Background
“Lily” was born in New York City to Susan Ridley Sedgwick Swann Hammond and Doctor Arthur Wharton Swann.
architect artist sculptor industrial designer
“Lily” was born in New York City to Susan Ridley Sedgwick Swann Hammond and Doctor Arthur Wharton Swann.
She studied at the Art Students’ League of New York City with Alexander Archipenko and, later, with Albert Stewart and Heinz Warneke before moving to Michigan where she studied under Carl Milles at the Cranbrook Academy of Artist
During her early years, Lily spent her summers in Connecticut studying sculpture, and her winters learning to ski with Otto Fürer in Saint Anton-Amalberg in Austria. In 1936, she was on the first women's Olympic Ski Team. In 1935, Lily illustrated a book called Picture Book Zoo for the Bronx Zoo, and in 1946 she published the children's book Who Am I? Lily and Eero had two children: Eric Saarinen, born in 1942, and Susan Saarinen, born in 1945.
Among them were the Crow Island School reliefs in Winnetka, Illinois 1938.
The reliefs at the Post Office in Carlisle, Kentucky. A sculpture for the Royal Dutch Airlines at John F Kennedy Airport in New York City, and a relief at the Harbor National Bank on Franklin Saint in Boston.
She also designed the "Screaming Eagle" sculpture for the Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago Detroit Branch at the request of Minoru Yamasaki. This piece is constructed of brass and mosaic tile, measuring four feet by four and a half feet as a contemporary version of the traditional American Bald Eagle. In 1945, Lily taught soldiers ceramic sculpture as part of the Red Cross Arts and Skills Unit rehabilitation program
Later she taught at the Pratt Institute, Brooklyn, the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston, and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Cambridge, Massachusetts.
Cousin Edie Sedgwick was one among her private students in Cambridge. Lily specialized in animal portraits, and her work "Bagheera", illustrates a scene from Rudyard Kipling’s The Jungle Book.
Placed in the Boston Public Garden in 1986, it was originally called "Night" and was the piece that she exhibited in the 1939 World"s Fair. lieutenant is featured on the Boston Women"s Heritage Trail.
In later years, Lily did a number of portraits, among them, one of her dear friend, Gardener Cox.
Lily died in Cohasset, Massachusetts in 1995.