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I was an uneducated art student. Everything I knew about painting and the history of art came from observations of an Arizona landscape and the people who were in the fore ground of my life. My family stood in front of the horizon line. I knew how to paint the ground meeting the sky. I studied that empty desert space but my family's shadows would break up the line where sky and earth made a seam.

I applied to Art Center College of Design because I needed a job. I was a single parent with two young boys, a 15-year-old Volkswagen, the odometer reading sixty thousand miles and a former husband with his hand on the doorknob saying, "good luck, you are going to need it." I was learning to see.

My first major at Art Center was in advertising. The admissions councilor named, Florence, said a job in Advertising would pay the most money while fine arts painting was not a major for a single woman with two kids. I had her check the advertising box. I was in school to find a career, and make money.

As an Adverting major we visited the Grey Agency in Los Angeles. The man that led the tour was real ad guy from New York City. He wore a slim gray suit; his skin was gray and as he talked, his hands twisted together as if he just applied jergens hand lotion.