Excerpts from Aging Artfully, by Amy Gorman

DOROTHY TAKAHASI TOY (FONG), 90
“We just lived tap dancing…didn’t know what time of day it was sometimes.”

Dorothy Toy, Asian tap dancer in the Caucasian style, now teacher.

ISABEL (BETTY) FERGUSON, 90
Of creativity she says, “An unfamiliar look at the familiar.” And, “Old age is hot right now. They don’t know what to do with us.”

Isabel Ferguson is a painter, poet, illustrator, actor

ANN DAVLIN aka Grace Lowell, 93:

"People want me to be what they think their version of me is. That is not how I am. If I can discover all the innuendoes in my old age, I think you go on forever. You discover new things all the time, and old things come back in a different guise."

Ann Davlin is a ballet dancer and teacher, former song and dance performer, kindergarten teacher, and Jungian devotee.

FAITH PETRIC, 90:

"What songs and performing are to me is communication. I work to find and do what I think are the best ways to perform a given song so that it reaches the listeners: the phrasing, the emphasis, even the body language. With most songs, when I am singing them I am ‘there,’ wherever the song is, seeing and even participating in what’s happening in the song.”

Faith Petric is a folk singer and touring jet-setter.

FRANCES DUNHAM CATLETT, 99:

"Art is an expression with the use of paints that somehow cannot be put into writing. It covers all that we know about the universe, all that we do not. I am in awe of the universe. It looks like it's going to be here forever. But I have no answers. Art allows us to express the complexities we cannot write about."

Frances Dunham Catlett is a painter and a former social worker.