Sketchbook: A Memoir of the 1930s and the Northwest School

by William Cumming

Overview

William Cumming began as a self-taught artist who grew up in Tukwila, a small town outside Seattle. In 1937, at the age of twenty, he met Morris Graves, who was at that time working in Seattle for the Federal Art project of the Works Progress Administration. Through Graves he soon became part of the circle of friends who came to be known as the Northwest School of artists: Mark Tobey, then nearing fifty, the patriarchal leader of the group; Kenneth Callahan and his wife Margaret, a writer and critic who became Cumming's particular mentor; Guy Anderson, Lubin Petric, and others. He has taught for many years at the Art Institute of Seattle and Cornish College of the Arts.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780295985602
Publisher:	University of Washington Press
Publication date:	08/19/2005
Pages:	239
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 9.00(h) x 0.70(d)
Age Range:	18 Years

Table of Contents

The Thirties

I Call On an Old Friend

I Remember an Earlier Day

And Still Earlier

Indian Summer, 1937

What Was It?

Artists, 1937

I Meet Morris

The Town Crier

The Group of Twelve

To Think About It All

I Go to Dinner

I Step Through the Door

New Friends Arrive

Breakfast with Morris

I Look at Kenneth's Mural

I Meet Two Friends in the Library

Dinner at Ken and Margaret's

Paris Fifteen Miles from Tukwila

Friends

Sour Notes

A Portrait and What Happened to It

Storm Clouds

The Bohemian Life

Guy Anderson

Trip to La Conner

Voyage to the South

Mark

John Cage and the Cornish Riot

Lubin's Anabasis

The Northwest School

The Rock

The People

Art Project Sketches

Hans Bok

Faye Chong

Ransom Patrick

Dick Correll and Wellington Groves

Jacob Elshin

Julius Twohy

Salvador Gonzales

The Spokane Art Project

Emma Stimson

George Mantor

Jim Stevens

Mrs. Harold Davis

Ted Abrams

Ivar Haglund

Walter Isaacs

Malcolm Roberts

Betty MacDonald

Dr. Richard E. Fuller

Bernard Flageolle

Johnny Davis

Betty Bowen

The Artist

What People are Saying About This

Wesley Wehr

"Besides being one of the Northwest’s best painters, Bill Cumming has certainly had a knack for being, historically speaking, in the right place at the right time. Beyond being good local history, his Sketchbook is a moving, sometimes chillingly perceptive, and certainly fascinating glimpse into the nature of artists themselves."

Tom Robbins

Bill Cumming is at once an exceptional and successful regional artist and one of the most erudite, perceptive, and entertainingly cantankerous characters in this part of the world. [He] tells what it was like to be an artist in the Great Depression, tells tales out of school about such international luminaries as Mark Tobey and Morris Graves, tells how the Northwest School (of which he was the youngest member) developed, tells about the early success— and ultimate failure— of the Communist movement in the Far West, and shows how the political, economic, and cultural events of a half—century affected the life of a region and of its creative minority. Cumming is a natural raconteur, equipped with more literary wit and charm than most professional writers.