L. Vance Phillips

Luella J. Vance Phillips (24 March 1858 – February 10, 1939) was an American china-painting artist and one of the founders of the Pi Beta Phi fraternity at Hastings College in Nebraska.

Early life Luella "Lou" J. Vance was born in a country home in Vernon County, Wisconsin, in 1858, the last child of Sampson Anderson Vance (1833–1864) and Jane McMahon. Her father died of disease while serving with the Union Army during the Civil War, and her mother later remarried to Captain William Horlocker. The family moved to Nebraska.

In 1890, Phillips, then living at Grand Island, won a gold medal for the best china painting at the Western Art Association meeting in Omaha. She won it again in 1891, at the time living in Kearney. It was the first of a series of art amateur handbooks published by Montague Marks of New York City. Experienced teachers contributed to the volume articles on special branches of the art, and the book contained full instructions for glass painting. It was illustrated with 150 black and white drawings on the text, and six colored plates, and the cost was $3.

In 1899, Phillips was elected chairman of education at the Chicago convention of the Miniature Painters Association. In June 1899 she worked with Laura Overly in her studio on Penn Avenue, Pittsburgh. While there, Phillips held an exhibition of her work.

Beginning of the 1900s, Phillips was in New York City working as Elocution, Voice Culture, Physical Culture trainer with a studio in the Carnegie Hall. She was a lecturer on Methods of Improving Articulation. Through the 1900s and the 1910s she also continued with art lessons, giving lectures on Colors, showing charts and masks disclosing color schemes. The charts were a key to a practical use of color. Phillips also taught at Chautauqua Lake Summer School. In 1911 she taught at the Duquesne Ceramic Club.

Personal life In 1888, she married Francis C. Philips. Phillips resided in Hastings, Grand Island, Kearney, and Omaha, Nebraska.

She later moved to Penn Yan, New York, where she lived the final 14 years of her life with her daughter, Loreta.