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Jim Mcwilliams Invisible City Audio Transcription Sid: Today Is Jim McWilliams Invisible City Audio Transcription Sid: Today is September 15, 2014 and we are here talking to Jim McWilliams for Invisible City Philadelphia and the Vernacular Avant-Garde funded by PEW Center for Arts and Heritage through a discovery grant. Thank you Jim for coming out to Philadelphia. You were born in 1937 in Canonsburg, Pennsylvania which is south-west of Pittsburgh? It is known primary for Perry Como and Bobby Venton? Jim: Correct. S: You went to school with Bobby? J: He became pretty famous towards the end of his senior year. Years later I was with a friend who became the caretaker of his kids in Hollywood. There were a lot of bebop singers there. When I first came to Philadelphia the big dance craze was the Twist. Edna Andrade and I use to go out dancing in South Philly. We could do the Twist really well. S: Do you remember the names of the places where you went dancing? J: I don't know where we went but it was somewhere in South Philadelphia. She knew where all of this was and I just went along. We really had some good time. The Rolling Stones came here and I had students who had permission to photograph them and we made a little movie on their concert here. Edna and I saw Sonny and Cher. S: Who photographed the Stones? J: I can't remember, they did the second year book. S: How did you first get interested in art? J: I got interested in art by having a friend of my father's who ran a supply store that all the schools around bought their art supplies. After school I would go to his place and he would give me craft paper and anything I wanted. I would walk up the hill and every day after school I would come home and make pictures. I didn't play ball, I just took piano lessons and made pictures after school. I did that for a good while, all through grade school and high school. When I got to high school I took classes in art even though you couldn't get credit for it. I was the art editor of the yearbook and I was also the president of the class. When I got to college I discovered type. S: You went to Carnegie Mellon? J: Right. I learned about the technology of printing and typography. I spent a lot of time there making images on the Vandercook, moving type around, and changing colors. The New York Times directors were impressed by the work I made senior year. What happened to me was that I had a teacher by the name Jack Stauffacher, who is still living in San Francisco and has Greenwood Press. He had gotten a grant to go to Florence and study a specific typeface. When he came back he was going to revive the Laboratory Press at Carnegie Mellon. That press was very famous for printing books and he was going to revive it. He was a big influence on my understanding of typography. He made it a sacred thing. I really enjoyed that. Typography became really big in 1959 and 1960 when I was graduating. Magazines were using illustration with big things of type that had a word and a picture in the middle of the word. Because I knew a lot about type I was able to get a good job at the Curtis Publishing Company, which is how I landed here in Philadelphia. S: That was right after Carnegie Mellon? J: If there is two things to choose between I always choose the wrong one. I had two choices Rochester, New York and Philadelphia. What did I choose? Rochester, New York. How long did I last? Six weeks. My father came and got me. I called Curtis Publishing and asked if they still wanted me and they did. So in August of 1959 I came and started working at Curtis Publishing Company. Philadelphia was a much bigger city than Pittsburg was. It took me about four years to really have the city accept me, to also know what was going on, and be able to do things. S: You took photo class? J: Yeah I took photography class at night and once I was talking about type and Sarah was behind me and we started talking and became really good friends. I had dinner with her and she was quite enamored that I had all that type. She was doing her book called the Country Doctor. After I had gotten the interview to come to school here, Curtis Publishing Company didn't know I was leaving, but I had all of this type for this book. During lunchtime I had this raincoat and I would put the galley of type in my raincoat and walk home. I don't know if they knew what I was doing or not but they didn't bother me. There wasn't any real value to it. S: How did you meet Eugene Feldman? J: I worked on projects at night, little books, as a way to escape Curtis. I had an obsession to figure out what was accepted with what I was doing with type. So I sent them out to people. I sent them out to the dean of the school, to Gene Feldman, Harry Truman, the Rare Book Library, and the University of Kentucky. Gene Feldman was leaving to go to the University of Pennsylvania so there was an opening and I was hired as a placeholder. But I wasn't a good placeholder because I took over. It made for a much more interesting experience for the students because it was dark and dirty. Gene would send his assistant over to teach and he would come for a crit. So I had an interview and I passed the interview and was hired. The summer I was hired I completely redesigned the two big rooms in the back of the building. I brought new typecases and painted. There was a copy camera, a platemaker, and the offset proofing press. All sorts of things like that. I made a little exhibit area outside for typographic stuff. S: Did you throw away type? J: No. S: Rumor is that you came in and threw away type. J: No. Some of it wasn't worth saving. If the typecases aren't being kept clean it is a problem. I had made arrangements with this typesetting company here over in the industrial area and he was a big supporter. He gave me all this cheap type. They had really good clean type and then I had my own collection of wood type that I brought in. S: Do you know why Eugene Feldman called his press Falcon Press? J: Eugene had Falcon Press since he was a kid in New Jersey. I don't know why it was called Falcon Press. When I went to the interview I hadn't met Eugene. He was somebody who never shaved. He always had a beard, round glasses, and very strange looking. I was sort of taken a back . He was always smoking a cigarette. He interviewed me and then he went away for the summer and gave me the job to design books for him while I was fixing up the typecases. He was always a big supporter of mine. He helped me out a lot. S: You were saying how important Emmanual Benson was? J: Yes because as I was fixing up he was coming back to see what I was doing. He was impressed with what was going on. Anything I wanted I could ask for and he would approve it. I never had a budget for three or four years. I could buy paper for students to print on. It was a really powerful time. He encouraged me. He was a big help and he was my friend. S: He was also important in transitioning the Museum School to Philadelphia College of Art. J: He was moving up because he was able to get a professorship at the University of Pennsylvania. He went there and had his own workshop. He didn't have to share it with students or his business. He always had to bring in his own stuff to print to make money. He came in at night to do his own printing. He was a great person. Of course Gene taught me how to run the darkroom. I was also doing the same thing at Curtis because phototype setting was coming in. I was responsible for looking over that. The first show I had was at the Print Club of photographs I had made at Curtis. That was right after I started here. S: 1952? J: 1962. S: So you came here in the Fall of '62. J: No early summer of '62. S: Do you remember Billy Klüver's Pop Art show at the Y? That was in October/November of '62. J: No. S: What about Howard Wolfe? J: He was mainly concerned with the Museum School in addition to PCA. He was a very nice guy and a friend. S: Tell me about Edna Andrade. J: Edna was a fantastic teacher. She was at the foundation program when I first started here. She would always find out about things. She was very inquisitive and when she saw I was doing everything she invited me to dinner and we hung out a lot. We talked about things and I would see what she was doing.
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