For Poet and Painter, Elizabeth Case, at 68, the impermanence of her past
meant that we were at risk of losing her accomplishments. Women's stories
are so often lost. I hope, through this interview, to help preserve the herstory
of this remarkable woman. ~Georgia Jones
Elizabeth Case is both poet and painter. Her life has reached amazing heights,
and experienced notable landmarks in both areas of achievement. In her own
words, on being a poet:
When they said Ginsberg died, I didn't care. I
know that he and Lennie Bruce both used the magic
"F" word for supposed shock effect. I found that dull
beyond belief.
Drugs were coming in.
People were not viewing Beats as an end
to war or a protest against the
atomic bomb, but as a drug scene.
I found that horrific, so I, finally,
fled!
Before I took off though, I was booked all over, San Francisco and L.A.
Actually, I had to be talked into performing. I was not ready to
read anyway. I had enormous stage fright. I didn't relish any of my
readings.
I didn't enjoy it at all. I did it because I wanted to see an end to
atomic proliferation. The H-Bomb was on the world-stage at that point.
There were a lot of young
people involved in "being Beat" and I
was talking about and against The Bomb, which was a
big issue at the time. I was perceived as taking the role of
"Mom watching out for the kids,
scolding." In the Los Angeles area, it was
called The Beat Generation. In San Francisco, they were called Beatniks.
Different terminology. The Los Angeles scene was dark and shadowy and
more moody. People wore heavy eye makeup. Even though I was only
28 years old, I was looked at as an
"older" woman in this young people's arena. So they gave me the tag: Mother
of the Beat Generation. Herb Caen called me Big Mama Zwicker. A
lot of people tried to call themselves The Father of the Beat Generation,
or
the Founder of the Beat Generation, but this was the tag they gave me. I
didn't proclaim myself this. I thought it was odd, but I wasn't
uncomfortable
with it. I wore my capes and my sandals and my dark eye makeup and
appeared where they told me to appear.
Lawrence Ferlinghetti literally threw me
out of his City Lights bookstore. He wasn't going to have
any blankety-blank women or women's poetry, drivel.
But in 1958 I was the only one in San Francisco doing poetry
readings. I was reading at a nightclub, at a time when the nightclubs
were folding. Coffee shops were taking over. I don't know where the other
poets were. I didn't share a bill with any other poets.
There was Maya Angelou,
who wasn't known at that time... Not as a poet! Not back
then. She was a singer, one of the most wonderful performers I've ever
seen.
She was beautiful, talented and brilliant. She generously
offered to sing accompaniment at my very first poetry concert! Trying to
encourage me, I read, she sang acapella, and moved around the stage as
I stood at the lectern. An amazing memory I have of that!
She taught me that you can't be color blind. I was
raised color blind and that was good, but not good enough. She showed me that I had
to be more active, take a stand somehow. I really like it that everyone
is different, and I want the "differences" to be welcomed embraced!
She was key. This wonderful woman. I don't know why
she bothered to talk to me and she probably doesn't remember me. But
somebody having such a point of view, and so educated, so well-spoken she was one thought-full human being!
I followed her over the years.
Tried to paint a picture of her once: I couldn't do her eyes. Her eyes
are fathomless, impenetrable. Full of mysteries, things that I would
never see much less understand.
My work was affected
by personal events, not by people. When I was a child I saw that very famous picture of an atom bomb explosion on
the
front page of the "Los Angeles Times" the blast looked like a human face. That affected me! I read Krishnamurti and Ouspensky's
"Tertium Organum", I read a lot of Corbusier. I was always a reader. I was always hungry for information. But personal life dictated most everything I did, or thought.
My having children, where I lived. I always sought a village. I dislike
suburbia. I dislike the 9-5 world. I didn't fit into the PTA.
I chose to be in villages
where people tried to maintain simpler lives. I thought it was possible
to
live a simple life. I experienced a lot of joy in the Quaker community
in Pennsylvania. The Quakers are a highly effective minority
group. They believe in concord. Everybody has to agree. It can't be
majority rule. It's got to be total accord.
It's active non-violence.
Stand up. Get counted. Get knocked down. Get back up. Get counted. It's
what you have to say that needs to be wrestled with. Their meetings
for worship, of course, are silent, but the meetings for discussion
where they hash over issues (they used to call them "topics")
are quite
lively. If nobody agrees the topic is shelved I found that very
influential
for me and for my children.
I really wanted my kids to find
the truth of being, not affectation and false values. Like money,
position, society, gentry like being white, race! I didn't want my kids
in a
community that wasn't integrated and thoughtful.
At that time it was important
to have a sense of social responsibility. There were wrongs that had to be
righted. In fact I developed a program there, called
"A Gift for
the World," which embraced differences. Embracing differences
certainly
takes precedence over being color- blind. Ultimately, I think everybody
should be color-blind. In the meantime there's work to be done.
I think
the sound of a voice is difficult to preserve. A voice and isn't poetry
a voice? has a more fragile life. I don't know if it's something that
can be preserved. I think poetry is something that gets sent along. I
don't
say anything different from what has been said before. A poet can't
be judgmental, but can only maintain the words that have to be said in
each time. I don't think you can preserve poetry. I don't think you can
preserve a painting, either. It can be changed. It can be moved. It can
be brought along, and remembered.
I'm passing it along whether it's
in paint, or in pencil or in computers. I'm passing along that which I
heard. That which I dreamed. A lot of times I like to think, especially
when
I'm teaching, that I'm a carrier, or a transmitter, because those images
that I
talk about and those images that I see in my mind's eye are in being
passed along. They're not independent of or limited to one person's life.
Mine was just a little voice.
But somebody had to say something!
Nobody in my personal life ever looked at my pictures or read my books or read my
poems or asked me any questions about what I was doing. Nobody even
said, "What are you doing?"I fulfilled whatever those things
are, called chores. And I lived a parallel life...
PART 2 of 3
Elizabeth Case is both poet and painter. Her life has reached amazing heights, and experienced notable landmarks in both areas of achievement. In her own words:
I go down
screaming though... I reserve the right to a voice! My grandmothers
were bloomer-girls and suffragettes.
I just realized this
yesterday. I just realized I lived a parallel life! Nothing interfered with it. Well, yes, there were people who painted over my paintings and got rid of them
and threw them out and broke them. I encountered many disasters. It
wasn't personal. It didn't stop me.
I think that it's interesting, don't
you, that there was nothing to interfere with what I was doing. There was
a lot of interference after it was finished, but not in the course of doing. Nobody said, "What are you doing? I must stop you." Or,
"Women don't do that." Or, "You don't do that."
There was nobody stopping my flow. I was alone in that room for a
lifetime. If I wasn't, I was sent back there. I don't know how to explain
it.
I have no idea why I do
both. I could never illustrate my poetry or paint anything I was
writing about. They're two distinct entities. I always drew; I always
wrote. But
I was in bed a lot until I was eight.
I didn't go to school for a
couple of years ear pain, mastoiditis. I spent a lot of time in my head
making images on the wall, and in addition I was isolated, quarantined.
Nobody came into my room. My father hung a doll on my door and danced the doll on his way out to the Rainbow Room at the
Waldorf when he was announcing. That's when we lived on the East
Coast, and had a family life.
In 1956 I had just divorced and had to go
to work.I was living in Glendora, California. One Sunday I opened the
"Los Angeles Times", to the help wanted. It was
divided back then into men and women. I was
reading men's jobs and women's jobs. Nobody ever said
I couldn't I never had any boundaries. I did a
lot of things that other people didn't because I
didn't know better.
I found an ad that said "Fine artist wanted"
for Disney studios. I called and made an appointment to show my
portfolio. I didn't even know what a portfolio was and had to go buy one.
I put
in a lot of stuff from art school and also some "cute"
drawings. I
added what I consider now as very amateur work, as well as some copies
of work that was in the college museum.
I took it to Burbank and in the
interview they asked me, "Do you have another source of income? We
don't pay very much." It was $32 or $35 a week, and I assured them
that I
had child support. Everybody was very honest. They telegraphed me
over the weekend that I was hired.
I found out later that it was
an experiment. They were looking for fine artists and they still do.
They want people who can draw; not people who cartoon. You have
to know how to interpret human movement. If you are drawing a
teapot, that nose has to twitch. The ears have to go back and forth like
flaps.
I did birds in
"Sleeping Beauty." I studied how birds fly in
the research library. I developed a bird consciousness. Then I did the
jester with stripes sleeves the stripes are very difficult. The day the movie was
finished, we were all laid off. I was the last one laid off (my last name
at
that time started with a "Z"). They
offered me work in layout. I was crushed. I couldn't imagine life
without
animation. I didn't want any other work there, even for more money.
I was painting murals while
I was there and before I went there. I always saw things
on the bare walls. When I had a high fever I was much too weak to hold
a book, or a doll. So I would follow the stucco patterns on the wall,
literally tracing them with my finger on the sheet. I called them
"islands." As
I traced them they would move back and forth it was negative space.
I would see something I had read about, like a foreign country and
would wonder if it was shaped like that. I exercised my fingers while
envisioning things and I think this manual activity was that which made
me
draw, and imagine things. Because when you're doing poetry you're
imagining scenes. My poetry, in particular, is imagining what it would be
like if
we didn't have X, Y, and Z.
In the first house I lived in as
a married woman, I painted murals on every wall. Daisies in the kitchen,
a big religious scene in the living room, circus trains in the baby's
bedroom. And the first thing my husband did when we moved out
was paint over the walls so the house would sell better.
After that, I was asked to paint a mural for the Church
of the
Good Shepherd," so I painted a good shepherd. It took me about a
year.
I was working on an 11-foot ladder. You don't want to
just put the
mural on the surface where it
could chip off. You want it to pervade at least an eighth of an inch. So
I scratched the wall thoroughly and then used a warm wax medium
to penetrate the wall.
I came back a few years later
and somebody said "Where is your mural at the church?" And I
said "It
was in perpetuity; what do you mean where is my mural?" We went
up there. One whole section was boarded up and painted and
there were electrical fixtures on it. I'm not usually proud of a piece of
a
painting but I felt so good about that particular mural.
They have a wonderful minister now. She asked me to
tell the story
of the mural; they are thinking about restoring it.What happened was a
section of the roof had leaked, and there was so much damage to the
mural they were going to hire another artist to repair it. They said they
couldn't find me. They couldn't find me? At that time I was five miles
away.
That would be a welcome project.
I did a mural on a long wall in
a banquet room in the Palisadeum restaurant. They wanted it sort of
semi-abstract so I used their plants, their silverware, their glasses,
and I
wove it of yellows and gold, but mostly blues. It was one of the
strongest decorative pieces I've ever done. Later somebody said
"Where's
the one at the Palisadeum?" I said,
"What do you mean?" They said, "It's
gone." They had covered it with wallpaper.
Then I did a 16-foot mural on
the history of typography in New York City for a corporation. I made
sure that it was on Masonite panels that had been installed on boards. A
few years later they called me. They were bankrupt and asked if I wanted
it back. "If you can find a buyer in the next week it's yours."
Somebody told me that a nearby technical school had a
science wing.
I called the director and he said they'd have to see it and I said
"It's only going to be up one more day." A
friend of mine who was handy with a power saw and I were going up and saw
it apart and take the four panels and load them in her van. I said
"You have
one last chance to see it." I didn't expect any response from them,
but the
the principal and the director of the school came up in
suits and they got off the elevator and
here's the mural. And they said "Oh! "
But they weren't funded to buy it. I said "What about trading me an
education in computers?" So we did a little bartering and the
painting is now
permanently installed in the Bergen County Technical School's
Academy for Science and Technology wing in Hackensack, New Jersey.
I was an official Navy
combat artist. In the mid-70s. As a GS-15, I was on invitational orders
from the Secretary of the Navy to "Observe and Be Prepared to
Paint" at
the New London Submarine Base. It is a public information program,
using fine art to demonstrate Navy events and operations. It does seem at
odds, an anti-nuclear poet painting a torpedo painting, a painting which
has in the past hung in the Pentagon.
People ask, "How could you
reconcile that with your peaceful point of view?" Well, that comes
from
some Quaker influence. You have to have your ear to the railroad. You
have
to know what the fight is. You have to guard that which is good. I
believe
in preparation. I can't condone destruction, but I approve of protection.
How do you reconcile that? If you
don't know what's going on, you're worse off than a person with or
without
a bomb. You could be on the short end of a bomb and not know until it
blows off your shoes. As remote as I am here, I still know when there's
something happening in the world that spells war or danger and it's time
for me to
pay attention not that I can do anything.
The association I've had with
the nuclear concept has meant that, like any conscious person, I've had
to wrestle with fear, intelligence, the human condition, mortality,
my belief structure. I'm not alone, and it doesn't run my life, it's
just
another thread and another avenue to personal development that a lot
of people are denied or will deny themselves. I'm lucky that my life has
included such things because a lot of people have never been on an
atomic submarine. I'm like a boy. I get to go in the place in the books
that
the boys read. Down to the sea in ships. Actually
under the sea.
PART 3 of 3
One of the exciting things that has happened to Elizabeth Case this year was the rededication of one of her most beautiful murals, "The Wrong Elf" in the Old
Bridge (New Jersey) Library.
That story is fun. Actually, we didn't sign
the
contract until the day the mural was dedicated, which is very amusing.
Contracts
are antithetical to art! They are different kinds of thinking.
I definitely was not going to
do such a mural without its being "in perpetuity." To do this,
we all
agreed to give the copyright to the children of Old Bridge. As long as
there
was a child in the town of Old Bridge, that child would own the
copyright to the mural.
It's the history of
children's literature. The composition is based on the infinity sign and
that is
the yellow brick road. All of the characterizations and action of the
mural take place around the yellow brick road. I made the paint
for that
wall. I ground the pigment, and made the egg emulsion for an egg
tempera painting. Busloads of children came to watch me paint on the
ladder.
One day I was up on the ladder
and a woman came in with her fretful child and said, "Stay here.
I'm
going to go and get a book." The kid said, "NO!" And the
woman
repeated, "Stay! Watch the nice lady paint
the wall!" "NO!" Again she said,
"Watch the lady paint the wall. It's all your friends." So the
little kid stood
there. I was painting, and he looks at the wall and then up at me. He was
looking
at the Shoemaker's Elf.
(Because of copyrights, I had
to work with derivative art in public domain. I had permission
from Maurice Sendak, and other contemporary artists. The
Shoemaker's Elf was adapted from a series of block
prints that I had in my books as a child, when I was sick in bed,
reading. So for
me to paint these images was thrilling.)
This little kid is looking back
and forth between me and The Shoemaker's Elf and he says,
"It's the wrong elf!" Aaah! He was absolutely right, because in
his day
and age, the elves are from Disney and they don't look like that. He
knew it was an elf, but he knew it wasn't his elf. He was furious. Not
just
at his mother, leaving him to watch the lady paint the wall, but it was
the wrong elf. So that is what I named the mural, The Wrong Elf.
Ten years later they built a new
library that covers an entire acre, and did not make arrangements to
relocate the mural in the new library. It was abandoned. I couldn't go
and
have a fit, because ego works against itself. But it
was supposed to be a "forever" painting. It hadn't been
that long.
The only thing I could do was let it be known that I cared, and that to
leave it behind was in breach of contract. To have said so would have
sounded like a threat, and I didn't want to do that. But I was crushed,
As it turned out, the children of
the township started putting their dimes in a box called Save the Mural
Box. There were people who were in favor of this mural. Yet, one
woman said, "Well, she's not Picasso!"
That remark was quoted
in the newspaper. I was amazed at some of the remarks as to why it
shouldn't be brought along. One was the
fact that it was impossible to resituate it without a wall to hold it.
You couldn't nail it into air. This huge acre building with soaring
buttresses fantastic ceilings...unreachable. Not only that, but the
architect
said it was in an "earthquake zone," and had to be secured. I
said in
earthquake zones it has to be flexible. You could hang it with wire to
the
ceiling and just anchor it.
When they finally decided it could be moved they did not remove
the panels from the studding. They riveted out the steel studding and
took the whole wall. They did not know at the last cut whether the mural
would crash to the ground or come down with the studding onto the dollies
that they had prepared for it. After they removed it from the wall in
this
desolated area that it had been left in, everybody cheered and shouted.
There were seven or eight big husky men and they're
putting it on these dollies to sail it up the hill
to the new building! This 17-foot wall looked like a sail on a roller
skate. These men are saying, "It's Humpty Dumpty! It's...oh, I know,
Little Toot!" They're all making these wonderful noises about the
painting. They had to take the doors off to get it into the children's
area.
We were a little troop of people going to move the painting. As we
rounded the corner, little children sitting at tables in the Children's
Reading Room looked up and said, "Oh! Here comes Humpty!"
My heart was so full that the
mural was welcomed back to its place. They left it leaning against the
wall
until the architect designed an ingenious method of lacing it. You
couldn't
use a hammer and nails or a riveting gun on the studs, because of the
fragile nature of the gesso and the egg tempera. The mural had been
painted under artificial light, and had never seen daylight. When it was
flooded with sunlight in the room the architect had designed, it was
absolutely
like sparkling jewels. The color was so incredibly alive. It was just
bathed
in light though the windows have UV protection (works for the pigment).
The architect laced it to the
wall and put some kind of a frame around it. It's on the floor instead of
elevated, and a small child can have the feeling that he's going to walk
into it.
It is an entirely different picture from the one I painted. It has been
saved. It should last.
Elizabeth, Daughter Susan, and granddaughter Katy—in front of "The Wrong Elf"
I started art school at the Art Student's League with
William Zorach, the sculptor, because my major gift is sculpturing. All
that movement with my hands those years when I was sick, studying
those images. I have a certain dexterity. I have, on the other side, an
appreciation for the monumental. I say now, "Well, the only thing I
want to do
is paint murals." But we're talking about what happened after
sculpture, which was my gift. I could
do it. But. Every single thing I ever
sculptured turned out...cute. It ruined me
because what I love is the monumental. What I did was good
form, movment but, cute. Sad.
I was once at an art show,
talking to Joan Altabe, an outstanding painter, master of the
monumental in her art. I told her I just can't
deal with the fact that what I do and what I love are so diametrically
opposed. She said, "The day you realize that it's not a weakness,
but your
strength as a storyteller, is the day you'll be free from that
feeling."
After that conversation, I
finished up that particular piece and had it bronzed. So I allowed the
storyteller to take over. I did the mural on the History of Children's
Literature.
I allow myself to be a storyteller now. Maybe that's why I'm not
dropping the thread of poetry through my life. It's very strange the
paintings
and the sculpture and the poetry are all beginning to
tell the same story.
Recently, Elizabeth's mural at the Old Bridge Library was rededicated and her college invited her back for a special 50 year retrospective showing of her work.
Packing more than 51 paintings in the Cruiser was a hoot...unpacking resembled a car of clowns at a circus...I had students in a water bucket line carrying them into the gallery. It was professionally hung by a young man with a background in hanging for Steubens in Corning and other prestigious places. I like the idea he hung them high—gives a more imposing stance, rather than eye level. I couldn't put in anything larger than 48" so some of my bigger pieces still have never been seen.
Elmira was the first women's college to give a degree equivalent to that of a man's, it is an appropriate gift — the presentation will be on the 6th. They are coed now, but the 50th anniversary was a girlie gala. There will be a closing ceremony where I give them a couple pieces for their permanent collection, mainly the tryptych mural design "History of Women Voting"—about 89" wide, to quarter-inch scale, the center panel to be 40 feet with a 20 foot panel on either side. Plus two full-scale charcoal sketches.
The theme of the 50th reunion was "hats off to Elmira" so I put in everything I had of hats, with two extra watercolors, hat paintings that didn't fit in the show, displayed for the reception on the entry table and punch table. The 'star' of the show was my self-portrait in a hat—each exhibition has one dominant painting and that was it...very funny...because they had many reunion classes admiring it who had never known me.
The fifty years of paintings demonstrate the many places I have lived and reflected in my work, the many styles I have tried on, the few I have kept. Eclectic is always the word used to describe any retrospective of mine, but I think of it as a life interrupted, and during each hiatus I store up things ramaging to get out when their turn comes and I paint again. The oil paintings are intense and I use a chiarascuro...try to pull light out of the dark so to speak. Many people remark that they are 'dark.' On the other hand, my watercolors are always full of light, and rarely reflect the intensity of the oils, and tempera and oils.
You know, watercolor is 'for the moment,' and rarely involves heavy attention to detail—whereas oil is where you try to bring out meaning as well as those interpretations of people as well as a sense of place. I am in the American Genre in the oils...you can see my influences: Reginald Marsh as well as Homer.
The wall of pencils, pen and inks have as much variety as you might imagine, Disney outtakes...a prince, jester, Aurora, birds...submarine scenes, horses, Christmas tree, Downtown NY at the turn of the century—whatever comes to mind, rendered to a fair-thee-well.
A small sampling of work by Elizabeth Case
For the "Mother of the Beat Generation" the beat does still go on, as she continues on the extraordinary road she set for herself laying alone in a bed looking at blank walls.
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Listen to artist and poet Elizabeth Case.
