Helena Clare Pittman

Anna Maria Alberghetti, the opera singer, turned up in our bunk on the last day of camp like something out of a dream.

She was an adult in a sea of adults and children who seemed not to notice the world around them or each other. That was my child’s view...

I’d enter the game with all the belief that comes naturally to a theatrically inclined child—it takes a good audience to see the truth of a good actor...

It was the beginning that I would only see in hindsight, backwards in time, after learning again and again that such mercy exists—exists, secretly in concrete streets...

I took Three-Dimensional Design again, three years later. Then, I was older than my classmates, and I knew why I was there...

The air was enchanted, electrified with what I can only call the love that moved between the four of us, who had experienced something so other than the war, of such a different order than a world of folly...

I was fascinated by the Amish and the picture I took, with my eyes, and all my senses, the clop clopping of the horses, their smell...

Helena Clare Pittman, one of the Center’s most dedicated teachers, has written, painted, and taught her entire life. In her monthly Helena Writes series, she shares a lifetime of wisdom, one pearl at a time.

In her 67th post, Helena recalls some of the sounds of the old Brooklyn building that was her first adult home. Enjoy!

 

The ceilings in the studios had to have been 20 feet high. I loved the corner where I painted, lit by a tall, old window that was stuck closed with time...

...the progression of Lillian’s dementia is there, just outside, and I have to encounter this slow, arduous and mysterious passage. Lillian was a painter, as I am.