UNIVERSITY OF WISCONSIN-MADISON ARCHIVES
ORAL HISTORY PROJECT

Interview #483
COLESCOTT, WARRINGTON

COLESCOTT, Warrington (1921- )
Professor of Art
At UW: 1949-1994

Interviewed: 1995	
Series: Printmaking
Interviewers: Arthur Hove and Barry Teicher
Length: 3.5 hours

Background; Undergraduate training; WWII; Graduate training; Long Beach Community College; Coming to UW; Art Department in 1950s; John Guy Fowlkes; McCarthyism; Chairmanship of Art Department; Leo Steppat; London, Paris and Rome; Development as artist; Growth of printmaking at UW; Fred Logan; Career retrospective, silkscreen to etching; "Atom Boy"; Early years at UW; Students; Alfred Sessler; London and Anthony Gross; "Mach 5"; "Tidepool"; Shift to etching; "Ziggy"; "Colescott's USA"; Prints on assassination, war and struggle; "Verdun Defense" and "Verdun Attack"; "Poker Night at the Pentagon"; "The Last Judgement Update"; "NEA"; Painting.

First interview session (January 27, 1995): Tapes 1-2

Tape 1/Side 1

00:00:00	Interviewer’s introduction. 

00:00:22	WC talks about his background. Themes of warfare and the military are reflected 
	throughout his work, in part because of his connection with World War I. His father was a citizen-soldier in that war; it left a mark on him that was, in a way, transferred to WC.

00:02:00	WC's parents moved from New Orleans to California after the war, and he was born in Oakland in 1921. His father was a "tough."  WC played with objects his father had brought home from the war, like his gas mask.

00:03:36	The war was very much on the mind of the American populace; children were influenced by it.  In high school WC went into the ROTC and became a colonel (the highest rank possible).  He also began drawing during these years.  He was editor of the yearbook and drew cartoons for the weekly newspaper.

00:05:31	WC attended college at Berkeley starting in 1938.  He joined the coast artillery (later anti-aircraft artillery) through ROTC and was thus drafted into the coast artillery unit when World War II broke out.  Because of the math involved, he was unable to advance in this service.

00:07:55	His father wanted him to become a doctor, but WC only lasted one semester in pre-med.  He had taken an elective art course and did well; thus he changed his major to art.

00:09:07	WC was less interested in art classes than in drawing for student publications.  The Berkeley campus humor magazine, The Pelican, was regarded as one of the best of its type in the country.  Several of his Pelican colleagues went on to careers in journalism.  Working there was excellent training for a career in art.

00:10:37	WC talks about some of the art professors at Berkeley, including Chiura Obata and Eugene Neuhaus.  They seemed to be an "an odd bunch" at the time, but he appreciates them more now.

00:13:20	WC discusses the student paper.  He became its art editor, a job he enjoyed a great deal.  He learned to cut linoleum blocks as part of this job—these were in essence his first prints.  Printmaking was not a part of the official curriculum at Berkeley.  The Art Department there was very classically-oriented, focusing mainly on drawing and painting.  WC also took art history courses.

00:15:22	WC wrote as well as drew for The Pelican.  In 1942, his last year at Berkeley, he became editor, gaining experience in putting a magazine together.

00:15:53	World War II, which started in December 1941, had a great impact on California because the Pacific war was so close.  Californians experienced blackouts and "ghost raids."  The Class of '42 knew where they were going.  As a student, WC did parodies and satires for the war effort.

00:17:22	WC graduated in the summer of '42.  He had a high draft number, so he was not called up until the fall.  He went through basic training in the coast artillery and then on to officer's candidate school in North Carolina.  Once again, he struggled with math.  He was finally assigned to the 483rd Anti-aircraft Battalion. 

00:19:30	Once assigned, WC's job was to teach.  He found that despite the difficulty of the material, he was a good teacher.  Eventually his unit was retrained in infantry, so he went to infantry school at Fort Benning.  He found he was much better suited to the infantry.  He enjoyed tactics, which consisted of "sneaking up on someone and doing them bodily harm."  After that, WC retrained others.

00:22:35	WC was shipped to the Pacific, arriving in the last phases of the war there.  He was on Okinawa when the A-bombs were dropped on Japan.  He believes that had they not been, his sons would not exist.

00:24:15	Right after the war, WC's unit was sent to Korea.  He discusses his duties there.  There were many problems in Korea, including crime.  He was finally discharged from the Army in the spring of 1946.

00:27:40	When WC arrived home, he decided to write a novel.  If he could get a publisher interested in it, he would go to graduate school in writing; if he did not, he would go into art.  The latter was obviously the outcome.

00:28:51	WC did very well in graduate school and began to come alive as an artist.  He started working with a couple of people at this time, one of whom was Margaret Peterson O'Hagen, a Canadian abstract artist.  Under her influence, his figurative painting became more abstract.  She was very helpful with color work.  Her design knowledge allowed her to transfer that sensibility to students.

00:30:10	WC got his master's degree in a year and a summer.  He also got a junior college teaching certificate.

00:30:32	End of side.

Tape 1/Side 2

00:30:40	After graduation, WC got a good job at Long Beach Community College, a two-year junior college in southern California.  He enjoyed working in the Art Department there, which consisted of four people.  WC taught drawing and painting.  He frequently exhibited his work.  

00:31:43	Fred Heidel was a colleague at Long Beach—he did silkscreen prints and his wife Florence did woodcuts.  Both had studied at the Art Institute of Chicago and thus had a background in printmaking.  They had known Dean Meeker there.  In 1948, Heidel interested WC in printmaking.  Within a year, WC was showing his silkscreens in exhibitions.  In 1949, he and other artists had a successful show at the San Francisco Museum of Art.  These developments were very encouraging.

00:33:45	Unfortunately, WC and Heidel became involved in a conflict with the other two members of the department.  This design-oriented pair (a potter and a designer) was pitted against the painting-printmaking pair (Heidel and WC).  Since the potter was the departmental chair, both Heidel and WC quit.  Heidel went on to the University of Oregon, and WC and his wife planned a trip to Europe.

00:35:00	Before WC could leave the country, he got a telephone call from Fred Logan at UW offering him a job as an instructor.  He and his wife wanted to go to Europe but knew it would be risky from a financial standpoint.  He liked the idea of going to UW even though he had never been to Wisconsin; in addition, he wanted to teach in a large school, so he accepted.  Logan had learned about WC through a private employment agency.

00:36:44	WC was hired as an instructor on a one-year contract.  He had taken a cut in pay to come to UW, and on top of this, salaries were not very good at any level.

00:37:54	Due to the GI Bill, universities were expanding rapidly at this time.  Three other people were hired as instructors at the same time as WC.  Most of the Art Department faculty were fairly new.  There was a small, hard-core group of holdovers from the years before the war, including Helen Annun and Della Wilson.  George Dietrich, who had been at UW before the war, returned afterwards.  He wore his naval uniform when he taught and was a rather odd individual.

00:39:32	Although Fred Logan had been chairman when WC was hired, Helen Annun was chair when he arrived on campus for the 1949-50 academic year.  WC learned there was a power struggle for control of the Department between the old and "new" guard; Logan and Arthur Vierthaler represented the latter group.

00:40:50	WC's first meeting with Al Sessler was in a Quonset hut on library mall.  The Art Department had a hut that contained their studios.  WC realized someone was sleeping on a stool in front of an easel with a "tiny little picture on it."  That person was Sessler, whom WC liked immediately.  He also liked Zingale and Logan.  They were warm, friendly people, who welcomed WC into the department.

00:42:45	During the first few years, WC taught basic design and drawing courses.  The Department was in the old Journalism Building that fronted the lake.  "The pay was poor but the company was good."  He found he had a lot in common with Dean Meeker; they were both doing serigraphs.  The other thing he, Meeker, and many others in the Department had in common was interest in exhibiting.  This was particularly true in the area of prints, because they were easy to send off to exhibitions.  Also, prints were on an upswing all across the country.

00:45:05	A lunch group formed from this camaraderie.  They discussed acceptance into (or rejections from) shows—"Friendly competition developed which was enjoyable."  Later, when Harvey Littleton joined the staff, he became a member of the group as well.  Their acceptance rate was very good.

00:46:56	John Guy Fowlkes was the dean of the School of Education.  Fowlkes was an imposing person, and his policy was "to keep the art department terrorized."  Though he was something of a manipulator, he looked out for the interests of the Department.  He also protected the Milwaukee group, because during the '50s right-wingers were targeting certain people in the universities.  Zingale, for instance, had been a member of the Communist party.  Sessler and Logan were also suspect.  Helen Annen and Della Wilson "led the charge" against left-leaning members of the department.

00:49:34	Fowlkes defended them very ably.  "Nothing untoward happened."  Regarding Annen, WC was somewhat sympathetic toward her.  She was, however, anti-Semitic.  Many of her problems, WC asserts, stemmed directly from her husband, who was a rather crude man.  As an artist, her work was "polite and quiet."  As a teacher, she was not bad either.  She was more or less "anti-modern" in her approach to art.  She was a decent administrator.

00:52:07	When WC came into the department, it was called the Department of Art Education.  Later on it became the Department of Art & Education.  Because the department was "lightly ranked," WC had the opportunity to be a "player" even though he was an instructor.  He helped change the Department's name.  Eventually, the "& Education" was moved out of the title and it finally became the Department of Art.  The field of art education has dissipated almost to the point of extinction.  Now there are only two people in that area at UW.  Fred Logan was very active in this field.

00:54:35	WC became chair of the Department, a post he held for two years.  He was soon teaching painting, and by 1958 he had been promoted to full professor.  For these reasons he decided to stay in Madison, and thus became more involved in the department.  Though he did not realize it until later, Logan groomed WC as chairman, perhaps because he was regarded as the "peace candidate."  WC did not have a feel for administration; he was happy as a classroom teacher.

00:57:41	WC's interest in printmaking was not deep enough for him to want a printmaking class at that time.  Painting was still his main interest.  The Department had moved into the Education Building from Journalism, a definite improvement.  WC talks briefly about Leo Steppat and his role in bringing WC to UW.  As chairman, WC strengthened the art side of the staff.  He was involved in hiring Harvey Littleton and was instrumental in hiring Marjorie Kreilick against stiff chauvinist opposition.  She had a background in textiles and design.

01:01:17	End of side.  End of tape.

Tape 2/Side 1

00:00:01	WC continues talking about Fowlkes.  As departmental chair, WC had much contact with him.  Though Fowlkes "was not seeking to be liked," they got along fairly well.

00:02:10	The Art Department was in good financial shape while WC was chairman.  The "purse strings had loosened up" due to enrollment pressure.  They were able to hire new people and open new courses and sections.  New hires made the Department stronger and more diverse; Steppat's hire in sculpture was one example.

00:04:08	WC mentions some of the shows that the Department began to dominate—before the Milwaukee group dominated them.  Meeker, WC, and others were doing very well.

00:04:45	WC recalls some of the "near scandals" that made his job as chairman lively.  For example, there were problems that developed between some of the artists and their models.  Two years as chairman was enough for WC.  

00:06:06	At the same time WC was offered the opportunity to travel to Europe.  He had a Fulbright for study in London (1956-57) and got two research grants from the Graduate School that he used to go to Paris.  During this period, he was able to disentangle himself from the Department.  The Fulbright grant was particularly valuable to WC.  He felt he was reaching the limits of serigraphy, and he wanted to work in a print medium with a better density effect.  Sessler had interested him in etching.

00:07:56	WC's year in London was wonderful.  He worked with Anthony Gross, the instructor in etching at the Slade School and a friend of S. W. Hayter.  In a year Gross showed WC everything one could do with copper plates.  WC had the chance to go to Paris, meet Hayter at his studio, and see the color work they were doing there.  

00:08:54	On his next trip to Europe, WC became associated with the Gallerie des Peinteurs Graveurs, run by Jacque Frapier, later an important figure in the French printmaking establishment.

00:09:35	Working with Gross, WC learned how to do etchings and how to transfer his knowledge of color serigraphs to color etchings.  WC returned from London with the tools and the knowledge he needed to continue, in addition to a wide acquaintanceship with London artists he met through a print workshop run by Birgit Skiöld.  David Hockney was among those who frequented it.

00:12:14	While in London, WC taught at the Workingman's College, an old Fabian school.  There he used a large press in the basement and also taught a class of adults once a week.

00:13:00	He came back to UW and opened a section of etching alongside Sessler's; in connection with this course, they shared an office.  The arrangement worked well.

00:14:42	WC got a Guggenheim grant to go back to London in 1965-66.  He rented a top-floor studio in an old schoolhouse in Angel Alley, the scene of one of Jack the Ripper's most famous murders.  He was able to buy a press with his Guggenheim money.  The next year he taught at the Tyler School in Rome.  Thus his stay in Europe lasted two years.

00:16:40	Sessler had died during his absence.  Therefore upon WC's return to Madison in 1967, he and Meeker planned what to do with the print area at UW—the Humanities Building was in the works, they had the opportunity to hire Ray Gloeckler and Jack Damer, and the chance to plan a print area where each medium would have its resident expert.  This heralded the Department's "great period."

00:18:45	At this time Harvey Littleton was chairman.  Littleton would often bypass Lindley Stiles, the dean of the School of Education, and go straight to Bascom Hall.  WC talks about Stiles, who was not well liked, and his embarrassing radio show.

00:20:12	Littleton took a private apartment near campus and held weekly lunch groups there that included people from all around campus. He made the University aware that it had a growing Art Department of some reputation. WC believes that university support really strengthened in this period. Littleton was chairman twice.

00:22:02	WC discusses his early interest in art. He drew comic strips when he was a child.  The cartoonist Jay Darling influenced WC. "He was a very lively drawer." Later on WC learned Darling had been an early environmentalist.

00:25:38	WC talks about his father, who did not pay much attention to art but played the classical violin.  WC talks about his only brother, Robert, who is five years his junior.

00:29:14	WC's early painting was "on the verge of being abstract."  It started out fairly realistic and then moved to the abstract; it eventually returned to realism.  His early prints were very much like his painting at the time, semi-abstract.

00:30:32	End of side.

Tape 2/Side 2

00:30:34	WC's etchings began to change pretty rapidly, however, once his work became more linear.  The developments in his etching style affected a change in his painting style as well.  Once WC got into etchings, he quit doing serigraphs.

00:31:25	Like Meeker, WC started combining media. Initially he combined silkscreen and etching by printing on the plate. He has approximately a half-dozen editions featuring this combination.  Because of the difficult cleanup job, WC switched to cutting out paper stencils and using a roller to apply the ink—in other words, to a relief technique.

00:32:43	WC is Leo Steppat Professor of Art.  WC selected the name because of his admiration for Steppat.  Steppat's wife was a textile artist and did a fair amount of work in Madison.  Steppat had "knock-down drag-out" fights with Italo Scanga.

00:35:20	In terms of influences, WC admired Picasso when he was a student.  He likes all kinds of art.  Of the "moderns" he likes Raushenberg, the quirkiness and humor of Oldenberg, and Red Grooms.  WC does not like constructivism very much; he likes art to be a little more on the painterly expressionist side.  He likes the German painters in general, for example Otto Dix and George Gross.

00:39:12	WC talks about how so many good people were brought into the Art Department in the years immediately following World War II.  Much of the credit goes to Fred Logan.  Part of Logan's success came from the fact that he was willing to take advice from Sessler, Zingale, and Anderson; artists played a big part in selecting artists.  WC talks about Logan.  There was a lot of social interaction in the early days of the department.  It was very male-dominated then.

00:43:00	End of side.  End of tape.  End of interview session.  

Second interview session—Studio (August 10, 1995): Tapes 3-4

Tape 3/Side 1

00:00:03	WC assembled samples of his work chronologically, from the earliest days to the present.  He did some linoleum cuts while an undergraduate at Berkeley (political cartoons), but his first attempts at art-quality prints were done in 1948 at Long Beach Community College in California.  Fred Heidel, one of WC's colleagues, and his wife Florence taught him how to silkscreen.  Shortly thereafter, he assembled his own equipment and began to experiment.  He was immediately successful at getting some of his prints accepted into shows.

00:02:33	Leonard Baskin, a high-profile printer at this time, was very active immediately after World War II.  His wood cuts and relief prints portrayed the effects of bombing in the late stages of the war.  WC's print "Atom Boy" was a small-scale satirical takeoff on Baskin's widely-shown "Hydrogen Man."

00:03:38	WC approached silkscreen on his own, in very much the same way as he approached painting.  Color was very important.  The equipment was simple to make or acquire.  As he became more ambitious, the size of his pieces grew.

00:04:55	WC came to UW in 1949.  Though he was exhibiting silkscreen prints, he considered himself primarily a painter.  He was surprised that so much was going on in printmaking at UW.  He found the staff very congenial, for instance Dean Meeker.  He fought in the war after finishing his BA, and later went on to graduate school after it was over.

00:06:55	He was a dedicated young artist.  Like other young professors, he taught design and drawing at UW; they were underpaid and thus felt obligated to generate income from artwork.  He built up a network of contacts in galleries around the country, including the Serigraph Gallery in New York run by Doris Meltzer.

00:09:45	WC continued painting and silkscreening, the latter being of secondary importance.  His paintings were quite successful.  It took a while, but eventually he was teaching more painting than design courses.

00:11:10	WC was particularly interested in working with graduate students because he could approach them on an adult-to-adult level.  The undergraduates came with very little background in the visual arts; he had to work with them on a much more basic level.  He enjoyed working with older students, primarily veterans, because they were hungry for art knowledge and ready to try new things.  He also liked working with graduate students on an individual basis, among them John Colt and Richard Callner.  WC talks about his association with the latter, who was his first graduate student and has had a very distinguished career.  Many people from the early days went on to considerable careers of different types, not necessarily in art, for example New York designer Don Kauffman

00:15:36	WC shows his first etching; it heralded a big shift in his work.  Though interested in prints, he began to see the limitations of serigraphy for his own work—achieving linear effects, density, openness, and texture through the screen was difficult.  He discusses the way one silkscreened then.

00:17:49	WC's association with Sessler was influential.  In the '40s and '50s, there were many regional art shows and museums often had big juried invitational shows; artists personally knew each other and the museum curators.  WC talks about Sessler, who interested WC in etching.

00:20:12	In 1956-57, WC got a Fulbright to work at the Slade School in England; fortunately, Anthony Gross was the head of the etching department.  Etching was a peripheral subject at Slade, a state of affairs that frustrated Gross.  Foreign scholarship students and older students were the most interested in the subject.  WC liked his work, London, and Gross; he discusses them at length.

00:26:01	WC shows what he considers to be the best print he did in London, "Mach 5" It is an abstract portrayal of the head disintegrating under the force of speed.  It got a lot of exposure in exhibitions.  He displays a silkscreen from the same period that also depicts the effect of speed on the human shape.  He explains how he tried to "open up the medium."  It was shown in the Brooklyn Museum around '57, a coup because Mauricio Lasansky was on the jury. This was toward the end of his silkscreen career.  He recoiled quickly from abstraction since his natural tendencies are to produce work that is narrative, specific, and idea-oriented.  

00:30:20	End of side.

Tape 3/Side 2

00:30:21	WC's paintings and prints show similarities.  "Interior Morning" plays with the idea of light on figures.  He used multiple screens to create it.  He shows his last screen print, an open and expressionistic piece called "Tidepool," which portrays the movement of the tide in a shallow rock pool—it is printed on Chinese tea chest paper, silver leaf on tissue.  It is an effective piece, but at this time WC was losing interest in the medium because of his new interest in etching, which was very time-consuming.

00:34:58	He displays prints attempting to combine silkscreen and etching.  Meeker had tried the same type of thing independently.  It was difficult, but as time went on the processes became better integrated.

00:39:34	WC's pictures reflect his experiences.  Sessler and WC split up etching teaching duties.  He discusses a print of Italo Scanga in the sculpture studio in the Education Building.  WC explains how removing the undesirable portions of the plate instead of erasing became incorporated into the studio's technique.  Teaching helps to develop new techniques.

00:44:26	He shows a successful print he did in 1966 during his Guggenheim year in London, "Ziggy."  It portrays an opulent restaurant where upper-class men would bring their girlfriends.  His main drawing element was still dry point, drawing directly with a diamond point onto the copper plate.

00:47:27	The Vietnam War had a tremendous effect on the university, students, and faculty.  Visiting artist Jack Beal was gassed out of a meeting.  Struggle was the main theme of the print he is showing—opposites locked in a dance with neutral watchers looking on.

00:51:25	It is natural for WC to do prints in groups.  One such group is "Colescott's USA:  Histories," which portrays historical events as comedies.  Among the themes are Secretary Seward buying Alaska (1973, the Smithsonian owns a copy), George Washington meets Betsy Ross, and the first Thanksgiving.

00:55:25 	He did a group of five prints on Dillinger and the bank robbing period, including an indoor and outdoor battle between Dillinger and the FBI in Little Bohemia and J. Edgar Hoover at the Biograph Theater.  WC was ahead of his time in his portrayal of Hoover.  

00:59:33	End of side.  End of tape.

Tape 4/Side 1

00:00:07	WC shows a little print he did in 1975 in conjunction with a group of six artists.  They worked with students from South Dakota who actually did the printing.  The prints were then issued in a decorative box; they sold well.  He has always been interested in the idea of flight.  This print is a humorous takeoff on Gerald Ford's Air Force One.

00:02:20	He talks about another print from his Guggenheim period in London, 1967.  He did a group of prints centered around the different tube stations.  He shared a studio with Fran Myers in an interesting district of London where there were many homeless people, large rubble-strewn lots, and flea markets.

00:05:18	WC discusses a group of prints tied to upsetting events.  He did "assassination prints" that made reference to the political assassinations of the Kennedys and Martin Luther King, Jr.  One of the more interesting of these was a lithograph on the death of Lee Harvey Oswald (he does not even own a slide of this one anymore).  WC was influenced very much by television in this period, because television cameras were often on the scene—Oswald was murdered before people's eyes.

00:08:18	All of the prints from the late 1960s and early 1970s are actually about war and struggle.  The Vietnam War was with one daily because of the media coverage.  Today the action is not shown anymore.  WC did two prints on the theme of Verdun, the infamous WWI trench battle that resulted in immense loss of life:  "Verdun Defense" and "Verdun Attack."  His father had fought in WWI, thus WC heard much about it.  The latter print portrays nude women attacking men.

00:11:05	WC discusses a print right out of a personal experience, when he was trapped in "the worst riot of the season."  

00:13:25	There has been change in his work, but it has been a gradual evolution.  He worked his way through dry point to line etching to soft ground etching.  His use of color is much the same; he mixes straight inks with day glow inks, a combination he has found to be lightfast.  The day glow ink is still warm in a print for the 1980 Elvehjem show.  Sometimes his prints are political satires, sometimes they are just comedies.  He briefly talks about one making fun of hunters outside his window in the fall.

00:17:56	WC enjoys doing pieces on the military since he himself was in the army when he was in his early twenties.  "Poker Night at the Pentagon" is a humorous review on the military done during the Reagan presidency.  It shows the "new army," men and women playing strip poker, and the men are losing.  He talks about a similar piece, "Boo-boo in Silo 16" (circa 1984).  He could only do this piece with intimate knowledge of the military.  It revolves around the theme of a letter home.

00:22:49	WC discusses his 1988 religious comedy, "The Last Judgment Update."  He worked from the Renaissance ideas of a triptych and the dead being carried to judgment, which often focused on the rich going to hell.  In his version, the first panel shows the dead on Air Death receiving free cigarettes and drinks.  The second depicts their debarkation from Air Death, where they are met by demons and angels.  The last panel shows God handing out fully computerized, instantaneous judgments to the dead.

00:26:48	He shows the best of a group of three on the future, with humans caretaking dominant robots.

00:28:31	The next piece is an ambitious, strange print.  Salon painting of the 19th century featured great battles and disasters.  WC bases his print on one of these, Gericault's "Raft of the Medusa," which depicts the survivors of a sunken ship.  It is not entirely a comic takeoff.  

00:31:30	End of side.

Tape 4/Side 2

00:31:32	WC continues discussing the previous print and brings out its mate.  Its subject matter is the sinking of the Titanic.  Lately he has been avoiding tendentious use of color, instead putting in small spots of bright color and using whiting for highlights.

00:34:45	He shows "NEA," [National Endowment for the Arts], one of his more ambitious pieces.  It is a comic piece in support of the NEA, depicting its imagined headquarters surrounded by observers and vicious attackers.  He uses the technique of marbling in it.  He sent along a slide of this piece in his successful 1993 fellowship application (not the first).

00:40:45	WC displays one of his prints from the last faculty show.  He used special equipment to create this 32'x48' piece.  Ann Gratch worked with him on it.

00:42:50	He feels that he has given a fairly comprehensive look at his work.  In his career, he has done close to 225 prints, all printed in edition (recently anywhere from 10 to 25, but as many as 75).  He likes to be in control of the printing process.  First and foremost he is an "idea person," a storyteller; these are narrative prints, selling a point with humor.  He spends more time making prints than painting, but he still paints.  Because of the nature of printmaking, he has a treasury of prints and can do a retro show; however, a painting is gone once it is sold.  His paintings are essentially drawings with color.  Some of them are in museums such as the Chicago Art Institute and the Milwaukee Art Museum.  At Berkeley he painted in oil, but now he prefers painting in water-soluble materials on nice papers.

00:49:10	WC talks about his use of color.  His painting was influenced by Whistler, who was in turn influenced by a Japanese painting technique using neutral shades with bits of brightness.  

00:54:44	Etching still fascinates him because the material is unpredictable.  He does not do much preliminary drawing before working on the plate in order to include the exploration in the final piece.  He talks about doing "background research" on Audubon so he could include the idea of Audubon in his work.

00:58:48	WC enjoys his work.  He is aware of his audience in the back of his mind.  Museums are running scared about what is "appropriate" to show.  The Elvehjem had trouble with Otto Dix and George Gross' show a couple of years ago.  In this regard WC still does what he wants, but deals with ideas that are current.  He does straight political satires for The Progressive, and they are always accepted; it is an adult magazine catering to an intelligent audience.  Militias were the subject of work he did a couple of months ago.  People like his work and he has no plans to change the way he has been doing things.

01:03:01	End of side.  End of tape.  End of interview session.

END