textiles

It goes back to the ‘60’s when I was an artist in NYC... Read more

About Textiles:

It goes back to the ‘60’s when I was an artist in NYC. After graduating from the Cooper Union of the Advancement of Art and Science in 1956, I spent time living in San Francisco, and then in Japan, where I lived in Tokyo and Kyoto. This period was a definite formative influence in my art, and I absorbed much of what the culture had to offer. I studied woodblock printing and calligraphy, but the main influence was visual – the kimonos, the gardens – and above all the fact that the two worlds of art and design weren’t kept in airtight compartments, but that they interpenetrated each other. Already a lover of Matisse and the decorative, I was inclined in this direction anyway.

On my return to NYC, I resumed painting, and in a few years, I produced a full fledged body of work (NY studio series), and by the ‘60’s began to exhibit in reputable NY galleries.

Something happened around this time (1965?) when I began to see myself and my life going down a wrong direction, and I felt I was turning into a ‘painting machine’ – rather ego driven, competitive, and narrowing in too exclusively to my art and nothing else

My marriage was beginning to fall apart, and I decided that perhaps it was the time to step back from my art and take another look at myself. I joined a Fourth Way Work group based on the work of Gurdjieff and Ouspensky, which dealt with inner development and learning how to see yourself more objectively. This helped to precipitate the crisis.

As a result I abandoned painting because of what I felt was the negative influence it had on my life. But after I did, a strange thing happened. My art couldn’t leave me alone, and gradually I began to look at fabrics and seeing them as a possible new avenue to pursue. Instead of using paint to create, these became my new medium, and tentatively, I began to cut out pieces of material and stitch them together. Somehow this activity seemed less ego-ridden than painting – since, as an art form, it was in its early stages; there was no ‘official’ work being done in this area – so there was no looking over your shoulder to see ‘how am I doing’ and comparing yourself to other contemporaries – no worries about being ‘relevant’ or ‘derivative’, or ‘imitative’ – all the pejorative terms artists used to have slung at them.

So, instead of closing me down, it opened up a whole new realm of creativity, but, at the same time, I had become pregnant. Far from salvaging the failing marriage, it precipitated its demise, and I was left to carry the baby on my own.

Throughout my pregnancy I was able to continue with the fabric pieces, which began modestly, but gradually grew into wall sized hangings, and soon my flat on 2nd Avenue near Stuyvesant Square was filled with these new creations.

After Nicholas was born, I continued working at my fabric collages at night after he fell asleep, as it wasn’t the same kind of ‘mess’ that oil painting involved (though the dining room was filled with mountains of fabric)

Then, one memorable sultry afternoon in 1970, an event happened which was to change my life. Kaffee Fassett, who was the brother- in-law of one of my best friends from art school, and who used to drop in from time to time on his travels to check up on what I was doing, dropped in. I was in the tub with Nicholas trying to cool off, so told him to return in 20 minutes, which he did. This time he came back with Judy Brittan, then an editor on the London Vogue magazine, who was visiting the States with him.

When they looked around the flat, I could hear exclamations of enthusiasm and words like ’This would really work well in some of the garments so trendy in London.’, etc. At first, I thought this was strange: ‘Fashion?? I’m a painter, not a dress designer.’

But after talking with them for awhile, a seed had been planted, and I was left to ponder it. Little by little in the ensuing days I found myself walking around Stuyvesant Park wheeling Nicholas’ pram, and growing in me was the awareness of a new persona: ‘Lillian Delevoryas, Designer’. The hat felt right, and since I had been looking for a life change for Nick and me, it seemed that perhaps London might be the answer.

I contacted Kaffe and Judy who had returned to England, and said I’d be happy to consider their proposition, and to let me know what the next step should be.

Judy connected me with London Vogue, and they commissioned a few garments made in the technique of fabric collage, which were to be used in a future issue of their magazine. One was a gossamer floaty dress, made of floral and leaflike patterns stitched onto an organdie material, which I sent to Vogue to photograph. A beautiful shot was taken of in Zambia, and appeared in the September issue of London Vogue. (see photo in portfolio)

By then, my mind was made up, so within a few months I closed up my flat, packed my bags, tucked Nick under my arm, and boarded the plane on Halloween Night (I often joked that I flew across the Atlantic like a witch in a broomstick). We arrived in London and were met by Kaffe and Judy. They quickly took us under their wing, and Kaffe put us up in his flat while we found a place. He was immensely kind to us during this time, and without him I don’t know how I would have coped.

Once, he took Nick for a walk while I went for an appointment. It was autumn and the sidewalks were deep in fallen leaves. He came back awhile later, with one of the wheels of the pram falling off, a mute testimony as to the struggle he must have had with Nick and his strange behavioural problems (more about this later).

I soon had an applique studio operating in Kilburn, where I began to design garments for the rich and famous, pop stars, glitterati, etc. There was an occasional commission for a wall hanging or bedcover, which gave me the freedom to spread out and treat the whole piece like a painting (when the restrictions of garments became too fiddly).

My schedule was pretty restrictive: to care for Nicholas during the day (I eventually found him a play group, which gave me a few hours to nip into central London to meet my clients, and rush back). When I put him to bed around 8:00 then my work day would begin, and I would work through the night cutting and piecing the garments together. In later years people would ask me how I enjoyed the London cultural scene at this time, and I would have to reply that while I was aware of all this richness right on my doorstep, my life was too constrained to take advantage of it.

At this time, I needed a person to stich the pieces and assemble them. I found Doreen, a lovely Ghanian girl who used to travel each day from Tooting to Kilburn and be at my doorstep by 8:00 am. Whereupon she’d light the little stove, make us tea, and get Nick dressed and ready for the day. I’d show her the work to be done, and leave her to complete the pieces I had started the night before. Much of it she could do with machine embroidery, but there was still a lot of hand detailing.

During this period several things happened: my lovely Nicholas, whose behaviour was becoming more and more bizarre was finally diagnosed as autistic (he was about 3). This was a blow – especially since the condition was relative unknown in those days, and the prognosis even more uncertain.

But, to balance this out on the positive side, I met my husband to-be, the writer/philosopher Robin Amis, in the spring of 1971, and life definitely took a turn for the better.