Oral history interview with Suzanne Linda Miller, 1965 Feb. 11

Transcript

Preface

The following oral history transcript is the result of a recorded interview with Suzanne Linda Miller on February 11, 1965. The interview took place in Ojai, California, and was conducted by Betty Hoag McGlynn 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.

In 2024 the Archives retranscribed the original audio and attempted to create a verbatim transcript. The original transcript was edited. Additional information from the original transcript has been 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

BETTY HOAG MCGLYNN:  This is Betty Lochrie Hoag on February 11, 1965, interviewing Ms. Suzanne Barse Miller.

SUZANNE LINDA MILLER:  No, you're wrong.

BETTY HOAG MCGLYNN:  I'm wrong. Thank you [laughs].

SUZANNE LINDA MILLER:  I'm not Mrs. Barse Miller at all.

BETTY HOAG MCGLYNN:  Oh, excuse me.

SUZANNE LINDA MILLER:  We got very—we got quite embarrassed when they—I sent my pictures, and thought, oh, how wonderful.

BETTY HOAG MCGLYNN:  [Laughs.] Well, there is—

SUZANNE LINDA MILLER:  They were very embarrassed to find I wasn't a member of the society. And I wasn't Suzanne Barse Miller.

BETTY HOAG MCGLYNN:  And there is a Suzanne Barse Miller.

SUZANNE LINDA MILLER:  There is. But she's not living. Mr. Barse Miller’s mother.

BETTY HOAG MCGLYNN:  I see. In Pennsylvania, was it?

SUZANNE LINDA MILLER:  She was up in New England when I was.

BETTY HOAG MCGLYNN:  Isn't that interesting?

SUZANNE LINDA MILLER:  No, I'm Suzanne Linda Miller.

BETTY HOAG MCGLYNN:  Is that L-Y-N-D-A or I-N?

SUZANNE LINDA MILLER:  L-I-N-D-A.

BETTY HOAG MCGLYNN:  L-I-N-D-A. Well, that's something that we'll correct in Who's Who and so forth—

[They laugh.]

BETTY HOAG MCGLYNN:  —right now because it's listed this way. Isn't that interesting?

SUZANNE LINDA MILLER:  Well, I'm in the old Who's Who in Art.

BETTY HOAG MCGLYNN:  With a Linda.

SUZANNE LINDA MILLER:  Yes. But I was Suzanne Linda then. That was before I studied in Paris.

BETTY HOAG MCGLYNN:  And this was S-U-Z-A-N-N-E? Be sure we get that spelling right too [laughs]. We should start over again. I'm interviewing Ms. Miller in her home in Ojai, California. Ms. Miller is an easel artist, painter, a lithographer. I believe she's been a teacher. And I know that she's doing ceramics now and other things we'll find out about on the tape. Ms. Miller, you were born in New York, were you not—state of New York?

SUZANNE LINDA MILLER:  Cortland, New York State.

BETTY HOAG MCGLYNN:  And you do not care to give your birth date. Were you educated in the schools in Cortland?

SUZANNE LINDA MILLER:  In the high school—

BETTY HOAG MCGLYNN:  And then—

SUZANNE LINDA MILLER:  —actually in Homer Academy it was.

BETTY HOAG MCGLYNN:  Homer?

SUZANNE LINDA MILLER:  That's three miles from Cortland where I was born. And where—I really grew up in Homer rather than in Cortland.

BETTY HOAG MCGLYNN:  And where did you get your art training? [Tape squeaking starts].

SUZANNE LINDA MILLER:  I went first to Pratt Institute.

BETTY HOAG MCGLYNN:  Oh, you did! My mother went there too.

SUZANNE LINDA MILLER:  Oh, is that so?

BETTY HOAG MCGLYNN:  Mm-hmm [affirmative].

SUZANNE LINDA MILLER:  Two years teacher's course, then I taught for two years and painted. And then I went back for a general art course for two more years.

BETTY HOAG MCGLYNN:  Where did you teach?

SUZANNE LINDA MILLER:  I've done mostly occupational therapy in state hospitals. They said at Pratt, I wasn't suited to set a curriculum, that I should have more freedom in teaching. And they recommended me for the State Hospital in Pennsylvania, in Allentown. So I organized their occupational work there. And I taught at Bellevue Hospital. And I taught during the First World War in an army hospital.

BETTY HOAG MCGLYNN:  For heaven's sakes.

SUZANNE LINDA MILLER:  Then I taught three years in Constantinople College in Turkey.

BETTY HOAG MCGLYNN:  You did! Was that when Dr. Mears was there, Eliot Grinnell Mears?

SUZANNE LINDA MILLER:  Yes.

BETTY HOAG MCGLYNN:  I lived in his home for three years.

SUZANNE LINDA MILLER:  Oh, is that so?

BETTY HOAG MCGLYNN:  Yes, in Palo Alto.

SUZANNE LINDA MILLER:  Oh, well.

BETTY HOAG MCGLYNN:  I suppose that would be about the time you were there, then.

SUZANNE LINDA MILLER:  Mm-hmm [affirmative]. I was there in the early '20s.

BETTY HOAG MCGLYNN:  I've forgotten what he was doing, but I—

SUZANNE LINDA MILLER:  Then I keep changing from teaching to painting. I'd paint for a while and would be dissatisfied with what I was doing. Then I'd go back to teaching, and I'd get the urge to paint again. So—

BETTY HOAG MCGLYNN:  [Laughs.]

SUZANNE LINDA MILLER:  —I vacillated back and forth. I studied three years at Fontainebleau.

BETTY HOAG MCGLYNN:  Excuse me just a minute.

[Recorder stops, restarts.]

BETTY HOAG MCGLYNN:  Getting back to your going to Pratt Art Institute, I was in Butte and talked to mother—I was in Butte with mother for Thanksgiving.

SUZANNE LINDA MILLER:  Oh.

BETTY HOAG MCGLYNN:  She was saying that she had just recently contacted one of the teachers back there who's now head of the—is it Art News? Is that the big magazine? Or Art Digest?

SUZANNE LINDA MILLER:  You mean like the—

BETTY HOAG MCGLYNN:  —I always get them mixed up.

SUZANNE LINDA MILLER:  I'm not sure.

BETTY HOAG MCGLYNN:  Well, he would have been one of your teachers too, undoubtedly, is the reason I wondered—

SUZANNE LINDA MILLER:  Probably.

BETTY HOAG MCGLYNN:  —and he's professor emeritus there, but he's also one of the editors of this big art magazine.

SUZANNE LINDA MILLER:  I get the alumni paper. But I don't know what else they have.

BETTY HOAG MCGLYNN:  Well, it seems to me his name was Mr. Watkins, but I could be wrong. I'll find out.

SUZANNE LINDA MILLER:  His name was what?

BETTY HOAG MCGLYNN:  Watkins, it seems.

SUZANNE LINDA MILLER:  Watkins.

BETTY HOAG MCGLYNN:  But I'm probably mixed up.

SUZANNE LINDA MILLER:  I don't think I had any teacher named Watkins.

[00:04:57]

BETTY HOAG MCGLYNN:  In your doing this therapeutic teaching—is that what you're—

SUZANNE LINDA MILLER:  Occupational therapy.

BETTY HOAG MCGLYNN:  Occupational therapy painting. Has this always been with adults or with children too?

SUZANNE LINDA MILLER:  No, adults. Then, of course, I taught in Long Beach, adult education.

BETTY HOAG MCGLYNN:  Oh, you did?

SUZANNE LINDA MILLER:  For about six years.

BETTY HOAG MCGLYNN:  I'm trying to keep this in chronological order.

SUZANNE LINDA MILLER:  Oh.

BETTY HOAG MCGLYNN:  So I’ll get back to your going to school in Paris. Is that—This is where you studied with Jean Des—

SUZANNE LINDA MILLER:  Jean Despujols, D-E-S-P-U-J-O-L-S.

BETTY HOAG MCGLYNN:  Thank you. And this was the Ecole des Beaux-Artes, is that right?

SUZANNE LINDA MILLER:  No. That was at Fontainebleau.

BETTY HOAG MCGLYNN:  At Fontainebleau.

SUZANNE LINDA MILLER:  And I studied with him in his private studio in Paris.

BETTY HOAG MCGLYNN:  I see. And was this mainly landscape or—

SUZANNE LINDA MILLER:  No. Figure work—

BETTY HOAG MCGLYNN:  Figure work.

SUZANNE LINDA MILLER:  —figure and mural. That's where I got started in mural.

BETTY HOAG MCGLYNN:  I see.

SUZANNE LINDA MILLER:  He was a mural painter.

BETTY HOAG MCGLYNN:  Oh, he was?

SUZANNE LINDA MILLER:  And I helped him enlarge one of his large paintings.

BETTY HOAG MCGLYNN:  Was it for a church, or a convent?

SUZANNE LINDA MILLER:  No. It was for the crafts—Arts and Crafts show in 1925 in Paris.

BETTY HOAG MCGLYNN:  Mmm.

SUZANNE LINDA MILLER:  He did the Bordeaux Tower. And it was quite a large panel.

BETTY HOAG MCGLYNN:  Well—[clears throat] pardon me—it's very unusual for any of the artists who were on the Project later to have had mural training. That was a wonderful thing that you did at that time, wasn't it?

SUZANNE LINDA MILLER:  Yes. It really was.

BETTY HOAG MCGLYNN:  I don't believe they even taught it at Pratt or any of our schools then.

SUZANNE LINDA MILLER:  No, they hadn’t. One of the teachers I had at Pratt said I had a decorative sense—

BETTY HOAG MCGLYNN:  Mm-hmm [affirmative].

SUZANNE LINDA MILLER:  —which made me—interested me in mural. And I studied mural by myself a little bit.

BETTY HOAG MCGLYNN:  Did you study architecture too?

SUZANNE LINDA MILLER:  Well, we had a smattering of architecture, of course, at Pratt. We—

[Cross talk.]

BETTY HOAG MCGLYNN:  The reason I ask that, I came across an old notice in 1930, you got an honorable mention award for the New York Architectural League. And I didn't know what that was for and what it meant.

SUZANNE LINDA MILLER:  Well, it was the mural decoration show in connection with the architectural show.

BETTY HOAG MCGLYNN:  I see.

SUZANNE LINDA MILLER:  Every two years, they had a mural section in the—I guess it's the national architectural show, isn't it?

BETTY HOAG MCGLYNN:  I don't know.

SUZANNE LINDA MILLER:  I think so.

BETTY HOAG MCGLYNN:  Sounds like it probably is. Was this for the colonial Long Island mural—

SUZANNE LINDA MILLER:  Uh—

BETTY HOAG MCGLYNN:  —or do you remember?

SUZANNE LINDA MILLER:  No. It was for a special panel that I had done, not for any particular purpose, just for exhibition.

BETTY HOAG MCGLYNN:  I see. Well, which was your first one? I have in New York, I have two murals. And if there are more, tell me about them. I have the colonial Long Island. And I have Jamaica High School.

SUZANNE LINDA MILLER:  Well, they’re the same.

BETTY HOAG MCGLYNN:  Oh, they are. Well, tell me about them [laughs]. My information comes from so many sources—[Suzanne Linda Miller laughs.] When I put it together, then I don't know—

SUZANNE LINDA MILLER:  Well, the librarian and the historian at the school asked—there were 10 of us who were competing for it; they had an invited competition. And they said they would like something that was between a tapestry and a Persian miniature.

BETTY HOAG MCGLYNN:  How interesting!

SUZANNE LINDA MILLER:  So [laughs] they looked up most of the history. And I looked up books and costume books, various things, and made sketches. I was the fortunate one. I won the competition. So [laughs] I got the commission.

BETTY HOAG MCGLYNN:  Was this true fresco, or—

SUZANNE LINDA MILLER:  No. It was oil on canvas.

BETTY HOAG MCGLYNN:  Oil on canvas. And was this before or after your New York—or your Paris training?

SUZANNE LINDA MILLER:  This was after.

BETTY HOAG MCGLYNN:  This was the 1930s, probably.

SUZANNE LINDA MILLER:  Mm-hmm [affirmative]. 1929, I think I started it. It took me a year and a half [laughs].

BETTY HOAG MCGLYNN:   Good heavens! What was the size of it? Do you remember now?

SUZANNE LINDA MILLER:  Pardon me?

BETTY HOAG MCGLYNN:  What size was it?

SUZANNE LINDA MILLER:  They were—I'm awfully sorry I thought I have the reproductions here. They were—the entrance to the auditorium, there were six doors, and the panels went over the top of two doors and in between two doors. So it was 25 feet across the top. And it was, I guess, 15 feet across the main part of the panel. And I think it was about eight feet high, something like that. There were three of them. So I divided the island. I used the topographic map of the island—

[00:10:15]

BETTY HOAG MCGLYNN:  Oh, how interesting.

SUZANNE LINDA MILLER:  —to get the feeling of a tapestry or a miniature where things—the perspective was anything but true perspective because the things at the top were just as big as the things at the bottom.

[They laugh.]

SUZANNE LINDA MILLER:  But I had a road running all the length of the island out to Montauk Point.

BETTY HOAG MCGLYNN:  Gave it continuity for the—

SUZANNE LINDA MILLER:  Yes.

BETTY HOAG MCGLYNN:  When did you come to California, Ms. Miller?

SUZANNE LINDA MILLER:  I came to California in 1933, the year of the big earthquake at Long Beach, the year the banks were all closed.

BETTY HOAG MCGLYNN:  Catastrophic journey.

[They laugh.]

SUZANNE LINDA MILLER:  My aunt was ill, and I came to be with her. And she thought surely I would turn right around and go home again after the earthquake, but I didn't.

BETTY HOAG MCGLYNN:  Was she in Long Beach?

SUZANNE LINDA MILLER:  No. She was in Hollywood.

BETTY HOAG MCGLYNN:  Oh. Well, I know the first mural you did was at Long Beach.

SUZANNE LINDA MILLER:  Yes. Well, I didn't do anything for 10 years.

BETTY HOAG MCGLYNN:  Oh, you didn't?

SUZANNE LINDA MILLER:  No. It wasn't until about—oh, no, it wasn't as long as that. I guess I began painting again in maybe '35, '34, or '35. I've forgotten exactly.

BETTY HOAG MCGLYNN:  What does an artist do for 10 years when she doesn't paint? [Laughs.]

SUZANNE LINDA MILLER:  [Laughs.] Well, I was devoting my time to my aunt.

BETTY HOAG MCGLYNN:  Oh, I see. But I know that you did several different kinds of things on the Project. And I think we'll come back to that period afterwards. And I want to jump ahead to what happened to you after the end of the Federal Art Project. You probably came to Ojai about that time, didn’t you?

SUZANNE LINDA MILLER:  No, I went to Long Beach and taught adult education.

BETTY HOAG MCGLYNN:  Oh, I see. What years were those?

SUZANNE LINDA MILLER:  Well, I left there in '44, '43, the end of '43. I think I'd been there eight years. It must have been '35 when I started, about that.

BETTY HOAG MCGLYNN:  And the—and when you left Long Beach, did you come up here to Ojai or back to Los Angeles?

SUZANNE LINDA MILLER:  I went to Hollywood for about two years.

BETTY HOAG MCGLYNN:  And were you teaching there?

SUZANNE LINDA MILLER:  No, I was just staying at home.

BETTY HOAG MCGLYNN:  And have you done any more murals since that time?

SUZANNE LINDA MILLER:  Well, right here in Ojai, I did a little—it's called Doug Jordan's pet shop or something like that. It's in the arcade. And Doug Jordan, himself, and his wife were both very civic-minded people and doing a lot for the young people in town. And they had a grocery store at the time. And one day when I went in, Claudia said, Ms. Miller, we're having such a hard time. All these chain stores coming in, these supermarkets. We've got to do something to make our shop distinctive. We were wondering if we couldn't have a little mural, something up there on the wall, maybe just one or two little panels showing something about—well, we thought maybe Mother Goose food things. We saw a Piggly Wiggly market that had a little pig. We thought something like that. Could you do something like that? And I said, Well, I suppose so. So they said, How much would it be? And I said, Well, how much can you spend? So they told me how much they could spend. I said, Oh, yes, I'll do something.

BETTY HOAG MCGLYNN:  Wondering if it would cover your materials probably.

SUZANNE LINDA MILLER:  They expected me to do two or three little panels. But I got started [laughs] and I did a whole mural across the whole wall. I had such fun doing it.

BETTY HOAG MCGLYNN:  I'll have to go look at it on my way out. I'd like to.

SUZANNE LINDA MILLER:  Yes, you should.

BETTY HOAG MCGLYNN:  I still haven't gotten down to see these in Long Beach that you did. But still, before I go into this, I know you did some other work on the Project, and I wanted to ask you about them. You did at least one oil painting. Were you in the easel group?

SUZANNE LINDA MILLER:  No.

BETTY HOAG MCGLYNN:  Because the Los Angeles Museum catalog of an exhibit in 1934 of the Works Progress of Art oil paintings had one called Industry that you had done. Do you remember that?

[00:15:01]

SUZANNE LINDA MILLER:  Industry? I wonder if you have Suzanne Barse Miller’s in here somewhere.

[They laugh.]

BETTY HOAG MCGLYNN:  Was she out here in California too?

SUZANNE LINDA MILLER:  Yeah. She died out here.

BETTY HOAG MCGLYNN:  Oh, well, no wonder it's been confusing.

SUZANNE LINDA MILLER:  You know I lost—

BETTY HOAG MCGLYNN:  I undoubtedly do have things—

SUZANNE LINDA MILLER:  I lost four or five beautiful oriental rugs because the friend who had brought them over from Constantinople for me wrote out here when she found I'd come here, and they had written back that Suzanne Miller had died. So she sold and gave away, and burned one of my rugs. And I never got my rugs. She'd thought I died.

BETTY HOAG MCGLYNN:  Isn't that a shame!

SUZANNE LINDA MILLER:  So I think you may have the wrong person.

BETTY HOAG MCGLYNN:  Well, I probably do. What about the lithographs?

SUZANNE LINDA MILLER:  I did lithographs.

BETTY HOAG MCGLYNN:  You did lithographs. Because I have in '38 one of Balbera Street, for instance.

SUZANNE LINDA MILLER:  Yes.

BETTY HOAG MCGLYNN:  And did you work on those at home?

SUZANNE LINDA MILLER:  No.

[Cross talk.]

SUZANNE LINDA MILLER:  It was in the Project, yeah. They had a lithograph department with a press and the stones we worked on and everything.

BETTY HOAG MCGLYNN:  Were you there under Mr. Wright, or Mr. Feitelson? [Sneezes.]—

SUZANNE LINDA MILLER:  Yes. Well, he was at the head—

BETTY HOAG MCGLYNN:  Excuse me.

SUZANNE LINDA MILLER:  —S. Macdonald-Wright. I've forgotten the man's name who was in charge of the lithographs a very fine lithographer.

BETTY HOAG MCGLYNN:  I wish you could remember his name because several people have mentioned him and can't remember it either. Isn't that funny.

SUZANNE LINDA MILLER:  That is.

BETTY HOAG MCGLYNN:  It's come up several times.

SUZANNE LINDA MILLER:  That's curious.

BETTY HOAG MCGLYNN:  It is. I talked to Ms. Jeakins and, oh, I guess Mr. Wong the other day [inaudible].

SUZANNE LINDA MILLER:  I don't remember the other people who were in that department.

BETTY HOAG MCGLYNN:  You don't [inaudible]. Mr. Bucky McGarren, I think, was in charge of the—

SUZANNE LINDA MILLER:  Who?

BETTY HOAG MCGLYNN:  Bucky McGarren, or Mr. Feitelson.

SUZANNE LINDA MILLER:  Well, he was after S. Macdonald-Wright—

BETTY HOAG MCGLYNN:  Yeah.

SUZANNE LINDA MILLER:  —I think, later on.

BETTY HOAG MCGLYNN:  Was that while you were still with it too? [Inaudible.]

SUZANNE LINDA MILLER:  I think he took charge before I left. Do you know what year he—

BETTY HOAG MCGLYNN:  I don't have the material with me. I should know. It's out in the car. We could get it. I just wondered if you remembered knowing any of them.

SUZANNE LINDA MILLER:  No, I don't.

BETTY HOAG MCGLYNN:  How did you first find out about the Project, do you remember how you got started in it?

SUZANNE LINDA MILLER:  Through—oh, dear, what was her name? —a friend of my aunt, she lived right across the street. Oh, dear. I'll have to think of it. She was on the mayor's committee, and she was interested in the Project. And when I decided to leave my aunt, I'd been with her three years, I think it was, and my cousin was coming to stay with her. This friend said, Why don't you go back to painting? I demurred a bit. And she said, Why don't I see if you couldn't get on the Art Project? So she did. And I took my things down. Jason Herron was at the head of the mural painting. In fact, she was on—

[END OF TRACK AAA_miller65_8838_m.]

BETTY HOAG MCGLYNN:  I'm just going to experiment with this and see if it's working. This is Betty Lochrie Hoag. Part two of the tape with Ms. Suzanne Miller in Ojai on February 11, 1965. Ms. Miller, you just asked if I had talked to Jason Herron. And I told you that I was trying to get a hold of her. I'm very happy to know she is in Ventura then if you—

SUZANNE LINDA MILLER:  Yes, she is.

BETTY HOAG MCGLYNN:  —talked to her a few weeks ago. Good. She had another address, I believe, in town for a while. And I thought maybe she lived both places and that I was missing her that way.

SUZANNE LINDA MILLER:  Well, I don't know of her being in town.

BETTY HOAG MCGLYNN:  Yeah. I have a whole box of photographs that I got from Thyrsus Field in San Diego. And there are half a dozen, but he didn't remember anymore who the artist was—

SUZANNE LINDA MILLER:  Oh, yes?

BETTY HOAG MCGLYNN:  —and most of them are sculptured pieces—

SUZANNE LINDA MILLER:  Oh.

BETTY HOAG MCGLYNN:  —and I'm very eager to see her and see if she can identify—

SUZANNE LINDA MILLER:  The Long Beach library has a lot of my lithographs.

BETTY HOAG MCGLYNN:  Oh, do they? Good!

SUZANNE LINDA MILLER:  I think they have a whole box full of Project things that—

BETTY HOAG MCGLYNN:  Oh.

SUZANNE LINDA MILLER:  —so you could get copies of the lithographs.

BETTY HOAG MCGLYNN:  Well, I'm glad I didn't get down to see the murals, then, because now when I go see the murals, I can borrow those—

SUZANNE LINDA MILLER:  Yes, you can ask about it.

BETTY HOAG MCGLYNN:  —for the microfilming.

SUZANNE LINDA MILLER:  Yes, they have a lot of the Project reproductions—

BETTY HOAG MCGLYNN:  Good.

SUZANNE LINDA MILLER:  —of the lithographs especially.

BETTY HOAG MCGLYNN:  That's wonderful to know. You started to tell me about how you first found out about the Project.

SUZANNE LINDA MILLER:  Yes.

BETTY HOAG MCGLYNN:  It was a friend of your aunt's who told you. And what—did you take samples of your easel painting down with you?

SUZANNE LINDA MILLER:  Yes, to Jason Herron. And very soon I got word back that they'd like me to start right away.

BETTY HOAG MCGLYNN:  Mm-hmm [affirmative]. Doing what?

SUZANNE LINDA MILLER:  As an invited artist—

BETTY HOAG MCGLYNN:  Yeah.

SUZANNE LINDA MILLER:  —for murals. I made the designs for the Long Beach library right away. Well, I think I did one or two oil paintings first.

BETTY HOAG MCGLYNN:  Yeah.

SUZANNE LINDA MILLER:  While—and then Ms. Herron said they were interested and they'd like me to present sketches for that library.

BETTY HOAG MCGLYNN:  Now, this was the Long Beach municipal library in Lincoln Park, wasn't it?

SUZANNE LINDA MILLER:  Yes.

BETTY HOAG MCGLYNN:  And I know that you were working on them in 1937. And at that time, they said you were doing five panels. And then later, by 1938, they said you'd done seven.

SUZANNE LINDA MILLER:  Seven.

BETTY HOAG MCGLYNN:  How many were there? Seven altogether. And that was—

SUZANNE LINDA MILLER:  The Times has a reproduction of the committee standing in front of one of them.

BETTY HOAG MCGLYNN:  Oh!

SUZANNE LINDA MILLER:  It was in the Long Beach paper. not the Times. The Long Beach—I've forgotten the name of the paper. It's their main paper.

BETTY HOAG MCGLYNN:  You probably have that in your clippings that are stored away now.

SUZANNE LINDA MILLER:  Yes, I have. Well—

BETTY HOAG MCGLYNN:  I do hope that when you get them un-stored some time that we can borrow them.

SUZANNE LINDA MILLER:  Oh, surely, you can.

BETTY HOAG MCGLYNN:  Because you know that libraries have not kept the back copies. I tried Laguna Beach the other day to get papers of that period. She said, Oh, we didn't save any of those. We haven't room.

SUZANNE LINDA MILLER:  Oh really!

BETTY HOAG MCGLYNN:  So usually the only chance is if the artists have them.

SUZANNE LINDA MILLER:  Hmm.

BETTY HOAG MCGLYNN:  You had one picture for us. Where did I put them? Scenes from English Literature.

SUZANNE LINDA MILLER:  No, neither of those are from English Literature.

[Cross talk.]

SUZANNE LINDA MILLER:  Well, the other one—History of Printing. One is the Day in the Jungle [sic Visit to the Jungle –Ed]. Is that what I called the story?

BETTY HOAG MCGLYNN:  Yeah. What were some of the themes from English literature in the seven panels?

SUZANNE LINDA MILLER:  Well, there was Hiawatha, and Shakespeare's—what's the one with Prospero in it—

BETTY HOAG MCGLYNN:  Midsummer Night's Dream?

SUZANNE LINDA MILLER:  No, not Prospero. What do I mean? The one with the shipwreck.

BETTY HOAG MCGLYNN:  I'm not very good with Shakespeare [laughs].

SUZANNE LINDA MILLER:  It’s dreadful of me not to know. Oh—well, anyway, some of the others were Pilgrim’s Progress and the Faerie Queene by Spenser, the Canterbury pilgrims from Canterbury Tales, and then the center panel was the English version of the Bible—

[00:05:00]

BETTY HOAG MCGLYNN:  Saint James?

SUZANNE LINDA MILLER:  —various scenes from it woven into a sort of a composite.

BETTY HOAG MCGLYNN:  Did you choose your subject matter? Did the library tell you? Or how did they do that?

SUZANNE LINDA MILLER:  No, they just asked for a history of English literature, and I made sketches. And Mrs. Brewitt looked at them and decided what she liked.

BETTY HOAG MCGLYNN:  Was she the librarian?

SUZANNE LINDA MILLER:  Yes, she was the main librarian in all of Long Beach—

BETTY HOAG MCGLYNN:  Oh, I see.

SUZANNE LINDA MILLER:  —and she was also on the state library committee.

BETTY HOAG MCGLYNN:  You don't remember now how she spelled her name, do you?

SUZANNE LINDA MILLER:  B-R-E-W-I-double T.

BETTY HOAG MCGLYNN:  Thank you. And you'd—no sooner—finished that one then you started on the James Adams Elementary School murals too?

SUZANNE LINDA MILLER:  Yes. Mm-hmm [affirmative].

BETTY HOAG MCGLYNN:  And that is at North Long Beach at 53rd and Pine Avenue, is that right?

SUZANNE LINDA MILLER:  Yes.

BETTY HOAG MCGLYNN:  And the first one in the Long Beach library were what, oils on canvas panels?

SUZANNE LINDA MILLER:  Yes.

BETTY HOAG MCGLYNN:  And the second one is tempera on acoustic plaster. Now—

SUZANNE LINDA MILLER:  Well, it's casein tempera.

BETTY HOAG MCGLYNN:  Casein tempera—

SUZANNE LINDA MILLER:  On plaster.

BETTY HOAG MCGLYNN:  Was that the finished one or was that just the start [cross talk].

SUZANNE LINDA MILLER:  That’s the finished one.

BETTY HOAG MCGLYNN:  The finished one. The reason I'm asking is apparently they had exhibited a kind of progress work at the time. Because the Los Angeles County Museum [of Art] had some of your Faerie Queene pictures, and then some were on—some were charcoal, and one was on transparent linen, so I gathered they were just—

SUZANNE LINDA MILLER:  Transparent linen?

BETTY HOAG MCGLYNN:  That's what it said in the—

SUZANNE LINDA MILLER:  I don't know what they meant [laughs].

BETTY HOAG MCGLYNN:  I don't know what they mean either. Isn't that funny?

SUZANNE LINDA MILLER:  I didn't choose any transparent linen.

BETTY HOAG MCGLYNN:  I didn't know there was such a thing.

SUZANNE LINDA MILLER:  I didn't either. Well, maybe they thought casein was transparent linen.

BETTY HOAG MCGLYNN:  Possibly.

[They laugh.]

SUZANNE LINDA MILLER:  I have no idea what that would be.

BETTY HOAG MCGLYNN:  I thought I was going to learn some new medium today.

SUZANNE LINDA MILLER:  [Laughs] no.

BETTY HOAG MCGLYNN:  I did want to get the size of the other mural.

SUZANNE LINDA MILLER:  Which one?

BETTY HOAG MCGLYNN:  In the public library, 300 square feet. Is that right? All together in the seven panels.

SUZANNE LINDA MILLER:  Oh, I presume so. I don't know, I never figured it out.

BETTY HOAG MCGLYNN:  And then the one at the James—Jane Adams school was a five-and-a-half by a 17-and-a-half foot one panel—

SUZANNE LINDA MILLER:  Yes.

BETTY HOAG MCGLYNN:  —picture. And that's your jungle one that—

SUZANNE LINDA MILLER:  That's the one, yes.

BETTY HOAG MCGLYNN:  —you had a picture of. You started to tell me earlier about how chose the subject and I wish you'd tell—

SUZANNE LINDA MILLER:  Well, it was just in the—I asked the librarian what subject. She—it was all up to her to decide. And she said the children were the most interested—the books they took out of the library the most were the animal books and the home making books. So I made sketches for each and she liked the jungle the best. And then I wrote the little story that went with it.

BETTY HOAG MCGLYNN:  I certainly appreciate being able to have this microfilm to go with it. That will be interesting.

SUZANNE LINDA MILLER:  All the animals in the jungle talk to the children.

BETTY HOAG MCGLYNN:  I see.

SUZANNE LINDA MILLER:  Say what they stand for [laughs].

BETTY HOAG MCGLYNN:  I imagine they're still using this.

SUZANNE LINDA MILLER:  Oh, I think so.

BETTY HOAG MCGLYNN:  Yes.

SUZANNE LINDA MILLER:  The librarian reads it to different classes. And then they hung up the animals in the picture.

BETTY HOAG MCGLYNN:  Has it been published to the—

SUZANNE LINDA MILLER:  The project turned it over first to the literature section. But they said, as long as I wasn't registered in that section, they couldn't use it in any way. So I just give it to the library.

BETTY HOAG MCGLYNN:  Yeah. The library probably has a mimeographed—

SUZANNE LINDA MILLER:  Yes, I think so. I gave them two carbon copies, I think.

BETTY HOAG MCGLYNN:  Weren't you fortunate that they had a nice, clear rectangle to do this in? So many people had doors like you'd had in New York, cutting out—

SUZANNE LINDA MILLER:  Yes.

BETTY HOAG MCGLYNN:  —their mural.

SUZANNE LINDA MILLER:  Yes, this was easier to do, of course.

BETTY HOAG MCGLYNN:  Yeah, it looks like good light too.

SUZANNE LINDA MILLER:  But it was a real challenge to do it with doors in it. I enjoyed it just as much.

[00:10:02]

BETTY HOAG MCGLYNN:  Did you? Working out the problem.

SUZANNE LINDA MILLER:  Mm-hmm [affirmative]

BETTY HOAG MCGLYNN:  What were the predominant colors in the jungle picture? Do you remember now?

SUZANNE LINDA MILLER:  Oh, they were all sort of earth colors, different shades of green, And the animals were—all the right colors for animals. I think I had a few spots of red for birds. The children were—maybe one of the children was dressed in red, I don't remember. Mostly greens, I guess. Various shades of greens and brown and orange.

BETTY HOAG MCGLYNN:  Did any of the children at the school model for you when you were doing this? [Inaudible.]

SUZANNE LINDA MILLER:  No, I don't use models.

BETTY HOAG MCGLYNN:  Don't you?

SUZANNE LINDA MILLER:  I was discouraged in Paris when I was studying with Mr. Despujols. I had worked very hard on a model and had done it the way I learned at Pratt Institute, which, of course, was an earlier period, where we copied shadows very carefully and brought out forms by shadow, with the most light on the chest and so forth.

BETTY HOAG MCGLYNN:  [Laughs.]

SUZANNE LINDA MILLER:  And Mr. Despujols came in and said You might as well just stop painting. You have no sense of form, whatever. And I was so mad, I could've just knocked him down. And I said, Well, I'll just show him.

[They laugh.]

SUZANNE LINDA MILLER:  So I turned my easel around and I didn't look at the model at all. I had the sketch for the outline. And I just rounded everything the way I'd learned in elementary school to paint spheres and cubes and [laughs] cylinders. So when he came back the next day, he wouldn’t believe that I’d done it at first. And then he said, Don’t ever use a model again. You’re a slave to your model. You’ve got a sense of form, but you let the model destroy it.

BETTY HOAG MCGLYNN:  Isn’t that interesting?

SUZANNE LINDA MILLER:  So I’ve never used a model since for anything unless for a pose, I’d pose for myself in front of a mirror.

BETTY HOAG MCGLYNN:  Mm-hmm [affirmative].

SUZANNE LINDA MILLER:  Or I can do—I can get in the position I want and feel how I feel.

BETTY HOAG MCGLYNN:  Yeah.

SUZANNE LINDA MILLER:  And then I can do it better than I could to look at the model.

BETTY HOAG MCGLYNN:  Well, that is very interesting!

[They laugh.]

SUZANNE LINDA MILLER:  I think he told me to go home and raise babies and give up painting. Something like that.

[They laugh.]

BETTY HOAG MCGLYNN:  Well still, certainly all of your training is subconsciously there on the form. You couldn't—I mean, even if you could do cubes and squares and all, it wouldn't do any good unless you had all the anatomy that you obviously had.

SUZANNE LINDA MILLER:  Well—

BETTY HOAG MCGLYNN:  Those things.

SUZANNE LINDA MILLER:  —I have observed. I've been very interested in form, so I've done a lot of observation. And then, of course, he did give me some very worthwhile criticisms after I began working for form and not copying a model.

BETTY HOAG MCGLYNN:  He must've been a very good teacher, it sounds like.

SUZANNE LINDA MILLER:  He was an excellent teacher. Perfectly wonderful.

BETTY HOAG MCGLYNN:  You did the South Gate library mural about—what, about 1940, probably, wasn't it?

SUZANNE LINDA MILLER:  Mmm.

BETTY HOAG MCGLYNN:  About a year after the other one. And I didn't know, I haven't been able to find any material about it. So I'm just delighted that you—

SUZANNE LINDA MILLER:  That was just one.

BETTY HOAG MCGLYNN:  —have a picture. How many were there, there?

SUZANNE LINDA MILLER:  There were five.

BETTY HOAG MCGLYNN:  Oh.

SUZANNE LINDA MILLER:  They—I took—the earliest was the panel of the Egyptian painting, making the paper and the form of their book; and then the Chinese; and then the medieval monks copying by hand; and then the Gutenberg press; and then the last I went down to the Times building and made sketches from their big machinery.

BETTY HOAG MCGLYNN:  Oh, that must’ve been fun.

SUZANNE LINDA MILLER:  Oh, it was fun, and I got that woven into a panel.

BETTY HOAG MCGLYNN:  Well, did you work with Mr. Wright  on your—

SUZANNE LINDA MILLER:  No—

BETTY HOAG MCGLYNN:  —you know, at the time—

SUZANNE LINDA MILLER:  —not in any way with him. He was merely a director of the department.

BETTY HOAG MCGLYNN:  I see.

SUZANNE LINDA MILLER:  Director of the department.

BETTY HOAG MCGLYNN:  It’s confusing reading these things because he was director at the time. Sometimes when you read about them, it sounds as if he was collaborating on the designs.

SUZANNE LINDA MILLER:  Oh, not in any way whatever.

BETTY HOAG MCGLYNN:  No.

SUZANNE LINDA MILLER:  I think he merely approved the designs after they were done. But no criticisms ever.

BETTY HOAG MCGLYNN:  He didn't even come around to see—

SUZANNE LINDA MILLER:  Never, never.

BETTY HOAG MCGLYNN:  —what was being done.

SUZANNE LINDA MILLER:  Never.

[00:15:00]

BETTY HOAG MCGLYNN:  Did you have any helpers with you on any of these?

SUZANNE LINDA MILLER:  I had help enlarging and mixing paint. Albia—what was her name, Alberg—

BETTY HOAG MCGLYNN:  Albro?

SUZANNE LINDA MILLER:  What is her name? You've got her name probably.

BETTY HOAG MCGLYNN:  Yeah, I have it in my files. [Maxine] Albro or Elber or something like that.

SUZANNE LINDA MILLER:  Yeah. And then Helen Hiler? What’s her name? Helen? She did murals.

BETTY HOAG MCGLYNN:  Hilaire Hiler?

SUZANNE LINDA MILLER:  She did the series of boat pictures in some building. Some library—ships—

BETTY HOAG MCGLYNN:  Was that out in San Francisco?

SUZANNE LINDA MILLER:  No, it was in Los Angeles.

BETTY HOAG MCGLYNN:  Here? Oh.

SUZANNE LINDA MILLER:  They both helped enlarge and mix paint, and they did some of the underpainting but never any of the finished.

BETTY HOAG MCGLYNN:  Well, they were probably not as well-trained artists.

SUZANNE LINDA MILLER:  They hadn't done any training at all.

BETTY HOAG MCGLYNN:  Oh, really?

SUZANNE LINDA MILLER:  I trained them actually. And it was after they had worked with me that they were given these other projects to do.

BETTY HOAG MCGLYNN:  Oh, I see. I'll go out in a few minutes and bring my files in, and we'll check them.

SUZANNE LINDA MILLER:  Hmm?

BETTY HOAG MCGLYNN:  I'll go out to the car and get my files, and we'll check them.

SUZANNE LINDA MILLER:  Oh yeah.

BETTY HOAG MCGLYNN:  Just for fun. You probably might like to know yourself what those murals were—

SUZANNE LINDA MILLER:  Yes.

BETTY HOAG MCGLYNN:  —because I have a record of them. And what about putting them up on the walls? Did you have to bring in the official plasterers to do that?

SUZANNE LINDA MILLER:  I hired a paperhanger and plasterer, the one at Long Beach, I got the one that Mrs. Brewitt recommended. And the one in Jamaica, I had expected them to put it on in white lead—

BETTY HOAG MCGLYNN:  Yeah.

SUZANNE LINDA MILLER:  —instead, when the paperhanger came, he said, No, I'm going to put them on in regular wallpaper paste. And the water shrank them so that I—

BETTY HOAG MCGLYNN:  Oh.

SUZANNE LINDA MILLER:  Fortunately, I had left enough canvas. But I had to paint almost a foot out on each side.

BETTY HOAG MCGLYNN:  Wow, how amazing!

SUZANNE LINDA MILLER:  It was very disgusting.

BETTY HOAG MCGLYNN:  Yes.

SUZANNE LINDA MILLER:  Because I didn't expect them to shrink at all.

BETTY HOAG MCGLYNN:  Yeah.

SUZANNE LINDA MILLER:  Or rather—yeah, shrink. They shrank.

BETTY HOAG MCGLYNN:  I didn't know canvas would do that.

SUZANNE LINDA MILLER:  Well, I didn't know it would either, but it did.

[They laugh.]

BETTY HOAG MCGLYNN:  Oh, that is very interesting.

SUZANNE LINDA MILLER:  There was a heater, a big heating flue behind one of the walls. And I think that was why he decided not to use white lead.

BETTY HOAG MCGLYNN:  Mm-hmm [affirmative].

SUZANNE LINDA MILLER:  I'm not sure why but, at any rate, he did use paste and water.

BETTY HOAG MCGLYNN:  Did that make it adhere permanently all right, even though it was shrunken?

SUZANNE LINDA MILLER:  Well, as far as I know it has. I haven't been back to see.

BETTY HOAG MCGLYNN:  You didn't do any more murals for the Project?

SUZANNE LINDA MILLER:  No.

BETTY HOAG MCGLYNN:  I don't mean that, any more, because that was a lot to have done [laughs], three tremendous groups of them like that.

SUZANNE LINDA MILLER:  Yes.

BETTY HOAG MCGLYNN:  I just wondered if there was anything else that I had missed that you'd done.

SUZANNE LINDA MILLER:  No, the rest was lithographs.

BETTY HOAG MCGLYNN:  Mm-hmm [affirmative]. And you probably were busy on those at the same time that you were working on your murals, weren't you?

SUZANNE LINDA MILLER:  No. After finishing that last mural, they had decided that a new group of people were—should come on the Project. And that we who had been there several years should give way to them.

BETTY HOAG MCGLYNN:  Oh, I see.

SUZANNE LINDA MILLER:  It wasn't several years. I guess I was there a year and a half.

BETTY HOAG MCGLYNN:  Mm-hmm [affirmative].

SUZANNE LINDA MILLER:  But at any rate, instead of giving me a new mural until the time was changed, I went into the lithograph department.

BETTY HOAG MCGLYNN:  Do you remember any of the artists working on that, if you were in a group? Some of the artists—it's impossible to find to talk to. I just, you know, they're [inaudible].

SUZANNE LINDA MILLER:  I remember faces so well and all about them except their names.

BETTY HOAG MCGLYNN:  [Inaudible.]

SUZANNE LINDA MILLER:  I never remember names well. I'm sorry.

BETTY HOAG MCGLYNN:  I have a list of some of the artists with me and if you have time, maybe you'd like to look at it. And if you remember any of them or can tell me anything about them, that would be interesting.

SUZANNE LINDA MILLER:  Well, I haven't kept track of any of them.

BETTY HOAG MCGLYNN:  Yeah.

SUZANNE LINDA MILLER:  When I came up here, I—

BETTY HOAG MCGLYNN:  Pretty well cut off—

SUZANNE LINDA MILLER:  Well, even when I went to Long Beach, I lost touch with most of them.

BETTY HOAG MCGLYNN:  Mm-hmm [affirmative].

SUZANNE LINDA MILLER:  Jason Herron would know who they all were.

BETTY HOAG MCGLYNN:  She and Ms. Wurdeman, I guess, were very busy, sort of organizing it at the beginning, weren't they?

SUZANNE LINDA MILLER:  Yes, I think so.

[00:20:00]

BETTY HOAG MCGLYNN:  I haven't interviewed Ms. Wurdeman either. I've talked to her, and she's been very helpful.

SUZANNE LINDA MILLER:  Well, who was she? I don't know her.

BETTY HOAG MCGLYNN:  Well, she manages the Los Angeles Art Association, which, as I understand it, is kind of a non-profit group. They have a gallery on La Cienega.

SUZANNE LINDA MILLER:  Oh.

BETTY HOAG MCGLYNN:  I think the artists belong to the Association. But it isn't like a gallery where anyone's getting a commission on what they sell.

SUZANNE LINDA MILLER:  Mm.

BETTY HOAG MCGLYNN:  And a lot of the artists—oh, Nick Berganti and Mr. Feitelson and Helen Lundeberg Feitelson are active in it. And I don't know what other artists from that group, but—

SUZANNE LINDA MILLER:  The man who had charge of the lithograph died soon after—

BETTY HOAG MCGLYNN:  Oh, did he?

SUZANNE LINDA MILLER:  —after I left the Project.

BETTY HOAG MCGLYNN:  Well, that's probably why so many people have forgotten the name then, if he hasn't been around for some time.

SUZANNE LINDA MILLER:  It probably will come to me—Nahr. Mr. Nahr. N-A-H-R.

BETTY HOAG MCGLYNN:  N-A-H-R.

SUZANNE LINDA MILLER:  I don't remember his first name.

BETTY HOAG MCGLYNN:  Let me go and get my box of names.

SUZANNE LINDA MILLER:  Yes, do.

[Recorder stops, restarts.]

SUZANNE LINDA MILLER:  [Inaudible.]

BETTY HOAG MCGLYNN:  How long have you been working on ceramics?

SUZANNE LINDA MILLER:  Oh, several years on and off not very seriously. But recently, I've been doing mosaics. I've gathered stones down at the Pierpont Bay beach. I've been all the way up the coast gathering jaspers and California jade and various things. And I have a diamond wheel for slanting.

BETTY HOAG MCGLYNN:  Mm-hmm [affirmative].

SUZANNE LINDA MILLER:  I slab them and then I combine them with pebbles.

BETTY HOAG MCGLYNN:  Well, you showed me one of them here with the pebbles and it's just beautiful. It's an interesting—

SUZANNE LINDA MILLER:  The rest of them are all stored. But I will show you the two panels that are going back to College.

BETTY HOAG MCGLYNN:  Now, where might these be used? The new—

SUZANNE LINDA MILLER:  Well, they're planned for the entrance to Building P.

BETTY HOAG MCGLYNN:  Of a—

SUZANNE LINDA MILLER:  It's sort of like a square arch. They're about two feet wide by four feet high, and they fit on the upper part of the arch. But our ceramic teacher says they probably will use them in the new building. I don't know whether they will or not. It's undecided at present.

BETTY HOAG MCGLYNN:  Is this a state college or a branch of the university, or?

SUZANNE LINDA MILLER:  This is the Ventura—was junior college. Now it's just the Ventura College.

BETTY HOAG MCGLYNN:  I see. And is that already started?

SUZANNE LINDA MILLER:  The College?

BETTY HOAG MCGLYNN:  Mm-hmm [affirmative].

SUZANNE LINDA MILLER:  Oh yes, it's been going for several years.

BETTY HOAG MCGLYNN:  Oh, it has? I didn't know that.

SUZANNE LINDA MILLER:  It was the junior—Ventura Junior College, but now it's just Ventura College. It's been put on a regular college basis.

BETTY HOAG MCGLYNN:  Mm-hmm [affirmative].

SUZANNE LINDA MILLER:  And have their own campus now.

BETTY HOAG MCGLYNN:  So then these will be for the new building that's being built there?

SUZANNE LINDA MILLER:  Probably, I don't know whether they'll use it in the new building or the building I planned them for. But they're building a new auditorium.

BETTY HOAG MCGLYNN:  I was interested in your glazes. Do you have your own kiln here?

SUZANNE LINDA MILLER:  No.

BETTY HOAG MCGLYNN:  Oh.

SUZANNE LINDA MILLER:  It's all fired down there at the College.

BETTY HOAG MCGLYNN:  I see.

SUZANNE LINDA MILLER:  There are quite a number of us that go there and work. We're registered under teachers, but we really just do our own work.

BETTY HOAG MCGLYNN:  Mm-hmm [affirmative]. When I was here in September or October and talked to you on the telephone, I think you said you were getting ready for a pottery fair, weren't you? Some kind of exhibit?

SUZANNE LINDA MILLER:  When was that?

BETTY HOAG MCGLYNN:  At—wasn't it September or October?

SUZANNE LINDA MILLER:  Oh, down at—

BETTY HOAG MCGLYNN:  Some kind of exhibit that you were busy with.

SUZANNE LINDA MILLER:  Yes, yes, the Knecht Gallery nursery has an exhibit every year.

BETTY HOAG MCGLYNN:  Mm-hmm [affirmative]

SUZANNE LINDA MILLER:  Mr. Knecht is a potter himself.

BETTY HOAG MCGLYNN:  How do you spell his name?

SUZANNE LINDA MILLER:  Oh dear.

BETTY HOAG MCGLYNN:  Do you remember?

SUZANNE LINDA MILLER:  K-N-E-C-H-T, I think.

BETTY HOAG MCGLYNN:  Well, before we stop the tape, Ms. Miller, I wanted to ask you just one kind of final question. Of course, everybody knows that the thing helped people eat at the time and was wonderful for that reason. But do you feel that it had very many other profitable outcomes for artists in the area? As you look back on it, for instance, do you feel that you were able to influence very many younger people, or that—

SUZANNE LINDA MILLER:  Well, I didn't even come into contact with younger people—

BETTY HOAG MCGLYNN:  —except these two, Albro—

SUZANNE LINDA MILLER:  Yes, yes.

BETTY HOAG MCGLYNN:  —and Hiler.

[00:25:01]

SUZANNE LINDA MILLER:  Well, they got training in mural.

BETTY HOAG MCGLYNN:  What about lithography? Was that—do you think a lot of artists gained from the contact of working with other people like you who'd had training?

SUZANNE LINDA MILLER:  Well, I gained something I don't know about others [laughs].

BETTY HOAG MCGLYNN:  What did you gain?

SUZANNE LINDA MILLER:  Oh, all sorts of social experiences.

BETTY HOAG MCGLYNN:  Mm-hmm [affirmative].

SUZANNE LINDA MILLER:  I don't know. Not anything you can put into words. It was a group of people who were all different, and you worked with them like that everyday. A group of artists, of course, are all the unusual people, I think.

BETTY HOAG MCGLYNN:  Yes.

SUZANNE LINDA MILLER:  So there were all sorts of unusual relationships [laughs] and contacts. It was a lively department.

BETTY HOAG MCGLYNN:  It must've been. Well, there certainly has never been any other time in American history when that many artists have worked that close to each other either, has there?

SUZANNE LINDA MILLER:  No, I guess not.

BETTY HOAG MCGLYNN:  Yeah.

SUZANNE LINDA MILLER:  There was a very good man there who did most of the printing. I've been trying to think of what his name was. Carl—Carl what?

BETTY HOAG MCGLYNN:  Bond?

SUZANNE LINDA MILLER:  He did a lot of lithographs himself. Very good ones.

BETTY HOAG MCGLYNN:  He was probably a professional printer, wasn't he?

SUZANNE LINDA MILLER:  No. He hadn't—I don't think he'd ever done it before. But I don't think he did anything on the Project but that.

BETTY HOAG MCGLYNN:  Mm-hmm [affirmative].

SUZANNE LINDA MILLER:  And I think he learned from Mr. Nahr how to do it.

BETTY HOAG MCGLYNN:  I'll see if I can find his name, Carl—

SUZANNE LINDA MILLER:  Carl—what could've been—

BETTY HOAG MCGLYNN:  Some of the artists have told me—

SUZANNE LINDA MILLER:  Then there was Eve somebody—

BETTY HOAG MCGLYNN:  Eve?

SUZANNE LINDA MILLER:  —and what was her last name? [Laughs.]

BETTY HOAG MCGLYNN:  Was she a printmaker?

SUZANNE LINDA MILLER:  Well, she did lithographs. No, she did the—not the printing. The—she designed them. I was trying to think what subjects—she did animals especially well. I remember one of a lion or a tiger or something on a tree about to pounce on to a deer below; it was very alive. And then there was one young man who did old buildings; he went around sketching some of the old buildings. His name was Paul somebody. Then you probably know Kay Winters?

BETTY HOAG MCGLYNN:  No.

SUZANNE LINDA MILLER:  She did lithographs. And Olinka Hrdy?

BETTY HOAG MCGLYNN:  I have her name. I think she lives someplace else. I think I've seen her address—

SUZANNE LINDA MILLER:  She lives in Sherman Oaks.

BETTY HOAG MCGLYNN:  Oh, does she? Good.

SUZANNE LINDA MILLER:  Sherman Oaks, no wait a minute. Maybe it's not Sherman Oaks. Well, it's one of those. Is there a West Oaks too? Or what other Oaks are there?

BETTY HOAG MCGLYNN:  Well, I—there are streets that are Oak Ridge and Oak Mount.

SUZANNE LINDA MILLER:  Well, I guess she's in Sherman Oaks.

BETTY HOAG MCGLYNN:  Is that a Ms. Hrdy or did she ever marry, I wonder?

SUZANNE LINDA MILLER:  No, she's Miss.

BETTY HOAG MCGLYNN:  I'm going to Sherman Oaks tomorrow to see a man who was in New York on the Project. So maybe he will know of her [inaudible].

SUZANNE LINDA MILLER:  Probably will.

BETTY HOAG MCGLYNN:  Well, that is a lot of names. I’ll see if I can connect some of these up [laughs].

SUZANNE LINDA MILLER:  Yes.

BETTY HOAG MCGLYNN:  Well, I certainly appreciate talking to you. I really enjoyed it.

SUZANNE LINDA MILLER:  Well, I'm glad you finally got here, and I'm sorry you didn't come while I'm still in my own house.

BETTY HOAG MCGLYNN:  Well, I think you're very gracious to let me come now when you're in the middle of getting moved. Thank you.

[Recorder stops, restarts.]

BETTY HOAG MCGLYNN:  This is Betty Hoag to make some additions to this interview with Ms. Miller, which seemed to be jinxed right from the beginning. First, because of the mix up about her name, which is something she's been bothered with all the time she's lived in California apparently. And in the middle of the tape, we were disrupted by the fact that a pan left on the stove caught on fire, and there were great plumes of smoke coming into the room where we were. And it was just a little disturbing for both of us.

[00:30:04]

And the third thing, I had taped Ms. Miller for perhaps 15 minutes or so before we turned the tape off when the pan caught on fire. And she told me that she is hard of hearing. So some of the—[clears throat] pardon me—things which I had asked her, she had not really understood. So there were two or three things that I want to get straight. One was when I asked her if she knew Dr. Eliot Grinnell Mears in Constantinople, she said she had. And later she told me she misunderstood me and that she didn't know him. And just for the record of history, I thought I should set it straight. Dr. Mears incidentally was for many years Dean of the Graduate School of Business at Stanford University. And he was at the university at Constantinople at the time she was there.

Another thing about her birth date, she did not want to tell—has never told what it is, which is certainly in her prerogative. But for any future historian who is going to be studying her, I think it should be noted that she told me off the tape that she was at Pratt Art Institute [sic Pratt Institute –Ed] in 1911 and '12, sometime around then, which means that her birth date was probably around 1890 or that general time. She showed me the tiles, which she has done for Ventura College after we had taped. And these are quite beautiful abstract designs, about 3x5 feet with rock, which she had gathered from the beaches, as she tells on the tape, set into them. And they're sitting in her garage waiting to be installed. I wanted to also—I wanted to also add that I went down to what she'd called Doug Jordan's pet shop to see the murals that she'd done. And they're dated 1956. This building formerly was a grocery store. And the idea, she says, it comes from Piggly Wiggly grocery store in Ventura. The people who have the shop now have a gift shop, not a pet shop. And these little nursery rhymes go the full length of the building and are quite delightful because they were done over board and batten walls, which gives them a lightness and kind of a lively movement that's quite effective. But it must've absorbed a great deal of paint when it was done.

For anyone wanting to know more about South Gate Library murals, which she did, there's an article, which tells about them and some other ones in the Pacific Binary Talk, Volume 13, number five, January 1941, page 74. "Murals in California Libraries." Of the people who were discussed on the tape, I have both a Maxine Albro, A-L-B-R-O, and a Maja Albee, M-A-J-A, A-L-B-E-E. And a Hilaire Hiler, H-I-L-E-R. Now, these people I believe are in the San Francisco area. And Mary Fuller tells—mentions their name in her Art Forum article if anyone wanted to look into that. They can probably trace it through the San Francisco tapes. She also speaks of Kay Winters. And in my files, I have a Carl Winter and then a Danny Winters. And a Mrs. Danny Winters who formally was Mrs. Herman Cherry. And someone has interviewed Mr. Cherry, so they may find that this Kay Winters was his former wife. She also mentions a Nahr with the lithography section of the WPA here in Los Angeles. And this probably was a man in my files Edwin, N-A-H-R, who is superintendent and techno-critic—technical critic for lithography under Mr. Wright.

[END OF TRACK AAA_miller65_8839_m.]

[END OF INTERVIEW.]