HELEN WEST HELLER
Helena (Hellen S) Barnhart
(1872-1955)
extraordinary modernist artist-poet
Mother Earth aka Mother of Mankind 1928
white-line woodcut, image size: 13 1/4″ [h] x 10 1/4″ [w]
(2012 © collection of Scattergood-Moore)
INTRODUCTION
People foolishly like to be furnished a name for an artistic style, and I am sometimes asked whether I am a modernist. I reply that I am not. I call my work ideographic. Every concretion which enters into a composition contributes an intellectual nuance. I build up contrasts and similitude of ideas as well as opposed areas, forms, tonalities, and colors. – Helen West Heller
Helen West Heller may not have identified her artistic style as modernist, but I believe she displayed a modernist sensibility in her life and in many of her woodcuts – two woodcuts Mother Earth aka Mother of Mankind (1929) and Creation (1929) being early examples.
|
Modernism was a revolt against the conservative values of realism. Arguably the most paradigmatic motive (motif) of modernism is the rejection of tradition and its reprise, incorporation, rewriting, recapitulation, revision and parody in new forms. Modernism rejected the lingering certainty of Enlightenment thinking and also rejected the existence of a compassionate, all-powerful Creator God in favor of the abstract, unconventional, largely uncertain ethic brought on by modernity, initiated around the turn of century by rapidly changing technology and further catalyzed by the horrific consequences of World War I on the cultural psyche of artists. |
|
American modernism like modernism in general is a trend of thought that affirms the power of human beings to create, improve, and reshape their environment, with the aid of scientific knowledge, technology and practical experimentation, and is thus in its essence both progressive and optimistic. . . The general term covers many political, cultural and artistic movements rooted in the changes in Western society at the end of the 19th and beginning of the 20th century. American modernism is an artistic and cultural movement in the United States starting at the turn of the 20th century with its core period between World War I and World War II and continuing into the 21st century. . . Characteristically, modernist art has a tendency to abstraction, is innovative, aesthetic, futuristic and self-referential. . . The 1913 Armory Show in New York City displayed the contemporary work of European artists, as well as Americans. The Impressionist, Fauvist and Cubist paintings startled many American viewers who were accustomed to more conventional art. However, inspired by what they saw, many American artists were influenced by the radical and new ideas. . . The late 1920s and the 1930s belonged (among many others) to two movements in American painting, Regionalism and Social Realism. The regionalists focused on the colorfulness of the American landscape and the complexities of country life, whereas the social realists went into the subjects of the Great Depression, poverty, and social injustice. The social realists protested against the government and the establishment that appeared hypocritical, biased, and indifferent to the matters of human inequalities. . . |
Creation 1928
woodcut, 7 3/8 x 8 3/4 inches
2012 © private collection
|
The art of woodcutting or wood engraving is at once a very ancient and a very young art. Fine line engraving on various materials, including woods, was popular from the beginning of the 15th century down through the 19th. When at the close of the last century, print makers turned with revulsion from the super refinements of the Victorian era, they turned for inspiration to the very beginnings of European woodcutting for printing purposes. This crude work of the 1400s became an influence on all the mediums of the print, but especially on the revival of the woodcut. From: The Art of Woodcutting by Helen West Heller |
Gifted in nearly all of the pictorial arts – fresco, oil and watercolor painting, mosaic, lithography – Heller’s greatest artistic achievement lies in the medium of woodcut and wood engraving. She once said of her prints:
I begin thinking in terms of the wood; only this way can original creation take place. I am a forerunner in the development of composition into a phase of psychology, by discovering ways of conveying emotions through abstractions. My product is completely creative; entirely divorced from the motive of conveying authors’ images
Helen West Heller
If you know of other art works not on this list – I’d love to know.
THE EARLY YEARS
(1872-1892)
RUSHVILLE, ILLINOIS (1872-1876)
Helena Barnhart was born in October 1872 of mixed South-German and English parentage, on a small farm in the town of Rushville, in the western county of Schuyler, Illinois. She was the oldest of three daughters of Washington Miller Barnhart , a farmer, and Edith Harrington Barnhart. Helena was two years older than her sister Edith and five years older than Elise.
The parents of Helen Barnhart:
• Washington Miller BARNHART, born 11 April 1842, Dearborn County, Milton, IN;
Died October 13, 1933 Bothell, WA
Son of David Balsley BARNHART and Sabra SILL
Married Edith HARRINGTON December 23, 1871 in Chillicothe,
Peoria County, IL (Vol. 4, Page 93, License No. 390)
• Edith HARRINGTON, born October 10, 1845, Brooklyn, NY *
or October 10, 1847, Vermont **
Died January 11, 1911, Canton, IL.
Buried in Greenwood Cemetery, Canton, IL. (Information from cemetery records)
* Family Origins
** Lucille Wattles
The name Hellen S. Barnhart was listed on the 1880 United States Federal Census:
Name: Hellen S. Barnhart
Birth about 1873 – Illinois
Residence: 1880 – Canton,
Fulton County, Illinois
CANTON, ILLINOIS (1876-1892)
In 1876 the Barnhart family bought ten acres on the outskirts of Canton, Illinois (3). The land was developed into a fruit orchard. . .
Helena Barnhart’s lifelong interest in nature motifs must have developed during her years growing up in the rural farmlands of Illinois. Her love for wood as an artistic material most likely came from her father, a wagon maker and self-sustaining farmer – known for making decoys for duck shooting and as a builder of boats (5).
Ducks at Night 1929
woodcut
(2012 © collection of Scattergood-Moore)
In The Classroom, 1938
oil on masonite panel
from Children at Work and Play
2012 © Leonard Davenport
|
Is it possible that the girl depicted in the mural panel above is a self-portrait of Helena Barnhart? There is no evidence that it is, but something about the little girl’s expression and stare makes me wonder. – Scattergood-Moore |
Helena had little formal schooling and was needed to help on the Canton farm. She remembered her high school years as difficult and she felt socially isolated.
|
Of all my career as a public school pupil the happiest memories are of summer suppers in our country home (just outside the “city” limits . . .) when my mother served fried chicken and strawberry shortcake to our teachers, mine and my sisters. And in the high-school era, literary evenings in my principal’s home. There were other evenings there when this man was coaching me in Latin & Greek so that I might enter a prep school in the autumn. These were a strain on us both, sometimes we almost nodded over a page from weariness. The literary parties were my only social life, the town boys and girls were paired off and went to dances & ‘shows’ but I was apart. I was dreaming of college and cities and further art training. I already had one year in an art school (during 1888 at the age of sixteen) in Saint Louis, before I entered high school and was already a prizeman & found no thrill in sitting on a dusty bank under a hedge and being kissed. (O hell). (2) Helen West Heller, from a letter to a friend, July 2, 1943 |
A STRANGE TALE by ROBERT HARDY ANDREW
Robert Hardy Andrews wrote for the Chicago Daily News in the twenties and thirties … he was given an assignment by the chief editor to head up a project which was to be an outlet of sorts for writers and journalists called ‘Midweek.’ In his book, A Corner of Chicago, published in 1963, Andrews retells his piece on Helen West Heller. It seem high unlikely that it is all based on fact – it might have been invented by Heller herself. None-the-less, it is an interesting tale and may contain a kernel or two of truth:
|
In Midweek, I told the story of Helen West Heller. She began trying to paint when she was five years old. Her parents were dismayed, because nothing she painted looked like a dog or a horse or a tree. She got little formal schooling; she was needed to help on the farm. She was young when her parents married her off to a neighbor, a widower. One of his two mules died during the first week of their marriage. He yoked her to the plow, beside his other beast of burden. She rose at dawn to milk the cows, hurried back to the farmhouse to cook breakfast, then dug in the kitchen garden, then worked in the fields with the mule and her husband. He let her keep one fifth of the egg money. When she saved enough (it took almost a year), she sent away to Sears Roebuck for a box of primary paints, a Children’s Holiday Special, the first Christmas gift she ever received. Thereafter, she hurried breathlessly through the final chores of her daily servitude, until at last she could hurry out to the west side of the house. Then, straining her eyes while the sun died and twilight darkened, she mixed colors on a broken plate. Then, in the kitchen, in the circle of light from a kerosene lamp, she painted. Like a pianist transposing score for violin, she tried to paint colors as she remembered them by daylight, not as she saw them at night. She did this for six years, until her husband said he was sick of her silly wastefulness. She could no longer keep any of the egg money to buy paints. When she protested, he whipped her with a harness-strap. That night, while he slept, she left him, walked five miles to town, and caught the train for Chicago. Robert Hardy Andrews; A Corner of Chicago |
EARLY CAREER
(1892-1914)
CHICAGO, ILLINOIS (1892-1901)
|
. . .at night, while he slept, she left him, walked five miles to town, and caught the train for Chicago. – Robert Hardy Andrews |
During 1892, at the age of twenty, Helena Barnhart left home to go to the city of Chicago, where she intended to educate herself in the arts. To support her artistic self-training in sculpture and painting, she became a professional model and took many menial jobs. She lived an extremely isolated and destitute life and late in life spoke to Dr. Ernest Harms bitterly of the pains and suffering as a disregarded model – her only concrete relationship to the social world of art. Every cent she could spare during these early years was spent to hear operas and to mail the poetry she wrote to magazines. (5) An early success came in June, 1899, when “The Criterion” (a little magazine, published by G. L. Davidson in New York City) accepted a sketch (signed ‘Helena Barnhart’) illustrating one of her poems.
Helena’s formal art training was limited and according to Dr. Ernst Harms, poor health, which she apparently suffered from throughout her life, made her school years difficult. The two attempts to study at an art school failed although generously supported by patrons impressed by her early and distinctive sense of color and form (5) The strong individualism of her artistic temperament could not adapt itself to the conventional training of that time. Dr. Harms tells how in 1888 Helena briefly studied art in St. Louis, at the age of 16. The catalog of her first solo exhibition at the Walden Bookshop, Chicago in 1922, indicates that Hellen S. Barnhart studied at the St. Louis Academy of Fine Arts.
In 1898 Helena created an illuminated rendition of “Thanatopsis” by William Cullen Bryant. The book was in hand-tooled leather covers and the text was completely hand-lettered; there were no figurative drawings, just the lettering with embellishments. The book’s title page includes: Bryant’s Thanatopsis illuminated – bound by Helena Barnhart, 1898. In November, 1921 Appie Lewis, a Chicago artist who had studied at Pratt Institute, Brooklyn, NY in 1903, acquired the illuminated book from Helen West Heller in Chicago. Heller inscribed the book: “Helen West Heller to Appie Lewis, November, 1921″ on the first page. It is possible the two art students knew each other during the early 1900s; Helena was in New York around 1901-04 studying at the Art Student League and Miss Lewis was at Pratt in Brooklyn during 1903.
NEW YORK CITY, NEW YORK (circa 1901-1906)
By 1901 Helena Barnhart had moved to New York City where she attended the Art Student League. She attempted to make a living with embroidery and factory work, so she could concentrate on her painting – but she had little artistic or financial success – as in Chicago, she lived a life of destitution. In autobiographical notes composed in her latter life, she complained of a New York surgery that, she claimed, had made only Lesbian sex, which she found unthinkable, possible for her – if true, this may be the reason for Hebert’s possible “Adultery!” (1.) Dr. Harms wrote, She felt herself an artistic and social rebel, unable to cope with life, and after a struggle with suicidal tendencies she retired for years to an Illinois farm – a few years before she retired to Illinois, she met her future husband and apparently they spent five years in New York City.
(1.) according to Larry Stanfel, Helen West Heller
wrote on her second marriage license application,
“Adultery!”, presumably West’s, not her own. . .
In 1901, Helena S. Barnhart married Herbert Warren West, from Pennsylvania. Little is known about Herbert. . .
During 1902 Helena Barnhart West exhibited in the annual show of the Architectural League of New York, where the catalog showed her contribution to be Bookbinding and Illuminating. (3)
FARM in ILLINOIS / NYC / ILLINOIS (circa 1906 – circa 1912)
There is not a lot known about Helena’s life during this period. Around 1906, Herbert and Helena Barnhart West were living on a farm in Canton, Illinois – possibly at the Barnhart family farm. According the Dr. Harms, Helena scrimped to buy art materials and stamps to send her poems to magazines.
During 1909, Helen West may have been briefly in New York City.
Helen’s mother, Edith Harrington Barnhart, died on January 11, 1911 in Canton, IL
Around 1911, after five unsuccessful years of submitting her poems to magazines, Jane Heep, a poetry critic of the time, gave Helena West a break in local poetry magazines. At the same time a successful exhibition in an Illinois town “gave air to her wings” and she decided to make a new attempt in the art world. It is not known if Herbert was a factor in her decision or what did did during this period.
NEW YORK CITY, NY / ALLENTOWN, PA (1912-1914)
|
True liberation begins neither at the polls nor in courts [but rather] in a woman’s soul. Emma Goldman (qtd. in Lyon 223) |
Anarchists in New York, led by Emma Goldman and Alexander Berkman, founded the Francisco Ferrer Association in 1910 to perpetuate the work and memory of the executed founder of progressive schools in Spain: Francisco Ferrer. The Ferrer Center and Modern School in New York opened its doors in January 1911 in St. Mark’s Place in Greenwich Village. After a fund-raising drive, the center moved to a building on East 12th Street. In 1912 the youthful Will Durant took over the school; under his leadership the Modern School became one of the most important centers of the Radical movement in New York. The adult classes thrived; students flocked to art classes conducted by Robert Henri and George Bellows. Famous people who lectured at the Center included authors Jack London, Upton Sinclair, and Manuel Komroff; Lola Ridge, an anarchist poet and influential modernist editor of avant-garde, feminist, and Marxist publications; and Margaret Sanger, the founder of Planned Parenthood, whose son attended the School. During 1912 Helen West was enrolled in the Center; she is listed among the students of . . . Robert Henri and George Bellows. Among her classmates were Rockwell Kent, John Sloan, Emanuel Rabinowitz (later Man Ray), and the Zorachs, William and Marguerite. While she was there her signed drawing of a small child. . . was the cover of the Winter, 1912-13 Modern School Magazine. – Larry Stanfel (3)
In July 1914, following a bomb explosion in an apartment building a few blocks away from the Modern School, the school relocated from New York to Stelton, New Jersey. The Ferrer Center remained in New York lasted until 1918.
Around 1912-13, while she was at the The Ferrer Center, Helena Barnhart West most likely met her future husband, Roger Paul Heller from the City of Canton, Illinois. During this time Roger was seen at the Center and around Greenwich Village; he was working at the Navy yard.
Helen and Herbert Warren West divorced in January of 1913.
On February 15th, 1913, The Armory Show opened in New York City.
|
The Armory Show was the first exhibition mounted by the Association of American Painters and Sculptors and was run by their president, Arthur B. Davies, secretary Walt Kuhn, and Walter Pach. It displayed some 1,300 paintings, sculptures, and decorative works by over 300 avant-garde European and American artists. Impressionist, Fauvist, and Cubist works were represented. News reports and reviews were filled with accusations of quackery, insanity, immorality, and anarchy. . . terms that Helen, during this period, might have identified herself with. Among the scandalously radical works of art, pride of place goes to Marcel Duchamp’s cubist/futurist style Nude Descending a Staircase, painted the year before, in which he expressed motion with successive superimposed images, as in motion pictures. . . The purchase of Paul Cézanne’s Hill of the Poor (View of the Domaine Saint-Joseph) by the Metropolitan Museum of Art signaled an integration of modernism into the established New York museums, but among the younger artists represented, Cézanne was already an established master. The exhibition went on to show at the Art Institute of Chicago and then in Copley Hall in Boston, where, due to a lack of space, all the work by American artists was removed. |
Armory Show: Facts, Discussion Forum
Sometime in 1913, Helen West and Roger Heller shared the same address in Allentown, PA. It was during this time that Helen painted a portrait commission, “Mother and Child,” a rather conventional oil painting.
The following year Helen (age 40) and Roger (age 24) were married in the Lehigh County Courthouse following a brief incarceration. Immediately after their marriage they left Allentown for their farm on East Walnut Limits, Canton, Illinois.
ROGER PAUL HELLER
(1888-1975)
Helen West Heller’s second husband, Roger Paul Heller, was sixteen years younger than her. He was born on October 9, 1889, in Bethlehem, PA. His parents were Llewellyn Heller (1856 – 1923) and Anna Giess Heller (1858 – 1943). He graduated from high school in Bethlehem in 1904 at age 15 and won a scholarship from Lehigh University – but because of his age he was not admitted. Instead he spent a year attending prep school. “He won a second scholarship to Lehigh, but suggested to the university to award it to the student who was his runner-up. . .”
|
from: “The Epitome,” (yearbook) 1910, published by The Junior Class of Lehigh University, Volume 34. Member of the Graduating Class of 1909: Roger Paul Heller; E.E. (Electrical Engineering); 220 E. Broad St. Bethlehem, PA; Wilbur Scholarship; Tau Beta Pi; University Day, June 10, 1908: First Junior Honors in Electrical Engineering, of Bethlehem, PA; Treasurer of Electrical Engineering Society, ’08-’09; Secretary of Bethlehem High School Lehigh Club; Inventor of Class Yell. Quotation: “He might be a very clever man by nature, for all I know, but he laid so many books upon his head that his brain could not move.” – Heller, ’09 |
Following are reminiscences by people who knew Roger when he lived in Canton, Illinois:
Roger Heller, Canton, Illinois 1955 My family grew up in Canton and lived by the Heller dump. If this was the same man, he was brilliant and worked for International Harvester but demonstrated some unusual behaviors such as drinking coffee that had ketchup and sugar in it. He suddenly disappeared after a major event occurred in that town . . . [more] . . . My oldest brother would sneak over to Rogers and go through some of his accumulated junk. . . C.J.M. (April 30 & May 1m 2012)
. . . Prior to his marriage he held three jobs in the New York area: for a consulting engineering firm, at an architect’s office, and, in his wife’s words, as the first radio operator at the Brooklyn Navy Yard. She said he was fired from the first two. . . At none of these could he have lasted much more than a year. . . Larry Stanfel (3)
Canton, Illinois, where he became a legend in his own time, was a factory town, surrounded by rich farmland and around which productive coal mines once flourished. . . No doubt he was highly intelligent and was still an articulate letter-writer in his 80’s, but what magnified his accomplishments in local eyes was their contrast with his habits and with what must be termed his obsession. He scoured the town, including its garbage cans, for refuse, especially paper, which he accumulated at strategic points and dragged or carted to a brick hovel he owned and compiled it there in great heaps. He dressed in rags, likely part of the trash gleaning, might be seen with a sweater fastened around his neck with a rat trap, and in fair weather napped on the ground with his pack of stray dogs ranged around him. Mothers cautioned their children to shun him, but it was from fear of dog bites, not of Roger. Before 1920 his wife wrote that he had developed a notation for expression all the sounds of all the Aryan languages, but nothing is known of that. Late in her life she wrote of the great fund of his information but his disinclination to do anything with it. Her departure from him, in fact, she attributed to his demurring at her ultimatum that he do something with his investigations or she would go make her way as an artist. . . He was sometimes to be found reading in the library, and I personally saw him on occasion slip into the last pew at the First Baptist Church just in time for the sermon, after which he departed quietly. Another of the stories had him giving a tutorial on atomic energy to people in a restaurant. – Larry Stanfel AskArt Discussion Board
Lucille Wattles, a contributor to the Canvas discussion board on Juy 26, 2007, wrote: I grew up in Canton, Illinois, and I remember Roger Heller well. He was an eccentric genius. He always had a pack of dogs with him and one day I was chased down the street by one of them. There was a story about a piece of equipment that was broken at the International Harvester plant in Canton and they couldn’t find anyone who could fix it. They called Roger and he went in alone. When he came out it was working. His wife’s maiden name was Helen Barnhart and their farm was on East Walnut Limits. Roger Heller graduated from Lehigh University with a degree in Electrical Engineering. He died October 10, 1975.
As a boy growing up in Canton IL, Charles Rogers knew Roger Heller: He . . . became a legend in Canton as a genius recluse. There was an article about him in the Canton Daily Ledger some years ago. . . Helen Heller and Roger Heller appear to have been very similar people. . . The Heller’s life, in my opinion, is the substance that creates legends.
AROUND THE SQUARE: Roger Heller: eccentric, genius, or both
by Charlie Wright (1920- 2012) Canton Daily Ledger, Canton, IL March 2, 2004
There are all kinds of people in the world, but how many of them do you really know? There was an interesting individual who lived in Canton 40 years, but few if any really knew him. He looked like a bum with long hair and the way he dressed. His closest friends were four or five dogs who worshiped him. His name was Roger Heller. . .
According to Mrs. Claire Moxon, Roger’s sister, he received a degree in electrical engineering from Lehigh and following graduation, he went to work for a New York electrical engineering firm. This was followed by employment at the Brooklyn Navy Yard. She said her brother took on eccentric tastes, while living in Greenwich Village.
It was speculated that Roger met his future wife, Helena Barnhart West, when she studied at the The Ferrer Center and Modern School in New York and he lived in Greenwich Village and worked in the Navy yard. After they married (in Allentown PA) they moved to their farm was on East Walnut Limits, Canton IL. Sensitivity and intelligence were traits he shared with his wife. She was as much of a genius as he was. Local people described her as an artist who specialized in palette painting. Heller and his wife separated but were never divorced, according to Roger’s sister.
According to the former Mayor of Canton, W. Paul Woods, Roger was a genius, eccentric and very smart. He was never mean, never did create any trouble.
Charlie Wright remembered seeing Roger during the winter sitting at a table in the lobby of the Canton post office around 7:00pm: going through the waste basket reading what he found and saving coupons he could use. His dogs were there. If someone spoke to him, he would respond. Mr. Wright ends his article with: Roger Heller will be remembered by residents of his time as Canton’s eccentric or genius or both.
Roger Heller died one day after his 87th birthday on Oct. 10, 1975. The Ledger ran two features on his life and the funeral. . .
MID-CAREER
(1914-1932)
CANTON, ILLINOIS (1914-circa 1921)
From 1914 to around 1921, Roger and Helen West Heller worked on the farm in Canton, Illinois. She spent her days doing farm chores and evenings writing poems and painting pictures in the dim light of a kerosene lamp. . . . in autobiographical scraps composed in her latter years, Helen West Heller . . . noted a hospitalization from hard farm work in the 1914-1921 period and poor eyes that opticians had not learned to correct. (3)
In 1915, at age 43, Helen West Heller illustrated three books published for P. F. Volland Company in Chicago: “Yesterdays with You” written by Wilbur D.Nesbit; “Diana Forget” written by Edwin Osgood Grover; and “Let Us Do The Best That We Can” written by Madison Cawein. Heller received credit for the illustrations in the last two books but not for “Yesterdays with You.”
untitled (1928)
woodcut & poem for Alone in the House
from: “Migratory Urge” (1928)
(pages 39 & 43)
poem originally published in The Little Review
Vol. VI July, 1919, No.3
(2012, © collection of Scattergood-Moore)
ALONE IN THE HOUSE
Silence – punctuated by sharp sounds: martens click as they swing,
cock chortles from cooo (coop), rat skitters home to woodpile. Song-
birds coasting down long smooth air ways bring up against low
sheltering cherry trees. Tall ragweed folds behind it large
white palms, leaning helpless on the in-sucked tide of air. Light
and fireflies flare care-free across the lurid cloud – golden-
orange brush-strokes on red-purple. Far white houses blare
through copper-green glare.
Tall ragweed petulant turns now white palms down, strained from the
storm. Strong gusts insult the gazing face, – slap – slap!
II.
I go in-doors and close an open window, lock and go to up-stairs,
west, white window and rest white chin on sash.
Through locked doors at height of storm THE INSIDIOUS THING
will come.
Incessantly the wind and the rain roar through bended, thrashing
trees, I do not breathe. Autos rumble down the road nearer and
louder but never pass – nearer and louder. A spark of fire blows!
Glance to the barn and back to the spark. It sinks on a pool,
glimmers green and goes out.The fireflies draw yellow care-
free lines on lurid sky. By winking light, green wickets in the
garden, – the unripe fruit hangs white. What’s that!
.
THE INSIDIOUS ONE passed the corner of the house!
The combined roars change key: up and higher, higher yet till the
voices screech high C. By now all the fruit will be bruised.
Tomorrow in the sun it will rot where it hangs. What matter?
Men and women are rotting where they hang.
The trees leans to me (chin on sash, face wet, hair dripping into neck),
swipes green wet fingers over brow. Sign of the Cross in unholy
water. Snap, snail, its bones give in the strain, crash on the
No answering crunch. It seems the roof-comb holds.
There! The steep on the stair, soft – slow – up – up – higher – higher
the first turn – up – up – the second turn – near – nearer – in the
doorway! It is not white, it is moon-color. It is moon-color.
I do not scream or wait for it to cross the room and touch my
flesh; knuckles pressed tight in the other palm, I step – to meet -
this THING. My thought questions. The eyes reply, hard. Cynic,
cruel? A slight smile. INDIFFERENCE.
|
This poem, vivid and dramatic, building up suspense and tension and resolving it, seems to show the influence of Emily Dickinson in its format and use of capitalization and prominence of state of mind. The writer seems utterly alone in a country setting filled with exuberant, colorful nature in destructive mode. The storm and the THING occur simultaneously, and the speaker is able to face IT, which turns out to be INDIFFERENCE. Surely a thing West Heller faced much in her lifetime, she seems triumphant, discovering it is moon-colored, and she moves forward, facing it for what it is, despite her apprehension. Her rich language, movement forward in upright position, and safe house all assure us; she will go on. Rachel Wood |
Ghost on the Stairs c.1925
linoleum-cut or woodcut
From the 1920 United States Federal Census/Census & Voter Lists:
Name: Helen Heller (age 47)
Spouse: Roger Heller
Birth: about 1873 – Illinois
Residence: 1920 – city, Fulton, Illinois
CHICAGO, ILLINOIS (1921-1932)
Late in 1921 Helen West Heller left Roger Heller, who had been occupying himself with private, scientific research which added nothing to the support their life on the farm. Bringing with her fifty canvases Mrs Heller returned to Chicago to start again a new career as a painter. She was active in the modernist activities of the Chicago art world. She helped found the Chicago No-Jury Society with other artists who had been rejected from the Art Institute Exhibition. During March of 1922, at the age of 50, she had her first solo show at the Walden Bookshop, 307 Plymouth Court, in Chicago’s Loop. She sold one painting.
.
Operation (1929) lithograph
Inscribed “To my Friend Charles Biesel, Christmas, 1929,
in memory of hard labor in East Chicago Ave.”
(2012, © collection of Scattergood-Moore)
During 1923, The Chicago Evening Post arts magazine published the first image by Helen West Heller and from 1924 to 1926 they published her poems in the Art Magazine, usually under the heading ‘Tanka.’
• WOODCUTS (1923-1932)
It was in 1923 that Helen West Heller cut her first block. In one of her many biographical notes she reports how, in a period of greatest poverty, unable to purchase any art materials, she turned to woodblock and linoleum techniques. She could pick up pieces of linoleum and wood for practically nothing and, after cutting the blocks, print them on wrapping paper (see Oak Street, Beach at Night below). She tells how the magic of the printing blocks came over her as it might have inspired the first block printers of the fifteenth century. And this magic never left her. Dr Harms remembered: She was practically always cutting a block.
Heller wrote of the difference between using the woodblock as a medium for reproduction of drawings transferred to the block and “the artist who is capable of creating as he cuts, a difference instantly discernible to the sensitive connoisseur of prints. Woodcut[s] imbued with the easy, joyous spirit of the sketch.” Although she did create some lithographs directly on zinc plates, she preferred the woodblock. Her love of wood led her to buy a rabettng plane “that I can make frames as I think frames should be built – I do not approve of mitred corners.
According to Dr. Ernst Harms, At first her prints were not well received; the public felt her art was too abstract and her woodcuts unrealistic. Undaunted, Helen West Heller felt this was simply the nature of her art. From 1923 until the end of her life she produced more than six hundred woodcuts, and spent a great deal of time studying art and history, and writing.
Oak Street, Beach at Night aka The Beach at Cedar Street 1925
linoleum-cut or woodcut on brown paper
image size: 8 13/16″ [w] x 5 3/4″ [h]
(2012, © collection of Scattergood-Moore)
Prairie Child • Star-Child • Witchfire
“A child, she would run at evening in the dust of the prairie road;
Dust still warm where the sun had polled, running, between stars. . .
untitled c. 1928-30
oil painting
2012, © Illinois State Museum of Art, Springfield, IL
|
PRAIRIE CHILD A child, she would run Migratory Urge, 1928
|
There is little doubt that the image of a young female figure running with her arms outstretched and stars at her finger-tips had a very personal meaning to Heller. Did she consider it an image of her “self” as a child of the prairie? Heller repeated this image a number of times: first as the Prairie Child aka Star-Child an early chiaroscuro woodcut from 1926, which she re-cut in a smaller size, reversed and re-titled Witchfire for her poem Prairie Child in Migratory Urge (1928). Sometime around 1928 and 1930, Heller painted an untitled oil, now in the Illinois State Museum of Art in Springfield with similar figure. In 1950, five years before her death, Heller used a very similar image from the first two woodcuts in the wood-engraving, Witchfire. What did she mean my “Witchfire” in this print and earlier in 1928? In the 1950 woodengraving, the running figure is running in the moonlight with her arms (again) out-stretched) toward moon-flowers (?) where earlier there had been stars. The two early prints are basically white-line woodcuts, creating the effect of white lines on a black background; the latter print, a more complex wood-engraving, using a variety of textures and patterns was engraved so the lines appear to be black on a white ground.
Heller sometimes did the same, or similar, composition in her paintings and woodcuts; sometimes the painting was executed first and at other times the painting was executed after the woodcut. In the example above, Razorbacks (1932 and Cabin (1933) the painting was done directly from the woodcut – the same for Doer, Knower, Sayer (1932 and 34). Other examples include: the oil painting Baseball (1929) after the woodcut Baseball (1928); The watercolor The All Seeing Eye (1929) after the wood engraving Nocturne (1928); the painting and wood-engraving, Intersection of Three Streets (1929); the woodcut Pulling Beets (1931) and the painting Pulling Turnips (c.1932); the woodcut Jacob and Angel (1932) and painting Jacob’s Angel (c.1933); the woodcut Proteus as Shepard (1932) and painting Jacob and His Sheep (nd); the woodcut and painting sharpening scythe (c. 1933); the tempera Southwest (1941) and woodcut Southwest (1942); and the woodcut Sugaring Off (1941) and painting Sugaring Off (1943).
Growing up in a mid-western farming community, it is not surprising that many of Heller’s art works and poems depict rural farm life – apple picking was a popular theme, depicted in the painting and prints below, and also on the panel titled “picking apples” – now lost, for the Children at Work and Play mural for the Neponsit Beach Hospital on Long Island.
Migratory Urge, 1928
wood-cut poems by Helen West Heller
Published by Franklin J. Meine, Chicago, 1928
57 woodcuts. Edition of 109.
(2012, © collection of Scattergood-Moore)
|
WAIF I have caressed the quick |
In 1928, encouraged by her poetic success, Helen West Heller cut a whole set of wood blocks to illustrate her poems under the title Migratory Urge. The whole as a modern block book or xylographic print was published in two editions – a portfolio of 30 prints and a limited edition of 109 signed and numbered copies printed from 57 wood blocks on Spanish hand-made paper at The Hogarth Press. Chicago, November. 1928 and published by Franklin J. Meine, Chicago, 1928
Un-juried Art Exhibitions
from “Migratory Urge” 1928
Collection of Scattergood-Moore
The Parade of The Chicago Artists
Chicago Literary Times, Oct 1928
enlarge illustration
that’s Helen West Heller with the bomb
Flogging, 1927
aka Prelude to the Lynching
woodcut or linocut, 9″ x 8 3/8″
(2012, © collection of Scattergood-Moore)
. . . By the end of 1920s, other women artists explored the woodcut medium as independent, non-illustrative print-makers. Helen West Heller, an artist who began working within a broad spectrum of artistic activities, such as painting, mosaic, and lithography, ultimately chose the woodblock as her major interest. “Sylvan Glen“, a work from 1929, displays her experimentation of various cutting devices in order to achieve the desired effects of movement in the reflection of the water and in the vegetation that surrounds it. Her style in this early print already reveals the decorative inclination she would pursue as an independent artist. . . (4)
Intersection of Three Streets, 1929
wood-engraving, image size: 5 1/4: [w] x 4 7/8″ [h]
(2012, © collection of Scattergood-Moore)
Intersection of Three Streets, 1929
photograph of oil painting
(2012, © private collection)
In 1929 Helen West Heller’s painting, Intersection of Thee Streets, was exhibited in the Jefferson School of Social Science, a Marxist study center in Chicago. According to Ethel Staples, a friend and patron, during this period, Helen referred to herself as a Marxist.
Helen West Heller, 1930
posterized digital image based on
photograph by Chicago Daily News
East Wind 1932
(2012 © private collection)
The Chair 1932
In two woodcut of 1932, “The Chair” and “East Wind” Heller’s love for pattern asserted itself over the earlier white-line effect. This love for pattern would come to a more complete realization in her triptych of 1935, titled “American Earth” (see below) and even more so in most of her woodcuts during the 1940s and 1950s.
American Earth aka American Soil, 1935
left panel: “Cotton Picking” – middle: “Reforestation” – right: “Corn Husking“
(left and middle panels, 2012 © collection of Scattergood-Moore)
Helen West Heller’s love of pattern came to . . . a more complete realization in a triptych of 1935, titled “American Earth”, in which the subject most favored in this Depression times were people and the work of the land. “Cotten Picking,” “Reforestation” and “Corn Husking” were the subtitles of that print. It was praised for the balanced blend of blacks and whites in the three panels, and for the simplicity of the figure of the black cotton picker in the first panel, by a critic (Dr. Ernst Harms) writing for the magazine Print Collector’s Quarterly, which recorded the interesting achievements of printmakers. (4) Notice that the facial features in this triptych continue to be in the “white-line” wood-cutting technique.
Helen West Heller remained in Chicago until 1932, where she exhibited and sold paintings, mosaics and prints. She contributed poems and woodcuts to the Golden Book Magazine, The Measure, The Little Review, Pagan, Broom, The Midland and the Chicago Evening Post Magazine of the Art World, etc.
NEW YORK CITY, NEW YORK
(1932-1955)
Under The Brooklyn Bridge
illustration from
Bronzviler Gerzang, 1941
INTRODUCTION
In 1932, at the age of sixty, Helen West Heller left Chicago, and after a brief visit to the farm in Canton to see Roger, she traveled on alone to New York City where she lived for the remainder of her life – creating some of her most complex and beautiful woodcuts and wood-engravings. Helen Garlinghouse who had a gallery in Greenwich Village, said, I handled both Helen and Maurice de Vlaminck, but I when I bought a piece it was always hers, not his, though I knew his were better investments. Miss Heller told this same dealer that her paintings were studies for her woodcuts, which she came to see as the final form she strove for.
Helen’s father, Washington Miller Barnhart, died on October 13, 1933 in Bothell, WA
Helen West Heller contributed woodcuts for The New York Times from 1932-1951 and created illustrations for a number of books and magazines, including: Etwas Neues (1936), Bronzviler Gerzang (1941) Di Oisgebenkte Sho (1947) and the Golden Magazine (1932).
FEDERAL ART PROJECT and W. P. A. (1935-1947)
Helen West Heller was active during the period of the WPA; she created a few commissioned woodcut prints for the WPA; mosaic murals for several NYC subway stations that have been lost; and at least one major mural.
The Federal Art Project was one of the depression-era work relief programs of the Works Progress Administration (renamed during 1939 as the Work Projects Administration) and was the largest and most ambitious New Deal agency. The program was founded in August 1935 to provide employment for artists and to implement visual arts programs in local communities across the country. Helen West Heller, was on the federal payroll from March 1935 to June 1941 and received between $90 and $115 per month. (3) The FAP program ended in 1947 – six years after Miss Heller’s last commission.
• WPA WOODCUTS
Helen West Heller’s diptych: “Biology – Resolution of Forces” and “Cosmic Rays – Sulphur” was commissioned by the Federal Art Project and the wood blocks remained in their possession. Copies are in the collection of The Met, NYC; The National Gallery, Washington DC; and Yale University Art Gallery, New Haven, CT. Heller’s diptych, “Cider Press” was also commissioned by the WPA and printed my L. F. White.
left: Biology – Resolution of Forces
13 1/8″ x 10 13/16″
right: Cosmic Rays – Sulphur
13 7/8″ x 11 1/8″
linocuts (diptych) 1939
commissioned by the WPA
(2012, © The Met, NYC)
(Gift of the Works Projects Administration, NY, 1943)
Cider Press, 1939
linocut (diptych), image size: 11 1/4″ [w] x 5 1/2″ [h]
commissioned by the WPA, printed by L.F. White
(2012, © collection of Scattergood-Moore)
• WPA MURALS
Most of the hospital murals in the 1930s were done under the WPA. They were provided as therapy for the mental distress that accompanies physical illness and sought to emulate the Greek ideal of treating the body and mind simultaneously. Most of the hospital murals were those intended for children. At Bellevue Hospital, Helen West Heller proposed to the WPA/FAP a mural about the life of Johnny Appleseed, for incurable and aging patients, which would remind the patients of the places where they had lived and stimulate them to read about American history. Although this proposal was rejected (which angered Miss Heller) her proposal to paint a mural titled Boys and Girls at Work and at Play, for a ward in the Neponsit Hospital for Children on Long Island, had been accepted and executed.
. . . The mural which Miss Heller will paint for the boys’ ward. . . will consist of a series of forty-one panels depicting activities in which the handicapped child may participate. The artist has made a point of including two crippled children in the busy, happy groups on the walls. . . Two of the panels will be devoted to the whittling of airplanes since Miss Heller learned that this was the favorite activity of the boys.
WPA Art to Cheer Crippled Children, The New York Times, Nov. 18, 1935
The mural was assumed to be lost when the hospital was demolished, but in 2006, eleven of the original masonite panels were discovered. They depict: children working as sculptors, toy-makers, potters, basket weavers, on a loom, haying, and herding sheep There was also a four-panel series of children with dog, feeding birds, catching school bus and in the classroom. They are very colorful and beautifully painted. – Contact: Leonard S. Davenport if you are interested in giving these panels a home; he would love to keep this incomplete collection of murals together if a all possible. . .
Walking in the Rain to School Bus
panel from Children at Work and Play
Federal Art Project, W.P.A.
1938 newspaper press release
. . the best types of pictures for children’s wards fall into two groups: those that divert and amuse the young patients, and those ‘designed for special psychological reasons.’ In the latter group is the mural ‘Children at Work and Play,’ executed by Helen West Heller for the Neponsit Beach Hospital on Long Island. This is a hospital for handicapped children, and the twenty-three panels show children weaving, and making baskets, doing wood carving, picking apples, fishing, and helping in the hayfield – all suggesting healthy, normal occupations in which the handicapped child might share. In one panel a youngster is racing along with the help of a crutch.
Catherine MacKenzie, WPA Art Project
New York Times, May 7, 1939
NOTE: If the review by Catherine MacKenzie for the New York Times is correct, only 23 of the proposed 41 panels were completed; however, if the WPA 1938 newspaper press release is correct, 39 panels for the mural “Childrn at Work and Play” were painted my Miss Heller.
SOCIAL ACTIVISM
The owner of the Green Bookstore on 3rd Avenue recalled her fondly as a ‘short, almost tiny energetic’ woman who lived nearby and dropped in often. The owner, my father and Helen and Nelson Garlinghouse separately all talked about Helen’s political and outspoken bent, using the word communist in the context of the 1950s.
Murder At A Doorway, 1932
wood-engraving, image size: 2″ [w] x 3 7/8″ [h]
(2012, © collection of Scattergood-Moore)
During the mid-1930s, at the height of the Depression, many artists joined the Artists’ Union. Active members attended political rallies, picketed to create and protect government-supported jobs for artists, made posters and exhibited in group-sponsored exhibitions. Helen West Heller was active in these artists’ social and political affairs. She was a member of the Artists Equity Association and a signer of the Call for The American Artists’ Congress in 1941.
If the 1930s can teach us one key lesson, it is the need to organize. Nothing changes when people do not engage in the long and difficult work of building a diverse, multi-cultural, working class movement from the ground up. This includes artists. Fortunately, the 1930s provides us with multiple examples of how artists worked collectively to confront the economic crisis of their time. – The International Artists Union
• AMERICAN ARTISTS’ CONGRESS (1936-1941)
American Artists Congress card signed by Stuart Davis
AMERICAN CONGRESS ARTISTS
In 1936 the 1st American Artists’ Congress against War and Fascism was held in New York City at Town Hall and the New School of Social Research from February 14 to 16. Through this Congress more than 400 leading American artists, academicians and modernists, purists and social realists, were brought together on a platform in defense of their common interests. The Congress was also attended by a delegation of 12 from Mexico, including José Clemente Orozco and David Alfaro Siqueiros.
Restoration, 1935
central panel of “American Earth”
(2012, © collection of Scattergood-Moore)
Although not a member, Helen West Heller attended the Congress where her print “Reforestation” – the central panel of her triptych ‘American Soil’ – was shown in the group exhibition and illustrated in “America Today: A Book of 100 Prints,” published by Equinox Cooperative Press.
|
American Today; New York: Equinox Cooperative Press, 1936. First Printing. Quarto. 14pp. Plus one hundred black & white plates. Original cream color cloth over boards with black stamped lettering on spine and front panel. Contains many examples of American printmakers including Helen West Heller, Lynd Ward, Wanda Ga’g, Philip Evergood, Paul Cadmus, Miguel Covarrubias, Rockwell Kent, and many others. Each of the prints was chosen for the exhibition by American Artists’ Congress |
A December 17, 1936 New York Times advertisement for American Today stated:
|
Those who ran New Deal art projects were often artists themselves, but they were artists who thought art should not be limited to an elite. They refused to restrict artistic creativity to those talented enough to paint museum-quality work or perform on a New York concert stage. Most New Deal artist-administrators believed deeply that the projects had a responsability to explore art’s many expressions, to reach out to as many Americans as possible, and to put art to practical use. |
The Equinox Cooperative Press, which published 12 books and 4 soft-covered Equinox Quarters from 1932-1937, was the idea of Lynd Ward. In her autobiographical memoir addressed to Fay Gold on October 18, 1955, Heller complained about many things – including about publishing her book of woodblock verse (Migratory Urge), a process she claimed Lynd Ward later took credit for. Regardless of Heller’s bitter feelings, she and Ward shared many common interests in terms of printmaking and social concerns – Lynd Ward would be the main speaker at her memorial service on April 13, 1956.
Of all the forms of expression in printmaking, the woodcut is the most ancient. In Europe it reached it pinnacle with the invention of printing from movable type and by the late 15th century with print-makers like Durer and Holbein. After the mid-16th century, woodcuts began to decline in importance as a vehicle for aesthetic expression.
|
It was not until the revival of the woodcut as a sensitive, personal art form in the late 19th century, that it regained its place as a major expressive form. The prints of Gauguin, strongly influenced by the Japanese prints being exhibited in Paris, the prints of the German Expressionists who were returning to the simplicity of the early German Medieval woodcuts, and the prints of the Norwegian expressionist Edvard Munch greatly helped to renew interest in the woodcut as a serious contemporary art form. With this revival of the woodcut as a fine print medium came a new spontaneity and creative use of the material. – that also depicted the social/political turbulent periods in Europe and the USA |
Besides Helen West Heller, the woodcut revival in United States during the first half of the 20th century, included many other distinguished contemporary American woodcutters: Grace Albee (1890-1985), Elizabeth Catlett (1915-2012), Howard Cook (1901-1980), Richard V. Correll (1904-1990), Frances H. Gearhart (1869-1958), Fred Geary (1868-1955), Hendrik Glintenkamp (1887-1946), Dorothy Hay (Jensen) (1910-1999), Rockwell Kent (1882-1971), Karl Knaths (1891-1971), J. J. Lankes (1884-1960), Blanche Lazzell (1878-1956), Clare Leighton (1898-1989), Tod Lindenmuth (1885-1976), Ethel Mars (1876-1934), Leo Meissner (1895-1977), Hans Alexander Mueller (1888-1963), Thomas W. Nason (1889-1971), Elizabeth Norton (1887-1985), Betty Waldo Parrish (1910-1986), Margaret Jordan Patterson (1867-1950), Richardson Rome (1902-), Ruth Thomson Saunders (1901-1952), Charles William Smith (1893-1987), Lynd Ward (1905-1985), Marguerite Zorach (1887-1968) and William Zorach (1887–1966) and others.
Contemporary Woodcuts, 1932
41 woodcut selected by Alfred Fowler
|
In Europe, during the end of the 19th Century and first half of the 20th Century, the German print-maker and sculptor, Kathe Kollwitz (1867–1945) created many extraordinary personal and social-conscious prints. Other important European print-makers of note include: Ernst Barlach, Max Beckmann, Rodolphe Bresdin, Edgar Degas, John F. Greenwood, Erich Heckel, Ernst Ludwig Kirschner, Frans Masereel, Edvard Munch, Otto Nueckel, Max Pechstein, Odilon Redon, Birger Sandzen, Karl Schmidt-Rottluff, and Felix Vallotton – among many others
|
BOOKS and NOVELS IN WOODCUTS
Frans Masereel (1889-1972) a Belgium artist, created his first novel-in-woodcut, “Mon Livre d’Heures” (“My Book of Hours” – later retitled to “Passionate Journey”) in 1919; Helen West Heller published her book of woodcuts and woodcut poems, “Migratory Urge,” in 1928; Lynd Ward, cut his first novel-in-woodcut, “God’s Man” in 1929; and Helena Bochoráková-Dittrichová (1894-1980) a Czechoslovakian artist who graduated from art school in Prague in 1933, then studied in Paris, most likely with Frans Masereel, published her woodcut novel, “Childhood: A cycle of Wooduts” in 1931.
|
“If I remember correctly, I felt the need to escape all these representations of war. So I turned to something more inside of me. With the ‘Book of Hours’ I wanted from what I did every day, detach, that is, from my reviews, my satires, my accusations against the war and by the impetuosity of my expression, I guess I wanted to express something else, and so have I started with my story autobiographical character that I romanticized a bit. I think that is the essence is of the, say what I wanted, I pushed it out a bit of my philosophy, and perhaps contains, My Book of Hours’ with its 167 woodcuts potentially everything that I’ve created it, for I have elsewhere and later developed a number of issues with it.” – Masereel on “My Book of Hours”, 1919(Analects, 1967, p 43/44) |
In “Expressionism and Social Change” – an article from Art Front, November 1936, Charmion von Widgand:
|
argued that after seven years of economic ‘stagnation’ America was now ready for a truly revolutionary, expressionist art, one that could provide ‘the destructive action necessary to the new future.’ German Expressionist art, she argued, had lost its force after it abandoned social criticism. At present its young American converts embodied the true spirit of expressionism, one that visualizes the ‘social struggle of our time as it assumes ever more dramatic and violent form in the United States.’ She then listed the U.S practitioners: among them, Helen West Heller and Alice Neel.
Art Front (1934-1937) . . . provided a fantastic resource and community sounding board for issues surrounding art and politics during the Works Progress Administration (WPA) period. Based in New York City, the magazine was the official organ of the Artists’ Union and served as a main organizing tool. Contributors included Fernand Leger, Harold Rosenberg, Louis Bunin, and Stuart Davis, among numerous others. Art Front’s mission was “as wide as art itself.” Stated its editor, H.S. Baron, “Many art magazines are being published in America today. Without one exception, however, these periodicals support outworn economic concepts as a basis for the support of art which victimize and destroy art. The urgent need for a publication which speaks for the artist, battles for his economic security and guides him in his artistic efforts is self-evident.” |
On December 15, 1936, the Art Digest printed an account of the December 1st riot that erupted between artist protesting WPA layoffs and police at the New York City FAP offices, leading to the arrest of 219 artists. Includes statements by Audrey F. McMahon (FAP New York office director) and Elmer Englehorn (business administrator of the WPA Art Projects). Artists Philip Evergood and Helen West Heller contributed statements. . . (4)
Lynd Ward’s 1937 novel-in-woodcuts, published under the title of “Vertigo” was meant to suggest that the illogic of what was happening all around us in the thirties was enough to set the mind spinning through space and the emotions hurtling from great hope to the depths of despair. – Lynd Ward. The book focuses on the Great Depression and follows the story of three interconnected lives: a boy and girl who fall in love and are separated by financial struggle, and an old business owner who lowers wages and is responsible for breaking up strikes that result in deaths. It so happens that the boy in the story gives his blood for money in a move of desperation and the blood goes to the old man, who falls ill in the midst of the strike. It focuses on the extreme contrasts during the depression, which put the boy on an FBI watch-list. (Goodreads)
The February 22, 1938 issue of New Masses included a photo essay titled “Subway Art” about the effort by the United American artists and the New York FAP to put art in the subways – with illustrations of work by Helen West Heller, Ben Karp, Max Ratskor, Joseph Ringola, and Ruth Cheney.
|
SUBWAY ART The Public Use of Arts committee of the United American Artists and the New York Federal Art Project are engaged on a program to beautify the subways of New York City. The Five items on this page are part of an exhibition of fifty experimental works attempting to solve the aesthetic and, especially, the technical problems of art for the underground stations. They are on view at the Museum of Modern Art in New York City. |
By June 1940, the American Artists’ Congress had stopped functioning as a significant force in the art world. Despite defections, it still existed and Henry Glintenkamp became national chairperson. The following year he called for a meeting to take place on June 6-8, 1941, at the Hotel Commodore in New York City. This meeting was sponsored by the Artist’s Congress and by the United American Artists. The signers of the Call for The (2nd) American Artists’ Congress, 1941 included Peter Blume, Robert Cronback, Adolph Dehn, Philip Evergood, William Grooper, Helen West Heller, George Schreiber, Charles Sheeler, Raphael Soyer, William Steig, Lynd Ward, and Art Young. On June 22, 1941, two weeks after the congress met, Germany invaded the Soviet Union and Hitler orders “maximum cruelty” against civilians of Russia. Almost at once the congress reversed the resolution condemning the European war as a “brutal shamefulll struggle,” and called for American aid to those fighting fascism.
• W W II – FIGHTING FASCISM (1941-1945)
Commandos aka Second Front
woodcut, 1942
(2012 © collection of Yale University Art Gallery)
Wolf Pack of the Sea 1942
egg tempera on panel (under glass)
(2012, © collection of Scattergood-Moore)
Helen West Heller created a number of artworks supporting America’s participation in the fight against fascism: Second Front aka Commandos (1942 woodcut); Wolf Pack of the Sea (1942 egg tempera on panel); Eyea and Ears (1943 woodcut); Gracious Fight (1943 woodcut); Magnesium bomb (1943 woodcut of two civil defense workers putting out fire),
• H.U.A.C. (1947-1954)
The first wave of hearings of the House Committee on Un-American Activities (HUAC) occurred in 1947. During this time novelist Ayn Rand testifies regarding the pro-communist slant of the film Song of Russia (1944). Many talented artists, writers and film-makers were brought before the Committee, including Lynd Ward, Rockwell Kent, Robert Rossen, Stuart Davis, William Gropper, Paul Strand, Mas Webber, Paul Robeson, Hugo Gellert, Charles Chaplin, Dorothy Parker, Dalton Trumbo, and many more. It is in these hearings that the “Hollywood Ten” are blacklisted and sentenced to prison terms for contempt of Congress.
Along with approx. sixty labor and liberal leaders, artists and other leftists, Helen West Heller signed the following statement, published by the Investigation of un-American activities in the United States, Committee on Un-American Activities, in 1947:
|
. . . Fascism began its attack on democracy in every nation under the banner of “anti-Communism.” It quickly moved on to the destruction of all political groups, trade unions, civic and religious organizations, that stood in its way.In New York, a general attack is being made on the right of any minority party to participate in the elections, with the most intensive fire being directed at removing the Communist Party from the ballot. Defending its own electoral rights in the courts now, the Communist Party, as the first and immediate object of attack, is thereby defending the American principle of free elections.
Fascism must not happen here.
We cannot permit freedom to be strangled, either by open terror or by legalistic trickery.
We, the undersigned, representing citizens of various political opinions, hereby record our strenuous objections to any undemocratic attempt to deprive any minority party of the right to the ballot. We brand such attacks as an assault on the American principle of free elections. We call upon the responsible officials of the major parties to repudiate these attacks and actively defend the basic electoral rights of all American citizens by formal and public opposition to the actions taken against the minority groups.
By word and by deed we pledge ourselves to work for the maintenance of the system of free elections for all.
from: Report on Civil Rights Congress as a communist front organization. Investigation of un-American activities in the United States, Committee on Un-American Activities, House of Representatives, Eightieth Congress, first session. Public law 601 (section 121, subsection Q (2))., Published 1947 |
HUAC ended in 1954 after a confrontation between Secretary of the Army, Robert Stevens and Joseph McCarthy. The Army-McCarthy hearings were convened to investigate communism in the Army; but with the help of President Eisenhower and Edward Murrow’s unedited footage of the hearings, the Army was vindicated and the true nature of McCarthyism becomes evident to the American public. In December McCarthy was censured for “conduct contrary to Senatorial tradition.” He died three years later at age forty-eight.
• WOODCUTS U.S.A. (1947)
(2012 © collection of Scattergood-Moore)
The same year that the House Committee on Un-American Activities published “Report on Civil Rights Congress as a communist front organization”, Woodcuts U.S.A., a book containing 20 of Helen West Heller’s 2 7/8″ x 3 7/8″ woodcuts, with quotes by American writers and a laudatory introduction by John Taylor Arms, was published in a limited signed edition of 750 copies by Oxford University Press, New York. A softcover edition (size: 6 1/8″ x 4 1/2″) was printed by The Merrymount Press, in 1947, with 16 woodcuts and printed wrappers of textural effects.
Helen West Heller’s Woodcuts U.S.A. presents a more positive image of American life in the mid-1940s than the HUAC report. There are no images of authority: no industrialists, bankers, politicians, policemen, military personal or preachers. There are only images in woodcut celebrating ordinary Americans and their activities combined with the words of America’s great writers.
Voters 1947
woodcut for “Woodcuts U.S.A.”
(2012 © collection of Scattergood-Moore)
|
Let the assemblies be annual . . . the representation equal . . . He that will promote discord under a government as equally formed as this would have joined Lucifer in his revolt. |
THOMAS PAINE
Arms wrote of Helen West Heller in his introduction to Woodcuts U.S.A.:
|
A number of years ago, while glancing through an art magazine, my eye was caught by a series of reproductions of woodcuts that by their brilliance of expression and their emotional content claimed instant attention. Investigation revealed their author as Helen West Heller. . . I did not then realize that this was my introduction to the oeuvre of a distinguished performer in the ancient and beautiful art of woodcut and would lead to a friendship with one of the most remarkable women it has ever been my privilege to know.
In the field of woodcut . . . there are many highly accomplished craftsmen today, but in it, as in all other fields of pictorial expression, or any form of expression for that matter, fewer truly creative spirits, and fewer still whose work combines both qualities to a high degree. Among these last I unhesitatingly place Helen West Heller . . . A woman of high intellectual attainments, unusual emotional intensity, and keen sensitivity of feeling, she has been able to combine all these qualities in her work and by long years of self-discipline, training, and practice has developed a technical mastery of her tools and her medium which gives her fluent expression of them.
That spiritual quality, that affinity between the artist and the mood of the subject, which raises a print above the level of a sound piece of craftsmanship or a bit of intellectual objectivity and endows it with the spirit of true art, is present in every on of Helen West Heller’s woodcuts . . .
. . . she is a true worker on wood, a true exponent of one of the most expressive and beautiful of all graphic media; what is even more significant, she is a true artist in her approach to it – passionately intense, highly imaginative, profoundly thoughtful, Helen Heller knows life through having lived it, sympathizes with and rejoices in it through her own knowledge of human suffering and joy; and, by the sensitivity of her soul and the skill of her hand, she has learned to interpret these things with rare mastery and understanding. To this one of her many admirers she has, through her self and her art, brought much spiritual help and inspiration.
John Taylor Arms |
The two 1947 woodcuts above (Baseball and Reacher) were designed and cut by Heller for Woodcuts U.S.A. but not used. Researcher was used (slightly altered) in 1950 as an illustration for the New York Times Book Review.
Alabama Bio-Chemist 1947
(portrait of George Washington Carver)
wood engraving, image size: 12″ [h] x 9″ [w]
(2012, © collection of Scattergood-Moore)
RECOGNITION (1948-1949)
Seasons (self portrait) 1948
wood engraving, image size: 8″ [w] x 10.5″ [h]
Based on portrait photograph by Harrison Knox.
Created for National Academy of Design.
(2012, © collection of Scattergood-Moore)
A year later, in 1948, Miss Heller became an Associate member of the National Academy of Design. To comply with a requirement associated with this honor, she created a self portrait (see image above) in wood engraving (10 1/2″ [h]” x 8″ [w]), titled Seasons. According to the National Academy of Design Museum, There isn’t much in the Museum’s files. Besides a person information sheet, there is a letter Heller wrote in 1951 objecting to the Academy abbreviating her middle name: ‘If spelt out as I invariably use it, still my signature would not be the longest on the rolls of the Academy.’
Nocturne aka Saint Francis On Mount Verna 1928-1947
wood engraving, image size: 9″ [h] x 10 1/4″ [w]
(2012 © collection of Scattergood-Moore)
During 1949, Heller’s wood engraving Nocturne aka Saint Francis On Mount Verna, which was originally cut in 1929, won First Purchase Prize at the Library of Congress and was published in the American Artists Group’s “American Prize Prints of the 20th Century.”
|
Many wood-engravers begin by drawing their design in complete detail on the block before cutting. Miss Heller prefers to sketch in the rough composition and then improvise on the wood as she goes along … As one can see by the moving forms in Nocturne, the artist is deeply concerned with the power of suggestion in art – a power potent enough to ‘call spirits from the vastly deep.’ Conceived in abstract terms it is still lucid enough to make the meaning plain. It is indeed a compelling print, full of the awesome shapes and terrors that prowl in the depths of the subconscious; it is that fearful time of night when the powers of darkness take possession of a mind asleep…” From: American Prize Prints of the 20th Century |
During 1949, a traveling exhibit titled: Woodcuts by Helen West Heller a loan exhibition of 30 prints from The George Binet Print Collection, was held in Brimfield, MA; a folded sheet with reproductions, including the reprinting of a short article on Heller by John Taylor Arms, was the catalog for the exhibit.
Hear Not – See Not 1949
wood-engraving
(2012 © Scattergood-Moore)
Companioned 1949
woodengraving
(2012 © Private Collection)
THE FINAL YEARS (1950-1955)
left: Witchfire 1950
right: The Dove and the Buzzard 1950
woodengraving and/or woodcuts
(2012 © collection of Scattergood-Moore)
Dieing Tree 1953
color woodcut, image size: 16 1/8″ [h] x 14″ [w]
(2012, © collection of Scattergood-Moore)
During the early 1950s, Helen West Heller created a number of large color woodcuts, which according to Dr. Ernest Harms, brought her more economic success than anything else in her not easy life. Apparently this success did not make her happy; for the last few years of her life, Heller wrote bitterly of other artists and institutions, which she felt had either conspired against her and/or rejected her.
Heller’s autobiographical memoir, addressed to Fay Gold on October 18, l955, 6 weeks before her death, explains why she left her husband and moved to Chicago to try to earn a living as an artist, how she learned to do woodcuts, and expresses her bitterness toward the Arts Club and the Art Institute of Chicago for refusing to exhibit her work. She credits C. J. Bulliet for publishing her work in the Chicago Daily News arts supplement; and writes about publishing her book of woodblock verse, a process she claims Lynd Ward later took credit for. She makes similar accusations against Audrey MacMahon and Adolf Dehn of the WPA Federal Art Project, and expresses her attitude towards Clare Leighton, but writes favorably about George Binet’s efforts to sell her work and John Taylor Arms, who was always friendly toward her. – Smithsonian Archives of American Art – Microfilm reel(s): Microfilm reel D 361, frames 266-273. – Forms Part of: Fay Gold papers, 1924-1979.
Helen West Heller died at Bellevue Hospital, New York City, on November 19, 1955.
|
The death of Helen West Heller, distinguished wood-cut artist, became known yesterday. For ten days her body has remained unclaimed at the Bellevue morgue. Mrs. Heller was 83 years old. She became ill Nov. 18 at her home, 732 East Sixth Street, and was taken to Bellevue. She died the next day. Since then the Police Bureau of Missing Persons and the Artists Equity Association have tried unsuccessfully to locate members of her family. She was without immediate relatives, and had been supported by city relief. The City Welfare Department and the Artists Equity now are making arrangements for the funeral. . .” – The New York Times; November 30, 1955; page 38. |
Helen Heller was buried, with funds provided by New York City Welfare Department and Artists’ Equity, in a small unmarked plot (section: 70, grave: 500) at the back left side of Rosehill Cemetery, 355 E. Linden Ave Linden, Union County, NJ 07036.
It is unlikely that anyone from Canton, Illinois attended Helen West Heller’s funeral. Her sisters, Edith and Elise (their whereabouts unknown) did not attend nor her estranged husband, Roger Paul Heller. There was no major appreciation of her life and art until Dr. Ernst Harms’ article in the November 1957 issue of American Artist.
|
A HORRIBLE CRIME and THE AFTERMATH On November 26th, seven days after Helen West Heller died at Bellevue Hospital, in New York City, an eight-year-old girl was raped and severely beaten in Canton, Illinois. The young girl died in hospital less than two hours after her battered body was found by her bothers in an abandoned rail car near her home not far from Burlington tracks in the town of Canton. Hours after the murder, Lloyd Eldon Miller, Jr, a 29 year old Canton cab diriver, illegally took his cab and abandoned it outside of town. He then continued to travel by bus, intending to go Detroit to find work in an auto factory. The police concluded that Miller was fleeing after assaulting the girl. He was arrested, returned to Canton where he later signed a police written confession after being threatened with the death penalty if he refused. Miller was convicted and sentenced to death in 1956 in Hancock County, Illinois, for the murder of Janice Elizabeth May in November of the year before. The conviction rested primarily on a confession that prosecutors persuaded the trial judge had been voluntarily signed. Miller faced seven execution dates — coming within eight hours of execution once — before he was exonerated 15 years later. After Miller won a federal writ of habeas corpus and the prosecution dropped all charges in 1971. Lloyd Eldon Miller, Jr. wrote of his ordeal in Tenth Stay at Midnight. Curiously, Roger Heller was not questioned by the Canton police; he apparently left Canton shortly after his wife’s death but did not arrive in NYC until the following spring; his whereabouts from November 26th, 1955 until May of 1956 are unknown. Although there is no evidence that he was involved in the sexual assault and murder of Janice Elizabeth May, it would be reassuring to know where Roger Heller was from November 1955 to May 1956. . . Could the death of his estranged wife pushed Roger over the edge? In 1959, four years after Helen’s death, Roger was judged in New York City a possible threat to himself and others. The attorneys for Lloyd Eldon Miller, Jr visited Roger Heller sometime after he was confined to a mental institution in New York City. The attorneys interviewed him and were astonished by his familiarity with the area and knowledge of events. (3) |
|
Roger Heller, Canton, Illinois 1955 After reading an article on Roger Heller, a story that my father told me about him came to mind. My family grew up in Canton and lived by the Heller dump. If this was the same man, he was brilliant and worked for International Harvester but demonstrated some unusual behaviors such as drinking coffee that had ketchup and sugar in it. He suddenly disappeared after a major event occurred (the sexual assault and murder of Janice Elizabeth May on November 26th, 1955) in that town and I have some questions about where he may have gone and if he was ever questioned about that event. C.J.M. (April 30, 2012) . . . my family lived next to Roger in Canton. My oldest brother would sneak over to Rogers and go through some of his accumulated junk. My father boxed Lloyd Miller several times at a makeshift gym in the service bay of a Gas Station on West Locust Street. Lloyd was afraid of blood so my father was convinced that he could not have committed such a horrible crime. Instead, he believed that Roger did it and left town immediately afterwards. My mother’s cousin was Virgil Ball who was the elected Sheriff at that time and the one instrumental in getting Lloyd to sign a confession. Of course my father believed that Virgil needed someone to pin the crime on and Lloyd was the one. . . My curiosity rests on rather Roger was even questioned in this case. My father seemed to think not. As I read more about his wife’s accomplishments and their relationship together, I remain curious. C.J.M. (May 1, 2012) |
In May of 1956, six months after Helen’s death, Roger Heller arrived in New York City. It is not known if he ever visited her unmarked grave. At some point Roger returned to Illinois but shortly later relocated to New York City. In 1959, Roger was picked up in the city; examined and judged a possible threat to himself and others (3). He was confined to mental institutions in the state of New York for the remainder of his life. On October 10, 1975, Roger Paul Heller died in the infamous Pilgrim State Hospital, Suffolk County on Long Island, NY – he had just turned 87 years old.
On March 2, 2004 Charlie Wright (1920- 2012) wrote an appreciation of Roger Heller titled “Roger Heller: eccentric, genius, or both” for his column AROUND THE SQUARE in the Canton Daily Ledger, Canton, IL. Mr. Wright ended his article stating: “Roger Heller will be remembered by residents of his time as Canton’s eccentric or genius or both.” Mr. Wright never wrote an appreciation of the life or art of the even-more distinguished native Canton resident, Helena S. Barnhart, aka Helen West Heller.
Roger Paul Heller was buried in the Nisky Hill Cemetery, Bethlehem, Northampton County, Pennsylvania, Plot: Section B along with his father Llewellyn Heller (who had a nervous breakdown in 1918 and killed himself on July 29, 1923 by leaping out of a third story window of his home), his mother, Anna Giess Heller (owner and general manager of the Bethlehem Times, who died of apoplexy on July 10, 1943), and his sisters Miriam Heller (1880-1880) and Claire Heller Moxon (1893-1988).
“He might be a very clever man by nature, for all I know, but he
laid so many books upon his head that his brain could not move.“
R. P. Heller, ’09 (Lehigh yearbook)
|
The April 4, 1949 LIFE magazine published “Fellow Travelers, Communist Fronts” in the article Red Rumpus. Fifty prominent people who “wittingly or not, associate themselves with a Communist-front organization and thereby lend it glamor, prestige or the respectability of American liberalism.” Fellow Travelers included: Susan B. Anthony II, Leonard Bernstein, Charles Chaplin, Aaron Copeland, Albert Einstein, Lillian Hellman, Langston Hughes, Norman Mailer, Thomas Mann, Arthur Miller, Dorothy Parker, Louis Untermeyer, Mark Van Doren, etc. . . “a representative selection ranging from hard-working fellow travelers to soft-headed do-gooders who have persistently lent their names to organizations labeled by the U.S. Attorney General or other government agencies as subversive.” – Life Helen West Heller was not famoous enough to make the list, but she drew her artistic inspiration from the working class. She sometimes idealized them and other times highlighted the hypocrisy of the world she struggled, as an artist, to make her way in. – Leonard Davenport. (2) |
Creation 1928
woodcut, 7 3/8 x 8 3/4 inches
2012 © private collection
EPILOGUE
During the last two and a half decades of her life Helen West Heller produced over six hundred woodcuts which established her as a major American print-maker. Exhibitions at the Brooklyn Museum and Columbia University won her widespread recognition and institutions such as the Library of Congress and Brooklyn Museum acquired her prints. Unfortunately like many other women artists of the period Helen West Heller was nearly forgotten, accept for the writings of Dr. Ernest Harms who wrote an important appreciation of her prints, Helen West Heller – The Woodcutter for the Print Collector’s Quarterly. April 1942, and an article on her life, Dark to Light: An appreciation of the life work of Helen West Heller, 1872-1955, for American Artist, November 1957. In 1955, he donated over 180 woodcuts by Helen West Heller to the Metropolitan Museum of Art, in New York City.
Helen West Heller has lived the life of a full blooded personality striving and fighting for an artistic ideal . . . Far too little is known even among artists about this amazing woman. – Dr. Ernst Harms
SELECTED EXHIBITIONS 1902-2003:
Architectural League of New York, NYC, 1902
Walden Bookshop, Chicago, 1922 (first solo show)
Philosophy Hall, Columbia University, NYC, 1933(solo show)
Society of Independent Artists, 1934
Salons of America, 1934-1935
Whitney Museum of American Art, NYC, 1935
American Artists Congress, NYC, 1936
Society of Independent Artists, 1941
National Academy of Design, NYC, 1942-46
Artists’ Gallery, NYC, 1942
Library of Congress, Washington DC, 1942, 1943, 44, 45, 46
Society of Independent Artists,
Art Institute of Chicago, 1920-1922
American Federation of Art traveling exhibition, 1943-45
International Print Society, 1944
Lowell Art Association, 1944
City Library Association, Springfield, 1948
retrospective, Smithsonian, 1949
California State Library, 1951
Hempstead Library, New York, 1952
University of Maine, 1952
Annual Show, New York City (small memorial show), 1956
Retrospective: Helen West Heller woodcuts,
curated by Scattergood-Moore,
Dana Art Gallery, Wellesley, MA 2003
Beggared (1928)
woodcut & poem from: “Migratory Urge” (pages 52 & 53)
(2012, © collection of Scattergood-Moore)
REFERENCES:
(1) Martin R. Kalfatovic, “The New Deal fine arts projects:
a bibliography, 1933-1992″ (1994)
(2) Leonard Davenport
(3) Larry E. Stanfel
(4) Nilza Belita Grau Haertel, “Landscape and nature in American prints:
Transformations in form and meaning,” Indiana University, 2007
(5) Dr. Ernst Harms, “Helen West Heller – The Woodcutter”
The Print Collector’s Quarterly. April (1942)
(5) Dr. Ernest Harms, “Dark to Light: An appreciation of the life work of Helen
West Heller,” American Artist, November (1957)
•
• Canton Daily Ledger
• Chicago Daily News
• William Furry
• Illinois State Historical Society
• Garlinghouse
• Karen Lewis
• C. John Malone
• Charles Rogers
• Lucille Wattles
• Rachel Wood
• Charlie Wright
SELECTED LINKS:
• Helen West Heller: List of Artworks
• abstraction arrives: the armory show
• A Toxic Acquaintanceship
• American Artists’ Congress
• American Congress Artists
• American modernism
• Archives of American Art
• Armory Show
• Art and Social Issures in American Culture
• Comrades in Art
• Contemporary Woodcuts 1932
• Cubist Ball poster, Oct 1928
• Find a Grave
• Illinois Women Artists Project
• Long Live Art Front
• Migratory Urge, Helen West Heller, 1928
• Modern School Collection
• The New Masses
• Novels in Woodcut
• Rosehill Cemetery, Linden, NJ
• Woodcuts U.S.A., Helen West Heller, 1947
•
NOVELS IN WOODCUT
LYND WARD – Equinox Press publications:
• Now That The Gods Are Dead, by Llewelyn Powers, illus. Lynd Ward
• A Christmas Poem, by Thomas Mann, illus. Lynd Ward
• Prelude to a Million Years, 1933 by Lynd Ward (30 wood-engravings)
• Nocturnes, by Thomas Mann, illus. Lynd Ward
• One of Us: Story of John Reed, by Granville Hicks, illus. Lynd Ward
LYND WARD – Novels in Woodcuts:
• God’s Man, 1929, Jonathan Cape (139 woodcut illustrations)
• Madman’s Drum, 1930, Jonathan Cape & Harrison Smith (119 woodcuts)
• Wild Pilgrimage, 1932, Harrison Smith and Robert Haas
• Song Without Words, 1936, Random House (21 images)
• Vertigo, 1937, Random House
FRANS MASEREEL – Novels in Woodcuts:
• Passionate Journey (Mein Studenbuch), 1916 (165 woodcuts)
• The Sun: A Novel Told in 63 Woodcuts, 1919
• My Book of Hours, 1922 (167 woodcuts)
• The City (Die Stad), 1925 (100 woodcuts)
• Landscapes and Voices, 1929 (60 woodcuts)
• Story Without Words (60 woodcuts)
.
I’ve had a passion for the woodcuts and engravings of Helen West Heller ever since I purchased a signed, limited-edition of her Woodcuts U.S.A. from a second-hand bookshop in 1974. As an artist, educator and lover of her prints, I’ve attempted to freely share my enthusiasm and knowledge of her life and artwork with the public. Fascinated as I am with Miss Heller’s extraordinary life, it never was my intention to be her biographer; if I were to put her story on paper, I would need a creative co-writer with extensive research skills and high academic standards. Unfortunately I’ve been unable to find such a person. If you think you might be that person, please let me know. – Scattergood-Moore
.
Installation view of the retrospective exhibit: “Helen West Heller,” January 2003
An exhibition of Helen West Heller art works and artifacts was held in the Dana Art Gallery, Wellesley, Massachusetts, from January 13 to February 7, 2003. Curated by Scattergood-Moore, the exhibit was the most significant Helen West Heller retrospective exhibition since her death in 1955. Items on display were drawn from three commercial galleries and two private collections. Over fifty woodcuts, executed from 1924 to 1953, plus illustrated books, a painting and copper relief by Helen West Heller were exhibited.
.
Migratory Urge | Woodcuts U.S.A.
.
Most of the Helen West Heller prints and artifacts on this page are from the private collection of Scattergood-Moore and may not be reproduced without written permission; other images are presented under the Fair Use Provision of the Copyright Act for noncommercial and educational purposes only. If you have images of Helen West Heller’s art and/or new biographical information or documentation on the artist – including corrections of information presented here – I’d appreciate knowing. Thanks a lot and ENJOY! – SCATTERGOOD-MOORE
.
Tags: American Artists' Congress, anarchist, Armory Show, art, artist, artist congress, artists, Artists Equity, Artists Equity Association, Artists' Congress, Artists' Union, barnhart, Brooklyn Museum., canton, Canton Illinolis, chicago, civil rights, Davenport, Dr. Ernest Harms, Emma Goldman, engraving, Ernest Harms, FAP, Federal Art Project, Ferrer Center, Ferrer Center and Modern School, Ferrer Society, free love, Fulton, HARMS, helen, HELEN WEST HELLER, helena, Hellen, Hellena S. Barnhart, heller, Herbert, Herbert Warren West, Herbert West, Illinois, Internatonal Exhibition of Modern Art, Janice Elizabeth May, John Taylor Arms, Jr, Larry E. Stanfel, Larry Stanfel, litho, lithograph, Lloyd Eldon Miller, Lynd Ward, Metropolitan Museum of Art, MIGRATORY URGE, moasic, Modern School, modernism, Mordenism, mosaics, mural, murals, New Masses, new york, new york city, painting, Paul, poems, poetry, polictis, printmaking, prints, Roger, Roger Heller, Roger Paul Heller, Rushville, socialism, watercolor, west, Women artists, wood engraving, woodcut, WOODCUT U.S.A., wpa, Yale University Art Museum
