Oral history interview with Edward B. Thomas, 1983 April 28-May 10 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 Preface The following oral history transcript is the result of a tape-recorded interview with Edward B. Thomas on April 28 & May 10, 1983. The interview took place in Seattle, Washington, and was conducted by John Olbrantz for the Archives of American Art, Smithsonian Institution. Interview DATE: APRIL 28, 1983 [Tape 1] JOHN OLBRANTZ: Ed, can you tell me a little bit about your background, where you were born, your early childhood experiences, your parents, who your father was, who your mother was, how they came to live in this part of the country? EDWARD THOMAS: Well, I was born in Cosmopolis, Washington, and many times when I've come through customs, when I was much younger and especially at the Mexican border, they would say, "Where were you born?" and I'd say, "Cosmopolis, Washington," they'd say, "Look, bud! Don't get funny with us." (laughter) But there actually is such a place as Cosmopolis, Washington. Nobody had any particular influence upon me, I would say, in my younger years as far as becoming interested in art, and particularly teaching art. I had a very severe illness when I was four and five years old and was confined to bed a lot, and so people brought me tablets and color crayons and pencils and stuff like that. JOHN OLBRANTZ: Hmm, interesting. EDWARD THOMAS: And, I became turned on by drawing pictures. In those days during the Depression years, people didn't hire babysitters and you went along with your parents. I was very acceptable because I was so easy to entertain while they played cards or whatever. They'd just give me a tablet and some crayons and a drawing pencil or any kind of pencil, and I would occupy myself very happily for the entire evening. But as I grew older, I realized that there were two very strong interests that I was interested in pursuing. One was being a teacher, and the other was art. So the natural thing of course, was to combine the two, and my B.A. was [earned- -Ed.] at the University of Washington back in the thirties when there was a five-year course known as Public School Art. JOHN OLBRANTZ: (laughs) EDWARD THOMAS: And the idea was that when you completed these five years, you were prepared to be an art teacher in any of the state high schools. So that was basically my undergraduate training. JOHN OLBRANTZ: Who, if we could digress for just a second, I'm curious here, did your father or your mother have any background whatsoever? EDWARD THOMAS: None whatsoever, nobody. JOHN OLBRANTZ: What did your dad do? EDWARD THOMAS: He was superintendent of a lumber mill. JOHN OLBRANTZ: Really. EDWARD THOMAS: No, no one in my family had any particular art history interests at all. JOHN OLBRANTZ: And your mom wasn't a Sunday painter or...? EDWARD THOMAS: Oh no. I remember one time as I was getting along in studying art and I said something about modern art and my father said, "Oh you mean those crazy impressionists and all those things they did?" JOHN OLBRANTZ: This is in the thirties. EDWARD THOMAS: And that was the extent of it. The last he had heard, the newest thing was impressionism. Couldn't have been more objective realistic art than impressionism. (chuckles) JOHN OLBRANTZ: Was your dad brought out here to work in the mill, or was he a native Washingtonian? EDWARD THOMAS: No. He was a native of Oregon. JOHN OLBRANTZ: So he came up to Cosmopolis. EDWARD THOMAS: Right. And my mother basically was raised in Oregon. But there was no connection whatsoever with anything to do with art. JOHN OLBRANTZ: In Cosmopolis, when you were growing up in the-- I mean in the late twenties and early thirties-- were there any kind of private art lessons being taught? Or did you have access to art books that you could look at? EDWARD THOMAS: No, not really. The first art class I ever took was during the WPA days, and a man who stoked furnaces at one of the local lumber mills knew a little bit about cartooning, and so at night he taught a course in cartooning. We all got the newssheet pads, you know, and bought a piece of plywood and a clip to attach it to and got some pieces of charcoal, and pencils, and we cartooned one night a week. And I suppose that was the first thing that had anything to do with any kind of training. During junior high and high school I went through the stage where I'd sit up for hours, into the night, drawing movie stars, copying the covers from magazines, or doing Mickey Mouse and Minnie Mouse and all those people and just sort of the typical kind of thing that you go through. JOHN OLBRANTZ: Did you do any illustration for the high school yearbook, or... EDWARD THOMAS: Oh yes. I was the art editor of the annual and all those usual things. I did all the posters and decorations for the proms, and all that kind of stuff. JOHN OLBRANTZ: Fantastic. EDWARD THOMAS: To me, it seems like a perfectly normal childhood. JOHN OLBRANTZ: Um hmm. Were you-- and this will relate to, ultimately your choice of careers-- but were you aware of the Seattle Art Museum at that time? EDWARD THOMAS: Well, you see, the Seattle Art Museum didn't exist really in my early days. It was right after the museum opened, which was in 1933, 50 years ago, I had a junior high school teacher, he was a science teacher, and he became interested in me just as an individual. He had a sister who was a commercial artist and she did the newspaper ads for the Bon Marche. And he happened to live just a few blocks from the new Seattle Art Museum. So at the end of a school year, or maybe it was a vacation or something, anyway he offered to take me to Seattle to give me a chance to meet his sister and see their art department and go to the museum and so on. And so my dad drove us from Aberdeen to Seattle and I think it was in an old Model-A; I can't remember. It might have been one of the first V-8's. At least it wasn't a Model-T which we had earlier. And so I was terribly impressed by the museum. It was brand new, and most of the galleries were filled with Medici reproductions. JOHN OLBRANTZ: Huh! EDWARD THOMAS: And there was one painting that especially impressed me. It was by Ambrose Patterson of the volcano on the big island in Hawaii while it was erupting. And that was a huge painting, the biggest painting I'd ever seen in my life, and it impressed me, and Patterson had been teaching over there at the time the volcano erupted. I remember, it must have been roughly around the time of the First World War, because I remember my father talking about the big eruption of the volcano too. So that was really my first exposure. There was a marvelous gal, lived in Seattle, who painted and one time she had an exhibition in Aberdeen in a vacant store building. Now I'm trying... Myra, what was her last name? She was marvelous and she lived to a ripe old age. I interviewed her on television a couple of times later on. She also was an early pioneer in photography. She painted mostly marigolds in copper pots. JOHN OLBRANTZ: (laughs) EDWARD THOMAS: And I was terribly impressed by her copper pots and her marigolds. Myra Wiggins was her name. And of course after I came to Seattle in 1939, I eventually got to know her and like her very much. She became kind of a character, a little old lady who would come to museum previews wearing her galoshes because they gave her a better grip on the wax floors-- she was afraid of falling down, breaking a hip or something. Her husband-- in his eighties, as I remember-- was still a traveling salesman for a seed company. JOHN OLBRANTZ: Oh boy! (laughs) EDWARD THOMAS: They lived in the old Lovelace Building up on Roy and Broadway. And it was a great pleasure to know her, and she, I suppose in a funny way, had a [noble-like] kind of influence upon me. JOHN OLBRANTZ: Um hmm. So your science teacher, this woman, and just a natural inclination toward art were probably the three factors that led you to the field of art education. EDWARD THOMAS: Yeah. I was especially interested in education and... A young person today who is working on a degree or terribly involved in the Northwest art scene has no concept of the changes that have taken place. Gosh, there were no galleries, till long after I had been in Seattle. I came here in 1939, the day after I graduated from high school. And I was lucky enough to get a job in a very well known place known as Harry Hartman, Bookseller. And it had a gallery connected to it.