Transcript
Preface
The following oral history transcript is the result of a recorded interview with Margaret Elder Philbrick on November 2, 1971. The interview took place in Westwood, Massachusetts, and was conducted by Robert F. Brown for the Archives of American Art, Smithsonian Institution.
The original transcript was edited. In 2023 the Archives retranscribed the original audio and attempted to create a verbatim transcript. 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
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RADIO ANNOUNCER: One of your favorite little ladies of song, right there.
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ROBERT F. BROWN: For the sound—for the—
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MARGARET PHILBRICK: The way I'll be talking—
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ROBERT F. BROWN: Mm-hmm, mm-hmm [affirmative].
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MARGARET PHILBRICK: All right, and now you're here in Westwood, 323 Dover Road. Is that enough?
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UNIDENTIFIED SPEAKER: I think that's good. Yeah.
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ROBERT F. BROWN: Your son does this, doesn't he? Hi.
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MARGARET PHILBRICK: Yes, he knows quite a lot about that.
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ROBERT F. BROWN: Okay, this is November 2nd, 1971. Westwood, Massachusetts. Interview with Margaret Philbrick, Robert Brown, the interviewer.
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Well, the first thing I'd like to ask about, could you say a bit about your childhood and upbringing? Stressing anything you'd like. And possibly, particularly, any early indications, inclinations toward art.
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MARGARET PHILBRICK: Well, all right, I was brought up on a farm. My father was a farmer. I was born first in Northampton, Massachusetts, and we moved around a great many different places while I was growing up. The first inclination I really had that I wanted to go into art I think was when I was possibly eight or nine years old. My sister and I were going to do a book together. She was going to write the book and I was going to do the illustrations. However, at that time, it wasn't very serious. But it was a slight inclination.
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The most important time was when I was about the seventh grade. I remember very distinctly the very—the real thrill I had when I did a real portrait drawing of one of my sisters. And it was the first time I'd ever done anything that really looked like anything. And it was just on old piece of brown paper, and I remember I saved it for years and years. And I got a thrill every time I looked at it. And then, of course, in junior high school and high school, I was in the art room all the time, as much as I could be. In my senior year in high school, I spent every single study period in there. I just loved it so. Then—
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ROBERT F. BROWN: And this was in Waltham?
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MARGARET PHILBRICK: This was when we were living in Waltham. I was in high school in Waltham. And then, my senior year, I knew that I wanted to go to art school. And I thought of nothing else but that. And my father had no interest in art at that time. He thought it was very impractical. He had no—didn't want me to go to art school. I was the oldest of six boys and girls.
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And he wanted me to do something to start making some money right away. And he knew, of course, that there was nothing in art at that time. But I persuaded him that it was all I wanted to do, it was the only thing I wanted to do, and the only place I wanted to go to art school was the Massachusetts College of Art, which was then called the Massachusetts School of Art. But he insisted upon taking me around to several different art schools, where I was interviewed and all. But I still wanted to go only to Massachusetts College of Art. So I took my art— Oh, at that time, he finally gave in because I—he asked me if he let me go there if I would take the teacher training course. And in order to go, I said I would. But after I got in and found that I was doing pretty well, he let me change over to the drawing and painting department, or let me go into the drawing and painting department.
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ROBERT F. BROWN: Was this your freshman—your first year you did this, made this change?
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MARGARET PHILBRICK: No, that was in the junior year. The first two years we took a very general course. And then, I was completely thrilled with art school. We had Ernest L. Major, who was right over from Paris and he gave us a wonderful feeling about art being very important. And I had Richard Andrew, who has done a lot of work in the State House. And he was one of my very important teachers. I had Cyrus Dallin for sculpture, and my present husband, Otis Philbrick, for drawing and painting. And several others that made a great impression on me.
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ROBERT F. BROWN: Could you perhaps describe a bit, those four teachers, how they taught and what—
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MARGARET PHILBRICK: Ernest L. Major was probably the most picturesque of all of them. He had a goatee, which was very unusual in those days. This was about 1932, [19]34, [193]5, and [193]6. And he did make a lot of the girls cry in school, because he was very strict and he would talk up to them a lot. But we got a real feeling of what it must have been like to go to art school in Paris in those days. He did very theatrical things. Things that children—the young people would never think of doing in art school now. He worked with all different colored lights, and gauzes of all kinds and draped the model with these—all kinds of exotic things, which people don't do nowadays at all.
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Dickie Andrew, as we called him, was my senior painting teacher. But more important than that, he was my first etching teacher. And when I went into that etching class in my junior year, the very first class I went into, I knew that was going to be my life work, even though I had never done an etching before. I didn't know anything about etching. I just took to it immediately, and I just loved it at that moment. And I know he was very encouraging from when my work—from the very beginning. And I even had one of my large etchings reproduced in the yearbook that year, which was a big thrill for me.
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Cyrus Dallin was very picturesque too. He also had a goatee. And he was very old at the time. He had done [the sculpture] "The Appeal to the Great Spirit" in front of the art museum. And he was probably the most famous of the teachers that we had there, and most thrilling, maybe, to have studied under. And of course, Otis gave us a wonderful philosophy about art. I think that he was probably the most beloved of any of the teachers in the art school. And even up to this day, there's hardly anywhere we can go that we don't meet a former student who speaks very highly and very lovingly of him, and what he had done at that time.
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ROBERT F. BROWN: Mm-hmm [affirmative]. Did he take a great deal of time with the students?
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MARGARET PHILBRICK: Yes, he did. And he also gave a lot of talks in the assembly that he had prepared. And everyone always looked forward to them. So many of the assembly programs were very boring, but his were always very wonderful, very inspirational.
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ROBERT F. BROWN: What would you say about etching there was that so attracted you to it?
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MARGARET PHILBRICK: It's a little hard to say because it was something completely new to me. I had been enjoying all my classes. We had all different kinds of things in general courses in the first two years. But the minute I took ahold of—the minute even just grounding the plates, and trying these experimental plates, working with a fine needle, I suppose maybe partly because I've always loved miniatures. And this is working with the very finest of lines. You use the tiniest etching of the tiniest sewing needle, embroidery needle that you can find, put into a hand vise. So that it is a good way of working in miniature.
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It hasn't held out—held through for the last few years since I've been doing big abstract painting. But for 20 years, I did nothing but traditional, hard—traditional etchings in black and white. And I was completely happy all that time. And I didn't sell the one to speak of. But I was completely happy. Nowadays, if the people don't sell when they first get out of art school, they're very unhappy. [Laughs.]
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ROBERT F. BROWN: Are you glad you had those years when you weren't selling? When there weren't those pressures?
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MARGARET PHILBRICK: I think it was wonderful for me. Yes. Because I stuck to the thing that I felt most strongly about. There wasn't any feeling of trying to please the public, or anything like that. I just did the thing that I wanted to do most and it was closest to me, the kinds of subjects that I did. They were all based on nature. I remember the very one of the very first A's I got in art school was for a drawing of a tree. And I've been doing trees ever since, either in the traditional kind of trees, or now doing a lot of abstract trees.
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ROBERT F. BROWN: Mm-hmm [affirmative]. Did you need an incentive of that sort, such as a good grade, or encouragement from a teacher?
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MARGARET PHILBRICK: To do etching?
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ROBERT F. BROWN: To continue doing certain things? Have you found this is true?
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MARGARET PHILBRICK: I don't think it was in art school, no. I did the etching because I loved doing it. I did get very good marks in it. But I loved it before I ever got a mark. I just loved it. And I had Dickie Andrew. That's what got me into thinking about Dickie Andrew again because he was my teacher who started me. Whereas, at the beginning of the junior year, I did have Otis for block printing. And that I loved very much, too. I liked it better than anything else I'd had in art school up to that time—linoleum blocks and wood blocks. But when I got to the etching, that was the real thing.
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ROBERT F. BROWN: Now, you've mentioned your love of miniatures. And the fact that these etchings of yours, many of them are very small—what is it in the miniature would you say that you like?
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MARGARET PHILBRICK: Well, maybe—I think it's the delicacy, and the strength, somehow. You get a very delicate line. But when you get it finished, you get a very strong—you can get a very strong print. Of course, Whistler got very delicate dainty prints, and they were always kept dainty. But I worked in a different way. I bent mine more strongly in places so that I got stronger areas, and could get a strong a line as I wanted. I just liked the feeling of the needle in my hand. I liked the feeling of working on the copper so much better than working in charcoal, or pastel, or oil painting.
Even when I got into my senior year, and had oil painting with Mr. Andrew, I still skipped all of his classes that I could to go back into the graphic arts room so that I could do more etching. And I did that for my thesis when I graduated from art school. I did a series of fairly large etchings, large at that time, anyway—large etchings of old Boston subjects, which now have quite a historic value. Some of them have been bought by the Boston Public Library for their collection, because things have changed so completely in Boston.
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ROBERT F. BROWN: At this time when you were in art school and shortly thereafter, were you, as young artists, and were your teachers, were they—was Boston pretty much a closed art world unto itself? Was there a sufficient patronage, sufficient interest in art? Or was there also a great deal of interest in, or at least awareness of other art centers—European, and New York?
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MARGARET PHILBRICK: Well, I don't think that most of us in the art school were very concerned with anything but Boston at that time. I know there was practically nothing in the way of sales as far as we knew about, most of us knew about. My husband had sales because he did a lot of children's portraits. But he didn't sell too much in the way of landscape paintings and things like that, and neither did I.
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I did have my first one man show at Doll & Richards on Newbury Street in 1940, I think, a couple of years—three years after I got out of art school. And I think I sold maybe two prints out of the whole exhibition, though it was displayed and advertised well, and it was right in the center of the art world there. And there were very few sales of any kind that I know of.
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ROBERT F. BROWN: How would you char—what outlets were there for exhibition at that time?
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MARGARET PHILBRICK: There weren't very many here in Boston. At that time, I don't remember, really, of exhibiting anywhere in Boston. I did start right away sending out to national exhibitions. And I very early got quite a lot of recognition there from the other exhibitions, but I don't remember showing much in Boston at that time.
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ROBERT F. BROWN: Mm-hmm [affirmative].
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MARGARET PHILBRICK: Except for this one man show I had at Doll & Richards. And they did carry my prints for a while, but they didn't sell anything much.
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ROBERT F. BROWN: Mm-hmm [affirmative]. Well, then, did you have to do other work, and do the—your etchings on the side?
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MARGARET PHILBRICK: Yes. I worked in a candy store evening, so I could have my day time for doing my etching. That was the only way I could get along. And then, of course, I was married a few years after that. So there wasn't that problem anymore, which is nice for a woman, I suppose.
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ROBERT F. BROWN: [Laughs.] Well, you had, then, some 20 years you said when you scarcely sold. You had occasional exhibitions, and you did send things to national exhibitions of printmakers, I assume. During those years, could you just describe your development, your interests, what you were working toward, or at least what you were doing?
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MARGARET PHILBRICK: Well, for those 20 years, we lived out here in Westwood. And we had a couple of acres and we did a lot of—I did a lot of gardening along with my artwork. See, most all my work is really based on nature. And I think that it has developed partly through my outside activities in nature. I've had a wildflower garden for many, many years. And I've had a sun-heated penthouse for quite a few years, and which was the inspiration and basis of a good many of my paintings later on, and my etchings, and other printmaking—other print forms.
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After I worked in etching for about 20 years, I decided I wanted to get into some color. That had been all black and white all that time. So right away, after that time, I started some color etching. But I didn't even save any of those. I wasn't at all interested. I didn't like color etching. I didn't like anything I'd done in color etching, so they were all destroyed.
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Then, I went into color block prints about 1957. And I enjoyed doing those. But I did them in my own way. I did them all in line, which meant cutting away everything but those lines that I printed from. And that meant it was an extremely long, tedious process. And I could do only maybe two or three in a year that way, because each block had to be cut just in line. And it was a long, slower—which I didn't really care for, because it took too long, and it was very difficult printing, physically.
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And so a friend had been urging me to get into serigraphs—find out how to do serigraphs. But we hadn't had this in school—it was before that time. They weren't even teaching it then. So I got a paperback book out, and I taught myself to do serigraphs. And then, I really went ahead with producing prints. They print and are executed very, very quickly and easily. At first, I hated serigraphs for a long time, because they seemed to be too thick, and all mixed in with white paint. But I found that my way of doing them was working with transparent washes. And once I learned about getting this transparent base, I used gallons of that, and a tiny, tiny bit of color. So that most all of my serigraphs have a transparent quality. Not that thick, white, solid look to them.
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ROBERT F. BROWN: Mm-hmm [affirmative].
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MARGARET PHILBRICK: And also, I started painting watercolors about that time too. And finally, very shortly afterwards became a member of the Boston Watercolor Society, and exhibited there. And that was a very good outlet because we showed at the museum for quite a while. And then, from the serigraphs, I went into abstract paintings. I took a course—a workshop group in New Hampshire one summer, with Donald Stoltenberg and worked with Nora Unwin, and Beatrice Orchard, and several others in an old barn that was fixed up so we could have this workshop up there. Because I had absolutely no feeling or no—I knew nothing about abstract painting at that time. And I wanted to do it, but I had no idea of how to do it—how to go about it. So he opened up a whole new idea—whole new ideas to us because he had us experimenting with all different kinds of ways to do things. He didn't show us how to do them, and how to make a painting with them, but he showed us how different ways of working that we could work out our own salvation with.
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ROBERT F. BROWN: Mm-hmm [affirmative].
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MARGARET PHILBRICK: And that was very helpful. And the following year we had a workshop at the same place. It was pretty much the same group—on printmaking. And I taught serigraph, and he taught collagraph, and someone else taught something else. And we all helped each other and worked with each other, which was a very helpful thing.
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ROBERT F. BROWN: Mm-hmm [affirmative]. What was there in abstraction that attracted you, or that you were—
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MARGARET PHILBRICK: Well, I suppose, I think at that time after working for all those years in straight etching, I felt I'd gone about as far as I could go. In the etching, I just felt it was time to do something new, and develop. I didn't want to just do that all my life, as much as I loved doing it. And I'm still doing the etching, except now, I'm doing just miniature etchings. I'm not doing any—very many of the large ones. There, again, it's the miniature coming back, which I always would like to do.
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ROBERT F. BROWN: Mm-hmm [affirmative]. Well—and in your abstract work, what is it that you strive for?
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MARGARET PHILBRICK: I try to get a feeling about the subject, or express the idea of the subject. For instance, now when I do flowers, I get the feeling of a field of flowers, say, rather than just a field of daisies, or a field of goldenrod, or a field of something else. I try to express the way—a bigger feeling of them, maybe, rather than a limited feeling of just doing a specific thing.
And for instance, this painting on the easel now, this one is of the edge of the forest. And we've done so much wildflower walking through forests, and fields of flowers on the edge of the forest, and so forth. And to me, it expresses some of the fun and happiness and thrill I've had from all these years of experiencing these things. I'd much rather do it this way than to try to sit down in front of a group of trees and a group of flowers, and paint each little one. But to give them all over feeling.
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ROBERT F. BROWN: Mm-hmm [affirmative]. Well, you're not interested in recording—
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MARGARET PHILBRICK: That's it.
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ROBERT F. BROWN: —basically, the appearance of something rather than feeling.
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MARGARET PHILBRICK: Yes. I'm trying to get the feeling of it, that I feel from it. The strong feeling—a strong feeling of color and richness, and the colors that I remember, rather than just recording an actual place.
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ROBERT F. BROWN: Mm-hmm [affirmative]. Well, is nature to you a pleasant thing? What kind of experience has it been for you? As I look at this painting, the forest in the background seems almost ominous.
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MARGARET PHILBRICK: Doesn't to me. It looks nice and rich and deep, and a great place to go and explore.
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ROBERT F. BROWN: Mm-hmm [affirmative].
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MARGARET PHILBRICK: No, nature has been very, very important to me. When I was very young, and we were on a farm, and we had a lot of weeding and things like that to do, I hated gardening. [Robert laughs.] But now, after I got away from the farm, and the family, and had my own place then I began to love it.
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ROBERT F. BROWN: Mm-hmm [affirmative]. So that even the thickets—even the inaccessible parts are attractive to you. They lure you.
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MARGARET PHILBRICK: Yes, they do. Yes. Then, of course, after the abstract painting, I began to get into the collagraph printmaking. And that, to me, is the most exciting form of printmaking there is today. And I'm doing a lot of that now. And—are you interested in a little bit about how—
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ROBERT F. BROWN: Yes. I'd like to know why it is exciting to you, and how are you—
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MARGARET PHILBRICK: Well, there again, I can use the abstract qualities in a collagraph. A collagraph is practically never used for a traditional way of working. If I want to do a traditional thing, I use my silkscreen, or serigraph work. But the collagraph is very exciting. We take a plate, and we glue all kinds of found objects onto it, or we make different things to glue onto it. We sometimes press—we make impressions by pressing found objects into them, and cutting them up, and gluing them onto the plate. And this way, we can get some very exciting things that you could never get in a thousand years if you were trying to make everything with little tiny lines, and drawing on it.
And then, of course, in the past few years, I've had my own etching press, which is the finest press that one can buy. It's a Charles Brand press. I started out with a tiny etching press that my father made for me out of old pieces of junk. And that did me for several years. Then I had another smaller etching press, in the meantime, which was a professional press, but it was very small. But now, I have my own great big one and it's so satisfactory to be able to print these collagraphs, and the miniature etchings equally well on it.
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ROBERT F. BROWN: You've always printed your plates?
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MARGARET PHILBRICK: Most always. There was a short time when I had just this poor press to work with that I would make—get a print to the place where I was satisfied with it and I took it to a professional printer over in Cambridge. And he did print, for instance, when I needed several prints for exhibitions. He would print it trying to match my print as exactly as possible. But that was just a short time before I had a good etching press to work with.
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ROBERT F. BROWN: Mm-hmm [affirmative]. You much prefer to be able to do your own printing. Is that because you can have closer control over the result?
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MARGARET PHILBRICK: Yes, and I think that it's such an important part of the whole process. I wouldn't care about turning my plates over to a professional printer now. I want to have the control over it myself. And I enjoy printing, too.
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ROBERT F. BROWN: Mm-hmm [affirmative]. Well, this has been from the very beginning, isn't it? You said that the feel of pushing into the copper plate, pulling off the prints too, the whole process is—
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MARGARET PHILBRICK: It's something that I love to do.
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ROBERT F. BROWN: It's very important to you.
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MARGARET PHILBRICK: Yes, it's very important. Yes, the whole thing. I wouldn't want anyone else to tackle my prints and all my plates.
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ROBERT F. BROWN: Mm-hmm [affirmative]. Well, I wanted to ask one more thing about nature. You've said how important it has been always to you. When you go to nature in your abstract paintings, you try to get—you convey your feeling about it. But over many years, you recorded nature, didn't you? You more or less went to look at it. Could you—what in nature in that phase of your work were you impelled to do? I mean, what did it lead you to do?
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MARGARET PHILBRICK: Well, of course, a lot of the earlier prints were from something that I felt very strongly about. The old farm scenes around Boston, around this area here. And I did a lot of my etchings—were of the old barns. And I still love to do those. I still love doing those in my serigraphs. And I love trees. I love flowers. And I've done a great many flower things, traditional flower things. I suppose it's just because I've loved everything out of doors.
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And we've been a member of the Wildflower Society for a long time. We've been on a lot of the field trips with them. And a lot of that has been absorbed, I think. And I think a lot of these things—for instance, one of my big paintings, called "Phosphorescent Pools" was a result of a trip—a vacation trip we took down to Prudence Island. And in the evening, when we were swimming, we saw these phosphorescent pools around the edge of the water there. And it made such a strong impression on me that I came home and did a great big painting of it. It wasn't at all realistic. And a lot of people would have to see the title before they knew what it was. But once they knew the title, they could tell right away what it was. And so I think I have done a lot of observing over the years. And then, come in and try to put that into a canvas—onto a canvas.
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ROBERT F. BROWN: And in nature, you were—you've been interested in structure, or in growth.
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MARGARET PHILBRICK: Growth. Growth and in light. A lot of my paintings are based on light, too and the feeling of light. And for instance, in this painting on the easel, the feeling of the light on the field in front of this dark forest and beyond. And I have another big new one called "Let There Be Light," based on the—from Genesis, you know, the feeling of the light exploding and the darkness all around it.
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ROBERT F. BROWN: Mm-hmm [affirmative]. So the color itself and this thick heavy impasto in the highlights, all of these are devices mainly for creating the feeling of great light? Or is color in itself—
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MARGARET PHILBRICK: Light, and composition too. To bring out the composition. You see, the way it leads in there, the more open places leading into more solid places and beyond. So it's partly composition, too.
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ROBERT F. BROWN: Mm-hmm [affirmative]. In nature, the contrast—I see great contrast here between the thick and the sparse areas here—between the areas that are very built up, and sort of scrubby flowers and bushes and the immense proportions of the trees. Is this kind of contrast something that has perhaps struck you when you looked at barns, or old houses, or nature?
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MARGARET PHILBRICK: Nature, yes. I think so because I think the—I have used the, as you call it, the thick part of it in the foreground to bring your eye forward. And then, it's flatter. Even though it's broken up a great deal, it's flatter, to give a more of a feeling of distance.
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ROBERT F. BROWN: Mm-hmm [affirmative]. Then, have you been involved at all with the groups of printmakers or painters? I wonder if you could discuss any of that.
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MARGARET PHILBRICK: Well, as I said earlier, I've been a member of the Boston Watercolor Society for many, many years. And we do have annual meetings where we get together just once a year, and at the exhibitions. And that's been a very pleasant thing, but that's a very traditional society on the whole. However, that is gradually waking up a little bit more, and is beginning to have more abstract things.
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ROBERT F. BROWN: You mean it was sort of—they were the same kinds of things were seen year after year?
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MARGARET PHILBRICK: Yes, and you could almost—you could always tell which person it was. They were always very traditional, and very much the same kind of painting year after year. But some of the younger people are in now, and it's very much more exciting organization, I think, than it was when I first joined.
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Then, of course, I've been a member of the Boston Printmakers almost—well, I have since it began. And I've been serving the executive board for almost as many years, and still am on the executive board. And my husband's been president for 17 years. So this past year he did resign, and we have a new president now. And we've had an annual exhibition for 23 years now. This next year will be our 24th. And we had it for many years at the Museum of Fine Arts. And that was where we were very, very happy, but they had a change in policy a couple of years ago where they don't have any exhibitions but what they instigate themselves.
[00:28:12.95]
So— But last year, we had probably the most successful exhibition we've ever had at the deCordova Museum in Lincoln. And this has been probably the most stimulating and exciting group of printmakers that I've been with all these years. Because at different times, we've had—a gallery at one time. We had a workshop place in Symphony Hall at one time. And we've always gotten together. And having been on the board for so many years, I've been closely associated with all these important printmakers.
[00:28:43.51]
ROBERT F. BROWN: Yes. Well, could you describe why it was set up and with what organization? How was it organized, rather?
[00:28:49.70]
MARGARET PHILBRICK: Well, originally, there were three or four young people from the Museum School—the Boston Museum School, and the Massachusetts School of Art, who got together, and came over and talked with both Otis—my husband—and Ture Bengtz from the Museum School. And that small group really went together. There was Shirley Hadley, and Richard Bartlett, particularly—that I remember particularly. And those four really got together and organized it. They wanted to have a place to show their prints in this area because there was nothing of that kind around here—and to make the public a little more conscious of fine prints as opposed to reproductions, which so many people had in their home.
[00:29:35.06]
And we started showing at the Paine Furniture Company, and we had our prints all scattered in around the furniture. We had there for four or five years. And we showed at the MIT Hayden Gallery soon after that. We showed at Symphony Hall. Then, we've had traveling shows all that time. And they've gone all over New England. Confined mostly to New England.
[00:29:59.90]
And then, we went to the museum. We showed there for many, many years up until quite recently. We went to the Copley Society and then to the deCordova Museum. And this next year, we're going to be showing at the Rose Art Museum in Brandeis, which should be very exciting, too. And then, the following year is our 25th anniversary. And we're hoping that Mr. Fred Walkey will invite us back there at the deCordova for our 25th anniversary. But it's been a very exciting group. And it's been a very significant group, because we're the only open national—we have the only open national print competition in this area.
[00:30:34.10]
ROBERT F. BROWN: I see. Yes, it is about the only large-scale print shop.
[00:30:40.66]
MARGARET PHILBRICK: Open print shop. Yes, it is.
[00:30:43.04]
ROBERT F. BROWN: And did it have an educational function? I mean, did you have meetings where you got together with speakers or was—
[00:30:48.37]
MARGARET PHILBRICK: We did for a while.
[00:30:50.26]
ROBERT F. BROWN: Discussions?
[00:30:50.44]
MARGARET PHILBRICK: We did for a while. We had speakers, and we had demonstrations when we had headquarters at Symphony Hall, and we had presses there. And both Ture Bengtz and Otis Philbrick gave demonstrations on lithography and etching, and things like that and we opened it to the public. But at that time, there wasn't that much interest—as much interest as there is now in this kind of thing. And now whenever there's an—any kind of a demonstration, everyone comes. It's a very, very popular type of thing. So we didn't keep it up for very long. And it got to be all the work was being done by a few people, as is the true in every organization.
[00:31:28.10]
ROBERT F. BROWN: Well then, what other groups have you been with? [Inaudible]
[00:31:31.48]
MARGARET PHILBRICK: Well, the most recent one, which has been probably the most important one during the past eight years, has been the Westwood Gallery. We have a gallery here in the town, which is more important to us right now than our Newbury Street association. We were associated with a gallery on Newbury Street for a few years. And we did have one-man exhibitions there. But there was not too much interest there at the time. And the association wasn't as completely happy as possible. Once in a while, a painting would get sold for less money than what we put on it. And the gallery owner couldn't understand why we weren't happy about it. And so we formed our own gallery out here in Westwood.
[Telephone ringing.]
Would you like to stop a minute?
[Recorder stops, restarts.]
[00:32:18.44]
ROBERT F. BROWN: That's the last thing that we were saying.
[00:32:20.75]
MARGARET PHILBRICK: Well, this little Westwood Gallery is one that has had the support of the town. It's had the support of all the surrounding towns. We have sold much more there than we ever sold anywhere else. Plus, the fact that people are really happy. This has been a real educational experience for the town. We've had several demonstrations, which have been well-attended, explaining the different media and showing how the different artists work. And we have a rental program where anyone in the town or anywhere around here may take out a painting for a month and try it in their home. And we encourage it. We'd rather do that way. We'd rather rent it first, because things look quite different in a big lighted gallery from what they do in the home, and people really appreciate this. And—may I tell you the members of our gallery?
[00:33:12.41]
ROBERT F. BROWN: Certainly, I'd like to hear. They have been together so long.
[00:33:16.55]
MARGARET PHILBRICK: Yes, because when we first started, the—everyone predicted, and in fact, there was an article in New York Times that predicted that we wouldn't last over three years. We're now in our eighth year. And we have both men and women. We have Phillip Bourne, who is a freelance artist, and he does very exciting traditional and abstract watercolors. And Meg Brown, who is one of our stained-glass artists and who has developed so much since we've had the gallery. She started out with just stained glass, and she's now doing very beautiful woodcarvings, block prints, etchings, decorative things with dried grasses, and so forth. She's developed a great deal.
[00:33:58.28]
And Arthur Corsini, who is a professor at the Massachusetts College of Art. He teaches watercolor there. And he does both abstract and traditional watercolors. And John Cornacchio, who is an executive, and he's really the executive in the gallery too. He's a wonderful peacemaker when there are any problems that come up, and he runs the meetings very satisfactorily. And he does both watercolor and polymer. Very rather traditional.
[00:34:26.36]
And then, we have Anne Philbrick Hall, who is my stepdaughter. And she is our animal artist. She does sculpture. She does sterling silver jewelry and drawings. She does portrait drawings of horses and dogs in pastels, and she does very well. And then, my husband and I are both in it. And then, Stephen York, who works at Rustcraft as a greeting card designer. And he does all kinds of things from traditional to abstract, mostly traditional things.
[00:35:02.15]
And the last one is Frederick Wilson, who was really the one who started the gallery. He came over one day and talked with my husband and me. We worked things out, and we talked it over. And thought that this particular group would make a nice group to work with, all professional artists. And we stayed together all this time. We've only taken in one new member, and that was a sculptor who had something completely new and different to offer to the gallery. And she's a Dedham artist, and her name is Constance Bernard Pach, who is a very good sculptor, and has added a great deal to the gallery.
[00:35:39.34]
ROBERT F. BROWN: Mm-hmm [affirmative]. So in this group, then, it's a recognition that in banding together, and each of you becoming familiar to the communities around here, there was a greater possibility of—
[00:35:53.38]
MARGARET PHILBRICK: Yes, I think that people—
[00:35:55.08]
ROBERT F. BROWN: —enhancing your career.
[00:35:56.59]
MARGARET PHILBRICK: Yes, and people started to collect certain ones of us. Certain ones would collect me; some would collect Otis; some would collect Olga DeSalvo. And they get so that they have a real collection of that person's work in their home. And once in a while, someone will come in and say, oh, I have a "DeSalvo room;" I have a "Philbrick room," or something like that. And also, people have sometimes even come in and said that they have bought a certain print, and taken it home and done a room around that—selecting the colors from that print and redecorating the whole room, which has been very exciting.
[00:36:25.88]
ROBERT F. BROWN: Yes, yes. Well, this is very pleasing to you, isn't it? This is something that—
[00:36:29.41]
MARGARET PHILBRICK: It's probably—it's the most wonderful thing that's happened lately for us, since Otis has retired. We've had all our time to put into our work. He has his studio in the barn, and I have my nice new studio out here. And we put our full time in it. Working off early in the morning 'til late at night. And now, we have an outlet so that when we get something finished, we can just take it down to the gallery and hang it up. And no one—we don't have to wait for anyone to tell us to put it up, or to take it down, and we each have our own section and we have complete control over that one section, so that we can change it as often as we want to, or we can leave it up. Sometimes we leave it up and find something we want to change about it. Bring it home, change it, and take it back down again. It's been a wonderful thing for us. And we've done very well financially here.
[00:37:18.15]
ROBERT F. BROWN: How would you describe your public? Is this the public that you have educated, or is it a public quite sophisticated when you began?
[00:37:25.09]
MARGARET PHILBRICK: I think we educated them quite a lot. Because at the beginning, there was a great deal of interest. We had about 1,000 people come to our opening from all around, because we sent out a lot of announcements. So there was the interest there. But I don't think the public was that sophisticated in the beginning. We did start to sell rather slowly at the beginning. But we did sell the smaller things for quite a while. But now, people are buying the large paintings, too, and they find just what they want.
[00:37:54.92]
ROBERT F. BROWN: So do you find a suburban setting such as this possibly a very challenging and exciting one for an artist?
[00:38:01.53]
MARGARET PHILBRICK: A challenging, exciting, and very—you can make a good living at it too, which is important. [They laugh.] Very helpful, anyway. I think it's much more exciting than Newbury Street galleries, certainly, are running down now. So many of them are closing up, and some of them are keeping their doors locked now. They don't dare keep them open. And some of them have to have a little peep hole that they look through before they'll admit someone into the gallery. That's not true out here. Except for a recent experience, we've never had any trouble at all with anyone. And it's been a wonderful thing.
[00:38:37.13]
ROBERT F. BROWN: Well now, you've also indicated that you as a family have exhibited. Is that at Westwood Gallery, or has that been elsewhere? Could you describe, perhaps, some of those things, and the rationale behind them?
[00:38:51.10]
MARGARET PHILBRICK: Well, soon after we started having this gallery in Westwood, which was eight years ago, my husband and my stepdaughter Anne Philbrick Hall, and I, were invited two or three times—several times to have a "three-Philbrick" exhibition. And we each had something very different to contribute. Usually, Otis would show his rather traditional but personal flower paintings. Anne would have her animal things, and I would have my abstract paintings. So it made quite a well-rounded group exhibition. And we had shows at Regis College, and several other places around.
[00:39:29.53]
And then, a little while after that, well, about 19—when was it? 1969—that wasn't very long ago—our son became very much interested in photography. And he began to show professionally. And so then, we were invited to have "four-Philbrick" exhibitions. And that turned out to be a very interesting thing for the public. Our most important one was at the State Street Bank in the Concourse Gallery where, surprisingly enough, our son outsold us—the beginner. Sold more than we did at that exhibition.
[00:40:03.59]
But it was a very—we had a lot of very interesting publicity from the critics being a family group. And the fact that there was no generation gap in this family, and so forth. And then, we were invited from there to show at Regis College. And we were invited to go from there to the Governor Dummer Academy in South Byfield. But now, we are pretty much showing individually in one-man exhibitions. But we're ready to show again when someone invites us to have a—
[00:40:32.72]
ROBERT F. BROWN: What is your preference? Do you like to have a one-man show?
[00:40:35.66]
MARGARET PHILBRICK: Well, I think it depends on where you show it. I think if you're showing at a college, or some other place like that, I think it's very exciting to have a family exhibition. But if you're really showing your own work to full advantage, you know, I think once every two years, for instance, I like to have a one-man show, because you naturally have everything concentrated on the one kind of thing. But I still love to have the family shows.
[00:41:02.90]
ROBERT F. BROWN: Mm-hmm [affirmative]. Have you always liked to show? I know you did not for too many years, though you did enter exhibits. But have you always like having done your work, a personal statement to have then turned around and have it shown and sold?
[00:41:16.20]
MARGARET PHILBRICK: Well, I was very thrilled at the beginning. Soon after I got out of art school, I had that one-man exhibition at the Doll & Richards Gallery. And that was because I had been doing etching for several years there. And it was kind of fun to see everything together and see how it looked. And then, I was very happy for many years not having any one-man shows, but just sending up different parts of the country around, and not even seeing the prints where they were hung, and all. Just going and working, working all the time. But now I do enjoy one-man shows every two years. I wouldn't want them any more often than that.
[00:41:51.14]
ROBERT F. BROWN: Mm-hmm [affirmative]. As a printmaker, though, you've liked to have your things shown, exhibited. You don't want to keep them—everything to yourself.
[00:41:58.27]
MARGARET PHILBRICK: No, I think it wouldn't be very human if you didn't enjoy having—[they laugh].
[00:42:02.23]
ROBERT F. BROWN: What is it particularly you like? You like the acclaim, or do you like the communicating with people through your work?
[00:42:07.88]
MARGARET PHILBRICK: Well, I think partly, for a long while anyway, you know that it's going to go before a professional jury. And it's a way of evaluating your work, too, somewhat to see whether or not your work is accepted in these juried exhibitions. I think that's one of the big things in the—in showing in a juried show is to have your work evaluated by someone who is possibly one of your peers.
[00:42:32.95]
ROBERT F. BROWN: Mm-hmm [affirmative]. Well now, Westwood has been your home, this place, for some what, twenty—
[00:42:39.86]
MARGARET PHILBRICK: Thirty.
[00:42:40.46]
ROBERT F. BROWN: —thirty years. I wonder if you could say anything about it as a place to be an artist. As your base from which—where you work.
[00:42:49.78]
MARGARET PHILBRICK: Well, I've been completely happy and completely satisfied here. And since we've had the gallery, it's proven that they're supporting—are happy to support the artists, too.
[00:43:01.55]
ROBERT F. BROWN: What about the home here? That's what I meant, really.
[00:43:03.89]
MARGARET PHILBRICK: Oh, the home.
[00:43:04.49]
ROBERT F. BROWN: Yes, this very place.
[00:43:05.83]
MARGARET PHILBRICK: Well, we have two acres here, and we have plenty of room for my wildflower gardening. And my son did put house out back here. And we have privacy. In the summertime, we wouldn't even know there was another house around here. But we do have our neighbors, which makes it very nice to know they're there but not to be—have to be going out for coffee hours, and so forth every morning. [They laugh.] We do have complete privacy here, and it's been a wonderful place to work, especially since I've had my new studio. For many years, many, many years, I worked in a tiny bedroom upstairs. Did all my printmaking and everything up there.
[00:43:42.17]
And then, I gradually took my etching press down in the cellar and had a little corner of the cellar to do the dirty work down there. And then, finally, took over a piece of the attic to do my matting, and storing of things. And then, about—must have been maybe four, five, six, seven years ago, I built—we built this big studio that we're in right now. And now, I have everything all in one area here, and it makes it much more comfortable and convenient. And I have everything I need—everything to work with, and I wouldn't ever want anything better. I don't need to go anywhere else. I can produce everything I want right here.
[00:44:21.28]
ROBERT F. BROWN: [Laughs.] Now, much of your inspiration and the subject matter you're concerned with is right here too, isn't it?
[00:44:26.63]
MARGARET PHILBRICK: It's right here. And my memories of all of our other places we've been, all these wildflower walks, and field trips we've taken, too and vacation trips, they all come into it.
[00:44:37.19]
ROBERT F. BROWN: Now, you also have a Western Massachusetts summer place where you work.
[00:44:43.01]
MARGARET PHILBRICK: Oh, yes.
[00:44:43.37]
ROBERT F. BROWN: Describe that a bit, and how it works.
[00:44:45.11]
MARGARET PHILBRICK: Well, two years ago, we were able to buy this great big old barn, which was really old. About—over 100 years old, anyway. It has hand-hewn beams in it, and wooden pegs. Very exciting. And we have—the three Philbricks bought it together, my son, my husband, and I. And it's primarily a family gallery. It's right next door to my sister's home. So her daughter can take care of it in the summer months for us. We do show works of special friends of ours. Some of the Westwood Gallery people are represented there. And some of our Boston printmakers friends are represented there.
But that has been a very satisfactory venture for us. My son designed the whole of the interior of the gallery. We kept the looks of it, the old barn, as much as we could. But we have built an inside wall in the lower part of it, which is a very nice place to display our work against it. But we have a lot of different kinds of things there. And we have a tremendous number of people coming in because it's on the main road between New York and Vermont. And they're coming in all the time during the day.
[00:45:58.15]
ROBERT F. BROWN: Mm-hmm [affirmative]. How would you compare that to where, I suppose, the visitors are more casual, passing through, with Westwood, where you say you've had people who over these last 10 years have been collecting and have whole rooms of a particular artist?
[00:46:10.48]
MARGARET PHILBRICK: It's an entirely different kind of group of the people that come in. The people that come in there are mostly transients, mostly people driving through, and maybe have seen our ads in the Boston Symphony Orchestra booklet, and so forth. And we are, of course, we're a very young gallery. We've only been—this is only our second year. So we haven't had time for very many repeats yet. We have had some people come in that came in the year before. But they're mostly new people up to now. Whereas, in Westwood, they're the same people that come over and over again, mostly. So it's an entirely different type of people.
[00:46:46.39]
ROBERT F. BROWN: Would you any differences in the clientele between here, the Boston area, people in the suburbs, and the people in New York, people—
[00:46:54.73]
MARGARET PHILBRICK: They're more sophisticated out there, because most of them come from New York City.
[00:46:59.08]
ROBERT F. BROWN: And what effect does that have, their sophistication, I mean?
[00:47:01.51]
MARGARET PHILBRICK: Well, I don't know. They right away—so many of them go—do go to the abstracts, you know. And they also like my son's photographs very, very much. He sold quite a few of them out there. In fact, this past year he sold more photographs and we sold paintings this past year. The first year, we sold a great many more things than we did this past year. The recession, or the whatever you want to call it, has hurt us this past year. But the first year, sold everything from miniature etchings to my largest abstract paintings. And Otis has sold several paintings and our son sold several photographs. But this last year was a little quieter. But we had just as many people coming in, but they came in and stayed a long time, and all. But they just looked a lot more than they did the first year.
[00:47:58.52]
ROBERT F. BROWN: And when you went to art school, were you thinking of a career? Or was this sort of a casual interest?
[00:48:03.94]
MARGARET PHILBRICK: No, it was not a casual interest. At that time, it was going to be my whole life. I didn't even expect I'd ever get married. I expected to be an artist, first and foremost and all that time. I just loved it. It was my whole—everything I thought about.
[00:48:16.50]
ROBERT F. BROWN: So in many ways, you fulfilled what since you were a girl, you wanted.
[00:48:22.13]
MARGARET PHILBRICK: Yes, but the strong feeling of being an artist really came in my senior high school years. Then, when I—I had a very great disappointment. When I took my art aptitude test for getting into Massachusetts School of Art, the first year I took it, I failed. Yeah, I didn't get in. And it was the most heartbreaking experience I've ever had in my whole life. And I cried for two days steadily. And for the next all the following summer, I spent the whole time just drawing tables and chairs and the kinds of things, still life groups, things that I knew were going to be asked. I could take the exam again in the fall.
[00:49:07.27]
And I hadn't been well-prepared in high school. I loved it in the art room, but we—I wasn't at all prepared for the kind of exam we were going to have in there. We had to do a drawing of a still life group, and we had to do a design, neither of which I had done at all in high school. But I had been completely happy in the drawing room just the same. So I did do that. And in the fall, I did pass it. And so—after preparing for it all summer. And then, I was so completely happy when I went to art school.
[00:49:37.06]
ROBERT F. BROWN: And then, even being married with children you have—still, your driving force has been your continuing desire to be an artist.
[00:49:45.97]
MARGARET PHILBRICK: Yes, I had, of course, only one son. My husband was married before, but they were stepchildren and weren't living with us. So I had just the one baby. And during the year that he was coming, I did very few prints except for miniature etchings. I didn't do any large ones. But except for that, I had I kept up all the years. While he was small, I did do a lot of Wedgwood drawings, which I could do while he was running around and playing around on the floor, because it just took a small drawing table.
And at that time, I had just a very tiny corner of a room, and I did original pencil drawings for the Wedgwood plates. And these drawings were sent over to England, and made into copper engravings. And they took a print and put it—while it was still wet, put it on the plate, put it in the kiln, baked it, and sent the plates back to this country, and they are in all kinds of museums, and all kinds of colleges. And I did an especially interesting series for the Peabody Museum in Salem, of twelve old sailing vessels. And the drawings were made from paintings—early paintings that they had in that collection. And those are still around today and they're still selling them.
[00:50:59.04]
ROBERT F. BROWN: Did you enjoy this work, or was this just something to keep you—
[00:51:02.13]
MARGARET PHILBRICK: I enjoyed it very much at the beginning, but it began to get very tiring after a while, because there wasn't very much creative work in it. At that time, I wasn't selling any etchings . And so this was a way of bringing in a small amount of money to buy my copper that I needed for making my etchings. And I would work sometimes a whole month and get paid $20 for one drawing. But it was enough to buy the copper, which I needed. So finally, I just stopped doing them. I just I didn't want to do them anymore.
[00:51:36.87]
ROBERT F. BROWN: [Laughs.] Well, do you ever think about the fact that you're a woman artist, or is this a factor? What do you think generally about women as artists?
[00:51:44.35]
MARGARET PHILBRICK: In this day and age, I can't see any difference. I think that there's no—a woman has no problem. I think there's no problem that a woman has an art, that a man doesn't have or vice versa. I think that I can't see any difference between the two. I think in the old days when Mary Cassatt was trying to make a go of it, for instance, it was a tremendous thing for her to pick up her roots and go over to—across to work. And I think the artists—the women artists probably had a very hard time because they were expected to stay in the home and do nothing else. But in this day, I can't see that the woman has any problem at all. I've never had any problem.
[00:52:23.70]
ROBERT F. BROWN: I guess your father was converted quite readily, wasn't he?
[00:52:25.78]
MARGARET PHILBRICK: Except with my father. Yes. But that was a long time ago. That was 35 years ago. But now, there's no problem. People don't mind buying a woman artist, you know, or have anything against buying a woman artist.
[00:52:41.33]
ROBERT F. BROWN: What do you see is the future of your—the kind of work that you do, the kind of work that is sold at Westwood Gallery, partly traditional, observed, but based on nature? Do you consider that this has a perpetual appeal to people? Is there something—
[00:53:00.10]
MARGARET PHILBRICK: Well, I hope it has, and I hope I'm not just doing it because it has an appeal for people. I'm trying first to please myself. And if people like it, then they buy it. But I wouldn't—I'm sure that I wouldn't do a thing just to try to sell, or just to try to please people. Because for a long time, when I started doing the—turning away from the traditional etching, and started doing the abstracts and the collagraphs and serigraphs, I had people come to me and say, "Oh, I used to like your old work so much better." My old teachers, my very old traditional teachers oftentimes would say, "Oh, why are you doing this kind of thing? I wish you'd go back to your other way of working." But it didn't stop me. I kept on doing the thing that I felt I had to do, and I wanted to do. But I don't think I've been doing the abstract paintings for long enough to know just—I think I want to go ahead doing those. I know I want to go ahead doing those for a long time to come, because I haven't been doing them for very long and I still have a lot more things I want to say in them.
[00:54:02.49]
And my next series of collagraphs is going to be—I'm working on it now—a portfolio of large collagraphs based on Conrad Aiken's—one of Conrad Aiken's poems, one of his improvisations. And I've already written to him and gotten permission to use his poetry in my new collagraphs. And so they're going to be abstract, but they're going to describe in an abstract way my feeling about what I get from these poems of this. But I'm still going to—I'm still doing miniature etchings, and I always hope to. I still like to do the miniature etchings, and I hope I always will.
[00:54:41.19]
ROBERT F. BROWN: Well, you've done several other times, illustrations, haven't you? Or at least things inspired by you.
[00:54:47.34]
MARGARET PHILBRICK: Yes. Oh, I have done actual illustrations. For instance, I did the—[pause; sounds of moving objects] the first one I did was the illustrations for a book by Gertrude Jekyll called On Gardening. And that was done by Scrivener's, and that was 1964. And I did the original drawings for the inside. And they liked them so much they wrote back, and asked if they could use them on the jacket, too. So they had the artist design a way of using all of these drawings on the jacket.
[00:55:25.39]
Then, two years later, they wrote—Scrivener's wrote, and asked me if I would do a book called In Praise of Vegetables, and that was by Luise Light. The first one was scratchboard drawings in black and white. And the second one was in pen and ink drawings. And there was a lot of research going into each one of these. But they were very satisfactory, and a lot of fun doing. And now, I've just finished another one for Doubleday on garden arrangements—Natural Arranging, by Mrs. Anson Howe Smith. And that I've just finished. And I did 32 drawings for that book. Those were pen and ink drawings. And now, I'm working on a series for a new book that's coming out, hopefully next spring and the—put out by the Westwood Historical Society on the history of Westwood, which is being written by Marjory Fenerty.
[00:56:20.54]
ROBERT F. BROWN: Mm-hmm [affirmative]. Well, do you find—is it easy to work with both publisher and author, or whom do you work with principally, when you do these book illustrations?
[00:56:28.21]
MARGARET PHILBRICK: Well, the last two, I worked very closely with Mrs. Smith on her book. She was over here, and I was back—we were back and forth with each other's place. She lives in Dedham, nearby. And so I worked very closely with her—entirely with her, after the editor had finally approved of a style of working. It had to be a certain kind of drawing- line drawing, that they wanted for this kind of reproduction. And I worked very closely with her. And now, I'm working very closely with the author of the History of Westwood. But with the first two, they just told me what they wanted, and I sent the drawings, and that was all there was to it. And they, fortunately, turned out all right.
[00:57:06.95]
ROBERT F. BROWN: Mm-hmm [affirmative]. Do you find this in—this work very satisfying to you?
[00:57:11.97]
MARGARET PHILBRICK: I find it satisfying. I wouldn't want to do very much of it. I wouldn't want to do one very often. In fact, this History of Westwood I got into—a little more involved than I planned to, originally. And it came too close to the other book, really. I'd rather not do one that often. But I'm very much interested in the history of Westwood anyway. I'm a member of the Westwood Historical Society. So I was glad to do it. It's a volunteer type thing. I'm not getting paid for this one, but I didn't want to. I wanted to do it as a gift to the town.
[00:57:44.87]
ROBERT F. BROWN: Any other things?
[END OF TRACK AAA_philbrm71_8909_m]
[END OF INTERVIEW.]
