Diana E. Balton

Diana was born in Detroit and raised by her loving Greek-American family. She attended Stellwagen Elementary, The Liggett School, and Cass Technical High School where she graduated a Fine Arts major. One of her first jobs out of High School, like Andy Warhol for whom she later worked, was as a commercial fashion artist drawing shoes for a major department store. In her case it was Detroit's legendary J.L. Hudson's Company. Diana was so proud of her Detroit roots and history but she was also compelled to make a bigger splash in a bigger city. She went on to become an award winning graphic designer and artist based in New York City. After attending The University of Michigan, The School of Visual Arts and receiving her BFA in Fine Art and Film Theory at Hunter College, she designed club invitations for Studio 54 and then became the first promotional graphic designer for Andy Warhol's Interview Magazine. While at Interview, Diana's work was included in one of Warhol's famed Time Capsules and he also referenced her in his book, The Andy Warhol Diaries. Diana was always a trail blazer in art, music and fashion and found other creative career outlets at ELLE magazine as a promotional art director, and later by designing apparel graphics, packaging, and labels for brands such as Gap, Old Navy and The Limited. Through her own business, Diana Balton Designs, she created graphics, home dcor products, and accessories all infused with her personality and individualized sense of style, and humor, blending a funky sophistication with a childlike innocence. During her successful fine art career, she was exhibiting nationally, most notably in New York and Los Angeles and was praised internationally by artists and magazines appreciative of her playful ingenuity and who understood her work as wholly unique, thought provoking, but always with an essence of city-bred joy. In the early 1990s she went on to show her special brand of what she called Pop Gumbo paintings, large works on metal, at New York's prestigious Tony Shafrazi Gallery. She continued to hone her great wit and keen sense of design which developed into a collaboration with Cady Noland on a series of light boxes and neon works which are funny, acerbic and, irreverent, and draw upon her experiences as an 'advertising age' interpreter of city life and pop culture. Some of these works were included in the much esteemed Whitney Biennial of 1993 in New York. In addition to her art being exhibited nationally and purchased by private collectors, one of Diana's pieces was also purchased by the Museum of Modern Art in New York in 2011. Diana was so passionate about life and art and was inspired by so many things, including her friends and her family, who she in turn inspired, energized and educated without even trying. In recent years she made special efforts to be with, and to bring together, her childhood companions from Cass Tech and also her classmates from her elementary school, prompting her to initiate a series of school reunions back in Detroit and to create the open Facebook group 'Stellwagen Elementary School 1960's'. Diana's love, affection and fond memories of her childhood has sparked a beautiful reconnection of old friends which has reunited many hearts. She also made that "bigger splash" in New York by becoming respected and beloved in the city's highly competitive, high stakes art world, but also by making lifelong friends who cherish her as a beautiful person of integrity and intelligence with a big heart a person who made everyone feel a little "cooler" and smarter just by knowing her. Diana Balton was a taste-maker. She was an open book with no filters, and her restless spirit and inquisitive mind were highly contagious, which she shared with so much love and without pretention. Her courage, creativity, humor and grace in the face of adversity, live on in all who love her. Memorial contributions may be made to New York Foundation for the Arts c/o Development Department 20 Jay Street, Suite 740 Brooklyn, NY 11201 212-366-6900 www.nyfa.org Time and date of Celebration of Life for Diana will be June, 2014.

Funeral Home:

A. H. Peters Funeral Home of Grosse Pointe

20705 Mack Avenue

Grosse Pointe Woods, MI

US 48236