Critics Choice   
The Bohemian, the newspaper of Marin and
Sonoma Counties    December 6-12, 2006
By Patricia Lynn Henley

Born Grace Lowell in 1910 in Richmond, CA., she danced, sang and studied her way around the world under the name Ann Davlin. Her 95 years of memories include performing in a vaudeville dancing-singing act with her sister, earning college degrees from San Francisco State University and Mills College, training extensively at the Royal Ballet of London, being briefly married to a man who was killed during World War II, studying psychology with a direct disciple of Karl Jung, learning the Stanislavski method of acting and founding the Ann Davlin School of Dance, which is still going strong in Berkeley.

Now a resident of Brighton Gardens, as assisted living center in Santa Rosa, she’s once again known as Grace Lowell. Lowell may be confined to a wheelchair, but her creative spirit continues to soar. That’s why she’s among one dozen Bay Area women profiled in Aging Artfully: Profiles of 12 Visual and Performing Women Artists 85-105 by author, Amy Gorman.  Lowell, shown above in her “vampire” attire, is also one of six of women featured in 32-minute DVD, Still Kicking, by filmmaker Greg Young, whom Gorman met during the process of writing the book.

A speech pathologist and a sculptor, Gorman was in her early 60s when she began wondering how to best keep the creative juices flowing as she aged. “I just wanted to hang out with very old women artists of all kinds. I met some amazing people,” Gorman recalls. In addition to Lowell, Gorman’s uplifting book profiles a 107-year-old pianist, a 98-year-old painter, an 89-year-old tap dancer, a 95-year-old rug braider and a 104-year-old sculptor, among others. The book is illustrated with more than a hundred photographs from the lives of these 12 women. Aging Artfully also includes a CD called Seven songs of Women’s Lives by Berkeley composer Frances Kandl.