Nanette L. Laitman Documentation Project For Craft and Decorative Arts in America

Interview with Arline M. Fisch
Conducted by Sharon Church
At the Artist's home and studio in San Diego, California
July 29 and 30, 2001

Preface

The following oral history transcript is the result of a tape-recorded interview with Arline M. Fisch on July 29 and 30, 2001. The interview took place in San Diego, California and was conducted by Sharon Church for the Archives of American Art, Smithsonian Institution. This interview is part of the Nanette L. Laitman Documentation Project for Craft and Decorative Arts in America.

Arline M. Fisch and Sharon Church have reviewed the transcript and have made corrections and emendations. The reader should bear in mind that he or she is reading a transcript of spoken, rather than written prose.

Interview

MS. SHARON CHURCH: This is Sharon Church interviewing Arline Fisch at the artist's home and studio in Mission Hills, a neighborhood of San Diego, California, on July 29, 2001, for the Archives of American Art, Smithsonian Institution.

Arline, you are now 70 years old, vitally involved with your art and committed to an ongoing studio practice, which is all around us. What are you working on right now?

MS. ARLINE FISCH: I seem to be continuing to work with some textile structures. I just completed some knitted pieces that are going to accompany the showing of my retrospective exhibition at the Textile Museum in Washington. I wanted to have some new pieces that fit into that particular category, so I made some large knitted collars, which I had made earlier in the mid-eighties, but I haven't made again for quite some time, so that was kind of an adventure.

I realized why I don't continue to do them, and that is that my neck really took a beating from using the knitting machine, because it's rather strenuous using wire on the knitting machine, especially making large, expansive material. I'll probably continue to do that anyway, but I'll just have to keep ice packs on [Laughter].

I'm also exploring a lot of braiding, especially spiral braiding, which a student of mine did a research study on a couple of years ago. She's not using it anymore, so I feel that I can explore it on my own, and it enables me to work with my colored wires that I like in making some tubular and conical forms. I'm also using the spiral braiding with strips of material to make things that are very springy in their final form, and I find that's kind of fun to work with.

MS. CHURCH: What long-term projects are you working on, Arline?

MS. FISCH: For some reason I've decided to do saints. I think it relates to the earlier things that I did, which were angels. I thought, do I want to do more angels? And then I thought, well no, I could do angels and then I could do saints. So I'm working on saints. I've done quite a lot of reading about saints, and I've talked with a friend, Randy Long, who's very interested in saints, and she's provided me with all kinds of research material and books. There's even something called Holy Traders, which are little playing cards that are saints instead of baseball players [Laughter]. I have two sets of Holy Traders, so I have all this research material about saints.

I've decided to do only women saints, and I thought it would be interesting, over the next ten years, to do an alphabetical series, starting with A. I don't know if I can actually do all of the letters, but I'm going to try that. The hard part is trying to work on those in between what I call my regular work, because it's a long term project, and it's not going to be ready for a long time. I mean, I can't do 26 saints quickly. But as I do them, I also don't want to show them. It's sort of like secret work that I do in between the things that I'm making for exhibitions and so on, so I think it will be long term.

My idea is not so much what kind of jewelry they'll be -- they will all be wearable -- probably mostly pendant forms, because that seems to enable me to work the most freely, if it doesn't have to attach to something. My idea is that they would then be mounted onto something like an illuminated manuscript, so that they would become more like an icon of a saint -- looking at Russian icons, which I've always loved, but didn't see any reason to make. I think this is a kind of offshoot of that.

MS. CHURCH: I saw the Oxford dictionary of Saints sitting on your desk. When you talk about making icons, I can see the kind of shallow relief that you've worked on in the past, translating into this project.

MS. FISCH: Yes. And if I was 30 years younger, I would chase everything, but it's really hard for me to do that now. Much as I love that process, it's really hard on your skeletal system, and I'm not sure that I can do those anymore. So I have to think about other ways of depicting saintly forms. And they'll be, I think, more abstract this time. The ones I've made -- I think I've made three so far -- are relatively abstract; that is, they don't have real faces.

The connection with the individual saints may not be totally obvious, which is why the illuminated manuscript idea appeals to me, because I can actually write the story of the saint in an accompanying installation.

MS. CHURCH: You bring up the point of not making the faces. In terms of making icons, that's such an issue, whether you should make faces or not. There's such a rich language of symbolism connected with the saints.

MS. FISCH: That's true, but when you look at icons from the Byzantine Church -- and I've been in Russia fairly recently and looked at a lot of Russian icons, and they're still making icons in the old style -- they are painted, and then often surrounded by metal reliefs. I don't think I want to do any painting. I don't feel competent to do that. They won't be painted images, but it has occurred to me to use reproduction images, Xerox images or something like that -- setting them in the same way that the icons are set, with a metal surround. But I haven't done that yet. That's my long term project.

MS. CHURCH: It's very exciting. In fact, now that you said you've made three -- I am trying to figure out how to pry them out of you [Laughter]. So, you've come to this point in your career where you've really decided to take on a huge project, lining up with another history that's connected to you. You're going to engage in it for ten years.

MS. FISCH: I think that's probably how long it will take. I could be wrong about that. And you're the only person I've told about this, because I don't want to be pressured into showing them until I'm ready to do so. That's why it's a sort of secret project. But it's hard to find the time, even though I'm retired. One would think I'd have lots of time, but the ongoing work, which is work for exhibitions -- mostly for exhibitions -- takes up a lot of time. And I'm much slower now than I used to be, at least it seems to me it takes me a lot longer to do everything than it used to.

MS. CHURCH: You have always managed to balance your life with your obvious feelings of obligation to an ongoing exhibition engagement. And so, you're going to continue to somehow balance all of this.

MS. FISCH: I hope so, because I don't want to give up the opportunity to be an exhibitionist. I've always enjoyed that kind of challenge. I do respond to thematic exhibitions as something that I find stimulating to my thought process. I'm going to do some chatelaines, for example, because there's going to be a chatelaine exhibition in a year or two. I've made a chatelaine in the past, and I'd like to try doing a few more of those, so that's a little project.

And then, Mobilia Gallery, with whom I deal, has just written and said they're going to do an exhibition of jewelry based on paintings, which I've always looked at. So, I'll participate in that because it gives me a chance to do something that I might otherwise not do. I've always wanted to do a stomacher, you know, that sort of corset like form. And I thought, well, here's the perfect opportunity to do that. I do like to respond to a challenge.

MS. CHURCH: But you're not going to let the saint project overlay with the painting project? You're not going to let that one out?

MS. FISCH: No, the saint project I feel committed to, I just don't know how long it will take. I also am not totally convinced whether the form will remain consistent. The three that I've done so far are all pendant forms, and they're all about the same size. There's the possibility that I would maintain that format, just because it would make for more consistency.

MS. CHURCH: Just last year, a retrospective of your work opened at the San Diego Historical Society, and the name of the exhibition and the accompanying catalogue is Elegant Fantasy. That seems to be an apt description of your work. Can you describe your work, put words around your work?

MS. FISCH: Well, what I would like to think my work looks like is elegant, and dramatic, and inventive, and beautiful. I don't know that things all succeed in all those categories, but I really have always liked working larger scale than things like rings and earrings -- I don't make rings and earrings. One, I don't wear them very much, and two, the size is too small for me. I don't like working at that scale.

On the other hand, I don't like working larger than wearable scale either, which is sort of curious, because I've often thought, well, if I don't like working these little things, why don't I work on sculpture? But I'm really not interested in doing that. I really like the fact that what I make is worn, and I want it to be worn. I suppose I'm my best client.

MS. CHURCH: You're a great model.

MS. FISCH: [Laughs] Well, it means that I can try everything on, and I know how it feels. I want what I make to be not just wearable but comfortable, in the sense that when you put it on, you feel elegant, you don't feel uncomfortable or restricted, other than, some need to stand up straight or move in a certain way, but aren't immobilized by a piece of jewelry, because I don't think anybody wants to do that. So the beauty aspect is the psychological aspect.

I don't think that people want to wear things that have a negative impact. People wear things to be provocative, even politically provocative. That's not of interest to me. I'm not into sharp edge razor earrings or things that are hazardous to your health. But I want the things of mine that people wear to enhance them and to do so in a very positive way, so that it makes you feel good to wear these things, and you feel good because the response from the public is a smile or a glance that is approving, not disapproving.

MS. CHURCH: I find your work to be ‘high attraction' work. You want to pick it up, participate with it. What about this word whimsy, which is often --

MS. FISCH: Well, it does come into the work, and I think it's because I don't take it all very seriously.

MS. CHURCH: Yes, you do [Laughter]!

MS. FISCH: Well, I mean, the work is serious, but I put something on and it may just strike a funny spot for me, and I think, well, this is pretty silly. And I might enhance that idea a little bit. It's a way of trying to maintain a sense of humor about what I do, that it's not heavily intellectual. It's intended to be, in some ways, frivolous, because what I make is certainly frivolous. It's not serving a particular physical function. It's not holding a garment together, or keeping you warm, or any of those kinds of functional aspects that some jewelry serves.

Mine is purely decorative; it's intended to decorate the person in a positive way, to attract the public -- a little bit like birds with beautiful feathers. Why are some birds beautifully colored? It's because it has this particular attraction within nature. And I like that metaphor also, the idea of the butterfly or the bird having this beautiful garb that is purely for attracting some kind of visual response.

MS. CHURCH: I would say that attraction is frivolous only on one level. I think you mentioned the deeper psychological import of jewelry that serves our need to feel a certain way and our need to project certain things about ourselves. Do you think that the whimsy keeps it a little bit accessible?

MS. FISCH: Well, I would hope that the whimsy means something, it satisfies me. It keeps me from feeling too totally serious about what I'm making. I try to maintain a kind of balance; what I'm making is a decoration for someone to wear. There are some certain deep psychological reasons for doing that, but on top of that and in place of that maybe, is the idea that this is fun–that you do this because it makes you feel really terrific, and you get this nice response from people, and that makes you feel good.

MS. CHURCH: And it does seem that you're vastly entertained by your ideas, which is great.

MS. FISCH: [Laughs] Well, yes, sometimes I suddenly see something that could happen. I work on these dress forms and mannequins that stand around in the studio, and I put things on them, and then I don't pay any attention for a while, and suddenly I see, oh, look at that, wouldn't that be fun, to have something that swings like that, or to have something that flips around the head like that -- wouldn't that be fun? Then I try and make it have that sort of energy.

I also think that the whimsy is a kind of energy that is evocative and meaningful for people. I mean, it makes something not be just a dead issue. It's something that's lively, and kinetic, and engaging with people. I suppose it also keeps me engaged, that sense of humor.

MS. CHURCH: One of the things that I love about coming into your studio is that it's already populated [Laugher]. You have a full mannequin at the doorway wearing a hat, and then you have some dresses on another, and you have all these bodies around in your studio.

MS. FISCH: Well, and they're all named. The lady by the door is Delores, and the lady standing up there is Madeline. They're my friends, and they keep me company in the studio. But more importantly, they provide me with a ready form, a ready body on which to put things, to work things out. And then I actually try everything on myself, as I'm working to see if it moves and how it feels, is it too heavy, is it the right size?

People have said to me, "You can wear your things, you make them all for yourself." And in a way, that's definitely true. I do make them all for myself, because I'm the model that I have to try them on. I don't think I'm the only person who can wear them in the end, but it is true that I'm the body that tries them on.

MS. CHURCH: I think that's so important as a jeweler, to understand how a piece is working with gravity and space on the body.

MS. FISCH: I've never understood how men can be jewelers, because they don't know what it feels like. It also is important to know how it feels psychologically. When I was in Denmark in the sixties, making these big full-length pieces, I would wear them to the Royal Theater, because at intermission, there would be a promenade -- people walked around at intermission, and it was a chance to get a response.

I had a friend who would get all dressed up and escort me, and I would wear my long gown and these full length silver pieces, which were quite outrageous at the time: we would just promenade up and down, and the Danes would just stare. But you know, some people would have a positive response of smiling or even saying something. That was a way of sort of gauging whether this was going to be a possibility, because I certainly didn't want people to scream or look away in horror, or be angry.

Those are all negative responses, and I don't think anybody wants that -- I mean, I certainly don't want that kind of response in a social situation. You might want that response in a protest march, but you certainly don't want it at the opera. It was an interesting experiment. And we would have a friend walk behind us and sort of listen to what people said [Laughter], so I could get some feedback from that experience. I haven't done that here very much, but I do wear my jewelry, often.

MS. CHURCH: And when we got off the plane, my seatmate, whom I had shown your catalogue to, knew exactly who you were because of what you were wearing. So you have an identity. Arline, how do you describe yourself? Do you tell people that you're an artist, a metalsmith, a jeweler, designer? How do you do it as efficiently as possible?

MS. FISCH: I think the best way is that I'm an artist, because when I say I'm a jeweler, that sends out the wrong signal, and people immediately think, one, I have a shop, and two, that I work in gold and precious stones, none of which is true. Sometimes I say I'm a jeweler, because in a group of artists, it describes the field that I'm in. I don't think I ever called myself a metalsmith, because I don't think that I am. I don't make hollowware, and I don't smith things. I put things together. But I don't think of myself as a metalsmith.

Artist seems to be the easiest thing to say to people that puts them on the right track, that I have a studio and I create things, but I'm not in business, and I don't make wedding rings. And then I'm a teacher. I think for me, those have always been connected, artist and teacher. And so, that's the most succinct description of what I do. Right now, it's actually a somewhat difficult time for me, because I've retired from teaching, and that's always been an important part of my identity.

Although I'm teaching workshops -- and those are always very positive experiences, because people come together for a very particular purpose. They're all excited, and it's a very short term thing. They go away really jazzed by what you imparted to them, which is a little different than the long term teaching involvement with students. So in a way, my artist/teacher description is now only artist, and that's a little hard for me. I'm struggling with that, because I'm so used to gathering information, and catalogues, and adventures, and letters from colleagues, and having a place to share them. Now, I don't have that, and that's really hard.

MS. CHURCH: I can imagine. It would be nice if there would be a way for you to keep some aspect of teaching in your studio practice. Have you thought about it?

MS. FISCH: At the moment it works somewhat because I still am involved with some of the graduate students, but that will be over within a year or two. I won't know the students who are working now. I think it just has to be in my head, a way of realigning my thinking. That may be forcing me to be more in touch with my colleagues as a place to share things. That hasn't been easy here, because most of the colleagues that I have don't live here.

MS. CHURCH: Right, you're very international.

MS. FISCH: I've always had friends in different places, and it isn't so easy to have the kind of discussion that we had last night, for example, because there aren't people here that I relate to in that way. Which is kind of surprising, because I've lived here a long time.

MS. CHURCH: You're going to have to come to Philadelphia [Laughter]. What was your training, just briefly? It's been documented, but I think it might be nice for you to just go through it a little bit.

MS. FISCH: I went to public school in New York City, in the New York City system. We lived on Long Island, in Bayside, Queens. The high school I went to had an art department of 12 faculty, and so I had art classes all through high school. I think the primary direction for most of my classmates was graphic design, commercial art -- it was called commercial art -- and almost everybody went to Pratt from my high school.

I knew that I didn't want to do that, I don't think I had the ability to do that, actually, the technical ability, and it wasn't really what I wanted to do. So I opted to go to Skidmore College, which had an art department within the context of liberal arts education. I sort of concentrated more on painting than anything else, although I took art education, because I knew that I was going to teach. I mean, that was my career path, teaching, but painting was what I did most.

I did hardly any three-dimensional work at Skidmore. I did a lot of screen printing with Alice Moshier, and painting with several different instructors. Then, because I knew I wanted to teach, I decided to go directly to graduate school. I didn't want to teach children. I knew that I didn't want to teach children [Laughter]. My art education classes involved practice teaching in the one-room schoolhouses around Saratoga Springs. Although that was an exciting opportunity and interesting, I knew I didn't want to do that. I don't relate that well to children.

I knew that I needed to go to graduate school, and I applied to all of the schools in the Big Ten, because I wanted to go someplace very different from Skidmore. I decided I would go to whichever one gave me the most money.

MS. CHURCH: Quite pragmatic.

MS. FISCH: Well, I had to be self-supporting going to graduate school. It was a toss up between Wisconsin and Illinois, in terms of the offer, and I decided to go to the University of Illinois in Champaign. I went thinking that I would study art education, which I did, but that I would concentrate in painting. Right away, I knew I wasn't going to do that. This was in 1952, and the graduate students, all of them, were mostly male, and they'd all been in the Second World War, so they were older.

I was 20 years old when I started graduate school, and I just didn't feel that I had anything to say in painting. The paintings I had done before were all flowers and abstractions, and so on, but there wasn't a lot of content. These guys were really heavily into content, and I just didn't feel I could measure up in that arena. So I took courses in ceramics, and I took courses in metal, and I worked in both of those things all through graduate school.

It was very funny: we had a seminar with the dean of the school, a graduate seminar once a week, and it was a research seminar. Basically, we had to write research papers. That was something I knew how to do. I had gone to Skidmore, which was a liberal arts school. I had written hundreds of papers, so I knew how to go to the library and do research, and write a paper. I would come to these seminar classes and I would get these glowering stares from fellow students. Finally, one guy said, "How do you know how to do this?" I said, "That's what I know how to do. That's my education." It was, in the end, rather ironic because we were all job hunting at the conclusion of this masters program looking for college level teaching positions.

[TAPE BREAK]

MS. FISCH: I was sent a notice from Skidmore that Wheaton College was looking for an art instructor, and they wanted to hire a Skidmore graduate, but it had to be someone who had a master's degree. I was probably the only applicant, so of course I got the job. I was the only one in this seminar that had a job in May, and they all just said, "How did you do that?" I didn't have the heart to tell them I was probably the only viable candidate for that particular position. It was because the head of the art department at Wheaton had taught at Skidmore, and she wanted to hire a Skidmore graduate.

MS. CHURCH: I wanted to ask you about your choice of Skidmore. I think that at that time, Skidmore was unique in its particular approach to an arts education within a liberal arts curriculum. Were you aware of that?

MS. FISCH: Yes, and that's why I chose to go there, but how I knew about the school was my next door neighbor's daughter went to Skidmore. She was probably instrumental in my mother's accepting of the fact that I was going there instead of to either Pratt, which was the art school that she thought probably I should go to, or Marymount, which was the Catholic school that I also applied to. It didn't help that my parish priest said to my mother that he thought I'd be doomed to hell if I went to Skidmore. He later apologized, many years later, but it didn't help my choice at the time.

I thought it had a lot of things going for it, for me. Not only did it have an art department, it was a small school. I went to a high school of 5,000 people, a New York City high school that was huge -- maybe not that many, but many thousands of students, co-ed, and I was quite young. I started high school when I was 12, and I finished when I was 16. I always felt a little bit unprepared in the co-ed world, so going to a women's college was important to me, and it was absolutely the right decision for me as well.

Basically, I was quite shy, and it gave me an opportunity to learn about leadership and gave me the opportunities to do things that were very significant in preparing me for what I've done the rest of my life in relation to organizations. I ran the art club, I worked on the yearbook, and I did a lot of things that I probably wouldn't have done in a co-ed school, because I wouldn't have felt competent or comfortable. I felt very comfortable at Skidmore, so it was a really good decision for me.

Among the teachers that were at Skidmore, probably the most influential for me was Alice Moshier, whom I mentioned earlier, because she had this grand gesture in the way she approached everything, and I greatly admired that. I think in many ways she influenced how I have conducted my own career. So it was good for me to go there.

MS. CHURCH: One more question about Skidmore. When I was there, it was in its final years of being a women's institution. I remember that everyone who ran the school, with the exception of the president, was a powerful woman -- Was that the way it was when you were there?

MS. FISCH: Yes, and all of the student government was female. It disturbed me a lot when I went back to Skidmore, I think in the late seventies, and met with students, and learned that although the male population was only 25 percent of the school at that moment, the governance was 75 percent male. I was furious and railed about the fact that what was important to me at Skidmore was this wonderful opportunity to have leadership skills imparted to me by example, and then opportunity to exercise those leadership skills on my own by the time I was a junior and senior in college. That was absolutely invaluable.

I was very sorry that Skidmore decided to become co-ed. I was just at Skidmore in May this year and met the new president, who's a woman. It's the first time there's a woman president, and I feel very good about that. There is a better balance: it's almost fifty-fifty now, male-female, and I feel a little bit more confident that women will have a better chance for leadership.

MS. CHURCH: And she's a collector of crafts.

MS. FISCH: Yes, she is.

MS. CHURCH: One more question about your education. When did it occur to you that there was such a career as an art-jewelry career. When did that appear to you as a viable route?

MS. FISCH: Not while I was at Skidmore. I didn't do any jewelry work at Skidmore, surprisingly. I knew I wanted to teach. I knew I wanted to teach at the college level. I wasn't sure what I was going to teach, because I clearly needed to have some kind of a skill, particular skill, if I was going to get anywhere in that arena. But interestingly, my first job at Wheaton was "studio." I taught painting, I taught printmaking, I taught drawing. I didn't teach any crafts at all. It was sort of a general studio course to support the art history program. It was a really good place to begin, because I didn't need any particular skills.

Wheaton is in Norton, Massachusetts, which is very close to Attleboro and Taunton, which are the jewelry centers of the United States. I probably wouldn't be a jeweler except for that circumstance, because I was also working in ceramics in graduate school. When I went to teach at Wheaton, I needed to have a studio of my own, and there was no ceramic studio. There was just this sort of generic drawing, painting studio. So I went looking in the community for a place to work, and what I found were jewelry studios, because all of the people who worked in industry, or many of them, had their own little private workshops where they worked on weekends and at night.

Just down the road, five miles, I found a workshop with a very nice gentleman who said, "Oh please, come and use my studio, and here's a key." I could go there anytime and work, and he was there in the evenings to help me if I needed help. And it became what I wanted to do. Also, I felt comfortable using the material. I never really liked working with ceramics. I hated being dirty, with the clay under my fingernails. I really didn't like that. Sometimes there's a circumstantial aspect that directs your career, and that was it, I had this opportunity.

MS. CHURCH: What was his name?

MS. FISCH: I don't remember. But I'm very grateful to this man, and I regret that I don't know his name. While I was at Wheaton, it was a very isolated community. It was a very small school, about 300 students at the time, and it was a very funny place. My friends there were a very odd assortment of faculty in Classics and English Literature. My goal after the first year was to leave there [Laughter]. So my second year was devoted to, how do I leave here, looking for jobs?

One of the ways to leave there was to apply for a grant, and Fulbright was a possibility. I applied for a Fulbright grant to go to Denmark, because I realized that the two years of working in metal that I had had at the University of Illinois were really not enough, especially since it wasn't a very high level program.

MS. CHURCH: And that program focused on metalsmithing?

MS. FISCH: Primarily. Because the man who taught it was Arthur Pulos, who was a silversmith. I really felt passionate about working in metal because I had had some success at it, I certainly didn't feel that I had the skill level to go very far. So applying for a Fulbright was a good thing. I applied to Denmark for two reasons: one, they didn't have a language requirement; and two, Denmark and Sweden were where silver was happening in the fifties.

I applied at large and didn't really know if I had a chance, so I also applied for a lot of teaching jobs. The jobs came through before the grant came through, and I sort of tentatively accepted a job, I don't even remember where -- in the Midwest somewhere. Then suddenly, I was called for an interview for a Fulbright, which, if you apply at large, the school that you went to hasn't supplied the necessary interview materials, so you are interviewed by somebody.

I was interviewed by the Dean of Mass College of Art, who was very funny. I took my little cigar box of work -- I worked pretty small at that time -- and I went to see him. He started out by saying, "I don't know anything about jewelry, but I think all I'm supposed to find out is if you are articulate and you're not going to be a bad representative of the U.S. So talk to me."

MS. CHURCH: [Laughter] And you were good at that.

MS. FISCH: We had a 45-minute conversation, and I guess he approved of my comments, because I did ultimately get the grant to go to Denmark. And that was important, both technically and in pushing me to continue in that direction. It was in '56, that I went to Denmark, and it was not easy. The school decided at the last minute that I would not attend, that they didn't want a foreigner. They didn't want any Americans.

MS. CHURCH: Was it only one school?

MS. FISCH: Yeah.

MS. CHURCH: And what was that school?

MS. FISCH: It was called Kunsthaandvaerkerskolen, which is School of Decorative Art, or School of Arts and Crafts. When I applied for the grant, I said that I could go to school or I would be happy to work in a workshop, and I was assigned to the school. Before I ever got to Denmark, I had a letter from the Fulbright office in Copenhagen saying that the school wasn't so sure they wanted me to come. Did I have any other possibility? What else would I like to do?

I wrote back and said, I would love to work in a workshop. That would really be preferable, even to going to school. They tried to do that and were not successful, because again, I was a foreigner. It was a very protective environment at that particular time, but the Fulbright office in Copenhagen simply leaned on the school and said they had to accept me.

MS. CHURCH: The Fulbright people.

MS. FISCH: Yeah. The Ministry of Education in Denmark was on the Fulbright committee, and I think they simply said, you will have this student. There had been several American students at this school before, not in the jewelry, I don't think. No, there may have even been one in the jewelry program, in the silversmithing program. At any rate, I met with the Rector of the school, who was very anti-American -- I don't know why -- and very rude, who said that I was really only there to steal their ideas, and I would have to be able to understand Danish if I was going to go to this school.

I was already taking classes, but I ended up hiring a tutor because he so intimidated me about it. Also, he didn't think I was serious, because I actually was going to the ceramics department in the morning and the goldsmith department in the afternoon, and nobody in Denmark did that. You were either a jeweler or a potter, but you were not both things, so he thought I was not serious. I said, well, I would do my best, and I worked like a dog.

I went to ceramics school in the morning, from eight until noon, then I went to the Goldsmiths High School from noon to 5:30, and then I went to Danish classes from six to eight. This was six days a week. I was determined that he was not going to defeat me. It was very difficult in the Goldsmiths School, because all of the students had served their apprenticeship and received their journeymen's degree, and been accepted to the school, for a two year program to learn design.

It wasn't really technical enough for me. However, I was determined I was going to succeed at this. I learned Danish real fast, because the teacher was saying very rude things to me, and I wanted to be able to answer back [Laughter]. I learned enough Danish quickly so I could say to him, I don't think that's true or whatever.

Anyway, in December, there was a meeting of the Board of Directors of the Goldsmiths School, because it was sponsored by the goldsmith organization. I was seated next to someone who spoke English, who was head of a workshop. He made the mistake of asking me how things were going, and I had had it by then. I told him how things were going, and he was sort of shocked and said, "Well, what would you like to do? How can I help?" And I said, "Well, what I think would be better is if I was in a workshop where I could make my own things and somebody could show me how to do that."

He said, "Well, I will see what I can do, and you will hear from me." I had a letter from him in about a week inviting me to work at his workshop, which was one of the largest jewelry workshops -- it didn't have a retail shop -- a jewelry manufacturing place in Copenhagen. It had about 40 people working, which was big. He told me to come see him and I did. He showed me around, and he said, "Okay, this is how it's going to work. You will show me what you want to make, and I will tell you who to work with. And I will say to the men" -- because they were all men -- "that they are to help you. But they are going to do that only if they think you're serious."

"We start at 7:30 in the morning." I said, "Well, that's a little hard for me, because I should probably continue to go to ceramic school." And he said, "Well, then come at noon, and I'll tell them that you're in school in the morning, and you are here from noon to 4:30. You will sit next to Sven here, who speaks a little English" -- he was a younger person -- "and he will help you. And where he can't help you, he will direct you to someone else." So that's what I did from January through the end of the academic year, and that was wonderful.

MS. CHURCH: Do you recall the name of that workshop?

MS. FISCH: Yeah, Bernhardt Hertz, Goldsmiths. And he subsequently took Glenda Arentzen also into that workshop when she had a Fulbright.

MS. CHURCH: So you really forged some important paths.

MS. FISCH: What he said was, he had friends, engineering friends, who had gone to the United States on Fulbrights, and had doors opened for them. He said, "I can't understand that we wouldn't do the same." So that was his attitude.

MS. CHURCH: Do you remember his name?

MS. FISCH: Otto Hertz.

MS. CHURCH: So this was this man who ran the workshop. How wonderful. So that was really a fortuitous --

MS. FISCH: It was. It played a big role in my life, and it was a wonderful experience. I did work every day, and I worked hard. I made, I don't know, maybe ten pieces. My goal was to learn how to set stones. And so, I learned how to do pearls, and faceted stones, and cabochon stones. They also had an enamelist. That was the only woman who worked there, she was an enamelist. I didn't really want to pursue that, so I didn't. I worked only on small brooches -- I think they were all brooches. And they weren't madly exciting in design, I don't think.

MS. CHURCH: The floral piece, Garden, is that from that time?

MS. FISCH: No, no, I don't think I have any pieces left from that period. You know, I tried to present things that worked within what they would accept. I would show Otto a variety of things, and he would say, do this one, do that one. So, that worked pretty well. At the end of the year, at the end of the school year, I had made a small exhibition at the Fulbright office of both my ceramics and jewelry-- I did do ceramics. I did hand built ceramic things, and I probably did, I don't know, ten vessels in that year, working in the basement by myself.

I did also -- I forgot about that -- I knew how to work with glass. I did some little glass jewelry things in the ceramics studio, because there was a kiln available. Then, at the end of the year, I had this little exhibition at the Fulbright office, and I invited the people from the school. Everybody was surprised: the goldsmiths didn't know I made ceramics, and the ceramics people didn't know I made jewelry; also, the students at the school didn't know that I was working at this workshop, because I did still go to the Goldsmiths School on Fridays. They had a silversmith who came on Friday, so I went on Friday and I made a set of salad servers, in silver and brass.

MS. CHURCH: At this point, you were still doing ceramics as well as the jewelry. Without the benefit of hindsight, were you still thinking that you were going to be a craftsperson with a more generalist approach to making?

MS. FISCH: I guess I was thinking more about the need to be able to do a variety of things in terms of teaching. As it turned out, Skidmore offered be a job. Actually, they offered me a job before I went. They were one of the schools that I had applied to. When I wrote and said, I've gotten this Fulbright, Marion Pease said, "That's fine. We'll wait." And so, I actually had this job waiting for me at the end of the Fulbright year, nut it wasn't absolutely for sure.

The cultural attaché at the American Embassy, who was on the Fulbright commission, who was, I later learned, responsible for my being there at all -- she had insisted that I come, because she thought that that door needed to be opened for exchange, that all of the Fulbrighters before had been in other fields, and that this was an area that had not been opened, and she wanted it opened.

MS. CHURCH: You didn't know that you were the point of the sword.

MS. FISCH: But she urged me to stay for a second year, and so I applied to stay for a second year.

MS. FISCH: And who was this woman?

MS. CHURCH: I don't remember her name. And, of course, I was granted that extension, and then I had to say to her, "I'm not accepting it. I have this job offer," because I wasn't willing to risk not having a job to come back to. I mean, I had left the United States with no money. I arrived back in the United States with a dime, enough to make a phone call. I'm not a great risk taker financially, and I just couldn't face not having some security. When this job was available, and it was considerably more than I had earned at Wheaton, I couldn't pass it up. So I regretfully declined staying in Denmark for a second year.

MS. CHURCH: Did the Fulbright grant provide you with enough money to support yourself while you were in Denmark?

MS. FISCH: Yes, it did. And I was even able to save enough to travel around Europe in the summer.

MS. CHURCH: One other question. In the 1950's, you were a single woman. You were competing mostly with men to do things that are highly singular. You had to fall back continually on your own resources. Did you ever think, gee, I'm doing something special, or did you just do it because it was there to be done?

MS. FISCH: I never thought about that, and I think that's a tribute to Skidmore. It never occurred to me that I couldn't do whatever it was that I wanted to do. And my father, in particular, was very supportive of that. He would support anything I wanted to do as long as I had thought about it and made a decision. My mother was not so enthusiastic, she worried a lot more. I guess that's mother's role.

MS. CHURCH: But she allowed it somehow.

MS. FISCH: She allowed it because my father insisted that I do what I wanted to do.

MS. CHURCH: I think that they were unusual parents, then. Because I'm not so sure in the fifties that was a normal thing for your daughter to do, to be going around the world on her own. And I think somehow that you did have some parental --

MS. FISCH: Well, I wasn't all that young either. I was 25, I think, when I was in my Fulbright year. But it was certainly an adventure, because I didn't have anything to return to financially. My parents were not able to support me, they were sending my siblings to school at that time. I had to be on my own, and I knew that.

MS. CHURCH: Are you the oldest?

MS. FISCH: Yes.

MS. CHURCH: Arline, you made a decision not to pursue a fine arts career, and you chose crafts, and that was connected to your teaching, but then you were increasingly drawn to make jewelry, and obviously, with your large works, to this idea of body adornment. Why was that such a match? Was there something in your past that prepared you to do this? Were you somehow inherently drawn to this activity?

MS. FISCH: Working with my hands was something I had done since I was quite small. I'd been a Girl Scout. My mother was a Girl Scout leader. We made baskets, I made my own clothes. I was very comfortable making things. I don't know that there's a great history of jewelry in my family. There isn't. It wasn't anything that I knew anything about. I simply admired it, not contemporary stuff, but ancient material. I was drawn to the Egyptian stuff. I was drawn to feathers. And I spent a lot of time in a natural history museum. As a Girl Scout, that's something you do a lot of.

I guess it all kind of entered my mind, this idea of decorating the body as being very appealing, as being something very human to do. I'd never been particularly interested in fashion, although I have a sister who was a fashion model, so she was very involved with the fashion world. I knew a lot about the fashion world, but it wasn't where I wanted to place my work. I had the opportunity early on, through my modeling sister, to think about having a business, designing jewelry for the fashion trade, but I rejected that idea because it was very high stress. It was not necessarily making anything, it was thinking of things, but not making them. It's the making of stuff -- that's how I think. I think with my hands more than I think with my mind. The idea that I would make things, I think, is probably the driving force. But it ended up being jewelry. It's probably more serendipity than anything. I started working in metal, and what I made was jewelry. I made some vessel forms, but I didn't really relate to those. I related to the jewelry. That was where I felt stimulated, and I continued to pursue that.

Because I was also teaching and had some other, more academic interests, I looked at things, I read books, but mostly I looked at things. I went to museums, and my travel has always been motivated by museums and things to see, as opposed to beaches or meeting people. I travel to see things. And the things I look at suggest, maybe because my mind is already focused in that direction, more things that could adorn the body. And so, it's kind of a self-perpetuating circle. One thing leads to another thing, leads to another thing, and then I need to think about it, or I need to go look at some other things.

So I go look at things, I see something I didn't expect to see, and that pushes me in a slightly different direction. That happened very much the second time I went to Denmark, which was in the middle sixties. I went with the idea -- my proposal was to make non-jewelry things, pomanders and small objects, because I thought they would be interesting.

[TAPE CHANGE.]

MS. CHURCH: This is Sharon Church, and this is tape two of my interview with Arline Fisch at her home and studio in Mission Hills, a neighborhood of San Diego, California, on July 22, 2001, for the Archives of American Art, Smithsonian Institution.

MS. FISCH: It's July 29.

MS. CHURCH: What did I say?

MS. FISCH: 22nd.

MS. CHURCH: Thank you, Arline. We were talking about your second trip to Denmark, and you were describing your interest, in making small objects such as pomanders.

MS. FISCH: Yes, that was the proposal I submitted to the Fulbright organization, and I went dedicated to pursuing that particular direction. But, at the same time, I also thought that I would look at other things. At the National Museum, I discovered this wonderful collection of Mongolian jewelry, which was full body adornment. It involves, because the Mongols, at the time that this material was collected, were nomadic -- the women wore all the wealth of the family, and so they had hats with great hanging elements that covered the ears but weren't hung from the ears, great pectorals and things that hung all the way down the back; it was very exciting.

I went to the director of the museum and asked if I could have an opportunity to study the collection at closer range. Again, through the auspices of the Fulbright office, I was able to arrange to go on Mondays when the museum was closed. I could say to them what pieces I'd like to see, they would bring them to the library, and I could examine the pieces. I did a lot of drawings from that work, which was very inspiring, and it led me to do these full length and much larger scale pieces, which I hadn't thought so much about before. I had done some larger things, but nothing like that.

That particular opportunity was especially important. I also rented a workshop space in Copenhagen at this time. I went back to see Otto Hertz, and he said he just simply couldn't manage anymore, and he thought he'd done his share, which I absolutely agreed with. But he did suggest somebody that might have space, and it turned out that this workshop was on the top floor of a very old building in the very center of Copenhagen, run by a man named Stig Berg, who was a silversmith, but who mostly did repair work.

However, he had a wonderful studio. It was very well equipped, with the biggest chasing bowl I've ever seen -- it was almost a foot and a half in diameter. And I worked very happily in that studio. Stig came not very early in the morning. He was a sole proprietor and did mostly repair work, so he worked on his own schedule. He simply gave me keys, and I could come and go as I wished. It was wonderful because I could walk to the studio from where I lived, and it was right in the center of town. At lunch time, if I had the energy to go up and down these 17 flights of stairs, I could go out on the street for lunch or go listen to another Fulbrighter who was an organist playing at the church around the corner, or just go sit in the park.

At any rate, it was a very, very productive time for me, and I did this time extend my grant, I stayed, actually, almost another six months. It was a time when I looked at a lot of things and I made a lot of things. I did do a number of small objects. I did some pomanders, I did some small portable shrines, I did small sculptural forms, and then I did some hanging forms. Another of the Fulbright people that year was a marine biologist, studying jellyfish, hydra medusae. She said to me, "You know, you'd really like what I'm working with. Why don't you come over and look?"

So I went to the lab, and here were these incredible things that I had never looked at before. They were all, of course, dead, they were specimens. They were very intriguing, but it was difficult to see how they were put together. So I went and actually looked at books of diagrams of hydra medusae, and I made several hanging forms in silver that were hydra medusae, because I felt so inspired by the form of them and by the way in which they move.

I've just recently seen a wonderful jelly exhibition at the Monterey Aquarium, and I feel totally reinvigorated by the idea of jellyfish, because again, these were living ones that move. So yeah, that was the hanging one that I made in Denmark.

MS. CHURCH: This is the Hydra medusa, made in 1968, in your catalogue.

MS. FISCH: Yes.

MS. CHURCH: And this is clearly a theme that you have returned to.

MS. FISCH: Well, I have. I mean, some of the things were because I did a collection of "Fish by Fisch" in the late nineties, but more recently by actually looking at jellyfish specifically. The living ones were much more inspiring than the specimen ones that I had looked at so many years ago. And I've seen jellyfish in reality in actual places. I took the ferry from Cape May across to Delaware, and the sea was full of jellyfish, which are so beautiful, as long as you're not in the water. At any rate, that was another inspiration from that particular time in Denmark.

In the fall of that year, having done the whole year, I was interested in having an exhibition, and it was very fortuitous that I was able to organize an exhibition at the Museum of Decorative Arts, the Kunstindustrimuseet, which is a very prominent museum in Copenhagen. They didn't normally show the work of foreigners, the living artists that they showed tended to be Danish, although they showed, certainly, historical work from everywhere. I had looked at all their pomanders, which they had been a major source of inspiration and of study for that year.

They were very amenable to hosting an exhibition, especially since it was subsidized by the Fulbright office and the U.S. Embassy. It was a marvelous thing called "Fantasies in Silver." And it created quite a stir in Copenhagen in the press, because I showed not only my pomanders, but the hydro medusae and the full-length body ornaments that I had made. It was most unusual and received a lot of review in the press, most of it favorable, some of it sort of scandalous. I mean, how could you imagine wearing such things? Otto Hertz, my old friend, wrote me a wonderful note saying that he never imagined, when I had been there in his workshop ten years before, that I would end up doing such work. He was quite astonished and pleased. So that was very nice.

That Fulbright experience was a very positive time for me and a very productive time. I then subsequently went back to Denmark in the next two years. I was there all of '67 and part of '68, I went back in the summer of '69, and then I lived there again in the spring and summer of '71 on sabbatical leave. I went back to Stig Berg's and I worked for another eight months in that same workshop.

MS. CHURCH: So you had an encapsulated experience in Denmark because you started out learning technique, then you got to some conceptual work through the museum and through your relationship with another Fulbright person. What was her name?

MS. FISCH: Joanne Allwein, now Von Weissenberg.

MS. CHURCH: And she was a marine biologist.

MS. FISCH: Right. And she actually lives now in Finland.

MS. CHURCH: Your work in Denmark really is exemplary of your interests, one in the natural world, and the other in the history of your particular craft.

MS. FISCH: Yes, it's kind of a fusion of those two things, I suppose.

MS. CHURCH: One thing that is of interest to me in any artist is that moment when they give themselves permission to be who they are. And I think that that's a hard thing for a socialized person to do, to decide that they're going to be truly unique. And it seems that in this 1966 trip, you were able to get to that place and make this large work, and seize on your interests and claim them.

MS. FISCH: It was a very seminal period for me, and I'm very grateful that I had the opportunity to do that, which I probably wouldn't have had, except for that Fulbright support, both times.

MS. CHURCH: Do you think there's something to being on your own, independent, in a foreign country that frees you up somehow of expectations?

MS. FISCH: Oh, absolutely. It was an opportunity to do whatever I wanted. There was no one to answer to, and I also didn't have any obligations. I mean, I had no commitments to exhibitions, I didn't have to teach, and I didn't have any organizational responsibilities. I barely had a telephone. So it was a very free time for me. But it did also have some social aspects, because I had a very nice group of friends, including an American who had taught at Skidmore and was, by this time, married to a Danish poet and lived in the country outside of Copenhagen. Helen Dewell was her name, and it was through her I met all kinds of interesting people -- writers, and artists, and sculptors.

My connections in the jewelry field were all those people I'd gone to school with ten years before, but it was very trade association, and it wasn't terribly interesting socially. Through Helen, I met all these design people, and architects, and through her husband, lots of writers. And so, it was a really interesting time. And also, there was a very stimulating group of Fulbright people who were in various fields, and it was a fairly cohesive group. So I also met people through that connection that enlarged my experience. They were musicians, for example -- one was an organist -- and I went to lots of concerts because Richard was involved in concerts. It was a wonderful experience. I don't think I can duplicate that again. You can't go back.

MS. CHURCH: Right.

MS. FISCH: When I went back in '71 and lived in Copenhagen again, it worked very well, because it hadn't been a long hiatus and all the people I knew were still there, and I could just pick up where I had left off. The thought of going back much later was just not anything that I wanted to do, because it could never be the same.

MS. CHURCH: So the first time you went, that was in '56, and it sounds like it was a solitary, very focused trip to learn something.

MS. FISCH: Well, it was, because I was a student, Fulbrighter -- there wasn't a lot of extra money, and because I was working so hard, had all these classes, there wasn't a lot of time either, and it was a very focused but not terribly enlarging experience. When I went in '67, it was very different, because then I was a research scholar and had a whole different position, and also a much different income. I could move around in a very different way, and I moved much more into the Danish society than I had had the opportunity to do when I was a student.

MS. CHURCH: You were older, a little bit more prepared.

MS. FISCH: But also, I had the right network of people to connect with, and I still see some of those people when I go back to Denmark. On visits, I still see some of the designers and architects that I knew then, although, my dear American friend, Helen, has died, and some of the Fulbright people I knew are gone.

MS. CHURCH: Is that Helen Dewell?

MS. FISCH: Yeah. She taught drama at Skidmore.

MS. CHURCH: And so, this time you found what I have always thought might be found in Paris . You know, you had people to talk to and ideas to throw around.

MS. FISCH: Yes, and wonderful opportunities. I mean, I could work at the museum, I could work at a library. I could work at the workshop. It was just a very enlarging experience.

MS. CHURCH: Had the attitude of the Danes changed in those ten years? Were they more accepting of you?

MS. FISCH: Yes. But also, I wasn't in a student situation. I wasn't in a school situation.

MS. CHURCH: You were established.

MS. FISCH: Right. Although, I remember having a discussion with the editor of the goldsmiths magazine, in which an article had appeared calling me a gifted amateur -- that was the title. And I challenged him at a dinner party at his house. I said, "You know, I really took offense at that: why am I called an amateur?" He said, "That's a compliment." And I said, "Not in my book." And he said, "Well" -- I'm sure he was trying to put a good face on -- he said, "an amateur is someone who does something because they love it." And I said, "You mean a professional does something they hate. I mean, that's not quite enough." The reality was I had never served a proper apprenticeship, and so I couldn't possibly be called a professional.

MS. CHURCH: Do you think that there was a distinction in his mind between someone who makes a living through his or her craft and someone who uses that craft as an art form?

MS. FISCH: Yes, I think so, because all of the Danes who are well known in the field basically work as designers. They don't actually even make anything anymore. They design, and it's made, and it's manufactured, and it's sold. And the selling is an important aspect of it. The fact that I didn't do that, that I had this teaching position that supported me, also made me suspect. I didn't need to be serious. I could make all these ridiculous, frivolous things because, clearly, I didn't need to earn a living at it.

MS. CHURCH: I think there is a question in everyone's mind about whether you make a living from the work that you make or whether you are supported in other ways. And I think for some reason that's much more an issue in the crafts than it is in the fine arts. I don't think anyone expects the same thing of a fine artist. It must be our tradition.

MS. FISCH: Well, I'm sure it does come down to the fact that you make things that are at least marginally functional, and that people buy those things, and they don't pay astronomical prices for those things. Therefore, you have to make a lot of them. If you're going to do that, then you have to work at it full time, otherwise you couldn't possibly earn a living. And that is a kind of trade position.

It's the same for painters. They just don't talk about it in the same way. I mean, painters, if they're going to be full-time painters and earn their living, have to sell quantity, because they aren't going to make one painting a year that's going to support them. They make small drawings, they do prints, they do lithographs. But nobody notices, or nobody talks about, the entrepreneurial end of that, except scathingly, of those few people who are up front about it.

MS. CHURCH: I also think that no one would call David Smith an amateur because he made his living as a welder, and that he made his art on the side. I think that there are different rules are applied.

MS. FISCH: Yes.

MS. CHURCH: And so, it's interesting that that observation was leveled at you when you were there. You've talked a lot about going to Denmark and that during this second trip you spent so much time visiting the museums. Traveling has been a huge part of your art. Did you travel as a child?

MS. FISCH: No, I was interested in thinking about that when you sent your questions, and no, my family didn't travel. My father traveled in his work, but not very far. I mean, he traveled up and down the East Coast and as far as Chicago. I lived in Cincinnati for two years because my grandparents lived there. My father actually emigrated from Austria before the First World War. He didn't have any interest at all in traveling back, he never wanted to go back.

Part of my childhood was during the Second World War when you couldn't travel anyway, and it was always just a kind of distant dream. I chose to go to the Midwest to graduate school because I wanted to get another experience from the East Coast. I lived in the Midwest for a couple of years, decided that was enough, I didn't want to live there anymore, and came back to the East Coast. Then I went to Europe, and I found that really exciting and very compatible, but I also decided that I didn't want to live there.

I guess I don't remember now whether it was the first time or the second time, maybe the second time. The question came up, would I like to stay in Denmark? And by then, one of my classmates was head of the school and I could teach there, and there were opportunities, but not enough. I looked around and I thought about it, and I thought, I don't want to be an alien, although, my friend Helen had very much become Danish. She didn't vote. She was very interested in politics. She didn't vote, because she kept her American passport. And I said, "How can you do that?" I want to be involved wherever I am.

So one, I didn't want to be an alien. And two, I didn't see that Denmark offered the kinds of opportunities that America does, just because it is small.

MS. CHURCH: Opportunities --

MS. FISCH: -- For my work.

MS. CHURCH: Exhibitions?

MS. FISCH: Exhibitions or --

MS. CHURCH: Sales?

MS. FISCH: Whatever. I just didn't see that it had the potential for me to do what I wanted to do. It had potential, it just wasn't in the areas that I was particularly interested in. If I wanted to open a small shop and sell my work right there, maybe it would have worked, but that wasn't interesting to me.

MS. CHURCH: At this point in time, in America, the crafts movement was really picking up steam. You must have felt that you were part of something that was getting to be quite an extraordinary phenomenon.

MS. FISCH: Well yes, the change between the fifties and the sixties was astronomical, and the craft world was very vibrant here. It didn't seem to be that vibrant in Denmark, and that was the only place I had lived, so I couldn't comment on living elsewhere, although later I lived in London. And although I loved living in London, it wasn't something that I wanted to do on a permanent basis.

MS. CHURCH: Well, I think of you as really being quite involved with the development of craft in this country, having started the program a little later on at San Diego. You really were involved with so much that was going on here. So it's interesting that there wasn't that same, maybe, energy in Europe.

MS. FISCH: Well, there may well have been, I just didn't feel a part of it, partly because of language. Unless you can participate in the language fully, you don't understand what's going on. And also, I didn't really like the restrictions, at least in Denmark. The restrictions were, you had to do things in a certain way if they were going to be accepted. As long as I was a foreigner, I could do anything I wanted, but if I was a permanent resident I wouldn't be allowed to get away with what I was making.

MS. CHURCH: But then, that second trip must have really sealed your desire to get out and see things.

MS. FISCH: Well actually, that happened on the first trip. After that student year, I traveled around Europe for two months on my own, meeting people here and there. Traveling at student level, you meet lots of people along the way. And it really fueled my interest in just the excitement of seeing new places, and being in new places, and having to figure out, where am I sleeping tonight and how am I getting to the next place, what is the next place, and all those things. It kind of stimulated my interest, I just didn't have the financial means to do as much as I might have wished.

After 1957 I didn't go back to Europe until '64, when I went to visit some people in Denmark, and I went to visit some friends in Paris, and in London. That was just a summer, like a month, but that certainly made me see that I wanted to do a lot more traveling.

MS. CHURCH: When you travel, do you do some advanced research in terms of the museums you might want to go to or do you note certain pieces that exist that you might want to be looking at?

MS. FISCH: I wish I was that well prepared. I tend not to be a terribly well prepared traveler. I'm basically a city traveler. I'm not a landscape traveler. So I know why I want to go to a certain place. I knew I wanted to go to Lisbon because I knew Gulbenkian Foundation was there and all those Lalique pieces were there. Yes, I do know those things. But I'm often surprised, and that's wonderful to be surprised.

I remember in the sixties, between that first year and the extended six months, I again did a tour around Europe, only this time I had a car and drove through Prague. It just happened that there was a butterfly exhibition, and I had never thought about looking at butterflies, but that's what there was. So I spent the afternoon drawing butterflies, and when I got back to Copenhagen, I made butterflies.

MS. CHURCH: Again, that serendipitous opportunity and being open to it.

MS. FISCH: And just allowing it to happen.

MS. CHURCH: Yes, isn't that great? Arline, at what point do you think you became international in terms of your scope and your interests?

MS. FISCH: Probably 1964, which was the start of the World Crafts Council when there was this huge conference at Columbia University. It was one week, and there were, I don't know, there must have been close to a thousand people, maybe not that many, but a lot of people. I went the whole time, and it was fantastic. I met so many people, and it was so exciting, and I knew right then that I wanted to be involved with that organization, because it brought people together that I would never meet otherwise.

I was very fortunate in that I was very shortly involved in the organization. I think what happened was, in 1968, there was a conference in Peru, which I went to. At the conference, there was an exhibition, which Paul Smith was in charge of. It was an exhibition that involved the pieces that people who were delegates brought with them, so it had to be arranged in two days after everybody arrived. Paul needed a lot of help, so I raised my hand and a whole bunch of us -- I remember Cynthia Bringle and Edwina, and a whole bunch of people, Ron Pearson, I think -- we all just kind of jumped in and helped Paul set up this exhibition.

There was a whole group of Peruvian art students who also were assigned to do this job. I suppose my presence was noted, or at least I was noticed as somebody who might participate in this organization. And although nothing formal happened at that time, in 1969 I think it was, I was asked if I would like to be on the committee for the American delegation. I said, yes, absolutely, I would want to do that.

[TAPE BREAK]

MS. FISCH: The next conference was in Dublin in 1970 and I was invited to give a lecture on "Large Scale Ornaments." I guess I was also on the U.S. official delegation, but I wasn't in any way an officer, so I didn't attend the business meetings or the executive committee meetings at that conference. It was a wonderful conference, and I did meet lots of people, some of whom I had met in Peru before, so it was renewing acquaintances. This conference was in, I think, early September, and I was on sabbatical, so I was going on to stay in London that fall for the next three months.

I had previously arranged to work in the workshop of Gilian Packard, who was the U.K. person in charge at the Dublin conference. Gilian, who knew I was coming to work in her workshop, introduced me to lots of people on her delegation. I met lots of British craftspeople, some of whom I knew already, but some of whom were new to me. That was a nice preparation for that time in London. It also was my birthday. The conference must have been in August, because my birthday is August 21st, and Lois Moran arranged a little birthday celebration at the final banquet dinner, which was in a castle in Shannon.

MS. CHURCH: Oh, wow!

MS. FISCH: That was great fun.

MS. CHURCH: I bet. Was it a special birthday?

MS. FISCH: No, I think it was just my birthday, but it was an interesting place. Subsequently, over a number of years, my birthday coincided with World Crafts conferences, so I have celebrated my birthday in lots of marvelous places in the world. In 1971, there was an executive committee meeting in Malta. And because I was living in Denmark at the time, I knew about the meeting and was told that I could come, even though I wasn't on the executive committee. So I did.

I thought, hey, here's a wonderful chance to see people I like and to go to a part of the world I've never been. I got a tourist trip from Copenhagen to Sicily, to Taoromina, and then I flew from Catania to Malta, and spent, three days, maybe, four days at this meeting where, again, Gilian Packard was there and Brooke Horgan the New York staff, and Mrs. Webb and Mrs. Patch, of course. It was marvelous, because it was a very small group. Again, although I was not an official, I was warmly welcomed and had a marvelous time meeting everybody and joining in all the social activities, although I didn't go to any of the meetings.

Then, in '72, there was a meeting in Istanbul. This time I was, again, on the American delegation. I arrived on a round the world ticket at that meeting, because I had been giving a lecture-workshop tour in Australia the month before, which had been organized by Maria Gazzard, whom I had met in Dublin, who was head of the Craft Board of Australia. Maria invited me to come to Australia, and I was their first foreign official lecturer. The brief there was I had to go to all eight states, because it was government funded and because it was a way of making it democratic.

I had this marvelous trip around Australia. I went everywhere, to Tasmania, Perth, Adelaide, and Alice Springs. And in 35 days, I gave something like four workshops and 17 lectures [Laughter]. They kept me very busy, but it was a great adventure. I had a fantastic time. And because I wanted to go to this meeting in Istanbul, I bought a round the world ticket, which was quite marvelous because it's a set number of miles, and you can make up to 50 stops as long as you stay within this mileage.

I had a wonderful travel agent here, and I told him where I wanted to go. I stopped in Delhi for three or four days on my way, because it seemed like such a long trip from Australia to Istanbul. I spent three or four days in Delhi, where I knew somebody that I had met in Copenhagen who was a designer, a rug designer, and I had spent several evenings with him in Copenhagen. He invited me to his home for dinner, and I met some other designers and textile merchants.

Through the World Crafts Council, I had a letter of introduction to the editor of an Indian design magazine. It turned out his house was right behind the hotel I was staying in, and I was invited for afternoon tea. It turned out that he had a salon every afternoon. It was incredible, marvelous, because all these people kept arriving -- all these business people, and design people, and architects just kind of dropped in at Patwant Singh's house in the late afternoon for tea.

I was included in this very intellectual and prestigious group for the afternoon, purely, again, because of my connections through the World Crafts Council. Maria had given me his name and written him a note that I was coming, and so he sent a note to the hotel and invited me to tea. It was wonderful. Then I went on to Istanbul, and that was my fortieth birthday. I don't know who specifically organized it, but there was a surprise birthday party on a floating fish restaurant on the Bosphorus, north of Istanbul. It was wonderful.

Marcia Lewis had organized a gift, which was a crocheted silver bra with dangles signed by everybody at the party. And I still have that. It was marvelous. Marcia made it while she was in London, and she came to Istanbul and had everybody sign these little pieces of silver. As a commemoration of my fortieth birthday. It was great.

MS. CHURCH: I want to try to imagine this community that is now global. I'll just speculate and I'll ask the question. Was the craft world so much smaller then that everyone sought out that kind of camaraderie that comes through having the same experience with media? And was there a need to connect and communicate in a way that maybe is not the same now, because there are so many publications, and is so much information?

MS. FISCH: Look at how many people go to conferences, go to the SNAG [Society of North American Goldsmiths] Conference, because I think there is a need still to have physical, face to face contact. And it was very important to me to do that. When I came to California, I didn't know anybody. I had never been west of the Mississippi before I arrived in San Diego to take up this job. The only person I had met was a designer, an industrial designer named Douglas Deeds. He was a student at Syracuse University when I was trying to decide whether I would take this job in California, where I had never been.

I called Arthur Pulos, who had been my teacher at Illinois -- he was teaching at Syracuse -- and I said, "Art, what do you think? And he said, "Well, come on over, because I have this student from San Diego." I drove over to Syracuse and I met Deeds, who told me about San Diego, and said, "When you arrive, give me a call." So he was the only person I knew. I called him up and he invited me to his family's home for dinner. It turned out he had a studio there, a working studio, and I was invited to use that studio, so for five years, I used Doug Deeds' studio as my studio here in San Diego.

MS. CHURCH: We're sort of jumping around. When did you move to San Diego?

MS. FISCH: In '61.

MS. CHURCH: So you're here in '61, and about to become a world --

MS. FISCH: Well, I was here in '61 not knowing anybody, and I needed to know people. You were asking about the craft community, and this actually leads to that. The first thing that I did was to get involved with the local and regional craft organizations, because I didn't know anybody. I joined an organization called Allied Craftsmen of San Diego, but I also joined the Southwest Assembly of the American Craft Council. At that time, the American Craft Council had regional groups, and I joined the Southwest Assembly, which was pretty much Los Angeles based at that moment.

I volunteered my services and I ended up on the committee or the board. I don't remember what it was called. Eventually, I ended up as president of that assembly, and I met lots of people through that. Southwest included Arizona, New Mexico, Nevada, Utah, Hawaii and Southern California, not Northern California. I met all kinds of people, and it was an important network for me. I suppose because I knew about the American Craft Council from living in New York, that was an easy door for me to open when I came to California. And then, through the American Craft Council , I entered the World Crafts Council.

MS. CHURCH: The American Craft Council in New York -- now, are you talking about knowing about it when you were --

MS. FISCH: When I was at Skidmore.

MS. CHURCH: At Skidmore. And how did you find out about the American Craft Council ? Did somebody tell you about it?

MS. FISCH: They published a magazine and they ran a museum.

MS. CHURCH: Now, I don't think everybody just knew about that. Did you run into it on the street? Did you see the magazine in the library?

MS. FISCH: Well, I don't know. It just seemed that I always knew about it, I guess.

MS. CHURCH: Someone had to point me in that direction. You know, look at this magazine -- oh, I haven't seen that before.

MS. FISCH: I certainly was aware of it when I taught at Skidmore before I moved to California. I wasn't involved with it very much, although there was a conference in '57 at Asilomar, which I did not attend, but I knew about and read about avidly, and wished I could have gone. Then, there was a conference at Lake George, which was just north of Saratoga. I didn't actually go to it, but I saw some of the people. I can't remember why I didn't go. I wasn't in town or something like that. By then, I was beginning to know people, and I guess I sought out some connections with people because I wanted them.

MS. CHURCH: This idea of people and correspondence is getting to be a big theme in your life, that you have actively sought people out, you've maintained connections. You've really benefitted from that network that you've created for yourself.

MS. FISCH: Well, I have. I think, perhaps, part of it is that I'm a single person. I need to have connections in some other way than home, because home is lonely. So I reached out a lot to meet people. It was also exciting, although it was not always pleasant. There was lots of contention and egos bruised, but there was also lots of promise and lots of activity. Through the Southwest Assembly, we had conferences, we had meetings, we had exhibitions. And because I was involved, I also was invited to jury something or invited to give a lecture somewhere, because I was going to be there anyway for a meeting.

It's like pebbles that you throw in the pond, the ripples expand, and you keep meeting more opportunities and it builds. Also I wasn't -- although basically, I'm a relatively shy person, I wasn't shy about volunteering to do things or to present things, because I found that interesting to me intellectually to do that. And I'm good at organizations, so it was not hard for me to do that, and it was, in many cases, very selfishly motivated.

MS. CHURCH: Well, there was a mutual benefit.

MS. FISCH: It got me places and it introduced me to people that I didn't have to approach totally cold, because they were in a field that I knew.

MS. CHURCH: I would like to turn to some of the work and influences that have been active in your art. They are so linked with the travel. I'd like to talk about how you have gone to look at objects and artifacts in museums, and what information you absorbed. One thing that I note is that you're not after the content of the piece. You're after something else. You're looking for variability or --

MS. FISCH: Well, there are lots of things that I derive from what I look at. Sometimes, it's only the way something's put together; I notice that and I think, oh, isn't that an interesting thing. I draw that, and it goes into my notebook, but it also goes into my head that that's a possible thing to do. I don't know at that moment what it's going to be used for, but I'm interested in that particular connection or that particular device that I hadn't noticed before.

I try, when I go to museums, to do two things. One, to appreciate what I'm looking at, just to see it, but then to isolate a few pieces that I really look at in detail. I study and I draw not with any purpose in mind. I mean, I don't go looking for specific things. I just try to be open-minded and keep my eyes open. It's interesting that every time I go back to the same place, I see something different. I've probably spent more time at the Metropolitan in the Egyptian collection than most people, and I still see a new thing that I didn't see before, every time I visit.

I'm surprised, delighted, inspired. Maybe I don't ever do anything with that, but at the moment, it's exciting, and I write it down and make notes, I do some drawings. Maybe years later -- I do go through my sketchbooks from the past, just because I think, well, there's probably something here that I haven't used that I thought was interesting, and maybe I should revisit that. I just kind of page through, and sometimes I find, oh, now there's something. I always wanted to do something like that and I never have. Why don't I try that now?

Sometimes, I just continue to skip over but think about various things. I don't go looking for specific things, but I go with an open mind. And again, I've probably looked at the pre-Columbian gold at the Metropolitan in their treasury in the Michael Rockefeller wing hundreds of times, but I still love looking at it, and I still notice something new that I didn't notice before.

MS. CHURCH: You said the word love. There is a kind of love that you have for some of these things that you see. It seems that you are very secure in what you want to be making and your approach to art. But at the same time, you allow a connection to occur so that you can be, like you say, open to the work that you see and allow it to have an impact at some point.

MS. FISCH: Well, I guess I want to have impact from other things. Because if everything has to generate from inside my head, it's going to get stale after a while.

MS. CHURCH: I think that's a good observation.

MS. FISCH: Sometimes I do reach an impasse. I think everybody does from time to time. I work through that by cruising through my sketchbooks, because if I can't get to a place to see something new, I have all this information that I could look at. I find that more meaningful than looking at photographs. I love looking at colored images, but I don't find them very provocative or directly provocative in terms of what I'm going to make, because there's not enough information in a photograph.

MS. CHURCH: Do you think that drawing not only requires observation, but allows for translation, as well?

MS. FISCH: You're already beginning to figure out, how would I do this? Yeah, and that's where I make notes, because, I'm standing up with a sketchbook, and it's not very comfortable, and I can't do anything very extensive or detailed. So I make some observational drawings, and then I make notes. Try this, think about this; what if? My sketchbooks are full of those kinds of little directives. I don't always pay attention to them, but that's what's fun about going back through the sketchbooks, that I have all this conversation with myself that I can renew.

MS. CHURCH: I think that's marvelous. You're looking at these museum pieces aesthetically, and you're allowing yourself to just have a very pure response to them. And then you begin to translate them somehow. Then there's this other component in your work, which is technique. It's mixed up with all of this. I don't think it's separate from it. But in your speculation, you're also thinking about how it might be made.

MS. FISCH: Right, how would I do this? Or, I observe something and think, oh, what happens if I try this in metal? And it's not always a metal thing that I'm looking at.

MS. CHURCH: One of the stories I'd like to capture on these tapes is how you developed the fiber textile techniques in metal. And certainly, that came with an observation of a piece in a museum, and then boom, a whole lifetime [Laughter].

MS. FISCH: Yes, it wasn't quite so immediate. It was direct, but not immediate. Because in '63 when I went to Peru, I looked at pre-Columbian textiles. And I saw also gold sewn to cloth. When I came back, that's what I did immediately. I made a piece that I've just remade, as a matter of fact, for the exhibition at the Textile Museum. I made a velvet bib that I sewed silver pieces to, and that was the immediate direct result of what I had looked at. But it looked like a pre-Columbian rip off, so I didn't go on with that.

It was interesting, but I didn't see any future in that. Although now I see that I could have moved in other directions with that concept, but I didn't. The next thing I made had nothing to do with the pre-Columbian things, except in shape. I made the same metal pieces that I made to sew onto something, but this time I actually wove in and out of them. And that was not something that I had seen in Peru. It was just something that came out of my knowing how to weave.

I thought about, why don't I try this? I did two pieces, I think, like that, where I made the metal elements and I wove in and out around them. Yes, that piece which is silk and linen, that's actually woven in and out of the metal pieces. That was a little bit more of a step away from the original inspiration, at least technically. I did another very large piece like that that was so labor intensive I thought, I'm not sure I want to do this anymore.

However, I might have continued with that, except that then, I went to Denmark on Fulbright research grant, and that was not part of my program, so I actually didn't do anything more with that for several years. I went back to Peru in '68, for the World Crafts Conference. And this time, the Gallo Gold Museum was open, which it hadn't been in '63. So that's when I saw this little tiny fragment of woven gold. And I thought, oh, now that's interesting. Why didn't I see that before? Well, I didn't see it before. I didn't immediately do anything with that either, but it certainly was in my head.

The next time I approached the idea was in 1970 when I was in London working at Gilian Packard's workshop, and I couldn't work there at night, because she had an elaborate alarm system. That meant I had to leave whenever the last person left, which was usually about 6:30. In the early fall, that was fine because it was light out and I could be a tourist for the rest of whatever the light would be. But as winter came, I thought, I need to do something.

I was living in this one room, a little bedsitter in the middle of London, which was not a terribly comfortable, relaxing place. I thought, if I just had something to do, then I thought, well, I know how to do these things. Why don't I try this? And that's where I made my first woven metal piece, because I could do that not in the studio. I could make the components at the workshop, and then I could work on it in my room.

I also did a spool knitted piece for the same reason. I don't know that I had that in mind, but maybe I did before I went, because I had the material. I had some 30-gauge 18-karat gold that I must have ordered specifically with that in mind, because I sat and did this little spool knitted thing hours on end in my little bed sit at night. And when it got long enough, which was as far as my arms would reach, I took it to the workshop and made the findings for it.

In the workshop, I wasn't doing textile things at all. I was doing, I think, some chased pieces and some constructed pieces. The other half of that year, in January, I moved to Denmark. And there, I went back to Stig Berg's workshop where I had a giant chasing bowl. So, I didn't do any textile things there because I had all this other opportunity and interest. It wasn't really until 1971 when Van Nostrand -- the publisher -- asked through a gallery if I would be interested in writing a book. I thought, I don't want to write a book, a textbook. There are plenty; I don't need to do that.

But I thought about it, and I thought, you know, this textile stuff is really interesting, and there's no information. By then I had begun to try a few other things, and I realized there was no specific technical information. So I contacted Van Nostrand and said, if you would be interested in this subject, I would be interested to do this book, and I prepared a little outline of what I thought I would cover.

They said, "Well, that sounds interesting." I said, "Well, I'm not sure I want to do this, because I'm not sure how big the interest is. I'm interested, but I don't know if there's an audience for this. I'm going to Australia on a two month lecture tour, and I will offer a workshop in this subject. I'll see how it goes and whether people are interested." In the meantime, I had done some work with my students at San Diego State.

MS. CHURCH: So it was more than a rudimentary --

MS. FISCH: Yes, it was more than just that one or two things. I wasn't doing very much, but I was saying to the students, why don't you try this and why don't you try that, and we will all do samples like this. I developed a curriculum, and we did samples. And you know, everything worked. It was really interesting; the students did exciting things. And so, I did this workshop tour, and there seemed to be interest. When I came back, I said, okay, I will proceed with this. I had to write a sample chapter, and then the contract was signed. I spent a year doing everything and preparing the manuscript.

[TAPE CHANGE.]

MS. CHURCH: This is Sharon Church interviewing Arline Fisch at her home and studio in Mission Hills, a neighborhood of San Diego, California. Today is Monday, July 30, 2001. This interview is for the Archives of American Art, the Smithsonian Institution. Arline, you've been talking about how you developed the various textile techniques in metals. Can you continue with that story?

MS. FISCH: In the year that I prepared a manuscript for the book that was eventually published, I sat here in this studio and I made samples of everything that I knew how to do. And because I had decided that I would photograph works in process, because it seemed too complicated to do it with a photographer, I used the advance from the publisher to buy a very good camera and to have some lessons in black and white photography so that I could take step by step photographs in the studio as I was making things.

My recollection is that I did all the samples, and then I sat and wrote the text. It was very fortunate that at that particular moment, the university had just established a typing pool that nobody was using very much, and the dean said it was okay for me to have them type the manuscript for my book. I actually wrote longhand, then dictated into a tape, which I delivered and had it typed, which was really very nice because it made it much easier than my having to type the manuscript myself.

I was able to spend my time making the samples and photographing them. The photographing was hard for me, because that's not something that I felt really comfortable with, but I'm glad that I did it that way, because it meant that I didn't have to prepare multiple stages of something for a photographer. I could just photograph step one and then go on and photograph the next step, and so on. In the end, it worked out better for me.

I also decided that a year was quite long enough to do this project, so I was determined to finish it in a year. A few techniques I rejected out of hand, and I later had to recant that. I first said no, you don't ever want to make knots in metal, it's too difficult, so macramé was out. Of course, that's not true, and in the second edition, I fixed that. But I did things like caning, which I hadn't done since I was a kid, when I remember caning canoe seats.

Everything I tried worked in metal, although some things worked better than others. The book has an introductory chapter on referential material. Doing the research for that part was really probably the most interesting to me; I kept finding examples, historical examples -- never a place where you could say, ah, in this culture or this period was everybody doing textile techniques in metal. It wasn't like that. For example I found a Greek head wreath that was made like a basket. I just found things unexpectedly.

People, like Jack Larsen who knew I was working on this book, would send me things. He'd see something and he would send it to me, and other people would do the same. I accumulated samples, examples, both photographic examples and actual examples of things like strainers and so on. That chapter was interesting just to demonstrate that I wasn't actually inventing anything. I was simply looking at things and transposing them into a more contemporary mode or format.

When the book was published, it was well received, it was well reviewed and all of that, and it sold well, but it didn't seem to have much impact. I mean, I didn't see any work coming back. The book went out of print in ten years. It sold steadily and then it went out of print. Unfortunately, it went out of print just at the moment that Van Nostrand sold that division of books to another publisher. The editor at Van Nostrand said they would have reprinted because they felt there was still a market, not a huge market, but it was worth redoing, but the new publisher sat on it for a year and a half, and then decided they wouldn't do it, by which time they'd destroyed the plates. Reprinting it was out of the question, even though I now had the copyright and could have done that. It meant it had to be republished, which was a much harder thing to convince some other publisher that they wanted to do, because they had to front up all of the expenses.

I would periodically write letters to a whole bunch of publishers, one or two of whom would express interest, and I would pursue that, but nothing came of it. After about eight years, I got tired of doing that, but I was tired of having people send me postcards or calling me up whining about, why can't I find a copy of your book? For a while I had the university make Xerox copies. They were really not very good. It was okay; you could read the stuff, but it was hardly a nice presentation, but it at least took care of the whiners, and I didn't need to think about it.

Then, I saw a book by Shereen Laplantz on twill basketry [Twill Basketry : A Handbook of Designs, Techniques, and Styles, 1993] and it was very handsomely done, by Lark Books, which does books on textiles. I thought, okay, I'll give that a try. I'll write to them. I wrote this letter, and I had a phone call back from the publisher saying, "I have that book right here on my bookshelf. We'd love to do it." That was really wonderful.

It was republished in 1995, by which time I was seeing some results. It had taken all this time, from '75 to ‘90 before I began to see more than one or two people. Mary Hu has always used basketry techniques in metal from the same time that I started, but there wasn't very much else going on. Then suddenly, there seemed to be a lot of activity, and since '95, there's been an increasing amount of interest, and I find that really exciting.

Lots more textile people are interested in using metal. There are a lot of weavers now who use metal warps because the structure enables things to be self-supporting. There's a lot more going on, when this second edition went out of print this last year, I was determined to get it back in print quickly. That's going to happen. It will come out in September, 2001.

MS. CHURCH: So a third edition is on the way.

MS. FISCH: Yes, and the only thing that's different about the third edition is the photographic section. When I did the second edition, I added a lot of material. I took out a little bit, but I added a section on machine knitting, which I hadn't done in the seventies, and also put in a section on knots, because I knew by now that you could, in fact, do that. There wasn't a lot more that I had to say technically. I didn't see any reason to rewrite the book, but I did agree to redo the portfolio section, and it's actually twice as large, with a lot of photographs.

There are about 50 artists from different parts of the world represented. There are Norwegians, and Danes, and Australians, and Europeans. That was exciting to me, to ferret out people who were doing interesting things. And, of course, since I sent everything off to the publisher and it's all too late to do anything, I've discovered a lot more people.

MS. CHURCH: Well, that will be for the fourth edition [Laughter]. I am glad, because I was one of those people who had the first edition, and it disappeared. Then, when I got to PCA, the library had a copy and that disappeared. I don't know what was going on, but your books were disappearing. And I think all of us were eager and thrilled when you republished it. And then, when you told me that was over, I thought, oh no, we're going to go through this again: it's going to disappear.

MS. FISCH: Well, happily, it will back in print very shortly, and hopefully it won't happen again.

MS. CHURCH: It's obviously a really useful text for a lot of people.

MS. FISCH: It seems to be something. I just finished giving a little three-day workshop at the Canberra School of Art in Australia, and a few of the students actually came from other parts of Australia to do this workshop, because they were already involved. They were already crocheting or knitting in wire. It was exciting to learn that the book had had some impact, that it had introduced the idea.

MS. CHURCH: Yes, that's great. Now, I want to back up a little bit and find out how you were introduced to textiles, to fibers. How did that happen in your life?

MS. FISCH: People ask me all the time, where did I start? Was I a weaver first or a metals person first? I was a metals person. I did very little in textile structures, although I had always been involved in dressmaking. I always made my own clothes, and so I was interested in fabric, but I had never made any fabric other than printed stuff.

It was when I was at Skidmore teaching a variety of things: art education, silkscreen printing. I think I taught lettering once. I was never going to teach jewelry because Earl Pardon was there, and Earl made it very clear that he was not going to share this field. I knew that when I went there.

One day, the department chair, who was Marion Pease, said to me, "Why don't you take over the weaving program when I retire next year?" I knew it was because she wanted to give me something that would be mine. And I said, "Well, Marion, that's wonderful, but I don't know how: I don't know how to weave." And she said, "Well, I'll teach you, and we'll send you to school." So I said, "Well, okay, that sounds interesting." The weaving studio at Skidmore was a wonderful place.

I took lessons from Marion -- she sort of tutored me and showed me a loom, and showed me how to string it up and so on. And then I went to Haystack for six weeks the next summer. My first teacher was Jack Larsen. My second teacher was Ted Hallman. In Jack's class, the first thing he said was, "I've done my time under the loom. I don't plan to do anymore, so don't ask. And you're to string up a double cloth." We had very specific instructions, and I'm thinking, oh my god, I don't know how to do this, but I'm certainly not going to tell him that I don't know how.

The next morning I got up at six, took my book, went to the studio, sat under the loom and figured it out from what Marion had told me and what I had in front of me in the book, and I got it strung up. I don't know that Jack ever knew that I didn't know anything, because I performed okay in the end. At the end of three weeks, I had managed to keep up and do some interesting samples. And I think I even made a piece but, I think they were mostly samples, pretty good samples. I was quite pleased with the result but it was a harrowing introduction. I learned a lot. And then, the next session was Ted Hallman, which was rug weaving, which technically was not so difficult, but introduced the use of really brilliant color in marvelous wools. So that was an exciting time, three weeks also, and I again made samples. I still have those and am rather proud of them.

I went back to Skidmore in the fall and started teaching weaving. My first student was Nancy Merritt. That's another Haystack connection because Nancy married Fran Merritt's son and became a weaver. I taught weaving for only that one year, because midway in that year, a job announcement came from San Diego State College -- it was a college then -- for a person to start a jewelry program. And it was Earl who handed me the job description [Laughter], and said, "You might want to apply for this."

So I did, and I got the job and came out here to teach metals but the students found out very quickly that I knew how to weave. There was a small weaving program in the Home Economics Department, several buildings away, but none in the Art Department, but there were several looms standing in the room I was teaching jewelry in. So I set up the looms and showed the students how to work, and before I knew it, I had started a weaving program.

I acquired a number of used looms. I just advertised in town, and it's amazing how many people have looms they don't use. I acquired enough looms for a class, found a classroom to put them in, and voila, we had a weaving program, which I taught along with the jewelry program.

MS. CHURCH: So you started a jewelry program and then, almost without thinking about it, you were simultaneously building a weaving program.

MS. FISCH: Yes, it was unexpected.

MS. CHURCH: Because of demand and interest.

MS. FISCH: Yes. And I probably couldn't have done it if I had been older than I was at that moment, because it took an enormous amount of energy to run both programs. But I did that for all through the sixties. We hired Joan Austin to run the weaving program in 1970, and I never taught it after that. At any rate, in that period of the sixties, the textile field was just blossoming, and it was exceptionally powerful in Southern California, centered in Los Angeles.

Everybody was very excited about things like pre-Columbian weaving, and large-scale textile structures, sculptures, and off loom weaving. All of that was just so exciting that I got quite caught up in that. I never actually did very much myself, and I never presented weaving in exhibitions. I never presented myself as a weaver professionally, but because I was teaching, clearly, I needed to do some things. I had a large floor loom, and I did weave some wall hangings.

I was very taken with Sheila Hicks' work. She had a small exhibition -- I think it was her first exhibition in the U.S., in La Jolla, in it must have been 1962 or ‘63, of her little frame loom tapestries. She had, I don't know, maybe 25 of them, but they were all quite small and very beautiful. She came to the exhibition and I met her. As a result, I went to visit her in Taxco the next year, in 1963, and that was very influential. I did some small frame weaving tapestries, and I had the students doing those as well.

Ultimately, what happened was the textile program became a kind of research program for me. That is, I could think of all these things that could be explored. I didn't do them myself, but I gave it to the students in assignments or suggestions. The students did absolutely wonderful work, and I had marvelous students. Ferne Jacobs came, for example, one short summer program I did at San Diego State. That was her first involvement, not with weaving, but with more contemporary ideas about weaving, because she'd been working at the Weaver's Guild in Los Angeles. I was very excited about the textiles, and the field was very exciting, but I never quite made the leap to being a textile artist.

MS. CHURCH: Well, I still think of you as having a strong affiliation with textiles.

MS. FISCH: I guess the material that I preferred was metal. And so, I never quite made the leap to becoming a textile artist.

MS. CHURCH: And you're not classified in that category.

MS. FISCH: No, I never put myself in that category. I suppose looking back on it, I certainly had that option. I could have done that, but I chose not to because I wanted to concentrate on the metal.

MS. CHURCH: Currently, craft artists move between media; they are crossing over and mixing things up. You were really one of the first among the post-World War II craft persons to do this. And you did it in a very honest way, not even consciously. You were crossing over. I think this is one of the things that is so interesting about you. You were a metals person working in fibers techniques and developing work that is at once ornament and clothing.

MS. FISCH: I think some of that comes from the fact that I really was an art education major, and as such, I had a generalist background. I didn't start as an undergraduate majoring in a particular medium as students do now. Skidmore encouraged that kind of generalization or open ended education, and I think that was very valuable, so that I didn't get so stuck in a direction that I couldn't move out and try some other things.

Early on, I incorporated some ceramic things in my jewelry. I never felt really satisfied with that, so I didn't continue it. But I did some little Faience clay modeling and incorporated that in a few pieces. And I did some glass very early on, just little melted glass beads that I incorporated into rather large neckpieces. I've lost track of those, so I don't even have good photographs, but they were actually quite successful.

MS. CHURCH: It would be nice to see them now. In terms of your work in metals and in textiles, the body has always been central to your work. I know you've made other things, but wearability, the body seem central to your work. How does this work that you're creating function on the form, both physically and psychologically? Let's just talk about the physical aspects first.

MS. FISCH: I think we did cover some of that yesterday in my saying that I try everything on, so all of that has to do with comfort and movability, and flexibility, but the idea that all of what I do is sited on the body gives it a dimension, gives it a scale that I'm comfortable with. I've tried working larger, off the body, and I don't feel as comfortable or as confident there, so I chose not to pursue that. But the idea that what I do goes on the body gives me a destination and a limitation that I like. It has some drawbacks, but it's sort of setting parameters for me that I am very happy to work within.

MS. CHURCH: Limitations have, I think, two things: they give you a clear arena in which you're working, and also, they can tell you where not to go beyond. They give you a very defined arena in which to operate. Do you think your traveling makes portability important, the fact that you can put it on your body and go? Is that maybe something that's involved?

MS. FISCH: You mean in terms of making it, that I can make it anywhere?

MS. CHURCH: No, no, no. That it is the art form of nomadic peoples.

MS. FISCH: I've never thought about it in that way, but I know that I don't care to have the work hung on a wall or put in a box on the wall, although it may be nicer for people to look at than to have it tucked away. I have, in some instances, actually made situations for the jewelry to be in when it's not on the body, so that it does at least have a presence when somebody's not wearing it. In actual fact, it's really wonderful to think that what you've made is moving around in the world and isn't sitting in a corner somewhere, or in a garden somewhere, where only a few people get to see it.

MS. CHURCH: The social aspect.

MS. FISCH: The social aspect is really intriguing, and it's always interesting to me to observe somebody that I unexpectedly ran into who's wearing something I made.

MS. CHURCH: Like yesterday.

MS. FISCH: Like yesterday, yes [Laughs]. That's very gratifying, but it also means that what I've created is moving in the world apart from me, and that's very rewarding. I like that aspect of it. I suppose, in some ways, it may be why I don't like doing small things like rings, although certainly, they have a bigger opportunity to move around in the world than the things I make. But they're not so noticeable, and I like the noticeability. I guess that's my ego trip thing.

MS. CHURCH: Well, it might even be a little bit more connected to theater, and performance, and spectacle.

MS. FISCH: I suppose so. I certainly don't think that women wear jewelry or beautiful clothing to be not noticed. My perception is, if you want to be a wallflower, you don't wear exotic things, because if you wear exotic things, you're not a wallflower, you are noticed. I love running into Zandra Rhodes, for example, who lives part of the time here in San Diego. You always know Zandra wherever she is, at the opera, or at a party, or walking down the street, because she has flaming pink hair and wonderful exotic clothes. You always recognize her.

I wish more women had that sense about them. Not very many people are quite so flamboyant as that. But it is nice to see women moving around in a social situation wearing things, whether it's my jewelry or somebody else's jewelry , or wearing a beautiful piece of clothing, that makes them individual and noticeable, and gives them a presence in a group situation.

MS. CHURCH: I was surprised yesterday at the Neurological Science Institute piano performance, how many people there knew you, were wearing art jewelry, and were excited to talk to you about their jewelry. I felt that you had had an enormous impact on the San Diego community through this idea you have about how jewelry can be a social and visual --

MS. FISCH: But yesterday was unusual, I think. It happened to be a group of people that are interested in jewelry. They shop at Taboo Studio, they belong to the San Diego State Art Council, they've supported my work. And so, they can have a conversation about it, and that's fun for me, but it's not so usual.

MS. CHURCH: Well, I was really astounded, and I thought that they were very educated about --

MS. FISCH: Oh, yes, well, one of the women you met was a former gallery owner, and she used to sell my work, and so she's very familiar with it, of course.

MS. CHURCH: Well, you'd fool me! I think you've turned the town around. We've touched on this, but I want to make sure we explored it: the psychological aspects of jewelry. The jewelry physically sits somewhere between the person and the viewer. It's on the body, but it is exposed to this larger audience. And I think that there's a conversation there. I think you explained to us what you're saying through the jewelry, but there is an effect of the spectacle, and then there's the audience.

So there are three things going on: there's the interior, private part of the person wearing it, there's the performance of the pieces, and then there's the audience that receives it. Do you have anything to say about all of that?

MS. FISCH: You know, if someone's wearing string of pearls, the pearls may be very beautiful or they may be fake, but the audience doesn't respond to that, they simply notice that they're pearls. But very few people would venture to comment on such a piece of jewelry, whereas, if someone's wearing a piece of art jewelry, something that is out of the ordinary, the tendency is for people to comment on it. They come up and they look at it, and they say something about it, and that provokes an interaction.

Personally, I like that, because it's hard for me to initiate a conversation with somebody. But if I'm wearing a piece of jewelry, people come up and suddenly I'm engaged in conversation. I think that may be also what happens with people who buy jewelry and wear it with a certain amount of self-confidence, that this is going to attract attention, and it is a way of opening a conversation or introducing a person.

I think, in the past, people have said things to me like, oh, you have to be tall and thin to wear your jewelry, and that's not true. I've seen many other shapes of people who wear my jewelry very well [Laughter]. I think it takes a confident person; that's the key. If someone feels very shy and non-self confident, then the jewelry's intimidating and they shouldn't wear it.

I remember once at an opening of an exhibition of mine where I was showing full length pieces, a man came up to me and said he was very interested in one of them full length pieces for his wife. I knew his wife, she was a very shy, demure person. It was awful of him to think that she would, in any way, be able to wear that piece. And I said that to him. I would be happy to have your wife have a piece, but it's not this piece, because I don't think she'd wear it. Not only wouldn't she wear it, she would be devastated. I thought that was really so insensitive of him to think that she could manage that. It was certainly not anything I wanted to be involved in.

MS. CHURCH: So you are actually very aware of the effect jewelry has and the appropriateness of it. I think I've read about your desire not to have the jewelry overwhelm the wearer.

MS. FISCH: Right. I don't want what I make to be hung on "walking-around" pedestals. I mean, that's fine if I've hired mannequins to do that or models to do that. But for people who own the jewelry, they have to feel that it's part of them, and not that they are simply an alternative to a wall or a pedestal to support my ego. I would not be happy with that. I'm delighted that people wear my work, and I'm delighted that it engages social interaction by people noticing the work. I'm pleased that the people who wear it have the ability to respond to that, that they feel comfortable to talk about it and share their excitement about the piece with whoever is questioning them.

MS. CHURCH: So in some ways, your work finds its own home. There is a personality match between the work and the wearer.

MS. FISCH: I would hope so. I think that most often the work is purchased by the women who are going to wear it, and not by people giving it to them. Occasionally, there are a few men who buy things for their wives, but they know already that that is acceptable. I don't have men buying things saying, well, I don't know if my wife's going to like this. If there's any question about it, they shouldn't buy it, because it's just going to make it uncomfortable for the recipient.

One of the advantages of not selling the work myself is that it relieves that tension of, "Is it possible to exchange the work?" I have a very dear friend whose husband wanted to give her a piece of my work, and I was thrilled that she was going to have it, but he chose the wrong piece. He bought it at Taboo, though, so she could take it back and exchange it for another piece that she preferred. And that's what happened. She was happy, and he had done his thing.

MS. CHURCH: It's interesting that your audience is comprised of women, who have been described in marketing journals, as those who buy for themselves, who have a lot of confidence, who have a need to dress in ways that have to do with their identity. Does this begin to describe the person who --

MS. FISCH: Yes, and I think it describes the person who buys art jewelry in general. I think that's a good description for most people who buy contemporary jewelry. I think that people who are collecting high karat gold and diamond jewelry buy it in another way.

MS. CHURCH: I do think that a jewelry collection is built differently from many other kinds of collections, because it's often based around the person who chooses to wear it.

MS. FISCH: Yeah, it's one of those difficult areas for people who make jewelry, I think. Because I remember Inge Assenbaum, who's a collector -- she owned a gallery in Vienna, but she was also a collector, and I remember going to look at her collection, which was 20th century, but started with Joseph Hoffman and the Wiener Werkstatt period. As she was showing me the collection, she said, "Oh now, these pieces I'm not going to keep, because I bought them for the wrong reason, and they don't belong in this collection." And I said, "What do you mean?" And she said, "Well, when I bought those, I was only thinking about how I could wear them, and that's not a way to build a proper collection."

She was an art collector, so she knew from a scholarly point of view that this was not the way to collect, but I think for most contemporary people who are not scholars, that what they collect is mostly apart from themselves. And then suddenly, there's jewelry, which is not apart from themselves, and that creates another whole dilemma, because do they buy things that they think are significant and belong in their collection if they're making a serious collection of 20th century jewelry, or do they only select those things that they can themselves relate to on their body?

Are they not buying some things because they can't wear them, and buying other things because they wear them but they are not significant? I think that's a real dilemma, and it's a dilemma for the artists in the field as well.

MS. CHURCH: I think it's a very important issue that isn't discussed too much, and maybe ought to be opened up within the field for some dialogue. I too want my jewelry to be worn. That's my most desired effect. I would not want it to be bought in a collection and put into a drawer somewhere.

MS. FISCH: No, but then there's this -- what happens when a museum buys it, and nobody's ever going to wear it again? I had to think about that. I want it there because it means that more people have access to it, and that it becomes part of a continuum of the history of ornamentation. So clearly, I want my work to be in museum collections, but the trade off is that nobody's ever going to wear it.

MS. CHURCH: Does it shift, then, in its intent? Let's say some of your fabulous collars end up -- and I'm sure they will -- in collections. Then it shifts away from the performance spectacle into, maybe, artifact, like you say, into history. And then it will become part of a study, part of a cultural --

MS. FISCH: Yes, and that's what I mean that it has, in some ways, much greater access, because more people will see it in a public collection than would ever see it in private ownership, and I become a part of the tradition, a part of the history of ornamentation. It also becomes an artifact in social history, because it identifies a period. Recently, the LA County Museum did an exhibition of 100 Years of California Art, and they chose to show a piece of mine from the sixties. The show was very comprehensive. It included design, craft, painting, sculpture, architecture. It was an enormous survey.

They chose the halter piece of mine; they wanted that specific piece because they felt it represented the sixties in California. I tried to interest them in a more recent piece, because I thought it would be better for me to have a more recent piece in the exhibition, but I could understand, when I saw the exhibition, why they wanted this particular piece. It was very related to Rudi Gernrich, the designer, who was doing topless things, and it was, in fact, related to that. I was a great fan of Rudy Germik and he influenced my thinking a lot about fashion, it's one of the few pieces where the jewelry actually becomes clothing. It's not something that probably would work now, but it was very much a part of the sixties.

MS. CHURCH: This was your 1968 Halter and Skirt, silver and printed velvet. It's a wonderful piece.

MS. FISCH: Well, but it is of the period.

MS. CHURCH: And it has become an artifact. Is it important to you that your work have a life on the body and then be received by a museum? Is it important that it be more?

MS. FISCH: I wore that piece. In fact it never fit anybody else [Laughter]. Well yes, I don't necessarily want to make pieces that go from my studio to a museum. I would like them to have a life for which they were intended before they get there. That doesn't always happen, and I don't always have control over that. I certainly wouldn't turn down the opportunity to have a piece in the museum collection for that reason, but my preference would be for them to be worn first.

MS. CHURCH: Arline, the catalogue of your retrospective exhibition, Elegant Fantasy, divides your oeuvre into 15 distinct categories that are thematic, and are in no way chronological. Some of the categories, such as Flowers, contain works that span your lifetime of making. Do you think that making is cyclical or spiral like rather than linear? How has your work evolved?

MS. FISCH: Well, it certainly hasn't been linear, for me. If anything, it's spiraling, because I come back to ideas that I didn't feel I finished, that I moved on from too quickly. Mostly, I come back to ideas because they still interest me, but I abandoned them because, at the time, something else interested me more. I don't feel uncomfortable coming back to ideas, revisiting ideas, even revisiting work just because it was nice work and I don't have anymore of it now, and I wish I did. Some of the knitted things that I've just done have that reason, that I liked them, they're all gone, and I'd like to see more of them.

Maybe I have a few ideas that I would change now from ones that I did before, 10 years ago or 12 years ago. I'm comfortable doing and revisiting ideas, but I also like to make jumps to something different, and there have been times when I've made really big jumps in what I do. When I learned to chase, for example, that was a big jump from the small unit construction things that I did earlier, to