Chronology
August 24, 1901 - born Pauline White in Colorado near what is now the Old Colorado City neighborhood of Colorado Springs to Cassius Earl White, a miner, and Bertha Peterson White a Swedish Immigrant.
Circa 1906 - her family moves to Portland, continuing a journey along the Oregon Trail that had started when Paulina’s parents left Kansas circa 1896.
April 1910 - her mother dies. Paulina later recounts that she has learned that the cause of death was a miscarriage.
June 1918 - graduates from Benson Girls’ Polytechnic High School in Portland.
1919-1923 - attends Oregon State College (now Oregon State University) in Corvallis, studying art for four years with Farley Doty McLouth and art for two years with Marjorie Baltzel.
Summer 1920 - has a summer job waiting tables at a logging camp which she has obtained through George W. Peavy, the Dean of Forestry, whose son she will marry three years later.
April 1922 - runner-up in a prestigious national scholarship contest for the Art Students League of New York. She receives accolades in Corvallis and Portland newspapers, and her name is listed in the Art Students League’s catalog which is published later that year.
June 1923 - graduates with a bachelor’s degree in vocational education from Oregon State College. The school does not offer a degree in fine arts at this time.
July 1923 - marries Bradley Peavy and moves to San Pedro, California.
March 1924 - develops a curriculum and teaches fine arts and crafts at the San Pedro School for the Arts, previously only an academy for dance and music.
December 1924 - gives birth to son Bradley Peavy.
October 1926 - gives birth to son Wesley Peavy.
July 1925 - receives third place in a Beverly Hills house-designing contest. Peavy previously helped design her own San Pedro home constructed between 1924 and 1925, and later designs at least three more San Pedro homes constructed by 1927.
July 1927 - wins a full-time scholarship to the Chouinard Art Institute to cover nine months tuition. She later recounts studying there for 18 months in addition to the special classes with Hans Hofmann and Morgan Russell which appear later in this timeline.
July 1929 - Peavy Studio & Gallery opens in San Pedro in a residence & studio building designed by Paulina at 702 Patton Ave.
July-November 1929 - Peavy Gallery opens with a group exhibition of contemporary American art which includes work by Stanton Macdonald-Wright and Morgan Russell among others.
September-December 1929 - In addition to classes taught by Paulina, Peavy Studio also hosts the first classes organized in San Pedro by the Los Angeles Art Students League (which has newly expanded and formed the Art Students League of San Pedro; a similar planned expansion to San Francisco appears to have been curtailed by the October banking collapse which will lead to the Great Depression.)
December 1929 - Peavy Studio is listed in the Los Angeles Times as hosting a three-person show of drawings by Lorser Feitelson, Stanton Macdonald-Wright, and Edouard Vysekal.
January 1930 - solo exhibition of Peavy’s watercolors at Peavy Studio.
Circa September 1930 - begins teaching art at San Pedro Evening High School.
November 1930 - the book A Child’s Guide to the Pacific Coast with poems by Alice Tenneson Hawkins and color illustrations by Paulina is published by Wetzel Press.
Spring 1931 - studies with Hans Hofmann at the Chouinard Institute
Winter/Spring 1932 - takes a class from Morgan Russell at the Chouinard Institute, where her classmates include Mabel Alvarez and Jean Swiggett, among others
February 1932 - files a divorce suit against her husband with the notice appearing in the Los Angeles Times.
Circa 1932 - begins attending séances at the home of Reverend Ida L. Ewing in Santa Ana. It was there she first channeled Lacamo, her astrocultural entity.
November 1932 - becomes ill enough that she is in the hospital for two weeks, later entering a sanatorium to recover from tuberculosis circa December.
February 1933 - her husband Bradley takes the kids to live with him at his parents’ house in Corvallis while Paulina is still in a sanatorium recovering from tuberculosis.
August 1933 - one of her works is included in the annual exhibition of the Laguna Beach Art Association.
Circa 1933-Circa 1939 - makes use of the boarding school connected with the orphanage at the Boys and Girls Aid Society of
Pasadena for part of the year while she is working.
September 1933 - one of her watercolors is selected for inclusion in the Professional Juried Division of the art exhibition at the Los Angeles County Fair in Pomona.
April 1934 - divorce granted.
Circa 1933/1934 - begins to use the name Paulina instead of Pauline.
September 1934 - solo exhibition at Gump’s Gallery in San Francisco, which is given favorable reviews prior to its opening in both the San Francisco Chronicle and Oakland Tribune. A week later, one of the works in the show is reproduced in the San Francisco Chronicle.
October 1934 - one of her watercolors is included in a group show at the gallery of the Laguna Beach Art Association.
December 1934 - her solo exhibition that was shown at Gump’s moves to the Stanford University Art Gallery.
January 1935 - two of her sculptures, Black Lily and Black Narcissus, are included in the annual exhibition of the San Francisco Art Association. This is the first of the organization’s annual exhibitions hosted at the newly opened San Francisco Museum (now SFMOMA), and the exhibition is one of the museum’s inaugural exhibits.
February 1935 - solo exhibition at Stendahl Galleries in Los Angeles, which receives an enthusiastic review in the Los Angeles Times accompanied by a reproduction of one of her works.
April-June 1935 - included in annual Painters & Sculptors exhibition at Los Angeles Museum.
October 1935 - second solo exhibition at Gump’s Gallery in San Francisco, which includes paintings, drawings, and sculpture.
December 1935 - solo exhibition at Delphic Studios in New York. It is one of three simultaneous solo shows at Delphic, each in one of the venue’s three galleries.
March-April 1936 - included in the annual Painters & Sculptors of Los Angeles exhibition at the Los Angeles Museum.
July 1936 - included in a group show at Stendahl Galleries.
September 1936 - included in another group show at Stendahl Galleries; this one is the first show of the Independent Artists Group organized by Lorser Feitelson.
October 1936 - included in the exhibition of the Independent Artists Group organized by Lorser Feitelson at the Laguna Beach Art Association. (likely the same show that was at Stendahl)
Circa 1936/1937 - moves from San Pedro to Long Beach, California.
February 1937 - offers a public lecture accompanied by slides at the San Pedro Evening High School on the subject of Mexican painters Diego Rivera and José Clemente Orozco.
July 1939 - exhibition of thirty of her paintings for one month at the Temple of Religion at the Golden Gate International Exhibition taking place on San Francisco’s Treasure Island. Her modernist depiction of biblical subjects draws protest. Paulina continues to offer lectures twice a day on “Modern Art in Religion,” and her spiritualist teacher Ida L. Ewing joins her to visit the Bay Area and the exhibition as her guest.
June 1940 - Ida L. Ewing, Peavy’s spiritual teacher, passes away at the age of 65.
April 1941 - solo exhibition featuring the debut of the (6 foot by 14 foot) painting Our Lord and His Supper at the San Diego Fine Arts Gallery (now the San Diego Museum of Art). The work receives positive reviews from critics and a mix of acclaim and outrage from the public for its modernist depiction of the biblical last supper.
September 1943 - moves to New York City.
November 1943 - solo exhibition at Argent Galleries in New York City.
Circa 1944 - works on government mural at Picatinny Arsenal in New Jersey
June 1944 - solo exhibition of paintings at Staten Island Institute of Arts and Sciences (Staten Island Museum).
May 1945 - solo exhibition at Jurart Gallery in New York City.
July 1945 - included in group show at Jurart Gallery in New York City.
June 1946 - exhibition of two large paintings in rotunda of Roxy Theatre in New York City.
November 1946 - solo exhibition of new paintings at Lawrence Terzian Gallery in New York City.
1947 - Raymond Piper contacts Paulina to include her in his project on “Cosmic Art.” A book will eventually be published through the efforts of Lila Piper and Ingo Swann in 1975.
1948 - Peavy is one of twelve artists invited to create posters for the cause of cancer awareness displayed in Fifth Avenue Department stores. Paulina’s painting The Seamless Robe is shown in a window of Saks Fifth Avenue.
January 1949 - copyrights a pamphlet titled “Cancer, Its Cause and Cure, Scientifically Deduced from the Bible.”
Circa 1953 - shows work at the Hartert Gallery in New York City.
1954 - publication of her instruction book Manikin Art by artist supply company Nobema in conjunction with the company’s production of her block mannequin design.
1958-1960 - transcripts of Peavy communicating with Lacamo and others will later be copyrighted in 1993 as the unpublished manuscript Some Conversations with Lacamo, Paulina, Martha, and Ed.
1959-1973 - various writings and transcripts of trance sessions are later edited and compiled into the unpublished collection Various Kinds of Dissertations, which is copyrighted in 1993.
January 1958 - appears on Long John Nebel radio show.
Spring 1958 - Submits a film of her paintings for competition to be screened in Brussels. This is presumably for Expo ‘58, though it does not appear to have been accepted.
April 1960 - appears on Long John Nebel television show.
Summer 1960 - exhibits work at Victor Sordan’s gallery in Woodstock, NY.
October 1961 - solo exhibition at Crown Gallery, 881 Seventh Ave in New York City.
October 1963 - copyrights a film script for a proposed pilot called Worlds Within Worlds: Extrasensory Perception.
January 1964 - files a patent for a "beneficial skin and tissue cover device" applied to the face which she will also later trademark as Mask-eez. She will receive the patent (3297034) in January 1967.
April 1965 - copyrights His Male Purpose, described as “manuscripts for film & lecture by Lacamo.”
June 1967 - has an exhibit of art and poems titled “The UFOs are the Valkyrie” at the convention of the Congress of Scientific Ufologists at the Hotel Commodore in New York City.
1968 - appears on John Nebel radio show.
1968 - appears on Alan Burke television show, described in program listings as “an artist … inspired to paint by beings from another dimension.”
February 1970 - copyrights a script titled “Is the Moon a Burned-Out Sun?”
1971 - a photo of Paulina wearing one of her masks appears in Paris Flammonde’s book The Age of Flying Saucers: Notes on a Projected History of Unidentified Flying Objects.
1981 - receives a bronze award for her film An Artist of Vision at the International Film & TV Festival of New York.
1982 - receives a bronze award for her film Mountain of Myrrh: The UFO at the International Film & TV Festival of New York.
1983 - receives a bronze award for her film Is the Moon a Burned-Out Sun? at the International Film & TV Festival of New York.
1984 - receives a silver award for her film Male Sex at the International Film & TV Festival of New York.
1985 - directs short film The Artist Behind the Mask.
1985 - copyrights the collection A Few Poems.
1987 - directs short film UFO Identified.
1988 - creates film Phantasma showing her paintings.
1993 - copyrights the collection Philosophy & Poetry by Paulina & Lacamo.
1993 - copyrights the allegorical story The Mad Nightingale in Search of God: A Spoof On Psychology, Biology, Sexology, Symbology, Government and Religion.
1993 - copyrights The Story of My Life with a UFO, a 194-page unpublished manuscript written in the 1980s.
Circa 1997-1998 - is moved into a nursing home in Bethesda, Maryland by her son Bradley and his family, who live nearby. The painting of the Last Supper, which has had at least four titles and at least three distinct visual manifestations, is destroyed during the move along with her sculpture of Lacamo.
November 18, 1999 - passes in her sleep in the mid-afternoon at the nursing home.
Chronology compiled by Narin Dickerson