For most people, getting into Juilliard is the fulfillment of a dream. For José Beth Smolensky (DIP '50, violin), it meant the deferment of hers. Yet Juilliard has shaped her life in ways that she deeply appreciates.

Growing up in the Bronx as the second girl in a proud, Russian Jewish immigrant family, José (named after Belgian princess Maria José) had no choice as to her instrument: "The oldest child plays piano; the second, violin," she observes wryly. Lessons began at age 8, under the influence of her "wonderful but eccentric" father, a hardworking businessman who devoted his efforts to bringing over as many relatives from the old country as he could. Smolensky enjoyed music well enough so that rising early to practice before breakfast wasn't a hardship. She took art classes, but drawing and painting always remained in second place; her father considered art an "indecent" career for women. So it was Juilliard-rather than the Art Students' League, as she had hoped-that determined her future.

Four years out of Juilliard, Smolensky had earned both bachelor's and master's degrees from the University of Illinois. By 1959 she was a busy mother of four, juggling teaching and performing jobs while her children were at school. Divorced in 1962, she moved to Florida. She played in several symphonies, as well as pop orchestras for Judy Garland and Liberace; got a grant from the government to play in rural communities; and still found time for visual art-bringing along some wood, a knife, and sandpaper whenever she headed to the park with her kids.

Faced with the challenge of supporting her young children alone and looking for more reliable work, Smolensky applied the discipline and problem-solving skills she learned at Juilliard. She earned a doctorate in education from the United States International University in San Diego in 1983, and teaching music, once a sideline, became her focus. Settling in Oregon, she put violins into the hands of "at risk" children so they would not have time for drugs and guns-earning the mayor of Portland's Award for Excellence in the process.

Along the way, she created art whenever she could-a commissioned bust for a government building in Albany; sculpture in stone, wood, and clay; jewelry design in gold and silver. As her gallery showings increased, pieces were seen and requested. By 1998, Smolensky could make another momentous decision: It was time to leave teaching and devote herself to art.

Smolensky now lives and works in an old farmhouse nestled in a beautiful valley in Monroe, Oregon. At 75, she is the oldest of a half-dozen artists who comprise Women in Harmony With Wood, an Oregon-based group who network on behalf of women woodworkers and exhibit collectively at least once a year in the Portland area. Gallery showings and sales have been "good for her," she says. Though her instruments now are a chisel, mallet, sandpaper, and files, each day still begins with a bit of violin practice. Bows waiting to be repaired hang in her studio. Smolensky is exactly where she wants to be-and the morning light coming through the windows of her studio seems to her, quiteto be literally, the light at the end of the tunnel.

- Jane Rubinsky