeks at a time. “It was very good. Well-cooked. Good beef. Probably better than the Americans would have for themselves. Add a few vegetables and things. Very good. Quite nutritious.”
“Hovannes was in this morning. He didn’t think much of my figure. Started casting after lunch, had a light supper, then worked through the evening till ten. Joined some of the night class members for a coffee in their studio.”
Outside on the street she still felt the pleasure of Zorach’s words earlier that day. “We’ll make a thrilling sculptor out of you yet,” he had said. Nice to know, she thought. The night around her reflected her contented mood. It was fairly quiet around 11:00 p.m., crisply cold, a lovely night. She strolled east along 57th Street, crossed Seventh Avenue, passed Carnegie Hall, and continued on to Fifth Avenue, the Mecca of the upscale shopper. More money in their pockets than I have, she thought, but without bitterness. More money, yes, but are they happy? She laughed. You bet they are! Rather than turn south toward her room and bed, she crossed Fifth and continued east to Park Avenue. “Such a beautiful night, actually a couple of stars in the sky,” and she felt the growing yuletide spirit in her heart. Then, at Park Avenue, she gazed south, and in that instant was happier than any moneyed shopper on Fifth Avenue: “Suddenly, there, spread out before me, sparkling against the buildings of lower Manhattan, were big Christmas trees all down Park Avenue!”
December’s end saw Frances at New Rochelle with Mary King and her mother, Norma. Christmas day was sunny and clear, with no snow. And Santa Claus was generous. Frances’s gifts were a reconditioned radio, two cartons of cigarettes, ten dollars cash from Norma, and from The Girls — the sculptors Wyle and Loring in Toronto — came a cheque. Frances could not read it through her tears. “The Girls were so kind. And all this time they were probably wondering how they were going to pay the rent. Yet, they were giving the money they didn’t have to people like me.”
She spent a quiet, relaxed weekend, loafing. “The birds out on the lawn were hilarious, sliding around on the frozen surface of the bird bath. Each morning after breakfast I chipped the ice off it. ‘That’s enough skating, fellas,’ I told them. ‘You’ll never make it to the National Hockey League anyway, you’re too small. Time for a nice sub-zero bath.’”
Then came the return to the problems at school. “Tore down the morning figure,” she said, aggravated with herself. “And the next morning, after hours of work, it was still no good.” Hovannes, unfortunately for her spirits, was quick to agree. “You like long slim muscles; this fat chunky figure (the model) is too much for you.” His critique was prophetic. Later (and more successful) examples of her work would mirror Hovannes’s words: Tall, thin female figures, slim-waisted, some might say under-nourished, though not quite as much as Giacometti’s sculptures; rather Giacometti on a fuller diet. These slim figures would sometimes be found in Frances’s sculpture of the late fifties and sixties. But in these New York days, Hovannes’s views were not the critical response that pleased.
She packed her bag and left for the New Year’s weekend in New Rochelle.
In Manhattan, winter was moving slowly into spring. Frances’s days were filled with work and study, museums and galleries, and thanks to Mrs. Berkovitz’s daughter Sondra and her Broadway contacts, Frances’s evenings often saw her attending plays, Broadway musicals — the premiere of Fiddler On The Roof, for example — and concerts, like her friend Joan Rowland’s recital on the twenty-eighth of February. But mainly her days revolved around the school. The Art Students League was her world, where she felt she was growing and learning and succeeding.
Her hours at the school never seemed enough. She was doing more and more castings for her fellow students, and was producing new works of her own almost daily, which generated criticism. “Felt happy about my morning figure, but Hovannes frowned at one mean little angle. Careless; threw everything off.”
March 1, 1954: “Both works much better. Tore into afternoon figure and think it much improved. Good drawing this morning.” March 2: “Good figure. Hovannes? Said nothing. Must use more free expression.” March 3: “Worked on my Frieda sculpture. She’s one of the models. Zorach likes the figure very much.”
This almost continuous activity had its effect on her diet. “I was never a good cook, and frankly, I just didn’t have time for food. Could have made time, I suppose, but (shrugs) I simply wasn’t that interested.” And she paid the price. Most of March was spent “feeling absolutely lousy and faint … weary … feeling ill after breakfast …” Breakfast, generally, was pausing for a moment outside a restaurant and taking a deep breath. “Very nutritious. Great time-saver and you can’t beat the price.” These senseless eating habits contributed to an endless catalogue of various gastric illnesses. She seemed almost constantly to be getting sick, being sick, or recovering from something. Colds, stomach ailments, sore throats, flu, ulcers, muscular problems, and repeatedly bumping into, bouncing off, falling down on, tripping over, every hard object imaginable. And finally tennis elbow or carpal
