Grace Lee Irby
September 8, 2020
Grace Lee Irby was a power house, a tiny one, on a mission to bring as wide a range of art and culture to the young people of Blackstone, Virginia as she could cram into an hour after school. When your mother dropped you off at her house, Grace Lee, always in a dress and pumps, hopped up from the baby grand piano where she was giving a lesson, greeted you with her raspy smoker’s voice, and hurried you off to the art room to get you busy with something.
The art room was also her dining room, which was tiny and crammed with art supplies, easels, books, side tables, chairs, and kids doing different projects. Grace Lee was not at all into our creating original art. No, no. None of us were ready for that. First we had to copy the masters. Of course, you could sketch from life, still lifes and whatnot, but nothing directly from your imagination. To get you on track, in case you couldn’t think of something right off the top of your head, which was always, she had a pile of art books. How about starting with a sketch of Michelangelo’s Creation of Adam, she says, flipping through options, oh…no, Adam doesn’t have much if any of a fig leaf, maybe do just God, no, better, just do the hands of God and Adam touching, look there’s a detail of that, there, here’s paper and charcoal. Get busy. You should know about the Sistine Chapel, anyway. When you’re done sketching, read this book about it.
Then she’d go check on another student and make a comment, or pick up a brush and just “correct” something on your painting. I’ll give this to Grace Lee, you never had to graduate to oil. She let you jump in and sniff all the turpentine your heart desired. You could have the run of every kind of medium and any master to copy, but she did not tolerate bad behavior. As a result, there wasn’t a lot of chatting during Grace Lee time. I don’t remember feeling oppressed by that at all. It was more like being in an art cocoon.
At a certain point, Grace Lee would come and fetch us from the art table, one or two at a time, and haul us into the music room to sing, do interpretive dance (although I’m positive she did not call it that), or read a poem, while she accompanied us on the piano. I dug reciting poetry, in the same way I dug reading devotionals at home after dinner. I just liked the sound of the words. For some reason, I was often assigned Henry Wadsworth Longfellow’s “The Village Smithy,” which I read with gusto, despite being clueless about what a village smithy even was.
Grace Lee wanted us to embrace the full spectrum of the arts, and that included opera. Yes, opera. There is an Ektachrome slide of me, say, aged nine or ten, at a recital, dressed in a red corduroy jumper, hands behind my back, feet planted wide, my mouth wide open and giving it my all, singing “O Mighty Ptha” from Verdi’s Aida. Grace Lee obviously thought I was up to it; who was I to question her? I let ‘er rip.
Blackstone was a world unto itself, yes, but full of people like Grace Lee Irby who wanted you to know there was another, wider world out there waiting for you.
Thank you, Grace Lee. We will never forget you.
©2021 Joy Cunningham