attacks that left him disabled and on oxygen for long periods. Nell's only escape came with her summer trips to Nellie Sue's house in Baltimore. She was visiting them when her father died. Flowers were Blaine's happiest enduring link with her childhood in Richmond, Virginia. She recalled, "We lived in a small, plain house that my father built himself in a middle-class neighborhood, and the upper half was rented out so our space was very cramped. In the yard my mother, my father, and I each had a garden. My mother's taste inclined to roses and spring flowers, and I had ordinary things like Zinnias and bluets, but the glory of our yard was my father's dahlias. They bloomed in wonderful, brilliant colors, and the blossoms were as large as dinner plates. I remember the care with which he sorted the bulbs and stored them in the basement over the winter." Blaine studied at the Richmond School of Art (now VCU) with Theresa Pollak. In 1942, she moved to New York City to study painting under Hans Hofmann. She was recommended to him by printmaker Worden Day. Through her yearlong training at the Hans Hofmann School, she adopted a non-painterly style. By 1943, she joined the American Abstract Artists group as its youngest member. Blaine studied etching and engraving with Stanley William Hayter at Atelier 17 starting in 1945. Early career Blaine's work had begun as "tightly realist" but transformed to an abstract style, which was inspired by artists such as Piet Mondrian, Fernand Leger, and Jean Helion. Blaine's association with the American Abstract Artists group led to her receiving her first solo exhibition, held at Greenwich Village's Jane Street Gallery, of which she was a founding member. It was the earliest known artists' cooperative in New York. In these early years with the Jane Street Group, Blaine prescribed to an abstract style, later explaining, "[By 1944], I'm developing so fast in my tastes and I become more abstract all the time--to the point of great purification....", and about fellow Jane Street Group members, "[we] were very dogmatic about our program. Now, as I look back on it, I'm a little ashamed. But we were so excited we really thought that was the gospel, you know. When you're young you are very sure of yourself." Blaine and many other young artists used the space to display and sell their works,