From Sandra Keith, Artist, Maryland/Virginia

In the 1950s we lived in Havre de Grace, Maryland, and Jean became interested in talking to my father, a Russian born engineer (Serge Zaroodny). “Madame Filloux” as we called her, decided we all (sister and friends we compiled) needed art lessons and she gave us exercises that I am told are standard in a French curriculum. We all had a box of pastels. On one occasion we drew a landscape in our field on a very hot day. Miserably hot. No notice of discomfort, she made us see that the sky was not blue, and the trees were black and not green. That has stayed with me. On another occasion we did stain glass windows in abstract--our first foray into abstraction!--just angular shapes but my art was always inferior to my older sister's. Another was a warm still life of things reminding us of our dad. And one exercise was a portrait of a girl dressed in a lime and orange kuchi Haitian vestment. (The girl who modeled loved it, and went on to dance with Merce Cunningham and write poetry.) “Madame Filloux” took a bunch of us country kids into an art world that many of us have never left. I think it was so brilliant, the activities, being with friends and learning about art, out there in the woods where we usually did nothing much. I suppose she criticized, once I think I cried, more because of my sister, but that was good, too. Clearly my parents admired the couple and I recall the launching of a boat with an enormous flask of Arpege perfume cracked over it. We all got bottles of the stuff. They just breathed a strangeness. Something exotic and kind and firm, hopeful, outside of our worlds. My memory of her personally is not as strong as the memories of being in our basement and drawing with these strange pastels--it was an entrance into the art world for us. And so glad she gave us that gift. (And trees are black in the heat.)