by  Susan M. Rostan, MFA, EdD, NAWA

Lolly Owens, President of the newly formed Pennsylvania Chapter of NAWA, and I sat for a Zoom interview in mid-February 2025. Lolly was in the midst of moving her studio to a new location and shared her thoughts about her move, her new position with NAWA, and her art. [Editor’s Note: The conversation has been edited for clarity and brevity.]

SMR: This move must be disruptive for you and your work habits.

LO: It is disruptive. Then, there are the other new elements in my life related to NAWA. I am learning different things and having unexpected quarterly meetings, as well as the meetings we have going on here. I’d like you to know two women who have been very helpful since the (Pennsylvania) chapter’s formation. I started this by myself and didn’t know anyone. But when we decided to form a chapter, two women immediately volunteered from the very beginning: Jen Haefeli, First Vice President, who does our social media work, and Marilyn Lowney Johnson, our Recording Secretary. We hold three monthly meetings, and Marilyn attends all of them and keeps us on track and organized, remembering everything we need to do and the next steps. [Ed. Note: See PA Chapter Chat in this issue of NOW for list of officers].

SMR: How many members do you have?

LO: Twenty-two. We registered as a chapter in August of 2024. So, we haven’t been around all that long.

SMR: How are you seeking new members? What venues are you using to get your presence announced to the art world?

LO: Well, we need help in that area, to be honest. I have the names of NAWA members in the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, and they get notices of our general meetings. I try to entice them to join as a chapter member. If we have a special speaker or a training opportunity, that’s for members only because I’m also trying to balance member benefits.

SMR: What made you decide to form a Pennsylvania chapter of NAWA?

LO: Well, we moved from Florida to Pennsylvania during COVID. And when we got to this location, I missed everyone I had connections with in Florida. The idea began with a desire to organize women in this state and support them like the support I felt in Florida, with the Florida Chapter and the other organizations I belong to there. I went through the 2022 NAWA catalog and made an email list of everybody in Pennsylvania. I then invited them to join me in a conversation about art and possible creation of a PA NAWA chapter. I had no idea how many people would respond. We began to introduce ourselves to each other because we were all over the state. We took time to talk about ourselves, give a PowerPoint presentation, a movie, or whatever we wanted to share. One of the artists walked around her studio with her laptop. We call that “getting to know you,” and we continue that segment as part of our monthly chapter meetings.

SMR: You can then have more intimate discussions with a small group of women and share your studio work?

LO: We just shared and tried to figure out where we were. We were limited at first because I had a free Zoom account with a limit of 30-minute segments. We were always going over. So, I created a fundraiser and12 to 15 people donated so that we could pay for an unlimited Zoom account. Then Christie Devereaux and Jill, Clifford Baratta, representing the national office of NAWA, began joining our meetings because it looked like we were moving forward toward forming a chapter and had many questions for them.

Our groundwork resulted in an invitation in August 2024 from the national office to officially form a Chapter. We recruited officers but still need members to fill leadership positions in publicity, programming and development. We are also interested in a scholarship program and have talked about a charitable aspect of our chapter. I have additional ideas, and I’m sure the group also does. So, those are big holes we have yet to fill. I think we’re doing pretty well because we’re not even a year old.

SMR: You’ve accomplished a lot. Were you in a national leadership role for NAWA before this?

LO: No.

SMR: Did you have leadership experience in other areas of your life?

LO: Yes. I belonged to the Florida Artists Group, which has quite a presence because they have been a statewide arts organization in Florida for many years. Because Florida is a large state, they divide the state into districts, and I was head of a district that included Sarasota County. We hosted a statewide exhibit at the Ringling College of Art and Design in Sarasota, Florida, which took 2 to 3 years to plan. We used their campus galleries. At that time, they had four galleries; we had the largest of them, and we used their auditoriums. The exhibit lasted over a month, and we brought in speakers and curators. It was a very complex organizational task that involved working with several artists and people in academia and security and maintenance at the college.

SMR: Were you a member of NAWA at that time?

LO: No. As a result of that project, I met women who were members of the Florida Artists Group who were members of NAWA. They suggested that I become a member of NAWA. I researched it and thought it was a good idea.

SMR: What were you specifically interested in about NAWA that made it so enticing?

LO: Two things. It has a long tradition of supporting women artists, which is dear to my heart. It was also an opportunity to exhibit outside of Florida because I had been exhibiting with the Florida group at various museums and galleries throughout the state.

I was teaching at Art Center Sarasota, Art Center Manatee, and the Longboat Key Center for the Arts, which was owned by the Ringling College of Art and Design then. I shared studio space with a group of artists. A group of four or five of us, depending on the time of year, rented warehouse space, divvied up the art space and had our studios in there. During the tourist season, we would host open studios on weekends. And because there was more than one artist and plenty of parking space, people would come by. I have always been around women artists, working in cooperation with them.

When we moved here to Pennsylvania, all of that disappeared. And I was very desirous of reclaiming that.

SMR: I want to back up a bit in terms of your earliest memories of being an artist and how that creative identity, that artistic identity, developed and evolved.

LO: I was an only child, and my parents immigrated to this country. Both were very busy trying to survive, and I had a lot of alone time filled with crayons and paper. I would constantly create with crayons and paper. When I was older and nearing school age, my father took all of my supplies and threw them down the steps of the apartment building we were living in because he did not want me to become an artist. In his experience, artists were derelict, starving, and didn’t live very long. He didn’t come to this country to see that for his daughter.

SMR: Where did your parents emigrate from?

LO: My father came from Italy. He didn’t have any experience with art because he was a shepherd in his country. My mother identified as Polish, but the Polish government did not control the land she came from. It was controlled either by Russia or Germany. She referred to her country as the breadbasket, which we now consider Ukraine. It’s somewhere in that area of the current Poland, in an area Russia wants to have. So, it’s a territory that’s been in constant turmoil.

Neither of my parents was familiar with artists’ other avenues of support, like being a graphic designer or perhaps a teacher. They saw teachers differently, such as mathematicians, historians, English teachers, and teachers who taught reading, but nothing in the fine arts area. So, I became what is known as a “closet artist.”

That’s what I called myself. I continued to study art and was the first in our family to attend college. I had a double major in sociology and psychology. It wasn’t until my parents died that I began to study openly with master painters and teachers and began to show my work.

SMR: Art-making resonated with you? It was satisfying for you even as a child?

LO: Very much so. I realized not too long ago, maybe just a few years ago, that neither of my parents said what I was creating when I created was bad or wrong or terrible.

It was the fear of what they had experienced, particularly in Italy. When my father came to this country, he had several jobs and trades but became very successful in the restaurant and saloon business.

He had some contact with artists, not that he asked them to come into his restaurant; they would approach him to paint a mural on his wall and do it for food or a price. We always had opera at our house and people singing. I remember on television or on the radio or whatever the musical background was, it was always opera. So, there was always the love of opera and appreciation for the arts to some degree, but they didn’t see it as a safe venue for someone, particularly for a female. I can appreciate that now. I don’t know if I had been a male, whether my father would have been so violent in his physically throwing all of my paint sets, crayons, paper, and my pallet. I had quietly played with and enjoyed all these things for many years.

SMR: That’s unfortunate. Focusing on your teachers, who were your biggest influences? You can start with the direct influences, people you studied with, and the indirect influences on your work.

LO: Well, that’s a hard one. There have been some men who have been my teachers. There’s a California artist named Robert Burridge, and I studied with Gerald Brommer, who taught me collage techniques. In terms of the women artists, there was Maxine Masterfield, who established the International Society of Experimental Artists. Unfortunately, she died about two years ago. She authored several books about experimental paintings and art making. I met her when we were living in Florida, starting as student and teacher and then as friends. She significantly influenced my life because she opened up new avenues. I had begun traditionally with watercolor with a teacher named Mary DuCharme. Watercolor is all about control and doing things precisely. It was good to learn all the rules, but then I got to the point where I didn’t want to do that anymore and began looking for other teachers, which led me to Maxine.

SMR: Have you ever considered or become aware of the influence of various “indirect mentors”? The influence of noted artists that comes to you directly through your teachers or sometimes just through your explorations, reading, or going to galleries or museums.

LO: Well, I guess the one that opened my awareness of myself was sitting in an art history class with several non-artists. They were talking about Monet and had images of a painting he had done. It was a cathedral he had painted at dawn, in the afternoon, mid-afternoon. And, of course, the cathedral was a light color stone, a beige. But his paintings took on different colors at different times of the day. I remember the whole class going, ooh, because it was amazing for them to see it. And, of course, I thought it was terrific, too. But I sat there thinking, but that’s the way I see. And that became a realization that not everybody saw things like I did.

One of my college roommates was a math major. She just went on and on and on. And I said, ‘Well, have you not ever sat in front of a wall, of whatever color, and looked at it for a while and seen that?’ And she said, ‘No, the wall always stays the same color, no matter what is happening.’ And so that was an awareness that I had.

SMR: Are there any contemporary artists you know and with whom you feel you resonate?

LO: I’ve discovered the work of Gertrude Abercrombie recently and went to her show at the Carnegie. One of the things that resonated with me is that she took everyday objects and painted them. I wondered why she was doing this. Why would you spend time painting a door and not even paint the door correctly? And over and over again. And then I realized there was a backstory. And what that meant for me was there’s a backstory to everything I’ve done. It didn’t click in my head until I had seen her work. I went to the docent and said, “She sort of has a lot of doors here. I mean, this is a door, and then there are multiple layers of doors.” She told me that this was partly this artist trying to hold onto something. This artist is from Chicago, and the University in Chicago bought this area, which had been home to primarily low-income and predominantly Black people. And now their homes were destroyed. People tried to salvage parts of the former homes, sometimes the doors. These doors were now lined up along the sidewalks or around the construction site. And she wanted to capture those doors. There were stories behind the doors. They represented families. But until you learn the backstory, you are just introduced to a room full of doors.

SMR: That is interesting and important to understand. May I ask how your work has evolved? You mentioned watercolor and the control and, of course, the skill in watercolor. Where did you go from there? In terms of medium, techniques, subject matter, thinking?

LO: Maxine blew open the door to all kinds of possibilities, not only with acrylic and pastel but also with all sorts of mixing them all. I didn’t have to study them in a strict structural way. I spent time learning the properties of each one and what they could do. I began to start mixing and slowly learned about mixed media. I think when we all start, we do landscapes because that’s traditionally what they teach you. Landscapes and flowers. So, I was doing that. But then I became interested in the figure and started a series of figures. One of my acquaintances or teachers said, “You need to do something 50 to 100 times before you really understand it.” So, I just launched and thought, I’m going to do 50 to 100 figurative paintings. Of course, the figures kept changing. They changed their skin colors, they changed their settings, they changed their shapes. They were alone or were with other figures. And so that grew.

When we moved here, I was shocked at the change in the environment; that is my memory of the environment compared to what it is now. Pennsylvania has been involved in coal mining and steel making, scarring our environment. Much of that was healing until fracking came along; they call it natural gas extraction. And now it’s new permits for limestone extraction. The federal and state environmental protection agencies are very weak. There may be good laws and good intentions. I saw this in Florida as well. There were laws to protect the environment, but no one was hired to enforce them. So, until you have enforcement, the laws can say anything. And that’s the situation I find myself in now regarding looking at the landscape. So, I began to do more landscape-related things.

I have two different things now, the figures and the landscapes. I’m starting to see the commonalities. The clues are there when I look at them. There’s tension present in both the early work and the current work. The textural elements are very much there. I use color to draw people into the work. But then, when you get close up, there’s a layering and layering of texture and more texture. The texture is there with fabric or gel mediums and collages, much like the strata of the Earth.

SMR: How would you describe the images you are sharing with me?

LO: One series is called Meditation, and another is called Churchill. The Meditation series was done in Florida.

Before I paint, there are rituals and certain things that I do. I consciously move from one side of the brain to the other through meditation. Sometimes, I go into meditation, thinking of the environment. Sometimes, I meditate, and I’m not thinking of anything. When I’m not thinking of anything, I come up with some interesting images, some of which you’ll see here. This group of paintings shows what can happen when you meditate.

And it’s figurative work here. There are some animals with lots of color and some non-objective paintings. I allow myself to explore and change. It’s part of who I am.

But when I look at the work and really study it, it has those elements of tension, texture, and the sublime.

SMR: And the Churchill Series?

LO: Well, this whole series began as a protest against Amazon building a massive warehouse in an area of Pittsburgh called Churchill. That’s why it’s called the Churchill series.

Amazon planned to take down thousands of trees and level a mountain when we brought up that their lighting, which would be on 24 hours a day, seven days a week, would prevent planes from landing. Their next idea was to level the mountain, but it had atomic and mining waste buried in it. We pursued this issue, and Amazon withdrew its interest in building at this site. But it took several years to get to that point, and we had to pay legal fees.

I created a series of small, medium, and large works that I sold for a donation. Most of the small ones, only six by six inches on cradle boards, were sold. The one large one is Sign of Spring, 38 x 38.

SMR: Were you working with other artists on this?

LO: I was the only one. I contributed to this effort because of the legal fees we had to pay.

SMR: That’s wonderful. I know you must keep a schedule. Is there a time of day that you prefer working?

LO: Yes, I keep a schedule. When I move to my new studio space, I will have a longer schedule, but I like to paint in the morning.

I think all artists share this conflict. I know I feel it between these parts of my life that if I go to exercise, that’s my exercise time, or this is my cooking time, or this is my keeping up relation time, or this is my religious time, or whatever. And it’s been in my head until recently, conflicting with my painting time. And I have chosen now to think of it as my painting time. It’s all part of my work process because everything I do impacts my painting. It’s not separate. It’s part of my artist’s practice to do these things. I really dislike it when people ask how long it takes you to do a painting. It’s taken me all my life, of course. And they think I’m being a smart ass about it.

But you understand as an artist that a painting is not only your learning but all of your experience. And it’s how you see, how you’ve either become aware of how you see or how you’ve learned to see. Everything that you do is part of your artwork and your artistic experience. I’ve become more relaxed about that. I’m not here at 10 o’clock with a paintbrush in my hand. I may be meditating when I should be painting or making breakfast when I should be painting. Maybe I’ll put stuff in the Crock-Pot for later. But that is all part of my creativity because not everybody cooks. Not everybody likes to cook. When I’m peeling a tomato, I’m astounded by the tomato itself and have to stop peeling it to look at its structure, see how the juices are running, and count the seeds. I may bring that experience into the studio, mixing the paint and that image of the tomato. So that’s a new way of being with me and allowing myself to see this. And then when people say, how long did it take you to do that?

SMR: Has NAWA and the activities that you engage in for NAWA influenced your work? You can start with balancing time, your volunteer time, and your artistic practice. Has that been difficult for you?

LO: It has been. It’s also been part of that process of saying this is an artistic time. And it’s part of something bigger than I am, you know, it’s bigger than all of us. And I want it there for women in the future.

SMR: Do you limit the hours that you put in, or do you wing it, so to speak? I know I have my sacred time up in the studio, and I’m not giving anything, anybody, any thought except for my work. But as you say, you have to reach a point of maturity to be able to do that and not say, oh, I’ve got to get this done, so that has to be done first. Are you doing that kind of balance, or do you have to take care of your volunteer work before you allow yourself the luxury of painting?

LO: No, I have this innate need to paint, to create. And I can’t do other things well when I don’t meet that need. I’ll make mistakes with things I’m trying to communicate to people in an email, and I’ll also become impatient with people. My husband has said to me, ‘Go to your studio. I can’t stand you anymore’ because of the way I behave.

SMR: Yes, I know what you’re talking about.

LO: When my need isn’t satisfied, I’m not doing anybody any good. I can’t say I have to do something now and then I’ll paint. Now, I might have to say I need to do this first before I can get to NAWA, and maybe I might not paint as long as I usually would. That is, if I didn’t have it in the back of my mind, I had to do something for NAWA first. That being said, on Fridays, I usually spend more time painting.