At Sweet Briar, Chandler studied sociology and enjoyed her classes with professors Belle Boone Beard and Fritz Rohrlich. She was tapped as a Chung Mung and elected to the May Court. She socialized on the weekends with students from Hampden-Sydney and UVa, and once showed up at a dance at the U.S. Naval Academy with purple hair after a peroxide experiment went awry. She and Alfred moved north when he took a job at Massachusetts Institute of Technology. It was the first stop in a storied academic career that led him to prominence at Harvard Business School. Meanwhile, Fay sometimes struggled in Cambridge’s academic community. She once went to a neighborhood picnic in blue jeans, only to find everyone else in cocktail attire. “I felt like a misfit,” she recalls. Nearing 40, she began to sketch and paint portraits. Her drive to paint came from a spiritual longing; it was “time to learn to pray,” she says. She had begun
“Vote Today,” 2008, 36 X 24
reading about spirituality, and the words of Christian philosopher Paul Tillich — to make full use of one’s eyes in order to see — resonated with her. “I got the message that learning to look was very important. It could be a very important start in learning to pray, and a good way to learn to look was to learn to draw,” she says. Seeing anew the world around her, Chandler essentially received a second education. She kept Tillich’s words in mind as she taught herself about art. Looking was paramount. While visiting museums Chandler observed, “Everybody would go and stare at something and then everybody would go another place. I didn’t like that. So I just would wander around and look.” She didn’t try to overanalyze the pieces she saw. She was learning to see the world through new eyes, and recording her visions on paper and canvas. While Albert was in residence at All Souls College at Oxford, she toured the U.K. by bus, people-watching
“Face the Facts,” 2011, 36 X 24
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