Oral history interview with Rudy Autio, 1983 October 10-1984 January 28 Funding for the digital preservation of this interview was provided by a grant from the Save America's Treasures Program of the National Park Service. Contact Information Reference Department Archives of American Art Smithsonian Institution Washington. D.C. 20560 www.aaa.si.edu/askus Transcript Interview ORAL HISTORY INTERVIEW WITH RUDY AUTIO IN MISSOULA, MONTANA AND SEATTLE, WASHINGTON OCTOBER 10 & 12, 1983; JANUARY 28, 1984 LAMAR HARRINGTON, INTERVIEWER RA: RUDY AUTIO LH: LAMAR HARRINGTON LH: I'm speaking to Rudy Autio in his studio in Missoula, Montana, and I wanted to say, Rudy, that this is about my third trip to Missoula. I've always been so favorably impressed with the place; there's almost a kind of a romanticism, as far as I'm concerned, about the landscape. When I opened the curtains this afternoon, the yellow trees were so dazzling I could hardly believe it, when the sun came out this afternoon. RA: It's been fantastic. LH: And the campus is so beautiful. RA: Um hmm. LH: And Turner Hall, where I'm staying, is, as Don Bunse [printmaker, faculty, University of Montana] called it last night, spare, as far as the furnishings go. But it's one of the most comfortable places I've ever stayed, and I feel so good in it. RA: (laughs) Ah, good. LH: I have a six-foot bathtub, can you believe it? RA: Really!? LH: Right. Which is kind of unusual today, except for certain specialized bathrooms. RA: Well, it's pleasantly camp, I think. (laughs) LH: (laughs) Well, I just think it's wonderful. I'm enjoying this place a lot. RA: Yeah. LH: I was thinking as I enjoy it a lot, about how you came to Missoula over 25ÿyears ago, and I just wonder, before we get into the beginning of your life, actually, if you think you made the right decision? RA: Well, I think so. Of course, I have to stand by that now. LH: (laughs) RA: I really have enjoyed Missoula in all the years that I've been here, since I started the ceramics department here in 1957. I've seen so many good students go through the program, and I've remained good friends with them over the years, which is kind of interesting. I still keep in touch with many of them; not all of them, of course, but especially the graduate students have been very nice to know over the years and maintain contact with. A lot of them have done well, and I think they've all done well. It's just that some have become luminaries in the field and others haven't. But it's been a very worthwhile 25years. LH: I was also thinking about your own work during that time. RA: Well, having left the Bray's [Bray's and Archie Bray's refer to the Archie Bray Foundation throughout the interview], I became centered on making ceramic objects, sculpture, and vessel-making. Part of that time, I dealt primarily with murals and reliefs for buildings and that kind of thing. So there was a kind of a change in the direction and thrust of my work; that's true. LH: As far as the university here, your having been here these 25ÿyears, do you feel like you've had a lot of freedom to do what you felt was right for you? RA: I think so. Of course when I came to Montana, at the huge salary of $5,000 a year, you know, I knew could pocket half of that money and save it. And then also do my work. Compared to the Bray Foundationÿ-- which was a situation where you worked from sun to sunÿ-- teaching was a snap. And you had your summers off and you had weekends and things like that, that seemed like an awful lot of time to work. I think that if you compare Montana to some of the larger universities, we really have very heavy teaching loads. But I've never known anything else, so I still think it's all right. You know, I hear of schools where the professors teach two days a week and things like that, and I've never known that kind of an experience. We've always worked every day with heavy teaching schedules. But other than that, the university does provide a kind of an atmosphere where one is allowed to work. Now I don't think that you could find it anywhere else. It's the patron of our time, you know. It has given me the freedom to pursue my ideas the way I felt I wanted to do it. I think that if I'd stayed at Bray's and continued to do ceramic tiles and commissions for buildings, it's very likely the work would have been of a different kind over the years. Commercial art, if you want to call it, to some extent. Where you're forced to make a living, you have to know where the next buck is coming from. And the atmosphere at the university has certainly helped me do the things I've wanted to do, or the things that I have done. LH: Going back to the very beginning: I was reading that you were bornÿ-- is it Arne? RA: It's Arne [pronounced Arnie] Rudolf Autio, officially. LH: A-R-N-E, R-U-D-O-L-F. RA: That's right. LH: Autio. RA: Um hmm. LH: On October 8, 1926. RA: Um hmm. LH: So I can say, "Happy Birthday," can't I? RA: Yes. As a matter of fact, I just turned 57. LH: Did you have a party yesterday? RA: Yes, sort of. There were a lot of people around, and I got a lemon pie, which I very much like, instead of cake. (chuckles) One candle. And, actually on my birthday, Lela [RA's wife--Ed.] and I went to Flathead Lake where I have a cabin, and we sailed the boat a little and drained the water lines, and all that old stuff with winter coming and everything. And, so my birthday was kind of sedate, kind of quiet, but they celebrated my birthday yesterday, which was on the 9th. LH: Oh, I see, this is the 10th, that's right. RA: Right. LH: You were born in Butte, Montana? RA: Um hmm. LH: I remember going through Butte once a very long, long time ago, and I thought it seemed like a very different looking place, to me. I was very young at the time. RA: That's a kind thing to say. That it's different. (laughter) LH: Well, it looked very foreign to me. It's been many, many years ago. I was a child, and I don't remember it too well, but could you describe Butte? RA: Well, the Butte that I knew was a very interesting busy, bustling place. It was, when I think back as a child growing up in Butte in the thirties and early forties, no mainly the thirties, it was just like living in Brooklyn. It was an interesting, busy city. And very dense with humanity. You have to think of Butte as a bustling mining camp that has been going now for about a hundred years or longer. It was at its peak in the twenties and thirties, and I remember it in the thirties. Or perhaps even earlier than that Butte was sort of an oasis between Minneapolis and the Coast; it was the the big city! With opera, acting companies, the arts, boxing matches, and Lindbergh, and all of those people, you know. The climate and life of the city of Butte was really pretty outstanding at one time. And I can remember places like Park and Main in Butte just dense with people. LH: Now where was this? RA: Park and Main in Butte, Montana. LH: Oh, Park and Main streets? RA: That's right in the center of town. And there were streetcars and automobiles and people and cops, and it was small enough [so that--Ed.] a lot of people knew each otherÿ-- and very ethnic in nature. There were communities; there were the Italians and the Yugoslavians and the Finlanders and the Jewish people and the Cornishmen, and all kinds of ethnic groups that maintained their own cultural identities in their own little colonies around the city. LH: Did they come there precisely to work in the mine? RA: Yeah, this was the immigrant population that came to Butte in the 1900s, on up to about 1920, you could say. The great influx of immigrants. And so they naturally settled in their own colonies, made their own churches, established their own halls and social communities, had their own restaurants, and stores, and yet all of this really melted together in this wonderful crazy city. And the interesting thing was that all of the company headsÿ-- the ACM [Anaconda Copper Mining Company] heads-- were living in the same community, practically next door to the miners, who were down the block. So, they didn't live in New York and clip coupons, but they lived right in the city, in their splendid houses, with servants and everything like that. But the miners were just down the block, a few houses down. It was this kind of mix that made Butte interesting. There's a lot of interesting history about Butte. LH: I've always thoughtÿ-- I haven't read much about it, and I guess I thought of a more rural kind of situation.