Her grandfather was a manufacturing engineer, Supervisor of the Washburn Shops at Worcester Tech, before starting the Chandler Construction Company in East Bridgewater, which manufactured a cotton seed huller with interchangeable parts and knives --something the factory manufactured and sold world-wide --as far away as Russia and China.
Clarence Austin Chandler had over 60 inventions patented with the US government, including a machine that made square bottom paper bags! At The Washburn Shops, late 1800s at Worcester Technological Institution, he was involved in everything from hullers to typewriters, mowers, hydraulic elevators (sold to Otis), hot water heaters for residences, and printing presses. In East Bridgewater he served on various town committees and was President of the East Bridgewater Savings Bank, while his wife, my mother's grandmother (and favorite person), started the Visiting Nurse Association in town, organized a Well Baby Clinic, headed the Red Cross in town during World War I and II, and she provided all the necessary equipment to establish home economics in the public schools there. Aunt Pat was the town librarian, a prominent member of the Massachusetts Library Association, and responsible for establishing libraries in Massachusetts public schools.
Joseph Chandler, my mother's father, went to Worcester Tech, was a flight instructor in Lake Charles, Louisiana during World War I and returned to East Bridgewater to help his father to design and run the fairly attractive brick factory called the Chandler Construction Company and managed the company up till he died in the 1970s leaving one outstanding bill of $1.78. The company was then sold, and the Cantrell Company references the Chandler Cotton Seed Huller in its history --continues to manufacture the Chandler Huller as it moves ahead into the 21st century bio-fuel industry.
The train line was diverted in East Bridgewater to pass close by the factory, which had wood rather than steel supports and could accommodate a second floor if necessary. Joe planned for the first traffic lights and stop signs for the town of East Bridgewater and was Chief Air-raid Warden during World War II --running an office for constant volunteer monitoring on phones. And --there were poker games over the garage every Saturday night with his war buddies and other men with who he worked.
So Joe, my mother's father, was home for lunch each day up the street from the factory--and while he was a devoted son, he was more than anything a family man who loved being a father to his children. And, while my mother was growing up in this small New England town --in a small farm house on North Elm Street --her father took all the time he could to make sure his kids read well (before they entered school) and could meet the challenge of any game he made up to identify and describe things in life. "How would you describe a chair?" It could not be anything other than a chair, for indeed, a horse has four legs, too.
Joe could recite poetry off the top of his head--the advantage, probably, of memorization in schools for children of his generation. Although his grandmother (Caroline Matilda Peterson Chandler Kingman, who grew up on Powder Point in Duxbury) --who really doted on him --was in love with Tenneson and she may have encouraged memorization!
And the house was filled with music. My mother's mother was a musician; Gladys Perkins studied music at the New England Conservatory and developed into a fine concert pianist. As a student she was invited to perform in the Tapestry Room at Gardner Court for Mrs. Jack Gardner--as Isabella Steward Gardner was known then.
Gladys Perkins grew up in Whitman. Her father, Charles Henry Perkins, was one of seven sons, and he left the family farm in Plympton, MA (the Perkins came first to Ipswich then Plympton) to establish his own family during the late 1800s industrial period; he got a job in a tack factory, got married, purchased a home on Jenkins Avenue and raised 6-7 children. Tears rolled down his cheeks when he had the chance to listen to good music, it was said, and he played the violin. Gladys, my mother's mother, was the youngest, she was very talented on the piano, so he insisted that she pursue music at the New England Conservatory (even though she really wanted to be a nurse). A member of 'The Sunshine Girls' and a performer in local theatricals, Gladys was outgoing and just plain unselfconscious! Everybody loved her. She was beautiful, and she played the piano with depth, range, a firm but light touch --and she was as tempermental as she was generous. She could look so sad . . . .
Joe was home from Louisianna when he met Gladys at a dance and later went to the church where he was told she played the organ--she could see him arrive in the door in the mirror behind the alter. Shortly after she took a train with her future mother-in-law down to Lake Charles to marry Joe. Their relationship was endearing and volatile--they were both temperamental --and through the years the family discussions at the dinner table for the formal lunch each day or evening supper each night were very lively!
Everyone in the family played the piano. Although Gladys, my mother's mother, just could not stand to hear herself after several years of motherhood; marriage and children came first, and she was unable to find time to practice. She did teach for a while, but then just threw away all her music books and would refuse to perform. But-- everyone else did play the piano in the front room including my mother's father, who went about it with a final boom boom boom in manner! My mother's brother, Jack, improvised and played jazz. My mother could sit down and like nothing at all read any sheet music--just like that --as did her sister Sally, and Sally's son played, and I still play, but seem to forget more and more. I had to memorize--reading music was tough for me.
After the children were grown Gladys taught herself to paint. Much like a musician learns from masters, she copied Corot and works that she very much liked --and she did so with a remarkable sense of color and tone with an understanding of application --the rhyme and reason for broad and fine brush strokes, weight and blend --and an appreciation for the qualities of the paint with a fresh and direct approach --and a luminous reflection where warranted.
So-- my mother's early years were very upbeat, supportive, filled with music and art--and this all added up to a truly positive take on the world in general. My mother would then keep her own family well with her healthy no-nonsense optimism and keen interest in all that was going on in the world --she never lost a beat even as her memory and some connections dissolved in her 90s.
As for my mother's interest in art--her own painting and printmaking --this sustained her, and her hope was that it would bring pleasure to others. She also had an ambition to move beyond the ordinary--that the richness of her imagination and her skill to apply the paint to canvas--to arrange visual fragments and drawings in prints --would combine in such a way to make a difference.
My mother was driven by her mother or father into Boston to the Museum of Fine Arts in the 1930's for classes, and she drew sculptures in the Museum's Cast Court. She also studied with an artist, Edith Shore, in East Bridgewater.
Later she would learn about portraiture in Blanche Brink's studio on St. Botolph Street in Boston. At Wellesley College, she took the one studio art class offered and majored in philosophy, and her advisor, the artist Agnes Abbott, was probably a healthy supporter of her interests. She illustrated a book on botany for a class at Wellesley which later mysteriously disappeared . . . .
And, she obtained a scholarship to study at the Yale graduate school of art, but her parents would not allow it. The important thing was to get married and settle into family life--which she did.
Along the way she punched the clock and worked for her father in the family factory, she worked in a YWCA in Boston, and after getting married she was a nurses aid in a hospital in San Francisco and later taught in a kindergarten there. Her husband Ed Larner was a Naval officer during WWII out in Berkeley, CA. They moved back East after the war to East Bridgewater and finally Lexington, MA, where they lived in Ed's father's barn at 53 Hancock Street and established --with friends --the Hancock Tennis Club up on the hill. So home was like a farm and a clubhouse with constant interaction with Ed's parents, brothers and sister --the tennis club and all their friends --till the early 50's when they moved into an historic 1785 Col. Robert Means house on the common up in Amherst, NH. They enjoyed a full life with friends in Amherst and in the Boston Area till the early 60's, when they moved right into Boston, where Ed worked. My mother raised the family and kept house with random drawings and paintings of the children and portraits for church fairs.
Her mode of operation was to set to work on things pleine air. She would get out her equipment and set to work in the corner of any unused space at home or out-of-doors --at the beach. She painted her children. She imaginatively surrounded the portraits with the yard or house --one painting of me was surrounded by butterflies! (Don't know what happened to that painting . . . ) This was her mode of operation since the 1930s, really--since before she was married and later when she did portraits of friend's children. Portraits was her first love--she was a hit at the 'Lend-a-Hand' Fair at the First Parish in Lexington, MA in the late '40s-- early '50s drawing portraits off-the-cuff --literally. They were lovely.
She turned any comment into a song. The house was filled with music and art. Trips to the MFA were frequent --always. She drove me from Lexington to Lincoln to the DeCordova Museum about 1949, the first year that the museum offered classes--one taught by a friend's sister--also an artist, the sculptor Merrill Delano Marsh. The DeCordova was still very much the home of Julian de Cordova (1851-1945) at that time --in that it was his collection on display, I believe --with busts on pedestals surrounded by elaborately framed oil paintings--and there was a small classroom set up high in the back of the main room. The Currier Museum in Manchester was the next interesting thing--when we moved to NH in the early 1950s --she enrolled me in classes in sculpture there about 1954. My mother took the initiative to join and participate in The Copley Society when they moved from New Hampshire into Boston in 1962, and when they moved to Concord in 1964 she participated in early Concord Art Association group shows at the Concord Free Public Library and at the Association.
In Boston, with the children mostly grown, my mother began to devote time to her interest in art. She went about these things properly--taking great care to prepare work for shows and always submitting work to competitions. The idea of art as a profession was beyond her --it just did not occur to her even though she submitted work right up till she died in 2012 --a time in which many of another generation were professionally trained. She did believe that she should compete. She did not believe in talking about her work. She preferred to say: "This is about the sea--I love the sea!" More formally when necessary she said "The focus of my work is on the relationships of space, shape, texture, color and form that are essential to good abstract or representational paintings and prints." She did know a great deal. She just did not understand it as a professional responsibility; one was or one was not a dedicated painter or other kind of artist, and the work was it and had to speak for itself.
She did not really have the opportunity to set up a studio and immerse herself with her work until the mid or late '60s, when my folks moved out of Boston into a contemporary in Concord. They built a huge space over the garage. There was a wall of windows and skylights. Not only did she dig in--so to speak--as she surrounded herself with her own work--but she could be found floating with large 8' by 15' stained canvases in the pool in the backyard. She also got involved by taking classes at the DeCordova Museum, where she met other artists. She lost the studio, however, when they moved from Coolidge Road to Monument Street in Concord in the late '70s. This time the space over the garage was designated for guests--until about 1981, when my father suggested she might like to use it for a studio. "She moved in instantly!" he said. Once again, she surrounded herself with work and everything visually of interest to her.
Stained paintings were very exciting to her. The acrylic stained paintings were mostly very large, and she loved the space for spontaneity and imaginative exploration--early 1960's up until the 1980s. However, she got to a point when she could no longer work on the large canvases on the floor--or anything on the floor due to arthritis. She had to keep her neck stress-free. It was the oils, ultimately, that provided her the opportunities to expand her imagery engaged mostly in her family, her experiences traveling, the view at hand --and some questions, such as "Please Don't Take my Mountain Away." The question was: Will I be able to continue with all this?
My mother would say: "I really enjoyed the camaraderie working with the group in the print shop at DeCordova in the 1970s-80s. The printing really suited my interest in both the abstract and representational; the many fragments of visual impression and relationships of visual elements could be manipulated and expand my vision in general. It was fun, and we organized exhibits for the group, which we called 'Partners in Printmaking.' It was very disappointing when I was forced to give up this whole thing because of arthritic spurs in my neck! Once triggered, the pain could be excruciating and disabling! So disappointing--I enjoyed my friends and was just getting started! I did do about 12 monoprints--'Desert Series'--which must have been early '90s --in which I applied just about every technique I had explored etching and transferring imagery. It referenced the intervention in Irag." Another series of monoprints was based on an etching of a lily on plexiglass--transformed numerous times as the plates fragmented. She was awarded 'Juror's Choice' in the 'Alternative Methods' exhibition in 1991 at the Copley Society for work that, according to the juror: "is printmaking pushed to its potential . . . . I like the feeling of space in this work, the build up of overlapping layers makes it literally three dimensional, as opposed to a two dimensional illusion."
And it should be noted that my mother led a very busy social life. Her husband had a prominent business position in Boston as a Board Director of Marsh & McLennan Companies and as a member of business clubs --at one time president of the Algonquin Club and the Second Club. My parents either entertained or were entertained--every weekend and some weeknights. They traveled with friends around the world. They had a good time --and, she was expected to provide the hospitality --and entertainment --for business associates. She had a scheduled weekly engagement with other women over bridge --the Old North Bridge Group. Her many friends knew of her interest, and the house reflected her keen sense of interior design with her paintings everywhere -- but not the extent to which her studio world fulfilled her intellectual and emotional exploration. She was knowledgeable and keen to understand all that was happening in the world of art and was literally buried in decades not only of her own work but of journals and catalogues.
We are all to an extent a product of a time. She played many roles and upheld basic structural ideas and standards. Her biggest fault was her supportive role to avoid any conflict, for she would strongly uphold anything in need of her agreeable opinion--even if she didn't really agree --what was she to say? But social was social, to her, and her work was something else.
The more personal and 'something else' about her work is most interesting to me . . . . She would parley with other artists and do a personal take on their work ('Barbara Inside in February' re: Jim Dine's 'Nancy Outside in July' . . . She would express a fear . . . . She would describe the time.
Photographs: Portrait when she was a student at Wellesley College; Outside the MFA in early 1930s when she was drawing in the cast court; Drawing in East Bridgewater about 1933; Painting in the studio about 1990; Work table in the studio 1981-2004; Working on 'Big Tree Little Tree, Backyard with Squirrel' in the dining room in Concord in 2012 --a few weeks before she died at the age of 92.
(This is submitted by her daughter Holly Larner and is in process of being edited)