40. Lois Hall DeLuca

Lois Hall was born in Kenmore, New York, and attended Syracuse University between 1947 and 1951.¹ While enrolled in the arts program at Crouse College, she met her future husband Ronald DeLuca, who was five years her senior and attending Syracuse on the G.I. Bill.² Together with DeLuca and other Syracuse alumni, including Doris Yokelson, Hall moved to New York City after graduation where she lived in a shared apartment on West 92^nd^ Street near Central Park West. To earn a living, she worked as a colorist for fabric manufacturer, devising several color combinations for a particular design. She attended classes at Hans Hofmann’s studio from September to December 1951 and, after Christmas, went to Atelier 17 where she worked until the end of the spring in 1952. She remembers the workshop being an intense place where everyone had his or her own individual mission. Her Atelier 17 prints were mostly abstract and explore the possibilities of tone and texture. Hall and DeLuca married in 1952 and spent four months traveling in Europe. Back in Brooklyn, DeLuca worked with Antonio Frasconi at the New School. In 1954, she and her husband welcomed their first child, and, after that, they moved to Ardsley, New York, where they raised six children. Hall DeLuca maintained an interest in printmaking, attending night classes at Pratt Graphic Center and installing a press in her basement. Although art took a second place to family, she never gave up drawing and creative pursuits. She wrote and illustrated with woodcuts the children’s book How Big Am I? (1995) and illustrated with watercolor a book on butterflies, The Butterflies of the White Mountains of New Hampshire, written by Warren J. Kiel (2003). She and her husband retired to Hancock, New York, where he passed away in 2016. DeLuca is currently working on an alphabet book of wild flowers.

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