Cleo (Cleo Dorman) papers, 1924-1999

Biographical materials include scattered doodles and notes. Correspondence is with artists, friends, and institutions including Cranbrook Academy of Art, Carlos Lopez, Quentin Neal, the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts, and Dr. Millard Zisser. Also found are greeting and holiday cards, many of which are handmade. Contracts, posing schedules, and scattered correspondence regarding payment are found between the Buffalo Fine Arts Academy, Carnegie Institute of Technology, Dan Lutz, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, and John Lyon Reid. Additional personal business records relate to the scholarship fund Cleo established to assist minority art students and the sale of her collection of works of art.

Photographs are of Cleo as a young woman and later in life; of events and exhibitions including Cleo: Fifty Years as an Artist's Model at the Otis/Parsons Art Institute, Los Angeles.; of others including Novella Joel and Jac Kennedy; and of works of art featuring Cleo. Of note is a portrait of Cleo by Deborah J. Youngman. Printed materials relate to artists for whom Cleo posed. Also found are two books, Memories of the Future by Gorgon Wagner and The Newd Cookbook compiled by the Torana Art League of Santa Ana, California.

A mixed media scrapbook, likely compiled by Cleo, documents her early career and includes clippings, exhibition announcements, press releases, notes, and unsigned sketches. Writings by Cleo include notes on artists for who she posed and her reflections on their techniques and styles, and an unpublished autobiography with notes entitled "Cleo: a Naked Woman's Handbook." Writings by others include a short story by Jack Bender and poems by Norma Green.