People
Collection for person entities.
Pages
-
- Cecilia Cardman
- She was born in Italy as Cecilia Cardamone to Santo “Samuel” Cardamone and Maria Angela “Mary” (Mendocino) Cardamone. Records of US Passenger ships show that she arrived with her family in the United States aboard the ship Finland in 1915, when she was nine years old. The family moved first to Minneapolis, Minnesota, where she attended grade school and learned English at the age of ten. The US Census indicates that by 1920, the family lived in Grand Junction, Colorado, where Samuel and Mary owned Cardman’s Candy Store. Cecilia attended Grand Junction High School, where she took classes at the Hoel-Ross Business College, was in the Rhetorical Club, and the Spanish Club. She then attended the University of Colorado at Boulder. In the 1940 Census, when Cecilia was 33, she was listed as an art teacher. She taught art at Grand Junction High School and was the first art teacher at Mesa College (now Colorado Mesa University). She left teaching at Mesa to pursue her degree at the University of Colorado at Boulder, and spent two years in Italy studying Italian before returning to Mesa College to teach. Her first art showing was in Naples prior to leaving Italy. She then had showing at the Chamber of Commerce building in Grand Junction. She received help from Josephine Biggs, Lucy Ela, and Edna Kurtz in putting on the exhibit. During World War II, she decided to leave her teaching career in order to pursue her art Back East. With the help of Congressman Wayne Aspinall (who knew her parents), she got a job in Washington D.C. as the social director of a residence-hall for low-salaried women workers. She then joined her siblings in New York, with her parents eventually moving out to be close to them. Once in New York, she pursued her art full-time. The Cardman siblings were accomplished: Michael went to Yale, Frank to Harvard, Lee studied voice in New York, and Nat was secretary to an administrator in the American Bar Association. Cecilia was a member of the Salmagundi art club and the Catharine Lorillard Wolfe Art Club. *Photograph from the 1940 Grand Junction High School yearbook
