UNIVERSITY OF WISCONSIN-MADISON ARCHIVES
ORAL HISTORY PROGRAM

Interview #1419
NELSON, LESLIE

NELSON, LESLIE (1948-)
Graduate student; 
At UW: [as student] 1975-1978; [as professor] 1982-2012

Interviewed: 	March 26, 2015
Interviewer: 	Harv Thompson, Maryo Gard-Ewell, Karen Geshko
Index by: 	Stephen A. Pierce
Length: 	1 hour, 58 minutes

Abstract: In her March 2015 interview with Harv Thompson et al, Leslie Nelson tells the story of how she became interested in art, pursued an education in art, and eventually came to teach at the University of Wisconsin-Extension and in Madison.  Nelson reflects on her strong commitment to feminism and activism from a very early age, and a series of “aha” moments that drew her to art and to education. She reminisces about numerous influences on her work and her teaching, and throughout the interview shared anecdotes about a number of prominent UW-Extension personalities, including Robert Gard, John Steuart Curry, and others. This interview was conducted for inclusion into the UW-Madison Oral History Program and the Gard Foundation’s UW-Madison and WI Community Arts History Project.

Key Words: University of Illinois; California College of the Arts; 1960s; student protests; Viola Frey; Trude Guermonprez; Oregon; Mexico; University of Wisconsin-Madison; art department; Wisconsin Regional Art Program; John Steuart Curry; James Schwalbach; Kenneth Kuemmerlein; Joe Bradley; Susan Farmer; Robert Gard; “memory cloths”; retirement.

First Interview Session (March 26, 2015): Digital File

Time	Keywords
00:00:00	Start of Interview/Interviewer’s Introduction

00:01:33	Question [HT]: Talk about your early life. Answer: Nelson was born in Des Moines IA, where she and her parents and siblings lived until she was 8 and moved to High-land Park, Chicago.  She recalled being interested in science as a little girl, though her parents didn’t encourage this interest (an early example of how boys and girls were treated differently), and she talked about always making things with her hands.

00:04:03	[no question] Though interested in science, her mother encouraged her to take art classes at the Art Institute in downtown Chicago during HS. She enjoyed this experience, though she had misperceptions about what she was actually doing. She and the interviewers talked about her math and science interests in HS.

00:06:55	[no question] Interested in art, she was nevertheless not permitted to major in art at the University of Illinois, where her parents went to college. She reflected on why she decided to go to Illinois though she had early on desired to go to Radcliffe.

00:09:26	Question [KG]: What did your parents do? Answer: Her mother and father met at the University of Illinois. Her father majored in business and worked in the car industry, but her mother ended up being a homemaker.  

00:10:06	Question [ME]: Influential teachers? Answer: Not in HS; but during college she began to realize that her community wasn’t really the poor people of society, and began to get more involved in issues of social concern. She talked about how her mother had bought her stylish matching luggage and continued to be concerned about her wardrobe even as she moved in the direction of hippie activism.

00:12:47	Question [HT]: Activism at Illinois? Answer: There was activism, though not as strong as at UW. Follow up [ME]: Was this linked with your art? Answer: No, these were separate areas of her life, relating some stories about classes and her activism.

00:14:42	Question [ME]: Getting to art school? Answer: She related that at the end of her first year, she skipped her exams to attend protests, secretly hoping she’d flunk (though her grades were too good for that and just had to drop out). Having met her future first husband at Illinois, she went back to the school to work during the second year, first working at a laboratory measuring raindrops, but then resigning for political reasons.

00:17:26	[no question] Right about when she realized she needed to resign, her future husband was accepted to graduate school at Berkeley, so they got married and moved to CA. After a brief stay in a draft resistance commune, they found housing in Oakland, where she was able to take ceramics classes for free. She soon realized she needed more training, and even though it was expensive, she was accepted to California College of the Arts immediately. 

00:19:55	[no question] She talked about going to California College of the Arts, where she took every class available, and particularly worked with Viola Frey and Squeak Carnwath in ceramics. They were extremely influential, turning her attention toward ceramic art rather than just functional ceramics. She also recalled wanting to take a class with Trude Guermonprez, a famous textile artist who also taught at CCA—but she had to take every other textile class before she got to Guermonprez’ class, and she discussed her final project. She graduated with a double major in 1972.

00:22:52	[no question] With the Vietnam protest era winding down, and getting highly interested in feminism, after graduating they moved to Oregon to live on a farm with some friends from Oakland.  She pursued primarily textiles there and got very involved in a women’s group.

00:25:54	[no question] As a side note, she related a story about how she later found out that her after-school women’s group had been infiltrated by an anti-communist FBI agent.

00:27:34	Question [HT]: Did your family support what you were studying? Answer: No; her political leanings were a rejection of her family’s values, so many issues became very contentious for them. They never stopped talking, but there was constant tension—some of this had to do with her rejection of her mother’s materialism.

00:32:14	Question [HT]: Were you commercially producing art? Answer: Yes. They had something called “Saturday Market,” which included farm items but also craft items.  The plan on the farm was to become subsistence level, but they never got there and so supplemented the farm income with other kinds of income. Her art on the farm was very functional/craft-based. Follow up [HT]: Teaching experiences? Answer: No.

00:34:43	[no question] While at the farm, she continued, her husband fell in love with someone else, so she returned first to CA and then moved to Mexico to study pre-Columbian art. When she ran out of money in Guatemala, she serendipitously got involved in giving tours of Tikal. She related some humorous anecdotes about guiding art tours for 6 weeks.

00:39:22	[no question] She discussed how she returned to the US after the tour season in Tikal. Having earned some money, she worked her way through Mexico to meet her parents (at a conference) in Acapulco. She talked about some of the things she experienced as her parents flew her back to Chicago.

00:41:15	Question [KG]: That’s how you got into teaching? Answer: That was the start, but when she moved back and got divorced, she began teaching art in Eugene OR to support herself, only to discover that she loved it.

00:42:25	[no question] She explained how she got to Madison, after deciding that she wanted to get training to be an art teacher. While UW had an MFA in textiles, she talked about the difficulties of getting an MFA in either art or the Home Ec dept. She talked about getting a job as a night guard, getting an apartment, getting tuition remission from a legislator, and falling in love all within days of arriving in Madison.

00:45:44	[no question] She explained that, after getting her MS in Home Ec, she was able to transfer to the Art department, doing printmaking on paper with similar techniques to the silkscreening on fabric she’d been doing. She worked on her MFA until 1978, doing practice teaching, working with the ‘art cart,’etc.

00:47:31	Question [HT]: After graduation? Answer: She was one of two who got actual university teaching jobs, and she described her work at Mary Baldwin College.

00:48:34	Question [ME]: Why leave VA? Answer: She recounted how her parents had moved to Door County in WI, how she fell in love with a man there, and why this relation-ship didn’t eventually work out.

00:50:23	[no question] She began explaining how she came to work at UW-Madison. In the summer of 1980 she applied to and got hired for a job in UW-Green Bay in three departments, where she worked for three years. 

00:52:47	[no question] Returning to talk about her graduate school days, she discussed how her thesis advisor, Otto Thieme, had her work on a project related to John Steuart Curry. As part of this project, she learned a great deal about John Steuart Curry’s Wisconsin Regional Art program.

00:54:10	Follow up [ME]: Can you explain the WRA program? Answer: She talked about how Curry was brought to UW as artist-in-residence at the Ag School in 1936, and she suspected that Curry, feeling somewhat guilty about being hired full-time just to paint, began to meet with local regional artists and also organized an art show for farmer-artists who were coming to UW for short courses in the summer. These activities were so popular, they rapidly expanded and got national attention.

00:57:28	[no question] Continuing to tell the story of WRA, she observed that the death of Curry (1946) slowed the movement down temporarily, but Aaron Bohrod was hired in 1948 and Jim Schwalbach got involved in encouraging the expansion of programs beyond Madison, like rural art clubs. When Schwalbach and Kuemmerlein did this, Nelson was invited to participate in their Green Bay shows. When Kuemmerlein died, Nelson was then invited to take his job in Madison.

01:00:44	Question [HT]: Talk more about your job in Green Bay. Answer: She discussed the high expectations and work load.

01:02:31	Question [HT]: Talk about your work with arts development in Madison. Answer: She recalled that there were three parts to her new job—the regional art program (she visited every one of the regional exhibits to help organize and judge); setting up non-credit classes in art in Madison; and working as the 4-H art specialist helping in all of the county fairs. 

01:05:48	[no question] She spoke about implementing her philosophy of art education in a variety of areas. One specific art kit project gave children a variety of art supplies, but no instructions, and she and the interviewer’s discussed how this and other similar projects were received by local 4H organizers and the art community. This was part of a strong emphasis in 4H on the arts.

01:08:47	Question [HT]: Expanding non-credit classes? Answer: These classes had been offered before, but she expanded it quite a bit—to up to 60 classes.  She also said a bit more about 4-H’s involvement in the arts.

01:11:23	Question [HT]: Talk about spinning off some of your assignments? Answer: Nelson recalled that when Joe Bradley retired, the department approached her to allow the new hire to take on some of her responsibilities.  She expressed her frustration at her work with 4-H, which was then taken over by Susan Farmer, the new hire; when the merger happened, she then also took over some art classes in the art department.

01:13:06	Question [HT]: Joe Bradley? Answer: While she admired what Bradley did and his courage and kindness, she didn’t enjoy writing and so wasn’t involved a lot in the distance learning Bradley pioneered.

01:15:45	Question [HT]: Susan Farmer? Answer: Farmer came in 1985, when Nelson released the 4-H responsibilities and started an art program on her version of billboards.

01:16:25	Question [HT]: Integration of Extension? Answer: She had a very good experience with the integration process, since she enjoyed teaching classes, especially 3D Design. She quipped about how this was perceived as a “safe” course for her to teach and about some of her student experiences there, which overlapped with her 4-H work.

01:20:14	[no question] When Lori Beth Clark became department chair, she got TA lines to teach 2D and 3D design, so Nelson was asked what she wanted to teach—she was able to teach graduate seminars on “inside” (where inspiration comes from) and “outside” (how one gets one’s art out to people) and “mother/artist.” She enjoyed being able to teach classes she wish she’d had in art school.

01:23:03	Question [HT]: Did this inform your Extension teaching? Answer: Yes; and vice versa. She talked about hiring art grad students as Extension teachers, which was the inverse of the WI idea.

01:24:11	Question [HT]: Lori O’Neil? Answer: She talked about how her program assistant had been a key part of the work Nelson did.

01:26:15	Question [HT]: How did you recruit teachers for 60 different classes? Answer: She went to a lot of art shows, and followed up with people whose art was good and who had teaching ability. She talked about how she defaulted to recruiting passionate teachers rather than trying to fill some kind of breadth.

01:28:45	[no question] She talked about some of the successes and failures she had with recruiting teachers and teaching Extension classes.

01:30:33	Question [ME]: Talk about your statement “the transformation of society begins with creativity.” Answer: She explained how she’d read that in the 1960s, one would be a creative person or a politically active artist, but not both. But she believed that creative energy was an aspect of every person, expressed in myriad ways.

01:33:28	Question [KG]: Did you know Robert Gard? Answer: She’d met Gard, but by the time she was working on campus, Gard was the “great man, hovering” over the department.

01:35:58	Question [KG]: Was Curry your first connection with the WI idea? Answer: Yes; they discussed how the WI idea is defined, and how Nelson saw this as the definition of her job. She also responded to a question about her work with 4-H

01:38:02	Question [HT]: Why has the WI regional art program been so long lasting? Answer: She thought that doing art was a solitary activity, so opportunities that allow artists to get better by interacting with other artists was a point of pride and camaraderie. She thought there wasn’t really anything else like it in WI or across the nation.  Follow up [ME]: Why has it survived in WI? Answer: She thought the involvement of the UW conferred a level of status to the competition.

01:44:46	Question [HT]: Did Curry bring the capacity to make connections with the people of Wisconsin with him? Answer: She explained that Curry had already been known as a Midwestern regionalist, one of only a few like him, so he could relate to farm folks.

01:47:03	Question [HT]: Other comments? Answer: She spoke a bit about writing grants, but then discussed how she’d become involved in “memory cloth” embroidery, which she’d “stolen” from a project in South Africa. When she returned to South Africa to tell them about how she’d used the embroidery concept, they were thrilled that she’d expanded the purview of the project. She also talked about how she’d continued to work with a coffee shop embroidery group up until the present.

01:53:36	Question [HT]: Retirement? Answer: She explained that in 2012, she’d been told that she couldn’t keep embroidering because her joints were deteriorating, but she decided she could give up office work, but not embroidering. So that December, she retired. She said she loved retirement.

01:56:41	Question [HT]: How do you want to be remembered? Answer: She said she hoped she’d given people the ability to explore their own creativity. She mentioned another interview she’d done and her book Memory Cloths.

01:58:54	End of First Interview Session

End of Oral History #1419