Biography

Lucille Henrietta Oliver was born in Greenpoint, Brooklyn, New York; 5/28/36. Attended all public schools; primary and secondary. She was attending Buffalo State Teachers College when the N.Y. painter, Peter Busa, advised her to take the tests to enter The Cooper Union. She was accepted to the art school and graduated in 1958. “I shall always be grateful to Busa, as I didn’t know such a wonderful art school as Cooper existed. Cooper Union opened my eyes to all the things that would be important to me for the rest of my life.” Marrying after graduation she acquired the name Simonetti, worked at Cone Mills in the art department and decided to go to Hunter College to become qualified to teach. She achieved the BA from Hunter College and taught at Junior High School 171K in New York for 4 years. After transferring to Dallas, Texas she completed her masters degree in 1966. She taught art at Ursuline Academy in Dallas (high school and grade school) at the same time teaching fine art in the evening in the just opened Community College (EL Centro) in downtown Dallas. “El Centro was a very special place in the ‘60s and ‘70s. It was a place where all types of people with diverse experience mingled and bloomed. I patterned my art classes after the way people like James Rosati, (Cooper); Tony Smith and William Basiotes (Hunter) taught me in my classes. I tried to give to others the wonderful awakening art school experience that was given to me.“
Mrs Simonetti-Arnold is now a Professor Emeritus, retiring after more than 30 years of teaching. She remains living in Dallas, Texas. She continues to sell and exhibit her art work widely and is included in many collections.

Statement

This new medium of electronic art is so exciting to me. I feel extremely fortunate in being able to have retired and now covet the time devoted to my new development in this electronic world. Yet in learning the programs I find I am relying on the same tenets that I learned so long ago from the first generation Abstract Expressionists: that I learn by doing lots of work; I use my mistakes; I can make something from nothing; change is good and a very important occurrence; and design is a universal thing. I am able to make this medium represent my way of working, albeit in an instant.