Jean Decker (Los Angeles, California 1914-1993)
Summer Circus, 1979
Lithograph in colors
Signed in pencil, dated 79, titled and given EV 7/10
Image: 10 by 8 inches
Page: 15 by 11 inches
From AskArt, A painter and lithographer, Jean Decker Slater was born in Lincoln, Nebraska to Elmer and Irma Gibbon Decker. As a youngster, she moved with her family to Tulsa, Oklahoma, and graduated from Central High School. By 1933, she was in California where her formal art study began in Los Angeles at Chouinard Art School. She also was a lithography student of Jean Charlot, who was working with color lithography in southern California in the 1930s.
Another dimension to Jean’s education was study in New York City with Florence Cane, who operated a school at Rockefeller Center devoted to progressive art education. Described as the “grandmother of expressive therapies,” (Wikipedia) her emphasis was on guiding children with methods that released their inner creativity. Unknown beyond her obvious interest in Cane’s ideas is the long-range influence they had on her career.
In 1936 in Tulsa, Jean married Willard Slater from Hobart, Oklahoma. He was a Methodist minister, and the couple lived in Los Angeles until 1964 when they moved to San Gabriel. In the interim, Jean had pursued her art career with lithography and oil, watercolor, and pastel painting. Her subjects included still life, landscape, figure, Mexican genre and religion.
In 1965, the year after the move from Los Angeles, Jean diverted some of her energies from art to a food-related business. She and a woman named Wynn Columbo became business partners in Aggie’s Ice Cream Parlor at 435 Miller Avenue in Mill Valley. The Daily Independent Journal of San Rafael, 19/3/1965, described the place as featuring “ice cream, steakburgers and frankfurters. An unusual feature is that the soft drink machine is finished in gold leaf. . . .Mrs. Slater is a painter and Miss Colombo was in the antique restoration business in San Francisco until January 1.”
Nine years later, in 1974, Jean’s husband, Willard, died in March, and this loss may have prompted the closing and sale of the Ice Cream parlor, which occurred August 1974.
Jean Slater was active with exhibitions, which included venues at Dominican College in San Rafael; Corwith Gallery in San Francisco; Stendahl Gallery in Los Angeles; and Philbrook Museum in Tulsa. It is unknown whether she painted under the name of Jean Decker or Jean Slater or both.
She died July 23, 1993, having lived her later years in San Anselmo where she had a home studio.
Sources:
Ancestry.com, May 2014, Aug. 2015 (Decker and Slater family papers)
askART.com, Aug. 2015 (Biographies by Edan Milton Hughes and Nancy Moure)
Daily Independent Journal, San Rafael, California Oct. 3/1965, Jul./9/1974;
Falk, Peter Hastings, Editor, Who Was Who in American Art, Volume I , Print
"Florence Cane," Every one an artist, Web, Aug. 2015
"Florence Cane," Wikipedia, accessed Aug. 2015
Oakland Tribune, newspaper, Mar. 8, 1933