Lucretia Romey

The well-known artist Lucretia Leonard Romey died unexpectedly on December 2, 2012 at The

Terraces Convalescent Center in Orleans, Massachusetts. Born in Akron, Ohio, she was the daughter of Akron banker George Leonard and elementary school teacher June Bolinger Leonard. She received her elementary and secondary school education in Akron at the Old Trail School from which she received a distinguished alumni award in 2001. She subsequently took her AB in Fine Arts at Indiana University in 1955. As an undergraduate at Indiana University Lucretia came under the influence of artists such as Arthur Deshaies, Alton Pickens, and the renowned sculptors Robert Laurent and George Rickey. In 1955 she did graduate work at Indiana in silversmithing and jewelry with Alma Eikerman and in sculpture with David Smith. While she was still an undergraduate her paintings and sculptures were accepted for major art shows in Akron, OH and Louisville, KY.

After leaving Indiana University she began a brilliant career as a painter, watercolorist, quilter, writer, and teacher, winning awards in major national art shows. She was a colorist par excellence with an incredible ability to find just the palette of colors and patterns needed for her paintings and quilts. Her instincts led her into every fabric shop within a mile of her that might offer the most interesting possible pieces of fabric for her quilts or colors of pencils or paints for her sketches and paintings.

She traveled widely, always with her sketchbook in hand, moving to England with her Navy husband, Bill, in 1955, where she also had their first daughter, Catherine. The Romeys moved then to Washington, D.C. and Berkeley, California, where Bill earned his Ph.D. in Geology and she had their daughter Gretchen and son William. The family moved to Syracuse while Bill taught at Syracuse University and she did further studies in sculpture. This time included a year’s research leave in Norway when they spent summers working in the Lofoten Islands in the Arctic and she did extensive sketching and painting as well as knitting wonderful Norwegian sweaters. She learned to speak Norwegian on this and later trips to Norway.

She was in Boulder Colorado from 1969-1972 while Bill directed the American Geological Institute’s Earth Science Curriculum Project. There she participated in many art shows and began her work as a fabric artist and quilter. In Boulder Lucretia continued to sketch wherever she was and now could devote much of her time to painting. She joined the Artisennes, a group of women who ran the Mustard Seed Art Gallery in Boulder and was elected as a member of the Boulder Art Association, becoming their Vice-President. Her work was being accepted and winning purchase awards in major juried regional exhibits by the Boulder Art Association, the Cheyenne Art Association, the Designer Craftsmen. She had works exhibited in major shows in Central City and Golden, Colorado, as well as in Boulder. She instituted a program at the National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR) of hanging monthly art exhibits on their walls. In Boulder she also began to do “stitcheries,” fabric wall hangings that ranged from landscapes to quite abstract pieces and quilts. These became well-known throughout the area and took several awards.

Next came a move to Canton, New York, where Bill headed the Department of Geology and Geography at St. Lawrence University. She earned honors in many art shows while also running an art gallery and teaching art at several local community colleges as well as at St. Lawrence. She was co-founder of the Canton Gallery, a cooperative art gallery whose members included local North Country artists and several members of the art faculties of St. Lawrence University and the State University of New York at Potsdam. Their stay in Canton included numerous academic trips to Europe, often with groups of students. In 1991-92 she accompanied her husband to Rouen, France for a year while he directed the St. Lawrence University Program Abroad there. She entered international quilt shows, taught quilting (in French), sketched, entertained the French faculty members working for the program, and acted as the resident “mother” for the St. Lawrence students in the group.

Returning to “retirement” on Cape Cod she began a period of 15 years of accompanying her husband on cruise ships traveling around the world, while he lectured and she sketched, quilted, and frequently taught art classes. In 1992 and again in 2000 she taught art on the University of Pittsburgh’s Semester at Sea Program involving a trip around the world and another around the shores of Europe. These travels included over two dozen expedition cruises to the Antarctic and the High Arctic and up and down the middle of the Atlantic Ocean. In her later years quilting became a dominant activity. She was active in the Bayberry Quilters Association and participated regularly in their annual shows, often winning first-place honors in their professional division. Her bright colors and innovative designs were stunningly beautiful and attracted wide attention.

She submitted her work to various shows around the country. She had one-person shows at The Kendall Gallery in Wellfleet, MA; The Cahoon Museum of American Arts in Cotuit, MA; The Remington Museum in Ogdensburg, NY; The Mill Art Gallery in Malone, NY; Clarkson University; The Cornwall (Ontario) Regional Art Gallery; St. Lawrence University; The Rome, NY Art Center; St. Lawrence College (Ontario); and the State University of New York College at Canton, NY.

Her work appeared in many group exhibitions as well: The American Watercolor Society (NYC); Allied Artists of America (NYC); Catherine L. Wolfe Art Annual, National Arts Club (NYC); Audubon Artists of America Annual; The North American Open Show of the New England Watercolor Society in Boston; The Mid-Atlantic Regional Watercolor Society Exhibition in Baltimore; the Adirondack National Exhibition of American Watercolors (Paul Mowrey Award, 1986); The Empire state Crafts Exhibition at the Renwick Gallery of the Smithsonian Institution; The Annual Exhibition of Artists of Central NY (Utica, NY); The Pittsburgh Water Color Society; The American Quilters Society show in Paducah, KY (first prize and purchase award for their museum); the Tactile Architecture Show at Decatur House (National Trust) in Washington, D.C.; The Invitational Adirondack Crafts Show of Adirondack Artists (Rochester, NY); the Cahoon Museum of American Art (Cape Cod); The Quilters Heritage Show in Lancaster Pennsylvania; The American Quilt Showcase at Dollywood, TN; The Mountain Heritage show in the BeleChere Quilt Exhibit at Ashville, NC; the ACC Craft Fair in West Springfield, MA; the Cape Cod Craftsmen annual exhibits; the Boston Museum of Science Invitational Quilt Show; The First Annual Wearable Art Show of the American Quilters Society in Paducah KY. She also did many commissioned drawings and portraits over the years, including a large multiple-panel painting given to New York’s Governor Mario Cuomo for the Governor’s Mansion and a large mural for the Community Bank Systems of Canton, New York. Her works are in the collections of The National League of Cities (Washington, D.C.), the State University College of NY in Canton, Clarkson University, the Newton Falls Paper Mill, the AKZO Chemical Co., and Liggett-Stashower Advertizing of Cleveland

She illustrated several books including North to the St. Lawrence (by Marnie Crowell); Adirondack Places and Pleasures published by Adirondack Life; The Inevitable Guest (by Marcia Monbleau); All in the Same Boat (Marcia Monbleau); Consciousness and Creativity (by Bill Romey); and Confluent Education in Science (by Bill Romey). Her North Country Sketchbook appeared weekly in the St. Lawrence Plain Dealer, and the monthly Mill Pond Sketchbook appeared in the Cape Codder. Her sketches appeared on the covers of county-wide telephone directories for the Northeast Directory Services. She began to make large multiple-panel sketches of Northern New York and Cape Cod town scenes, barns, buildings, animals, college campuses, landscapes, and other subjects. Prints of these soon became very popular, and many of them hang on walls of homes, shops, and other establishments across northern New York and Cape Cod.

Lucretia began her work as a teacher on a bait wharf in Ognuquit , Maine under the supervision of the renowned sculptor Robert Laurent. Later, she taught sculpture and painting lessons at the Boulder, Colorado YWCA. Subsequently she supervised student art teachers in the art education program and taught Interterm courses for St. Lawrence University. She taught art at the North Country Community College in Malone, New York and at the SUNY College in Canton, NY. She gave numerous lectures and workshops on quilting, watercolor painting, and sketching in New York, on Cape Cod, in other parts of the Eastern U.S., in Canada, and in France. She was an instructor in quilting at Quilting-by-the-Lake in Cazenovia , NY and in quilt workshops at Paul Smith’s College in the Adirondacks and at Russell Sage College. She was a design instructor at the Cod Cod Museum of Fine Arts.

In 1992 and again in 2000 she was an instructor in Studio Arts for the University of Pittsburgh’s Semester at Sea program, cruising around the world and around the shores of Europe , always with her sketchbook in hand. In the years from 1993 to 2005 she taught workshops on drawing and quilting to passengers aboard M/S Explorer on expedition cruises ranging from the Arctic to the Antarctic and around the Mediterranean. These travels took her around the Caribbean several times, to Australia, New Zealand, the Pacific Islands, and the South China Sea, all grist for her sketchbooks and quilts. She filled many notebooks with watercolor paintings she did on these cruises.

Beginning with her own children and her husband she was a “natural” teacher and loved to have adult friends, grandchildren, and anyone else’s visiting children in her studio with her. She virtually let people loose with swatches of fabric of their own choosing, needles, threads, scissors, colored pencils, watercolors, paint, sketchbooks—anything they might want to play with. She not only tolerated but encouraged experimentation with materials and forms. Many people in this crowd have gone on to do significant art work of their own. All she touched took with them a sense of what art is all about. She knew how to get people around her to observe the world round them and to find ways to represent it in words, music, or images.

She also loved to write and has left many notes and personal journals for potential biographers. Among her publications were several articles in McCalls Quilting; The American Quilter; Les Nouvelles du Patchwork (France); Spindle, Shuttle, and Dyepot, The Indiana University Alumni Magazine; The Geological Society of America Abstracts with Programs (two presentations on Art and Geology presented at society meetings; and Adirondack Life. Furthermore, articles about her work appeared in many magazines such as Quilt World; The Review; Great American Quilts 1991; Cape Cod Life; and Fiberarts Design Books II and III. A television program on the Folklife Series of WNPE-WNPI (PBS) featured her work.

Lucretia was an ardent member of the Kappa Kappa Gamma fraternity, receiving an outstanding alumna award from them in 1996. She served for several years as staff illustrator for The Key, the national magazine of this group. For many years she was a member of the Junior League and also joined the Daughters of the American Revolution. As an added interest she even took part in theater productions at St. Lawrence University, including a role in The Crucible.

Along with all of these accomplishments, Lucretia was a warm and loving daughter, wife, mother, and grandmother. She loved good food, good wines, good music, good theater, and good companions. She liked to entertain in her home, her big studio, her classrooms, and her ship-board staterooms. She loved travel, visiting over 100 different countries over the years. She was a fine skier, hiker, and camper. She especially loved the beach and her final residence on Cape Cod. She leaves behind a grieving husband of 57 years, daughters Catherine Keener (a model and actress) and Gretchen Romey-Tanzer (a fiber artist and head of the art department at the Cape Cod Academy), son William (Professor of Biology at Potsdam State University), and seven grandchildren: Alice and John Tanzer, Christina and John Keener, and Will, Max, and Sage Romey. She also leaves her sister Polly Keener, nephew Ted Keener and niece Whitney Keener of Akron, OH, as well as Romey nephews, nieces, and cousins who loved her very much. She will be sorely missed by her many friends, colleagues, students, and Kappas. Unfortunately, her creative spark dimmed in the last three years of her life as her Alzheimer’s Disease progressed, but she still participated in shows of her quilts at the Snow Library and the Center for the Aging in Orleans, MA in 2012, the year of her death. She was up and around and able to vote in the November election and to participate in family events. Up until the end she remained the delightful, gentle person we all loved so much. Her spirit lives on brilliantly in the many beautiful quilts, paintings, sketches, jewelry, sweaters, silver pieces, sculptures, and photos she has left behind. This legacy will always buoy us up.