Oral history interview with Adèle Clark, 1963 November 16

Transcript

Preface

The following oral history transcript is the result of a recorded interview with Adèle Clark on November 16, 1963. The interview took place in Richmond, Virginia and was conducted by Richard Keith Doud for the Archives of American Art, Smithsonian Institution. This interview is part of the Archives of American Art's New Deal and the Arts project.

The original transcript was edited. In 2022 the Archives created a more verbatim transcript. Additional information from the original transcript that seemed relevant was added in brackets and given an –Ed. attribution. This transcript has been lightly edited for readability by the Archives of American Art. The reader should bear in mind that they are reading a transcript of spoken, rather than written, prose. 

Interview

RICHARD DOUD:  This is an interview with Ms. Adèle Clark, former State Director for the WPA Federal Art Project in Virginia. The interview is being is being conducted at her home in Richmond, Virginia on November 16, 1963. The interviewer is Richard K. Doud. Ms. Clark would you briefly discuss for us your background in art, how you started?

ADÉLE CLARK:  We were living in Pass Christian, Mississippi and there was a very large school called the Pass Christian Institute and it had an art department. I was but eight years old and my mother entered me in the art classes there. And not only in the child's class, but I was allowed to go in every day, because I wasn't attending school regularly [on account of my health –Ed.], and work in the studio, which was on the third floor of this old house on the—right opposite the Gulf Coast in Mississippi. And the Gulf Coast was part of the Gulf of Mexico.

My teacher was quite an extraordinary woman, a Ms. Bedinger [ph] of Arkansas. And I did not know at the time, but I've realized since, that she probably had studied in Paris, perhaps at Julian's or some Beaux Arts connection there in Paris, because she had the—she made us draw from cast, statues mostly. And she let us draw from nature also, but we had—and from blocks, and, really, what's called cubism today. We had to make a drawing freehand in charcoal and then if it was nice enough, she let us do it crayon, rubbing in all the crayon with stumps. But she was very insistent in every piece of work being done from the round and I felt it almost immoral to copy. I've never been able quite to rid myself of Ms. Bedinger's [ph] attitude on that. She let me cut paper freehand, but mostly my drawings, which because of my mother's partiality to what her children did, I retained some of them. Drawing magnolias and drawing out in the yard of this old place that had banana trees and whatnot, and drawing the ocean.

Well, that continued, I think I studied under her for three years. And what interests me, especially in talking with you about this record of American art, was that—the influences that came to us from Europe. My first being the contact with what I now know was French, probably the Julian Academy. I never heard any further of Ms. Bedinger [ph], but I recall as a little girl the excitement in seeing her out on the beach at night with a lantern hanging on a stick behind her and painting moonlight on the sea. I was very much interested in what she did. And all I knew is that she was a native of Arkansas. But she must have been a woman of great talent because she conducted, extremely progressive for the '90s, a studio at a time when in many girls boarding schools they were painting what they called tapestries, "Paul and Virginia running before the storm" and all of that sort of thing. And she kept us to—my sister worked there, too—she kept us to realistic drawing, and freehand. She never let us measure anything. I recall one rather amusing incident. I came home one day and told my mother that Ms. Bedinger [ph] had said I made a very credible drawing, and my mother said, Did you tell her thank you? And I said, No. She said you must thank people when they pay you a compliment. And I said, I don't think she meant it as a compliment, I think she meant it was a nice drawing. She said, If she ever tells you a drawing is nice again be sure to say thank you. So, the next time she praised one of my drawings I said thank you, and Ms. Bedinger [ph] said, What are you thanking me for? And I said, My mother said that when anybody paid a person a compliment [laughs] she ought to be thanked. And she said, I wasn't paying you a compliment. So, I went back and told my mother that I was right. She said, Ms. Bedinger's [ph] not teaching you good manners, but you still should say thank you if somebody told you something nice. [They laugh.]

[00:05:04]

Now that was, we stayed there in Pass Christian for about four years. I was at that time in great admiration of everything I heard about the art classes in Sophie Newcomb College in New Orleans. Where they had a child's class, but I never entered that although we lived in New Orleans for a year prior to coming to Virginia. And my next art instruction in Virginia was with a Ms. Lillie Logan, who had a studio here and taught a great many people in Richmond. Ms. Logan was a product of an Italian school. She had studied in Italy. And while she still insisted on people not copying and drawing from the round instead of the flat, as the artistic terms occurred in those days, Ms. Lillie had a system of making you measure things. You held your arm out as far as you could and maybe took a key, the person's nose if you were drawing a face. And then you measured how many times the nose went into their face sideways and up and down. She also had a way of drawing from cast, but she let us draw from the models too. But everything had to be measured by a key and it was rather restrictive. And in my judgement only to be used as a check if you're teaching people to draw, and not as a mechanical aid, because if you move your arm a little bit the whole scale changes.

RICHARD DOUD:  Classic thumb stance that we see in cartoons.

ADÉLE CLARK:  Yes. But Ms.—but that was interesting to me because that brought in the Italian system of teaching. Ms. Logan —that was in the late '90s, it was somewhere in '95 and '96 with Ms. Lillie Logan. Whose studio in Richmond ought to be marked, it was directly opposite where the Commonwealth Club now stands at Madison and Franklin Street. [Ms. Logan's studio was really an art center. She was a painter of distinction in the fields of landscapes and portraits. Nora Houston was one of Ms. Logan's outstanding students. –Ed.] And she taught a great many people here. And Ms. Houston, Nora Houston and I who actively associated in the art club, both of us studied art there at Ms. Logan's.

Then at Ms. Jennie Ellett's school, now St. Catherine—the Ellett St. Catherine school, we had history of art. And a Ms. Brooks of Massachusetts taught us art history. And in the—around 1895, when I was not in it at the time because I was too young, the art club of Richmond was organized by a group of artists here. And at the art club you could work once a week free, and two very distinguished sculptures gave their free time. Mr. Willie [William L.] Sheppard, who has designed a great many of our statute here, and did quite a bit of painting and a lot of illustrating for Harper's. A great many drawings of the Confederate army, of which he was a part. He used to come and criticize us, and he had studied in Paris. And Mr. E. [Edward] V. Valentine, another very well know sculpture here, used to come and criticize and he had studied in Germany. So, there were a good many influences that came into the South through its teachers. I started at the art club. I was working downtown as a stenographer and typist and so I could study only at night and on Saturday afternoons. We used to go down and draw from cast at the Valentine Museum, and then we had two teachers here, another one, a Ms. Anne Fletcher from Colorado who had studied in Paris, and later Ms. Hallie Taliaferro, Taliaferro who had studied in Munich along with the Secessionists. [Recorder stops, restarts.] Hallie Taliaferro, Taliaferro who was a Virginian born, was—had lived in Wyoming quite a while. But she had gone from there to Europe and studied in Munich.

[00:10:00]

And she was there during about the same time that Duveneck and Chase and all had become so interested in Munich, so she was quite imbued with the value of the Munich Secessionists and—but also, she had studied in Paris and exhibited at the Salon, which we found as quite an exciting thing. Ms. Taliaferro Taliaferro made a connection, possibly through having known Mr. Chase, with the Chase Art School, which had grown out of the Art Students League. William M. Chase and Kenneth H. Miller, who had been a student at the Art Students League, had founded, together with Robert Henri, a school up at 90th and Broadway called the Chase School of Art. They had had some disaffection with the Art Students League. We heard that Mr. Miller had gotten into some art student prank and had been suspended, and Mr. Chase and Mr. Henri were angry about it. Mr. Miller was a very solemn and dignified man, and I studied under him and it was hard to believe that, but that was the story that was told.

The Chase School agreed to give scholarships to certain schools to build up their new venture, and the first scholarship awarded—the scholarship was awarded to the school of the art club. But about six people had to send their paintings and drawings, and then the scholarship was given to that student from that particular school. And the first one to win the scholarship, so far as I remember it was 1905, was Nora Houston who won a scholarship to the Chase School of Art. The following year Ms. Taliaferro telephoned me at the office where I was working and asked me   would I come up and select a portfolio to send up to the Chase School. That there were five students, and she needed a sixth one. And I told her, as I had done nothing but drawing, I hadn't had time—been able to paint because I worked only at night. She said that didn't make any difference because I probably wouldn't get it, but there were two students who were painters. So, I sent my portfolio of drawings and to everybody's surprise I got the scholarship to the Chase School that year. So, I had saved up money enough to carry me through in New York a while and with the help of my uncle, Mr. Goodman, who staked me to expenses the rest of the year, I went up to New York in the fall of 1906.

And the teachers there were Mr. Chase, and Robert Henri, and Kenneth Hayes Miller. And then there was a design school in which a Mr. Douglas Connah [ph] had taught. Henri was particularly interested in the French Impressionists and Manet, and he had done great work in France. Mr. Chase was a product of the Munich School and his history is so well known, there's no use my going into that. But he taught the portrait class and the life class. And Kenneth Miller also taught the life class and the illustration class. And it was a very exciting year. I was appointed monitor [ph] of the school—of the class, to come back the following year but I never did get back at that time, because I got sick and I had to stay in Virginia. But Ms. Houston, who went on to Paris, came back in 1908 or '09 and I was—at that time, joined her on the staff of the school of the [Richmond] Art Club which she directed. And from that time on my background was divided between teaching art and painting and drawing and doing a certain amount of illustrating and lithographing and that sort of stuff. Ms. Houston and I stayed at the Art Club until 1917, and then we separated ourselves from the Art Club and opened up our own atelier. We decided to call it the atelier because we had found out that the first art academy in the United States was established in Richmond, Virginia in 1786, and we were in great hopes of reviving that old academy.

[00:15:05]

So, we did everything we could to get French terms, because it had been established by a Frenchman. And we moved—we established our atelier at Second and Franklin. And a great many of the students from the Art Club came down with us. One of the most notable being Ed Minor Archer who is now Edmund Archer, a teacher at the Corcoran Art School. And our work there continued into the late or middle '20s. And then we operated our own studio and class for a while. We never were able to get the academy reestablished at that time, but in the '30s we did have an association that called itself the Academy of Sciences, the heir to—the Academy of Fine Arts, the heir to the old academy. And I think it was probably that general history of art and having taught so many years that threw me into the stream of the Art Project. Now maybe you better ask me—

RICHARD DOUD:  Well, that's very interesting. Were you associated at any time with the early Public Works of Art Project?

ADÉLE CLARK:  No, I was not. I was—except that I knew Mr. Parker very well. And Thomas Parker was directing that. And I saw the exhibits and went down to the reestablished academies of fine arts, which was then located on Capital Street, was the headquarters for that—in Richmond—for that Public Works of Art Project and there was a lady who lived up near Warrington who was the chairman of the committee. I think Ms. Nottingham first became interested in—Elizabeth Nottingham—in the Public Works of Art Project. But my interest in it was not very direct. I was working—in 1934 or '33, I had taken a position with the reemployment service, and I was going all over the state doing things for the—which was another government project of course, but it wasn't art. And I stayed with them until the fall of 1935. And so, my connection with the PWAP was very tenuous. [Laughs.]

RICHARD DOUD:  Well, you feel it was partly your background and partly your association with Thomas Parker that led to your selection on the WPA Federal Project?

ADÉLE CLARK:  Yes, I think it was. And also the influence from Ms. Ella Agnew, who was the director of the art—I mean she was our head person for the arts, and writers, and music, and those cultural projects which fell in in the division of WPA. I don't know just how they came to be associated more with the women's project. But Ms. Ella Agnew, who was an old friend of mine, and had been at Blacksburg VPI [Virginia Polytechnic Institute] for years, was a person who helped to choose the people who were to direct these various projects. Now prior to that, Mr. Parker had asked me just as a volunteer to be chairmen of the committee of the selection of artists before we had a paid supervisor or director. And so, I had helped select a number of people who worked with him as regional director from Washington, on the Federal Art Project. It had only about 10 or 15 artists and it was run and directed by Mr. Parker through the committee here in Richmond and I rather egotistically don't remember the names of the other committee members. But they probably have records somewhere. But I served on that committee and helped advise Mr. Parker about who to put on the Project. By the way, two or three of the sponsors of the Project—there was already some work being done, notably at the Valentine Museum, where there was a group that was making dioramas of the history of Richmond and that was going on before I was appointed. And just as a committee woman, I was helping at the Valentine Museum. I think in all we made about 15 or 20 dioramas of the history of the city of Richmond. And there were little paper figures cut out in profile and painted in watercolors. They're still at the museum, though for some reason I don't know the museum took all the Federal Art Project tags off of them.

[00:20:26]

RICHARD DOUD:  Is Ella Agnew still living?

ADÉLE CLARK:  What?

RICHARD DOUD:  Is Ella Agnew still living?

ADÉLE CLARK:  No, Ms. Ella Agnew, sadly enough, died several years ago. She did a magnificent job. She had to select the writer. She operated not only the Writers Project, the Music Project—I mean, with the directors of each specific one—and the Art Project. But also, a crafts project and a great deal of work of weaving and spinning and getting people to work all over Virginia. And I'm sorry—I don't know how much record was kept of the very splendid work she did. She was a remarkable woman, but she died several years ago. [Knocking.][Recorder stops, restarts.]

RICHARD DOUD:  Did you inaugurate plans for the various art undertakings on your own or did you receive orders from Washington or Mr. Parker or?

ADÉLE CLARK:  Well as I may have mentioned in answer to your last question, the Art Project was going in Virginia under this committee direction and under the direction of Mr. Parker from Washington. As far as I can recall at the moment there were about 10 to 15 people, at least a dozen people, already employed. There was a little group under the sponsorship of the Valentine Museum doing that historic work. There was about four people on that. Mr. Thomas C. Singleton, who has died since, was directing that Valentine Museum project, was supervising it, and doing some of the work. There was a carpenter or cabinet maker who was making the little cases for the Valentine Museum. There were two girls who were studying costume design so as to get the proper costumes for the scenes that were being represented. And I think there were about—at least there were four or five people on that.

The Academy of Arts, which had been reestablished and was then at 1110 Capital Street was entirely run on volunteer dues, which ran somewhere around five dollars per year, so they did not have a very impressive budget. And Mr. Alexander Weddell, who is quite a distinguished citizen of Virginia, then ambassador to the Argentine and consulate to Greece and all that sort of background, was the president of the academy. And we had cooperated with the city of Richmond in a tournament of arts and some art activities with the city of Richmond generally. And Mr. Parker had appointed a secretary of the academy that was a Mrs. Britten [ph] who was probably listed as a docent, and there were several people who helped with secretarial work and the hanging the exhibits. And so that was another sponsorship. There were several individual artists—I remember, there was a girl from Norfolk and there were several individual artists who were working under the conservation department here in—which was our government sponsor. As you know each project had to have a sponsor.

RICHARD DOUD:  Yes.

ADÉLE CLARK:  And so that was already running, and it had a certain direction when I took hold. The next directive that I received from Washington was through an interview with Mr. Parker who told me that he had come from somewhere in the Middlewest on the train with C. Bascom Slemp who had been a congressman from Virginia and the only Republican congressman in Virginia. [Incidentally, he was the only congressman from Virginia who had voted in favor of the amendment to the United States Constitution giving women the right of suffrage, and as I had been active in the suffrage movement, I knew Mr. Slemp and was very much interested in Mr. Parker's report of their conversation. –Ed.] At that time he was no longer a congressman, but was secretary to President Coolidge, and Mr. Slemp was a man of very far seeing judgement about the culture of Virginia and was extremely anxious to see something happen out in Southwest Virginia.

[00:25:06]

He was a resident of Big Stone Gap, in Wise County, and he told Mr. Parker, who so far as I know was the person who originated the idea of federal art galleries in the South, feeling that they were very needed little art centers. And Mr. Parker was regional director of several states.  Mr. Slemp told him that if we could have a federal art gallery in Big Stone Gap, he would see that the elementary school there gave a couple of rooms for us to use, because they didn't use all their rooms. And that he would himself be a sponsor with the school system there and the supervisors of the county and the little town of Big Stone Gap and would work out a gallery. Mr. Parker then realized that the thing could not be run by a committee any longer, so he came down to Ms. Agnew who asked me to come to an interview and asked me would I be willing to take the directorship or supervisorship, or whatever the term.

If I may make a little interlude, the government changed its names according to the way the political winds blew. The Work Progress and Work Projects and, they did all that sort of thing all time, and I don't remember just what the term was that we worked under then. I think it was Works Progress—

RICHARD DOUD:  Yes.

ADÉLE CLARK:  —and then it was changed to Work Projects. So, we just said WPA and let it go at that. But Mr. Parker asked me, would I take the supervisorship of the project. And I was very glad to do so, and I don't know, I think they paid somewhere around $150 a month or something on that order. And each artist was employed on a hourly basis, they couldn't work over 75 hours a month. And they were paid varying things from a dollar an hour in Richmond, to 35¢ an hour in the counties somewhere, because it was thought that people lived cheaper in counties. And Virginia never did make first grade in the payments. They were paid more in New York, but the dollar an hour just made the high sum of $75 a month, which is what most of the artists who were certified being eligible—because they needed the money—called certified for relief. We were allowed 10 percent of our number that didn't have to be certified, and the director of the galleries didn't have to be certified. So, I came into the Project somewhere in the later part of January or February '36, and the first job I had to do was go out to Big Stone Gap and establish the gallery out there.

It seemed to me rather fantastic that we would have a gallery out there in the Southwest mountains. But it worked out very remarkably. Mr. Parker told me that Elizabeth Nottingham of Culpeper, Virginia, who had studied art at Randolph-Macon College in Lynchburg and then studied art at the Pennsylvania Academy, and then had a Crescens [ph] scholarship that let her go all over Europe for a year painting and observing in the galleries there—would be his selection for the directorship of the gallery at Big Stone Gap. So, I rolled up to Culpepper and picked up Ms. Nottingham and we went out—drove out to Big Stone Gap. And Mr. Slemp met us and took us down to see the supervisor, the principal of the school and we established our school and little gallery, which was the first gallery established in Virginia. So, the directive did come from Washington and largely from Mr. Parker's imagination about the need in the South for these little art centers which were dignified by the term of art galleries. And that was when—at that time, or by the time a regional conference was held in Atlanta, I had 15 people on the Art Project. And Ms. Nottingham was the only one beside myself that had not had to be certified as deserving of a relief status. I think that answers the question about directive.

[00:30:17]

RICHARD DOUD:  You mentioned the Big Stone Gap gallery, what were some of the other major projects that you were associated with? What were you doing around say Richmond, or Culpeper, or Charlottesville? Were there things going on in the various towns in Virginia at the time?

ADÉLE CLARK:  At that time there were just the single artists who had been employed to work either on doing things for the Index of Design, and I think there were one or two there, and the little project I mentioned, the dioramas at the Valentine Museum and the staff at the academy in Richmond. And so, the gallery in Big Stone Gap was our first very concrete piece of work. We were given two large rooms in the elementary school out there and it was arranged that the gallery would have exhibits sent from Washington and that Ms. Nottingham would operate a school. She was a very progressive teacher and Mr. Horn [ph], the principal, would send out—they had no art in that public school so he was delighted to arrange times when the children came into the gallery. And also, we had exhibitions.

RICHARD DOUD:  Would you like to talk a little bit about some of the people who worked with you? The ones who showed unusual artistic or administrative ability? Or—

ADÉLE CLARK:  Yes, I think it would be quite interesting, particularly I would like to say some things about Elizabeth Nottingham. I've already said what her background was.

RICHARD DOUD:  Yeah.

ADÉLE CLARK:  She was a very progressive teacher. She told me afterwards she was very much frightened over having to work with me. We had never met. And she had heard of me doing a great deal of work in [legislature for –Ed.] the League of Women Voters and she thought I had got my position through some political pull. And she thought as I was a great deal older than she was that I was going to make her do a rather academic job, and she was very pleased that, although her teaching of children was even more progressive than my ideas, Ms. Houston and I had insisted on putting in modern concepts of teaching into the art club. And we stopped the children drawing from casts and we would let them draw from models and we had—from living models, and we had let them do composition as imaginative as we could get. But we were not totally sold at the time of the idea of letting a child paint anything he wanted. Ms. Nottingham was very free about the children's painting, but she and I agreed enough to work through very nicely.

Now when we got up to Big Stone Gap, we found that two extraordinarily talented boys, one was the son of a coal miner, one was the son of a man who ran an amusement park, an undertaken [ph] establishment, and it was like this coal [ph] and ice thing, you did one thing in the winter, and one thing in the summer. This boy's name was James Taylor [ph], the son of this man, and I understand—I know that he studied at Sarasota afterwards, and I understand he still kept up an art career, but I haven't heard from him recently. The other boy was named Otis Orr [ph] and he was—is now employed in a very responsible position at Reynolds Metal, having had education at the Richmond Professional Institute, which is a part of William and Mary College. And after his war experience he came back and has worked in two department stores here, window dressing, and now is at the head of the design and silk screen department at Reynold's Metal. So, I feel that those were very profitable effects of the Art Project. There were a number of very talented girls up there at the Big Stone Gap also, but those two boys are the ones that stand out in my mind. And Mr. Slemp had made a collection of historical objects of the Southwest, and he had them all housed in a little two or three houses in the back of his yard.

[00:35:03]

Afterward, as I told you, one of the few things that had been permanent from the Art Project is the Big Stone Gap Museum—Southwest Museum which was operated under the State Conservation Department, and a great stone house was willed by Mr. Slemp for its housing. And a man [Mr. True –Ed.] who worked out of Salem on the Art Project succeeded Ms. Nottingham at Big Stone Gap as director and is now directing that art museum [laughs]. Which was quite interesting. Then we had some of the other people—there was a very interesting colored man named [Philip –Ed.] Cox [in Richmond –Ed.], I can't remember his first name for the moment, but he worked on what afterwards was our painting section of the Project and did some very good paintings. He was seriously injured in the war but he's never—and so he's been a cripple, but he's kept up his artwork all the time here, and he is living here in Richmond now. We had several colored people on the Project, but I think Cox was the most talented of the group.

The next gallery we started was in—except at the academy which was gallery type of activity—the next gallery was in Lynchburg, but I think maybe that comes in a little later in the development of the Project. We did then enroll several people though on that Index of American Design, with which you're probably very familiar.

RICHARD DOUD:  Yes.

ADÉLE CLARK:  Most of the things they did on that that were good—I mean that were accepted, were housed in the National Gallery in Washington. I don't know whether that answers your question sufficiently about the people but the—

RICHARD DOUD:  Well, would you like to mention maybe some of the people in the higher administration? You talked some about Thomas Parker, were you—

ADÉLE CLARK:  [Inaudible.] Well, of course there was Mr. Holger Cahill who was a great inspiration to anybody working under him. He was very imaginative.

RICHARD DOUD:  Did you know him personally?

ADÉLE CLARK:  I knew Mr. Cahill quite well. He was a very delightful person to work with, and I think it was largely Mr. Cahill's attitude that the whole Project was kept on the high scale it was kept. He did not have any government interference at all. He worked—except there were non-Dem [ph] flare ups that came up in congress, but Mr. Cahill—I don't know whether he had originated the idea of the Index of Design. My recollection of the project was that outside Virginia, one of the biggest activities was the production of pictures, the painting section. Which curious enough we began in Virginia with the Big Stone Gap project. Mr. Slemp was very eager to have pictures of some of the judges that had—because in Virginia one of the few recognitions of art in public places is to have a portrait of judges in the courthouses and in the Supreme Court. And Mr. Slemp wanted the portraits of a good many judges painted.

There was a lady in Warm Springs who was on the project before I took it over. I'd forgotten her, for the moment, and she had studied in New York and in Paris and was quite a fine painter. I still have some of the things that she did that were not allocated. Under the system we had of the production of pictures, after the picture was produced, unless a sponsor had ordered it, the picture was open for allocation to a state or local government body that would be willing to have it framed and pay for the materials. Our artists, working at a maximum salary of a dollar an hour, were doing the paintings and the sponsors were paying for the frames and a small stipend that covered the materials used. And Ms.—this lady—I'll have to look at the records to—she was a Ms. Simpson, I don't remember her first name. She had studied under a good many people at the Henri School. She had painted a portrait of an old judge at Warm Springs, as well as restored a number of pictures that had been hurt by fire and things in buildings there.

[00:40:22]

Now I went to Warm Springs to look at her work, and she told me that her portrait of the judge, which had been pronounced very satisfactory by the court, was over in the courthouse and I went over to see the judge and found to my surprise the picture was not hanging. It was stuck back in the closet somewhere. And I was a little concerned thinking maybe it would do discredit to the Art Project, so I asked them to let me see it, and I found that it was an excellent portrait painted from life, and very good. I asked him why it wasn't hanging and he, in a very embarrassed manner, said that he was still living. And I said, Well, would that be any reason why a portrait shouldn't hang? And he said, Well, he'd never heard of a portrait being hung in a court while the judge was living. The judge—then I said frivolously—made him angry, Are they afraid you might vote the republican ticket while you're still living? [Richard Doud laughs.] And he was very angry over that, but I don't know whether it ever was hung before he died. There was that embarrassment and effigy kind of an attitude about pictures or movables being hung during their lives. And but Ms. Simpson did a great many paintings, and we allocated her paintings to schools and to various places.

The Index of Design was under the operation of Mr. Glassgold, Adolf Glassgold. And he did a perfectly wonderful piece of work. He came to Virginia quite frequently and—as the Index of Design grew and he kept up an extremely high standard of workmanship. All of those Index of Design things were done in watercolor. The next thing we did for the Index of Design was through the Mariners Museum, just outside of Newport News. Because they had an extraordinarily good collection of old figure heads and we worked not only from photographs of the figure heads, but would send the artists down when money permitted, so that they could see the coloring after they made the drawing. And those we had very good collection of figure heads. And some that weren't accepted I still have, and they could be used if you wanted to show the type of work we did. We also did a good many—we dug around to find collections of pottery and old furniture and things of that sort for the Index of Design.

And another Washington person who comes to my mind was Russell Parr, a Chicago man who was living in Washington and is still living, I hear from him occasionally.

RICHARD DOUD:  Is he still in Washington?

ADÉLE CLARK:  He's still in Washington.

RICHARD DOUD:  Could I have his address later?

ADÉLE CLARK:  Well, I'm glad to know that, I haven't see Russell for some time and he was— Mr. Parker sent him out to go and visit the galleries with me. And he would also give us a little encouragement, or sometimes discouragement, about the Index of Design, but Mr. Glassgold was the head of the Index of Design. I met a number of the Project people because we had one conference in New York and one or two conferences in Washington, and would meet people. I knew Mr. Rowan [ph], although he was with a different outfit, he was with the Treasury Department doing murals for post offices. And Mr. Parr was quite a delightful person to work with. He was very active in going out to Big Stone Gap. And when we established the gallery in Lynchburg he used to visit that quite frequently and come down to the academy. We had—in addition to the artists, we were allowed to employ carpenters and workmen who would help with the gallery and people who would pack pictures and send them about. And of course, everything we did was closely watched by Washington.

[00:45:00]

I had several artists up in Alexandria, in Fairfax County, and I think one or two in Arlington, as Northern Virginia developed. They—all these activities were developed when somebody either wrote to Washington, and they would refer to me if there was a desire to have some activity. And they—I think if we waited a minute I could collect my thoughts on this regional meeting that we went to in Alexandria—I mean, in Atlanta, in March of '36. Because it very much effected the scope of the Project, if you don't mind us taking a minute. [Recorder stops, restarts.]

About the middle of March, Ms. Agnew asked me to go with her to Atlanta where they were having a regional conference of writers, art, and music projects. And so, we went down to Atlanta and had a meeting at which several [phone rings] southern states—

It was in Atlanta that I first met Mr. Defenbacher, who was working under Mr. Parr. But we had this meeting and found out to my horror that the projects had been frozen. You couldn't take on any more people. And it left me—it left the project in Virginia under two great disadvantages. One was that it was going to be hard to staff these galleries that we were having requests for everywhere. It was going to be hard to staff the easel project which was developing. And also, it was going to very much curtail the people that I could employ who were not definitely on a relief status. Because they allowed you only a certain percentage of people who were non-relief, all the rest of the people had to be certified. Being certified for relief was one of the most humiliating processes that anybody could devise. You just had to show that—not just that you were an unemployed artist, but that you were in such a financial situation that you practically were pauperized. And there weren't enough—there were so many people who needed the money but could live some way or other than their own homes. But everything that could be done to humiliate people as needing relief was done.

And I remember even one day at my project I was called up and asked whether a certain young lady that was working on the project, and I told this person yes. We always welcomed telephone calls because we thought that somebody might be a person who wanted to employ someone. But this woman said, Was she on relief? And I refused to answer that, I said that I didn't certify the people for relief, I just took them when they were certified. And she said the reason that she was calling up was because she had seen this girl having lunch at Thalhimers department store and she didn't see how anybody on relief could afford to have lunch at Thalhimers department store. There was that type of humiliation. I told her, at the time, that I had gotten lunch at Thalhimers quite often for about 50¢ so I didn't know why anybody on relief couldn't afford 50¢ for lunch. But that was the sort of thing.

So, I was very much appalled at having just about 15 people on the project and only one, Ms. Nottingham, who didn't require certification because she was going to do an administrative job. And I fought with that—having just been appointed about a month and just learning my way around and having to go up to Washington once or twice to get directives, in addition to the directives that were given to me through Mr. Parker. I was very much appalled over realizing that the project was going to be so tight that I wouldn't be able to employ more than two administrators.

Another thing that was quite embarrassing was that when you—you almost had to get a visa to go to Washington. I could go to Alexandria, and possibly call up and get Mr. Parker or Mr. Glassgold or Mr. Parr to meet me in Alexandria. But I had to get Ms. Agnew's permission and sometimes she had to get permission from Mr. Smith who was the head of the whole of all these projects, of schools and roads and everything.

[00:50:10]

Because if you went to Washington you were supposed to be doing something almost subversive. You would work within your own group, and going across the river to Washington was—as I said you almost needed a visa. Then the expense accounts and all the other things were very terrible. I had intended and finally did employee a young man who had been a former art student of mine, but had not kept up his art work but who wanted a job of some sort and I was able to employ him as a clerk on the project to keep all of the expense accounts going. You see, each expense account had to come through to me, and then it had to be certified and then it had to be checked how many hours they had worked, and so on and so on. And I had just been on the point of employing this young man, a Mr. Boynton [ph], to be the clerk when all of this shutdown came. But we did, with a great deal of effort, straighten things out and my recollection is that before the project ended in 1942—that we had—that I had had off and on about 60 people on it.

But at that moment in March of '36 it [laughs] was a very black time. But at that time in Atlanta we learned about what they were doing in North Carolina, South Carolina, and several of the southern states. I have forgotten the precise boundaries of the region but we were kind of middle south, we included Tennessee also. So, I met people from all those different groups.

The next gallery that came up was an application from Lynchburg, for the establishment of an art gallery in Lynchburg. Mrs. Marie Williams, of whom I wrote you, is living in Richmond and says she kept a complete scrapbook of the whole—of the Lynchburg project. Mrs. Williams was never employed on the project, but she was head of the sponsorship, and she got the city council of Lynchburg to agree to sponsor an art project, if we could get a building in which to operate and open up a Lynchburg gallery and school.

I went up to Lynchburg and the day that I got up there and met Mrs. Williams we went down to see the gentleman who was the secretary or director of the Lynchburg Chamber of Commerce, which was also going to sponsor the job. We had to get a government sponsor and one or two sponsors from places like chambers of commerce or bank presidents or something. That morning there had come out in the paper an attack on two or three friends of mine and myself who had ventured to lobby several months before for some project about—it had nothing to do with the Art Project, but it was something to do with either the law that would affect the hours of women workers, or some labor thing. And the head of the Virginia national—I mean, the Virginia Manufacturers Association had made a statement to the paper that he was going to withdraw his contribution to the Richmond—the Richmond University, because Dr. Pinchbeck of the Richmond University and Dr. Mitchell of the Richmond University had been lobbying with Ms. Adele Clark, and Ms. Louisa Mason, and Ms. Laura Houston, on what he considered a very subversive piece of legislation because it affected the labor question in Virginia. So, when I went down to the Chamber of Commerce to establish—help establish the Lynchburg project, I was faced with this headline, but fortunately the secretary of the Chamber of Commerce had known me here in Richmond and also known my uncle who had been connected to the Richmond Chamber of Commerce, and he took it as a joke. But I was very much afraid that going down for the council to ask for money here I was appearing as a subversive person. [Richard Doud laughs.] But the council hadn't read the Richmond newspaper, apparently, and they did give us an appropriation, or a wave of a hand, that they would like to have a federal art project established in Richmond.

[00:55:20]

Mrs. Williams had made connection with a lovely old gentleman who was a former Confederate soldier—a Mr.—and a former—I don't know that he was a judge or not, but he was a Mr. Halsey, who owned a warehouse on Main Street in Lynchburg that had not been used for years, and he was willing to give us the ground floor of that warehouse for use as an art gallery provided that the first exhibit we held would be an exhibit of Confederate art. And we agreed to that, I with some misgivings because I—not because of it being Confederate, but because a great deal of the Confederate art since the Confederacy had been done by people who didn't know how to paint very well. But anyway, we agreed we would do it and we had an extraordinary credible Confederate art exhibit. Because we came down to the state library here and got a great many of Chapman's paintings, which we borrowed, and we got from the Valentine Museum a number of photographs of Mr. Valentine's sculpture. And I was able to get hold of a number of Mr. Sheppard's paintings. And people came up with the most extraordinary things. A deck of cards, which had been all personalized by somebody in a Confederate prison camp, with the hearts and spades worked up with figures around them.

I sent to a friend of mine in Washington and got a photograph of the statue that's on top of the capital, because Jefferson Davis had been on the committee that had approved that statue, which Crawford had done.

RICHARD DOUD:  Yes.

ADÉLE CLARK:  And the plaster cast of which is up at the Smithsonian. And if I had remembered in doing some Confederate research that Mr. Davis who was then a senator in the United States—from Mississippi—had refused Crawford's design because Crawford had a liberty cap on the statue of Freedom, or liberty or the thing. And Mr. Davis had written—Senator Davis had written that the Confederacy ought not to be associated with a revolution, such as the French revolution with a liberty cap, because the American revolution had been a withdrawal of a colonial government from its mother colony and not an uprising of serfs. And so, Crawford had to redo his statue and put a helmet, which Mr. Davis had asked for, and the helmet was to be open showing that the war was over. But the liberty cap was taken off. And I thought that was an interesting preview of Mr. Davis's attitude about succession. In other words, if the colony had succeeded it had not revolted.

So, we got that large photograph of the statue in Washington and the excerpt from Mr. Davis's statement about it and that was in the Confederate thing. So, the federal government spent its first money in Virginia really in an exhibit of [they laugh] Confederate art. People brought paintings of their husbands and photographs, but mostly it was paintings. And some of them had been done from photographs and some of them had been done in their younger days from life. But we had that and old major—he was Major Halsey. He was quite delighted he gave us—and we used for two years—this warehouse down on Main Street in Lynchburg. We then were given, in Lynchburg, the use of an old public school on the outskirts of Lynchburg. A school that had been abandoned when Lynchburg annexed part of the county. And in that we stayed for the rest of the Lynchburg gallery's life. We had some very fine exhibits and some fine classes.

[00:59:58]

We did one class with a Negro club, which was glad to have us come over and teach the Colored children. They did some very good work. And we had another one at the different centers through Lynchburg, as well as the classes in the Lynchburg gallery itself. Ms. Nottingham came down from Big Stone Gap and took over the direction of the Lynchburg gallery and we appointed Ms. Mary Goldsmith at Big Stone Gap. And so, we had those two galleries running at full tilt. And as the Academy of Arts in Richmond was having a great deal of financial troubles, we really staffed the Academy for some time, with teachers and Mr. Parker had already started with some clerks various people so that was a Richmond effect. And out of that Academy really—out of its activities grew the completion of the project that Mr.—that Judge John Barton Payne had started by giving a collection of art for Virginia and that was first collection our Museum in Virginia had. So, while the museum itself was built through WPA money, but not under the Art Project, it was state matching funds. I think it would be difficult to exaggerate the amount of good that came out of the government's work during those Depression days. Because—especially in the field of culture and of art. Because in the Art Project we discovered artists that we wouldn't have known about. One young woman afterward had a very good position at Fort Lee making army pictorial directives of the soldiers.

We then began our easel project. And we have allocated pictures to hospitals, to public schools. Ms. Houston came on the project as one of the directors of the—she came on as the director of the easel project, but she herself painted a number of pictures and one is up at the Culpeper high school. And was dedicated. Mr. True, now the director of the Big Stone Art gallery, was living in Salem and his first painting was one of the pioneers Lewis—who was with the Lewis and Clark expedition, for a high school up there. And Mr. True had studied in New York in the art students league, and a very talented man. And he's still painting although his major work is directing that Big Stone Gap gallery. And then we had—they asked for an art project in Fairfax which was held in connection with the public school system. Ms. Ions [ph] directed that for a while, and then Mr. Walker directed it, then that was all coming toward the end of that Project and we didn't keep that up. Ms. Ions [ph] came on as an easel painter after she stopped working at the Federal Art Project. The Federal Art Project cooperated with the Virginia museum in selecting paintings for the two New York World's Fair. I'm just trying to remember all the different things that came up in connection with things. But right now, I'll pause a minute.

[END OF TRACK clark63_1of2_reel_sideA_m.]

RICHARD DOUD:  Ms. Clark, could you tell me a little about the lasting effects of these government art projects in Virginia, those that have gone on and exist today?

ADÉLE CLARK:  Well, I would think that the most tangible one has been— was the establishment of that Southwest Museum. At the time of Mr. Bascom Slemp's death, which was— I don't recall exactly the date. But at any rate, by his will, he bequeathed to the state of Virginia and his town, Big Stone Gap, a very large residence that had been built by General Ayers [ph], who had been connected with a great railroad complex out there in southwest Virginia. And this was a stone house that Mr. Slemp had bought. And that house, it was turned over to the state of Virginia for a museum to house a number of collections that Mr. Slemp had made of historic things in the southwest, together with a number of paintings that had been done on the easel project of the Federal Art Project. And portraits of people—a great many portraits have been painted for courthouses. But it was suggested in Mr. Slemp's will that this— and he left some endowment in addition to the house, provided the state of Virginia would take over the project and employ a curator for the museum. And that was done. And the state of Virginia conducts that activity under its conservation department. And Mr. James True, who had been the director of the Federal Art Project after Ms. Goldsmith left, is now they curator or director of the Southwest Museum. I remember one of the things that Mr. Slemp had done had been a collection of lighting projects, all from the original little bear [ph] oil lamp on up to the electric light.

We had made, under the Federal Art Project, about a half a dozen dioramas for the Big Stone Gap gallery. We'd made a diorama of weaving activity, a diorama of sorghum making, a diorama of various activities that had been connected with the early mountain life, mountain work. We were very much gratified to feel that what work the Federal Art Project had done very greatly enhanced that museum. And Mr. True has been a painter for it. And Mr. Slemp left quite a number of other collections that he had made, that had nothing to do with the Project. But if we had had no Big Stone Gap art gallery, I do not believe that that museum could have been stablished along lines that it was established in.

We had had a branch project from Big Stone Gap that was in Abingdon. And I think that the activities we did in Abingdon in encouraging the art through—with a great deal of friendly cooperation with the Barter Theater there, has resulted in annual art exhibits and theater activities in Abingdon ever year. Although, that was more or less of a side issue. But I'm sure that the influence of the Art Project had—we had discovered artists up there in southwest Virginia that probably never would have been discovered.

Let me see. Another permanent thing, I think I mentioned, about the people. The head of the very fine art department of Richmond Professional Institute, and—which was at that time connected with William and Mary, Mr. Maurice Bonds was employed each summer on the Federal Art Project. He was an art student and during his student days he operated the Fairfax Gallery after Ms. Ions gave it up. And he also operated work in connection with the Virginia Polytechnic Institute for camps for boys and girls in which he taught art. And I'm sure that that gave him an impetus for remaining an artist, which so many of our Virginia people haven't.

[00:05:15]

I mentioned, I think, also Mr. Orr, Otis Orr, who was head of the design and silkscreen department at Randall's Metal [ph]. He was one of our discoveries at Big Stone Gap. He and the Taylor boy came to our attention first. And this is a little of a divergence, but they came to our attention first through a series of perfectly wonderful pencil drawings that they had made as boys of a mine disaster that had occurred near Big Stone Gap. As I mentioned to you, the Taylor boy's father was an undertaker. And there were just a tremendous number of casualties at this mine. And he was so much in need of help that he employed his son and the Orr boy to help with some of the transportation of the people who had been killed in this mining accident. The boys were so impressed that they made two portfolios of drawings under Ms. Nottingham's stimulation, from memory, of all of this accident. They were perfectly tremendous works of art for boys 16 or 17 to do. They were all pencil drawings. And both those boys have become artists.

Then, I met last night, a Mrs. Rex who was employed on the Art Project, on the Index of Design. She said that the project had been invaluable in keeping her going during a very difficult time. And she later had a fine position with the public schools here and has done a great deal of work.

I think we painted about 50—I say "we", the Project painted about 50 or 60 portraits for courthouses in Virginia. Then Ms. Agnew called on us for one of her craft projects, to help with the designing of crafts. And Ms. Ions did a great many designs for silkscreen. She had been an easel project person, but she did a great many designs for silkscreen, and for toys, and for things that were done in connection with the weaving project.

So, I think altogether that there was a great cultural thing. One person I should mention, Julien Binford who had had a tremendously active art career in Paris and returned to Virginia. Bought a little place at Fine Creek Mills in Powhatan County. But there was practically no sale for his art project. And somebody gave us his name. And we, Ms. Agnew and I, went out to interview him. And he was very reticent because there was so much that he didn't like to have to say about the difficulty he was in. I really believe that evening that we went out there, that afternoon, that he didn't have money enough to buy paints to finish a picture he was doing. Which, of course, is no—is quite the story of a lot of our famous artists.

RICHARD DOUD:  Yeah.

ADÉLE CLARK:  But he came on the Project and painted. He served on the easel project. He probably would have had to leave Virginia if it hadn't been for the Art Project. But he stayed on, and he has become one of the most distinguished Virginia artists and has been the instructor at Mary Washington College. And—so, I think of—now, I know we wouldn't have been able to retain him. A mural of his is now in the state library, that was not done under the Project. But I mean the fact that we were able to keep artists here in Virginia who would have left. Some of our people went on into doing work with the—war work at Fort Lee after the Project closed. I don't know of any permanent gallery except the Big Stone Gap one. But I think the impulse with keeping up art activities in Lynchburg resulted in their forming a very wonderful art complex up there, of theater and painting and the Lynchburg Art Gallery. Which I think they, quite rightfully, attribute to the fact that we were able to keep interest in art moving there.

[00:10:16]

We painted portraits which are in the Medical College of Virginia, at the Central State Hospital, and at a number—that was in Petersburg, in a number of places. There were several Negroes employed on the Project. One at Hampton who would not have been able to keep going if it hadn't been that we could employ him for a while. He did lithograph work and he wasn't connected with Hampton Institute, but he did a great deal of work. We discovered primitives all around through the state and were able to put them to work. So, I think that the Project had a very permanent effect in a number of places. Danville was another place. There was a very talented young man named Carson Davenport in Danville who painted on the Project, and who is now one of the prides of southern Virginia because he is an artist of such—you remember Carson, don't you? He did a great deal of very fine work.

RICHARD DOUD:  I noticed the wonderful watercolor there—

ADÉLE CLARK:  And a boy named Carlton Wright from Emporia [Lawrenceville –Ed.], who—Governor Harrison told me the other day when I was talking to him, that Carlton is in Texas with a fine studio. And has— he would undoubtedly have abandoned his art career, and he was a very outstanding student at RPI, if it hadn't been that he came on the Project. He was one of the few people who came to Project in the most neat and tailored fashion I've ever seen. Utterly out of keeping with most art students, and certainly with an artist who was applying for work. And I afterward found out that Carlton had made a nice contact with a tailor here, and he did all the signs for his window in return for having his clothes cleaned and [laughs] pressed. Carlton did magnificent paintings. And he had the distinction of painting one portrait from life, we were mostly confined to daguerreotypes and photographs. But Carlton painted Judge Preston Campbell from life, for one of the courthouses out in southwest Virginia. Judge Preston Campbell was a great friend of Mr. Slemp, and they were able to get that through.

Now, at the moment those are the most permanent things I can think of. Except that we did help support the Academy of Arts, galleries in Richmond. And the Academy of Art was eventually swallowed up into the larger Virginia Museum. But contributed very heavily to—both by personnel, and activities, and getting subscriptions to the museum. So, altogether I think that the Federal Art Project had a very distinct effect on Virginia art. I think that's about all that that question would cover.

RICHARD DOUD:  Well, you've more or less given us some idea of how you feel about the part that Federal Art Project has played in Virginia itself. You feel, in general, that it was definitely a good thing. I'd like to ask you now, something about your impression of the so-called government art. So many people, when they think of the Federal Art Project, think only of the bad things that were produced. Some of the third- or fourth-rate post office murals and this sort of thing. Do you feel that, in general, the art produced under these federal projects is worthy of the name art?

ADÉLE CLARK:  I was not very familiar with the—what we might call the post office art.  But as you've spoken, I've remembered another young man [Leslie Emory –Ed.] who lived up at Falls Church, who did some decorations for the post office which were not under the Federal Art Project that I—but was under Mr. Rowan's group. I felt they were quite creditable. I think Mr. Edmund Archer did an extremely distinguished mural for the Hopewell post office. In which he did it as an allegory. The Rappahannock River represented—meandered [ph] in the background, but by an Indian. And the James River about a Colonial figure.

[00:15:08]

It was purely allegorical. And of course, people who don't care for allegorical art might think it was bad. It was extraordinarily well painted because Mr. Archer is a painter of some distinction. I think some of the post office art, the one in Petersburg, particularly, I didn't care for because it was painted by someone who had no connection to Virginia and the people working on peanuts and various—and tobacco—various stuff that were typical of Virginia agriculture, all looked like large Swedish peasants instead of rather skinny looking [they laugh] Virginia farm workers and Negroes. So, I imagine there's quite a bit to be said about the quality of the art. Certainly, the quality of art that was produced in the easel project of Virginia, I think was of extremely high class.

And one thing I think that shows that it was, was that a number of the people who worked on the easel project got into the World's Fair juries, which were very critical. Ms. Ions was accepted at the first World's Fair exhibit. And several of the artists that had worked—Mr. Davenport and several of the others were—and Ms. Nottingham. I don't remember all, but I know they had to run the gamut not only of a regional jury, but of the New York jury. And I think that it certainly shows that they were up to what was good American art at the World's Fair.

I think that on the whole, that there was very little government interference. There was a very conscientious effort on the part of most of the artists that I was at all associated with. And while we were somewhat limited on this portrait question, because most of them had to be dear dead judges, and so on, that was what they wanted. And they all had to be done from photographs, and woodcuts, and faded old daguerreotypes types, and stuff. But at the same time, they rank very well with the number of official portraits in any government, certainly in Virginia.

RICHARD DOUD:  Mm-hmm [affirmative].

ADÉLE CLARK:  They rank very well with them. And some of our easel projects were highly esteemed in the schools and the places they were assigned to. We had some extraordinary people. That Dillon [ph] boy was a boy who had afflicted with polio. He was quite a fine artist. He did a number of woodcuts and watercolors.

On the whole I think the work was—stacks up pretty well with contemporary art exhibits in quality, and in imagination, and so on. But I think that there was—and that was why political interference came—there was a general effort to discredit all of those projects, particularly the cultural ones, 'cause they were new. There was a general tendency to disparage and discredit the efforts that were being made to keep—during the Depression. And you hear a great deal of things about boondoggling, and leaf raking, and all of that sort of stuff. But I think that was mostly political propaganda. It was a brand-new thing for the government to have attempted to come to the rescue of people by employing them instead of just giving them relief funds.

RICHARD DOUD:  Yeah.

ADÉLE CLARK:  And that, I think, was rightly viewed by people who were opposed to that sort of thing as setting a precedent for government employment which might in time interfere with private employment. There might have been some philosophical reasons that made their positions valid. But there certainly was very little interference and there was no interference in subject matter in Virginia, with anything we painted. There was a good deal of direction of the Index of American Design.

[00:20:02]

Some of us, from an art viewpoint, would say that this [inaudible] [exact reproduction –Ed.] type of art isn't calculated to produce imaginative work. It wasn't intended to. If you got a hold of a walnut table that traditionally was supposed to have been made by Patrick Henry, you had to do it exactly like Patrick Henry designed it. Incidentally, he and John Marshall both were a very fine designer of furniture. But we just had to do that exactly like it was.

RICHARD DOUD:  Yes.

ADÉLE CLARK:  And the old quilt and coverlets that make quite an interesting contribution to American crafts. We did any number of quilts. The bride's friendship quilt and the coverlets that had all kinds of names and were dyed with local things. We found all sorts of people who could give us contributions about how their grandmothers had dyed wool and spun them. And I think we got a lot of interesting information. Some of it's been lost. But we did get information about old arts and crafts.

And so, I would say, on the whole, that any government stimulus to art would be good, and that what was done under Mr. Cahill could be used as an example of how not to interfere or dictate to the artist. There was no propaganda anywhere in it. There was—when you look back on it, you think that a good many of the artists might have been encouraged to do all sorts of things to glorify the administration of Mr. Roosevelt, but it wasn't.

One of the few things that was done was a volunteer thing on the part of an old Russian wood carver, a Mr. Arluch [ph] that I had on the Project. And he carved an eagle, I think I have it here, and under the shield he put WPA.  And he wanted to do that for—as a contribution to show how grateful he was for what the government had done. He had a strong admiration for Mr. Roosevelt, and he put WPA under the eagle. Most of those things were voluntary things on the part of the artist. There was no propaganda at all.

When the war came on there was a little tendency to do posters and things. One of the interesting men we had on the project was Walter Whitehead, who was from Chicago and he was living in York County. And Walter had made the poster for "Over the Top" in World War I. And so, he did posters for us, in food— "Keep Food Good" and "Keep Virginia Healthy" and things like that. We did quite a bit of propaganda stuff that came up when the war came on, of doing posters and stuff. But that's natural in wartime.

RICHARD DOUD:  Certainly.

ADÉLE CLARK:  But other than that, there was no government interference in the type of painting that we did. And I think it was pretty creditable painting, and drawing, too. I don't think—we did do—and I must say it because Mr. Rufty being here reminds me of it, we had a wonderful piece of cooperation with the Music Project and the Writers Project. The Writers Project did a good of research on old folk songs. The Music Project did a tremendous amount of research on the music part of it. And I remember Mr. Rufty did—great, tedious work on mimeograph sheets—did the music for this Folk Songs to Sing. The Art Project illustrated it and made the cover design. And I think it was a pretty creditable piece of [laughs] work. He has one copy, and I haven't been able to find mine. I don't know whether that answers your question.

RICHARD DOUD:  Yeah, that's very good, Ms. Clark. It's been quite interesting, and we certainly appreciate you giving us this interview. So, I think that's probably about enough now.

ADÉLE CLARK:  Mm-hmm [affirmative].

RICHARD DOUD:  And we'll be talking with you more about this later on.

ADÉLE CLARK:  And what?

RICHARD DOUD:  We'll talk with you more about this later on.

ADÉLE CLARK:  Yeah.

RICHARD DOUD:  Alright. Thank you very much.

[END OF TRACK clark63_2of2_reel_sideA_m.]

[END OF INTERVIEW.]