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Emily Muir 1904-2003 Maine The Time of My Life Published by the Island Institute 2003 128 pages, illustrated. 8 by 10 inches Emily Muir's autobiography Written by Emily Muir $19.95 Shipping and Handling $4.95 east of the Mississippi $6.95 west of the Mississippi $2650

Emily Muir was born in 1904 in Chicago. She studied art with Richard Lahey at the Art Students League in New York. She married sculptor William Muir and moved to Stonington, Maine in 1939. She was an accomplished painter, sculptor, writer, designer, architect, conservationist and community activist. She was the first woman to serve President Dwight D. Eisenhower's National Commission of Fine Arts and later President Richard Nixon appointed her to the advisory committee for the Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts. She built a substantial career for herself as a painter and a designer of homes.

Although Emily Muir was primarily known as a "Maine artist," in her earlier years she painted quite a number of scenes from the West Indies. She and her husband Bill built dioramas for the Moore-McCormick steamship line which were displayed at street level windows in New York. Thus they were able to sight-see and paint while on Moore-McCormick's payroll.

She also wrote an charming autobiography called "The Time of My Life". Her descriptions of her early years at The Arts Students League, where she met her husband, and their struggles as starving artists during the Depression are particularly poignant. it was also the title of her retrospective at The Farnswoth Art Museum in Rockland, Maine from April to August 2002. Copies of the book are available at The Liros gallery for $19.95.