Janet Culbertson: how a Pennsylvania artist found her way to Shelter Island

Jan Culbertson was born “hundreds of years ago” in Greensburg, a small city in western Pennsylvania within easy reach of Pittsburgh, and grew up there, she said. Outside of town, it was a rural area — the men hunted and fished for recreation and one of her family’s favorite pastimes was canoeing.

If culturally it was a little “backward,” she said, there were compensations. Carnegie Mellon University was nearby in Pittsburgh and many professors earned extra money by teaching private classes and/or tutoring.

She counts herself as fortunate to have studied art privately with one such teacher, “who was an amazing artist and was terrific with young people. She got me involved with art and she was a feminist. She was really someone, not subservient to anybody, very outspoken and that was a lovely influence, because I grew up in an age where the answer to any question was ‘Because Daddy says so.’”

A full profile of Islander Janet Culbertson will appear in the Thursday, July 19 edition of the Reporter.