CFM Gallery
.236 West 27th Street, 4th Floor, New York, NY 10001 (212)966 3864.
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Lisa Lichtenfels

When I was four years old, my mother became quite alarmed that my "baby fat" was not going away. To solve this embarrassing problem, she got the brilliant idea of enrolling me in a dance studio. I would become a ballerina, and simply dance the flab off. So, I became the youngest - and fattest - kid ever to enroll in the Little Debbie Dance Studio in Erie, Pennsylvania. On one of my early trips to the studio, my father took a Polaroid of me in my tutu. It was the basis of one of the few self-portraits I have done. One can tell by my expression of exuberance that I had not yet been disabused of the notion that dancing was in my future.


As fate, or the Muse might have it, there was another school in the building with the Little Debbies. It was the Sanders Art School, and I can still remember the fascination I had for those students who went up the stairs with large papers and canvasses, and mysterious boxes with rattly things in them smelling of linseed oil. After a while, that upstairs place seemed like Nirvana, and soon I was planning my escape as a refugee oil painter. I do remember Mr. Sanders as a very kindhearted man, and the hours spent filling pads of paper with drawings were perfect bliss. I don't suppose the downstairs ladies were heartbroken at my disappearance - so my life had a wonderful equilibrium.


It took some time, but eventually my mother began to notice that I wasn't losing any weight - in fact, the trend was going decidedly in the opposite direction. By then, I had my heart set on being a student upstairs rather than down - and, who knows, maybe my mother had gotten used to having free Saturdays. For whatever reason, I was given my art classes, and it was announced that my mother would cure me with hypnotism instead. This involved having to sit quietly in a darkened room while she rotated a disk in front of my eyes with a swirly pattern on it. Thankfully, that "solution" didn't last long at all.

Little Ballerina
Fabric Sculpture
15” x 9” x 8”
2000


CFM Gallery
Exquisite technique coupled with artistic vision defines our user-friendly presentation of figurative fine art paintings, sculptures and original graphics. Contemporary symbolism at its apex in the traditions of Bosch, the Italian Renaissance, Art Deco, Art Nouveau, the Viennese and German Secession and the symbolist movements with an edge of surrealism.