She would know, as the Hamilton woman famous for creating lifelike silhouettes in cut paper celebrated her 69th wedding anniversary to husband Joseph Curtis “Curt” Arnold on Monday .
The Arnolds, both 89, first met at age 15, when Curt Arnold was visiting his sister in Hamilton from Macon, Ga. After dating for six years, they married on Aug. 18, 1945. Their marriage lasted through Joseph Arnold’s brain tumor in the 1970s.
“We get a note from the president of the Ohio Senate every few years to congratulate us on our marriage,” Arnold said. She added that they have received notes of congratulations from former presidents and first ladies of the United States, and received one this year from President Barack Obama.
She said they take the teachings of Saint Francis of Assisi as credos to live by.
“He said, ‘Where there’s anger, let me sow peace,’” she said. “Don’t hold a grudge.”
While a nurse at Fort Hamilton Hospital, Arnold first started cutting silhouettes after watching artist Audrey Waite create the delicate profiles at the Robinson-Schwenn building on High Street. Waite asked her to try her hand at cutting a young boy’s profile.
“I said, well, I’ve been drawing all my life,” she said. “And she told me, you did it perfectly, and I’ve been doing it ever since.”
Silhouette art was all the rage in the United States in the late 18th to mid-19th century, then experienced a resurgence after World War II. At $1 per silhouette, it was a cheaper option than an oil paint portrait, Arnold said. Since then, she has traveled all over the country cutting silhouettes, and participated in countless Hamilton fairs and festivals to share her craft.
Arnold said that she and Joseph Arnold were always making art in their household, as she also created dolls and made paintings, and Joseph Arnold was a violinist in the Hamilton-Fairfield Symphony Orchestra outside of his work as an insurance agent, and also created dolls later in life.
“I used to go along with her all over the country when she made toys,” he said. “I made the dolls, and she’d dress them.”
They passed their artistic tendencies down to their two children: Tim has followed in his mother’s footsteps and travels the country as a silhouette artist, and Jennifer paints china.
“I started teaching (Tim) when he was a teenager in 1950,” Arnold said.
Now, the Arnolds look forward to spending their 70th year together and onward in their home in Hamilton with their beloved cats. While their two children raised their families in central Tennessee and Buffalo, N.Y., they couldn’t dream of being anywhere else.
“Hamilton is home,” Arnold said.
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