A Lifelong Occupation

On Nov. 2 Celeste Spransy celebrated her 90th birthday by exhibiting her watercolors and prismatics (durable Lucite pieces with fade-resistant dyes) at Milwaukee's Elaine Erickson Gallery. This inventive artist and her late husband, Alan Gass, met at the Art Institute of Chicago in the 1940s. They later moved to Milwaukee and were instrumental in developing an art co-op. They also helped Dorothy Bradley establish a respected art gallery and created a loft/art studio on Second and State streets, where they lived and raised three children. In her current home and studio in Riverwest, Spransy still creates art. Recently, she reminisced about being a lifelong artist.

You are known for your prismatics. Tell me a bit about them.

I love the prismatics. They were something I devised without knowing how to do it. No one was doing this, working this way at the time, and I like the way the sun shines on the prismatics. I used them to create screens, hangings, room dividers, doors and windows-even one especially for the Knickerbocker Hotel.

Your watercolors appear contemporary: free form, fluid and abstract.

Artists are creative in different ways than you think. They're looking for something unusual. When I started doing the watercolors I liked abstraction. I liked that pattern, so there was an immediate response. I didn't want to copy something using realism. I wanted to create.

When did you know you wanted to be an artist?

My mother gave me an art book when I was a little girl. She wanted me to be an artist. So I would go up in the attic where there were many crayons and books. I would draw almost every day.

How did you decide to go to art school at a time when women rarely attended?

I had been going to the State Teachers College here in Milwaukee and was getting irritated because my brothers were getting educated as architects and engineers. I told my father one day while we were driving in the car that I wanted to go to art schoolthe Art Institute of Chicago. He stopped the car in the middle of traffic and laughed. Then he said, "I've been waiting for you to ask."

And that's where you met your husband?

I wasn't going to marry because I wanted to be an artist. … At first I refused him because I loved art and didn't want to have a family. And he didn't want to have a family because as an artist he couldn't afford it. The whole idea at the Institute was that you couldn't make a living as an artist. We were both planning on being nothing but artists. But it worked out beautifully. We were a very happy couple with a family and making art.

What keeps you making art at age 90?

What else is there? That's my life. I used to love to dance, but I can't do that anymore. But I still have these new ideas and can create.