UNIVERSITY OF WISCONSIN-MADISON ARCHIVES
ORAL HISTORY PROJECT

Interview #469
MEEKER, DEAN

MEEKER, Dean (1920-2002)
Professor of Art
At UW: 1946-1992

Interviewed: 1994	
Interviewers: Warrington Colescott, Arthur Hove and Barry Teicher
Indexed (time code) by: Alexis Puzon
Length: 3 hours, 15 minutes
Series: Printmaking

Background; Art school; Hiring by UW; John Guy Fowlkes; Art Department and its expansion; Development of print area; Serigraphy; William Stanley Hayter and Atelier 17; Meeker-McFee press; Papermaking; Transition to sculpture; Human form; "Found objects"; Alfred Sessler; Meeker's serigraphy studio; Pre-UW interests and influences; Courses; Print examples, various artists and techniques.

First Interview Session (September 9, 1994): Tapes 1-2

Tape 1/Side 1

00:00:00	This interview was conducted in Springfield Corners, in the studio of DM. 

00:00:30	DM gives background information on himself.  He was born in Colorado in 1920.  He attended high school in Billings, Montana, where he worked as an apprentice sign painter. His interests went beyond painting signs, so in 1939 he hitchhiked to Chicago, where he entered a professional art school.  There were no art schools in Montana at the time.

00:04:00	DM was introduced to many new things in the ensuing three years in Chicago, including opera, ballet, and symphony.  He studied painting with Boris Anisfeld.  Though the training was good, Anisfeld's students were readily identified as such by their painting technique; he did not particularly like them to experiment.  DM painted in an entirely different style in his own studio.  He does not regard either of these styles as particularly good. 

00:06:59	DM was drafted into the army his third year in art school. He had registered in Montana, and was called up when they "scraped the bottom of the barrel" where quality of recruits was concerned.  He was classified as 4F because he had copper lodged in his retina from a dynamite accident.  DM enjoyed the year he spent in the armed forces.  When he applied for officer training, he got his first real physical and was discharged. 

00:08:40	DM returned to Chicago (by way of Hollywood) and finished art school.  After the GI Bill was passed, he was the "first person in line" at Northwestern.  He did very well there.

00:10:45	In 1946, all the veterans were returning and the universities were gearing up for the resulting enrollment increases.  There was a general expansion of art departments around the country at this time.  DM registered with a teachers' agency and interviewed at several schools, including UW.  A short stint on the Terrace before his interview persuaded him to come to Madison. 

00:13:52	William Varnum hired DM.  Varnum and John Steuart Curry, the artist-in-residence, both died that summer.  Art Vierthaler "picked up the torch," so to speak.  Della Wilson and Helen Annen were the ultimate authorities on most topics.  It was an interesting time.

00:15:58	John Guy Fowlkes terrified DM, even after he was a full professor.  He tells a story illustrating why.  Fowlkes was very interested in the Art Department. He was, in a way, its champion, taking such initiatives as backing the first remodeling of the Education Building and promoting an Art Department open house.  Fowlkes was interested in the department because it boosted enrollment figures for the School of Education.

00:19:27	Before the massive influx of GIs, DM's general impression was that most art students were interested in teaching.  For a time, the Art Department had occupational therapy students, or OTs, whom he discusses.  The GIs were in a hurry to get through college and get on with their lives.  There was an odd dichotomy among GI and non-GI students — the GIs had been to Europe and were older.  As a teacher, it was difficult to bridge this gap.

00:23:32	During this general excitement and rising enrollment, faculty increased their requests.  Al Sessler was a pioneer of the philosophy of expansion.  He was thinking in terms of a graphics department early on, and he agitated for an expanded graphics program.  The burning of the Engineering Building resulted in art moving completely into the Education Building.  Education had to deal with the Art Department as a growing concern, and this helped to get art into the new Humanities Building.  Art was always "bursting at the seams"; it was expanding in all areas.

00:25:50	Earlier, prints were "purer."  As art departments expanded in the 1950s, print departments were created.  DM put himself through school in Chicago working in a commercial silkscreen shop.  Silkscreen was invented during WWI; it was used to produce war posters.

00:28:47	Students at UW persuaded DM to offer an independent night class in silkscreen.  At Fred Logan's insistence, it was offered as an official course.  It became an official subject in the print world.  In the 1950s, there was a room set aside for silkscreen in the "new" building.  The paints were quite toxic.  Every night the class had to carry out the garbage to keep it from "spontaneously exploding."

00:30:49	End of side.

Tape 1/Side 2

00:30:50	DM talks about people in the Art Department.  He tells a story about Roland Stebbins' difficulties taking role in his class.  Bill McCloy was also an assistant to John Steuart Curry, as was Bob Hodgell.

00:33:34	DM traded prints with other artists at shows.  He talks about the ubiquitousness of the print.  An artist could cover every show in the United States if he created a couple of good prints a year.

00:35:39	DM worked in serigraphy alongside his students.  It was not considered a fine art medium; it was a reproductive medium.  During the time he was at art school, some people considered serigraphy a "social" medium, i.e. it was widely distributable and cheap; thus an artist could distribute his message more widely than with many other forms.  The medium served various artistic types, such as the WPA artist or the propagandist.  In the 1950s and 1960s, prints were first thought of as collectibles. Many people who bought prints in their young professional careers are now sculpture collectors.

00:38:40	In 1958, DM received his first research grant. He spent the semester developing techniques, one of which attempted to make silkscreen look more like etching.  Serigraphers had an inferiority complex about their work, and DM tried to make his look like other graphic mediums.  He invented a way of screening wax and fusing it with a sunlamp to remove all evidence of it being a silkscreen.  Silkscreen is an amazing medium—one can use any material and print on anything with anything.  It does not have the "mystery and vigor of continuance" that, say, lithography does.

00:42:19	DM became very interested in etching.  Al Sessler got a grant and was thus extracted from his etching room, where DM and Misch Kohn worked happily all summer.  DM did not like the extant methods to insinuate color into etching, so during this time he conducted his first experiments in combining silkscreen with etching to this end.  Sturgis presses could not apply enough pressure to laminate the two effects together.

00:45:54	In 1959, DM received a Guggenheim grant to work with William Stanley Hayter at Atelier 17.  Hayter and those in his workshop worked with fast acid and deep cuts.  Students vigorously put together Hayter prints.  He could do a complete edition in an evening.  DM describes how Hayter also combined silkscreen and the metal plate.  He liked Hayter in spite of the limitations of his workshop.  DM met Keiko Moti in Paris; Moti was essential to his development.

00:49:52	DM did viscosity and etching, several metal plates, and burined.  He started building polymer plates which, unlike copper, allowed for burining and adding.  Polymer plates, later called collagraphs, were essentially plates DM could affect negatively, e.g. by burining and scraping, as well as positively, e.g. by building and modeling.  Working with polymer was a transition to sculpture for DM.  He shows two of his earliest plates, which he did in Paris.  At first, he put modeling paste over a copper base but then switched to aluminum.  DM was one of the few people working with this paste at this time. For a while he had many students doing collagraphs.

00:57:56	DM and Moti were interested in a very high and low topography in the plate, which required a press with a small top roller.  He and a neighbor from the UW engineering department designed and constructed a prototype of a press, which he shows the interviewers.  It is light, has a smaller roller good for deep printing, and has 800 pounds to the lineal inch pressure.  He explains how the pressure of a press is determined in part by the relationship between the two rollers.

01:01:33	End of side.  End of tape.

Tape 2/Side 1

00:00:03	DM continues to discuss the first prototype of the Meeker-McFee press, which was put together in 1960 and is still operational.  Improvements were incorporated in successive prototypes.  Some students having experience with this press bought it, and it varied enough from ordinary presses that DM had to provide technical support.

00:03:08	Colescott interjects that the best innovative feature of DM's press is the accurate, easy-to-read micrometer.  Previous intaglio presses required the printmaker to count the threads of the pressure screws to set the pressure, an inefficient process.

00:05:09	DM's press and his experience in Paris with Moti allowed him to bring together the idea of increased pressure with the combination of a plate and silkscreen color.  With the non-toxic water-based paints available today, it would be easier to combine silkscreen and the intaglio plate because these pigments penetrate into the paper, while silkscreen was inclined to sit on top and be rejective.

00:09:52	DM did paper pieces for two years in the transition from printmaking to sculpture.  He loved the relief in these pieces, but they were missing color, are hard to make, do not sell for much, are hard to store, impossible to ship, and expensive to frame; therefore he moved on to sculpture.  He made his own paper.  Mice love the paper pieces.

00:12:29	A print studio must be a semi-orderly, clean place.  Printmaking has generated a fairly lucrative supplementary income for DM.  It is a "truly negotiable art."  Print buyers are very different than those interested in sculpture.  There are 1950s print collectors now; they pay $500 or $1,000 for prints DM used to "give away to baby sitters."  There is tremendous current interest in sculpture as well.

00:15:44	The newer and more experimental the process of creating art is, the better, as far as DM is concerned.  New machinery and tools intrigue him.

00:16:57	The human form is a dominant theme in DM's work.  He had formal training in the study of the figure while in Chicago.  Life Drawing was one of the courses he taught at UW.  He has always been interested in humanist subject matter.  Visits to Greece and Mexico influenced DM's interpretation of the human figure.  Though the popularity of the human figure in art comes and goes, there is usually some element of humanist interest, be it the figure or landscape.

00:21:50	DM is very interested in using "found objects" in his work.  For instance, he used hames knobs in his first Medusa.  Problems arise when antique collectors drive up the price of these objects.  It is better to get flat material and exert oneself on them. Scrap pieces can be used in other contexts.

00:25:08	DM continued to teach silkscreen even while he was using other techniques in his own work.  He found when he went out into industry that silkscreen had gone through a technical evolution with the polycomp, which allows for the copying of watercolors.  He was criticized by his colleagues for bringing this modern technology back to his UW classroom.

00:28:15	DM discusses another development.  He used to encourage his students to do editions to repeat a piece, but now it is "anything goes."  They have found some wonderful techniques on monotypes with silkscreen.  Companies have approached DM to write "how to" books on some of these discoveries.  He has not taken up any of these offers.  He does not put much stock in such books to resolve complicated problems.

00:30:37	End of side.

Tape 2/Side 2

00:30:39	DM and Colescott discuss books on various techniques, some of which were written by former students.  One even used her class prints as the examples.

00:34:14	DM painted a lot during his first two years at UW, until he realized that he was still in possession of all his paintings.  His family was growing, and prints sold better.

00:36:10	Plans are made for the next interview session.  DM has Motis, Hayters, and "early Colescotts" in his collection.  He and Colescott mutually threaten to show each other's early work.

00:38:52	End of side.  End of tape.  End of interview session.

Second Interview Session—Studio (October 14, 1994): Tapes 3-4

Tape 3/Side 1

00:00:00	DM reminisces about Alfred Sessler.  They shared a studio in the old YMCA during DM's first year at UW.  Sessler was an excellent teacher.  He mostly painted in their studio.  They also shared studio space in a Quonset hut on campus.  Sessler was a "straightener" who used to line up his brushes and leave the studio immaculate; DM, by the nature of his work, was not.

00:03:27	At a recent Sessler show given by the Academy, DM gave a speech about Sessler's work.  Sessler introduced lithography and etching.  DM considers Sessler's biggest contributions to the graphics field to be in the area of woodcut.  DM explains a special, technically-challenging way of reduction printing that Sessler developed.  Sessler's forte was communicating art techniques to students.

00:05:42	Sessler got the first lithography and Sturgis presses, which he had in a little room in the old Education Building.  Thanks in part to his tenacity, the Art Department got its first major graphics studio when it moved into the Education Building.  He was able to obtain space in the basement, the usual location for graphics studios because of the great weight of the presses.

00:07:12	Sessler was supportive when DM opened his serigraphy studio.  Serigraphy was not quite regarded as art at this time because it had been a poster invention.  Many shows excluded silkscreen, monotypes, and photographs.  Serigraphy was not done in the same space as etching.  Its needs were different and its equipment lighter; thus, DM's studio was on the fourth floor rather than in the basement.

00:08:38	DM talks about the toxicity of materials used in serigraphy.  There were no air extractors in his studio, but open windows provided air circulation in the summer.  He thinks that warnings about materials are sometimes alarmist; students are even warned against walnut chips.  WC notes the benefits of safety standards and product labeling.

00:12:12	DM emphasizes once more that Sessler was a good and dedicated teacher.  He talks about Sessler's lithographs. In a sense, they made social statements; DM believes Sessler used social issues as a vehicle for his artwork.  Sessler was a very social person, and DM suspects that he took part in political activities in Milwaukee for the social aspect.  Sessler had an infinite capacity to entertain and discuss students' ideas.  Teaching combined his technical knowledge and sociability.

00:15:03	DM considers the woodblock and its development to be Sessler's biggest contribution to graphics.  At the Academy show, he was reminded after 25 years of the superb technical quality of Sessler's pieces.  When Sylvia Solichek, a former Sessler student, prominent printmaker, and dean at San Francisco State University, gave a slide talk on the art of the 1960s at a college art association meeting four years ago, WC was also reminded of the high quality of Sessler's work.

00:17:12	Despite the fact that DM did not finish high school (he is one of the few full professors he knows without a high school diploma), his high school principal was instrumental in getting him into art school.  DM did not plan to be a sign painter for the rest of his life.  He talks about his high school art teacher, and about some of the work he did at the sign shop.

00:22:46	The printmaking of the Chicago Art Institute influenced WC.  DM was more interested in painting when he was there.  His experience with silkscreen was outside of school; he inadvertently got involved with silkscreen through night jobs at commercial shops.  The curator of the graphics collection at the Art Institute also piqued DM's interest in silkscreen. DM's prints were in the first silkscreen show at the Art Institute.  Though graphics were not a "trendy" subject among students while he was at the Institute, its collection was very strong in the print area and thus provided a good source for that medium.  DM was honored to have a show at his alma mater.  He sold about half the show.  He did the first silkscreen commissioned by the Institute's graphics club.

00:27:44	Though DM wanted to forget about his commercial silkscreen experience, he started a silkscreen class at UW at the behest of students.  At first it was a non-credit course, but Logan insisted he make it an official course when the enrollment reached fifteen.  He also taught Painting, Life Drawing, Occupational Therapy, Design, and, as a junior faculty member, whatever courses were left over.

00:29:18	DM talks about teaching Design, a term only vaguely defined.  When focusing on the relationship between form and function in his design class, WC required the students to build kites; if they did not fly, the students did not receive a grade.  DM was impressed with WC's grading criterion, because "the wind did the critique."  He has never seen a successful course in Design, because the instructors were not sure what to teach.

00:30:36	End of side.

Tape 3/Side 2

00:30:37	DM and Santos Zingale managed to stay ahead of their students by studying the rules of perspective.  WC remarks that some of the other faculty, including John Wilde, were "obsessed" by perspective.  The art faculty consisted of people from diverse backgrounds.  DM quieted any troublesome students by giving them a complex spiral staircase problem for which he had already worked out the formula.

00:33:57	DM taught everything but Jewelry, including Sculpture and Figure Modeling.  He also taught the OTs, occupational therapy students, who preferred Della Wilson's facile approach to DM's. At first, he thought he was going to turn all his students into professional sculptors or artists; after a few years, he realized that at best they would become functioning teachers.  Training art teachers was part of the mission of the School of Education.  Occupational therapy developed into a great area of study that enhanced the reputation of the School.  DM used easily-obtainable materials for his OT projects.

00:38:38	DM got graduate students, mostly in graphics and some in sculpture, about the time he started to specialize in silkscreen.  He began teaching the non-credit silkscreen course in 1949.  In 1954, he won a graduate school grant to develop various silkscreen techniques, such as silk rubbings, resist techniques, and photosilkscreen; he strove to make silkscreen look like better-thought-of techniques, like etching.

00:42:26	DM shows and explains work that illustrates his development as an artist.  Hayter taught DM that an artist should always carry his prints with him.  Hayter sold a few at a party DM gave for him in Madison.  DM wanted to work at Atelier 17 because it was a studio well known for a certain attitude towards graphics.  He gained much from Hayter in technical facilities.  Hayter experimented with many techniques.  DM describes the innovative process used to generate a Hayter print.

00:46:12	DM also found the Atelier to be somewhat limited—it had no aquatint and the presses and plumbing were in bad shape.  He lived on the same street as Keiko Moti, who had earlier worked with Hayter.  DM shows a print by Moti that predates some of Hayter's viscosity prints; clearly Moti had also worked out this technique.  To date, it has not been established whether Hayter or Moti invented it first.  DM discusses the three-stage viscosity technique used in his Moti print.  DM found Moti less restrictive than Hayter.   DM and Moti taught each other techniques.  Hayter did not like DM doing aquatint in his studio because it made a mess.  DM was in Paris in 1959/60 on a Guggenheim grant.

00:50:31	Before DM went to Paris, he worked for a summer in the same studio with Misch Kohn.   They experimented with the topography of plates.  DM was very interested in Kohn's experimental techniques.

00:52:51	DM shows work by Bob Hodgell, assistant to Curry.  He was a very talented artist who did watercolors, big paintings, and relief prints, among other things.  At one point, the UW art department tried to hire him.

00:55:02	He shows work he bought in Mexico.

00:55:39	In the 1970s, DM was a consultant to a picture frame company in Chicago.  He advised them about display pictures and learned a great deal about photographic methods in the process.  He shows a silkscreen of a Moti watercolor that was reproduced for this purpose. 

00:57:05	When DM worked in Moti's studio, they alternated days being "master"; DM taught Moti how to silkscreen.  He discusses an example of their work.  The Paris print scene was very dynamic at the time DM was there.

00:59:48	Moti did not have a good relationship with Hayter.  Hayter threw Moti out of Atelier 17 after they both claimed to have invented viscosity printing.  Hayter simply wrote a book stating that he had invented the technique.  Krishna Reddi also claimed he invented it together with Moti.

01:01:12	End of side.  End of tape.

Tape 4/Side 1

00:00:00	DM explains the process used to print "Fossil Fish" from his second polymer plate, which he did in Paris.  Though DM first combined silkscreen and the plate before he left for Paris, he integrated most of the techniques he describes after he returned from Europe.  At the time, his idea was to make his prints more "sculptural," more "dimensional."

00:02:50	Many artists were interested in this type of technique.  DM shows a print by a Californian artist who glued down pieces of paper and then ran them through the press.  Ginsel was the first DM saw run real forks through the press.  One can put anything through a press.  DM and Hugh Townley actually printed some of the latter's sculptures.  An artist first had to break free from the presuppositions of the various disciplines before engaging in such innovative techniques; DM was particularly inhibited by the "breath-holding" of lithography.  He became much more interested in printmaking once he had his own press and had tried some of these innovative techniques.

00:05:18	DM shows some early silkscreens.  Some of the prints have a mythological theme, such as a Minotaur and Don Quixote; he chose subject matter that entertained the technique he wanted to use.  He used gold leaf in one experiment.  He also created a chess set.  He shows the print he did for the Art Institute print membership, which he described earlier.

00:09:54	DM also cut up old prints and printed them.  The idea of a total constituted by parts has been a preoccupation of his; he still uses this technique in bronze.

00:10:31	Fifty seemed to DM to be the perfect number for an edition of prints.  He retains only one of many of his print editions.

00:12:17	He shows prints generated using the "suck" machine, a squeegee-less printer.

00:13:17	He talks about the technique he quickly invented to produce examples for a Guggenheim application; he got the grant.

00:15:10	DM displays prints using the polymer plate and roller.  He points out an example that shows that day-glow colors do not fade if the artwork is properly displayed.  

00:17:10	DM has had pure silkscreens completely fade.  WC watched over the years as one of his own magic marker drawings, purchased by John Wilde, faded away to nothing.

00:18:44	DM used cut plates and plates made from sculptured velvet. “Man-sewing.”

00:21:34	There is a close relationship between DM's prints and sculpture.  He shows his only lithograph, done from a drawing on metal plate; it never went into edition.

00:23:46	He shows his first aquatint.  He explains the importance of art titles: a print of a doctor sold much better entitled "The Surgeon" instead of "Hesitation."

00:24:43	DM shows the only Paris etching he did, of homeless people.

00:26:16	He shows some student prints from the 1960s.  DM can tell from the technique and subject matter of a student print who did it and when.

00:29:11	The best way to succeed as an artist is to remain with the same theme.

00:30:30	End of side.

Tape 4/Side 2

00:30:33	DM enjoys technical challenges and changing mediums.

00:32:07	Joseph's Coat has been a recurring theme in his own work.

00:33:14	End of side.  End of tape.  End of interview session.

END