Interviewer Camille Billops

December 6, 1974

Part II

Emma, where were you born?

In Atlanta. My family has lived in Georgia for a long time. I was born in 1938 and went through elementary and high school in Atlanta; then I went away to college.

I see that you studied at Antioch College. Did you go from Atlanta?

Yes, with a stopover at Hampton Institute for one summer.

Were either of your parents interested in the arts or were artists themselves?

My father is a pharmacist, though he could draw, and his brother could draw very well, but neither one of them were artists. They did recognize when I was very young that I was talented and that I could draw extremely well, so from the age of six on I was considered a prodigy and was given everything in the way of materials.

Did you have brothers and sisters?

I have one brother. My brother liked to draw airplanes when he was young.

You attended public school. Were the schools segregated?

They were good, Black public schools.

They were good schools?

Well, maybe not good, but we came from a very bright, well-read family, so it was balanced. The school can't teach you everything; you have to learn it at home also.

What did your mother do?

My mother is a Fisk graduate, where she majored in anthropology. When she got out of school, she went right into working in the drugstore that had belonged to my father. Moses Amos, the first Black pharmacist in the state of Georgia, had been a friend of Booker T. Washington. They used to go raccoon hunting together. We lived an enriched childhood and were given all kinds of things to do and took many trips. When I was six, my father brought us to New York, and we went to see Paul Robeson in "Othello." We saw "Oklahoma!" and "Carmen Jones" on Broadway. We stayed at the Hotel Theresa on 125th Street. We entertained Dr. W. E. B. Du Bois. He had come to our house many times when he was in Atlanta. When I was about nine, Hale Woodruff was in Atlanta and my parents were friends with him. My mother had gone to school with him, I think, and they tried their best to get him to tutor me, to help me expand what I was doing. I really didn't have any real art classes. Nothing ever came of it, and Hale left Atlanta, and my mother's mouth was poked out because he never paid any attention to me. When I was eleven, they enrolled me in an art class at the Morris Brown College, and I was put in with first-year college art majors. That didn't help very much. What they were really into in that class was rudimentary
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oil painting, which I didn't know anything about, but I didn't have sense enough to know that it wasn't important not to know about oil painting at that time. What I could have used was some figure drawing and some design. There were no classes that I could get into in Atlanta at the time that were like that, so that when I went to Antioch I immediately signed up as an art major, and there I got fundamental painting and drawing.

I sort of taught myself as a child to draw from magazines. I had that hand flexibility that I think sets you apart as an artist, but I copied New Yorker magazines, all the line illustrations and also the wash drawings.

Having been brought up in Atlanta, did you feel the need to continue your education at Atlanta University?

No, I don't know anybody in my age group who stayed in Atlanta. We all went away, and we all came from upper-middle-class Black families. When I go home to Atlanta now, there's nobody I knew there for me to talk to. They all went away.

But Atlanta University was such a prestigious school.

For people from out of town, but for people who had been there for several generations, we were trying to integrate the other schools and found it very easy to get into white schools in other parts of the country, because they would bend over backwards to let a Black from Georgia in, not knowing what they were getting, which was a Black kid raised just like a white kid from Scarsdale. All my friends went to Brown, Harvard, etc. My brother went to Lafayette after taking a year at Morehouse. Some kids did go to Black schools, but most wanted to go out of town.

What was Hampton like?

I was only there for a month and a half. I loved it. I thought it was beautiful. There was a special pre-college prep program for Black kids from all over the country. We had a teacher there who introduced us to the works of Black poets. I had never heard any before. In the school system in Atlanta it didn't exist. There was no emphasis on what Blacks had written other than one teacher, Mrs. L. D. Shivery, a friend of Du Bois, who taught at my school, Booker T. Washington High, for maybe fifty years. She made sure that her students knew everything that was going on in Black art, music, history, and poetry. She had retired by the time I got to high school, so I never was taught anything like that. The experience at Hampton was great because it was the first time I saw an anthology of Black poetry.

But you did know there were Black painters?

No, not really. None other than what I could see at Atlanta University, from the shows there. I entered those shows from a very tender age.

What kind of exhibitions were these?

The annual Atlanta University exhibition. I showed from before 1952, when I was fifteen. I only knew about Hale Woodruff and Aaron Douglas, but I didn't know about anybody else.
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Do you have any memories of Black theater in Atlanta at that time?

There was a summer theater at Atlanta University, at Spelman College. That was a very good theater. Life around the university was very rich. There was a theater, there were the art shows, but since my parents were not on the faculty we didn't have dealings with the teachers, so we probably didn't know about symposiums, etc., unless it was a public performance.

When you had that first exhibition at Atlanta do you remember any of the artists that were in that show with you?

Jewel Simon showed every year. She was a very fine sculptor.

Did you have the conscious goal of, "I am going to be an artist?"

Oh, yes. Nobody ever said to me that being an artist is all well and good, except one can't really earn a living at being a sculptor. I didn't discover that until I got to Antioch. Then I scurried around trying to find some alternate goal to aim for.

How long did you stay there?

Antioch was a five-year school, but I took my fourth year abroad at the London Central School. The Central School gave me credit for having gone to Antioch, so that when I came back I finished in the right number of five years. Then I went back to London and finished there. So I was getting credit from both sides.

What was the London Central School?

It was a county council school, similar to a city college. It was funded by the city of London. It was a professional art school like Cooper Union and was extremely cheap, something like thirty-three dollars a year for full time for an out-of-the-country resident. I think it was free for people who lived in the city. There were two majors that you could have there in fine arts, either etching or mural painting, and I took etching.

Were there a lot of foreign artists there?

Yes, a lot of Israeli students, a lot of Indian students, but not too many Americans. It was super. Marvelous teachers. I was eighteen when I first got there, and scared because I was by myself, but I had been by myself for a long time.

That's pretty young. Do you feel that when it's your turn to let your children go, the same thing will happen?

I hope that I have the strength to do what my parents did. I hope I can kick them out of the nest, because I think there is a time from fifteen on when you do tend to want to get away from parental influence. I had a wonderful relationship with my parents because they were never on my back. I was gone, and they respected me and thought I was able to take care of myself. I tried very hard to prove that I was.

The first year I was in London I lived with two other Antiochlans, but they decided to go to Paris after a few months and they left me. I became very ill, and I'm sure it was emotional. I could hardly take care of myself. I had a very lovely landlady who fed me chicken soup until I was better, but I lost a lot of weight. I felt left, and was in a strange country all by myself, and was scared to death.
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Were there other Black Americans or Black English people studying there?

Yes, there were Black kids there that I knew. Preston King was an Alabama boy. David Lewis ["King Colen, A critical biography," 1970] was an Atlanta friend of mine whose father had been the president of Morris Brown College. David is a very literary soul and was at the London School of Economics along with Preston. I knew them, and that made me feel good. I knew a whole bunch of Antioch people who were there and met a lot of English kids who have remained my friends.

Did you exhibit there?

Yes, there was a big exhibition called "Young Contemporaries" which was very difficult to get into, and the people who ran it seemed to prefer people from the Slade School. But I entered and I got in, which was a big thing. My teachers at the Central School have gone on to distinguish themselves. My etching teacher was Merlin Evans, a compatriot of Stanley William Hayter in Paris. His assistant, also English, was Tony Harrison (who now shows at Bertha Schaeffer Gallery in New York and teaches printmaking at Columbia). Tony came over to this country about six or seven years ago. He was the best teacher I ever had. My painting teacher was William Turnbull, a sculptor and painter who shows at Marlborough-Gerson. He was fabulous, and I occasionally see him when he comes to show in this country. They were the primary influences on how I work.

Were you painting in oils?

Yes. After art school I always painted in oils.

How long did you stay in London?

Two years. Divided by a year back at Antioch.

Then you came back to Atlanta?

Yes, because I wanted to go home and rest, and I didn't know what to do. I had a B. A. and a Diploma in Etching, and I didn't have the faintest idea about how not to be a student. So I went back to Atlanta, drew my cloak around me, and sat around for a year doing nothing, more or less. I met a very interesting white woman there through writing a reply to an article she had written in the Atlanta Constitution. Her name was Carolyn Becknell. I think I wrote a cheeky letter something to the effect, "You could rot on the vine in this goddam city." She wrote me back and said, "That's not possible." We became friends, and she introduced me to Judy Alexander, who is running New Arts Gallery was what is what called in 1960. Judy Alexander has been written up in Vogue, and a few other places. She has become a catalyst for the southern painters. She is a white woman who ran a gallery in her father's building. It then became the Alexander Gallery, and now is disbanded, but I'm sure she still represent artists.

Did she show other Black artists?

When I was there for that year I was the only one she was showing, but she went on to show more Black artists, including Nellie MacRowe. Through her I met a lot of other painters.

When did you come to New York?

I moved here in 1960. I got a job at the Dalton School. It was a nothing job at a fancy school, where I met very interesting people. Those people formed the basis of my life here in New York. I was the assistant in the first, second, and
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third grades, getting paid fourteen hundred dollars a year for full-time work, plus all the faculty meetings. So my father effectively had to support me while I made this ridiculous pittance! The second-grade teacher there was Shirley King, a beautiful Englishwoman who is married to William King, the sculptor. I became friendly with them, and through Bill I met my husband, Robert Levine. Bill King has been very supportive of me all these years.

This job was from 1960 to 1961. When Dalton offered me the same job for the same pay for the following year, I said, "You've got to be kidding!" and left.

Why did you come to New York?

I felt that I wasn't going to get anywhere in Atlanta. All I could do was be a schoolteacher there, and I thought that I might as well be a schoolteacher in New York. I also had just found a boyfriend in New York, so that was another reason for coming. I had come up during the summer to visit a girlfriend, and I met him then.

Had you met other Black artists by this time?

No. I didn't really know any other Black artists in Atlanta or New York. I was pretty snotty then, because I was very full of myself and was so sure that my training was better than anybody else's. Of course, I knew I was a better painter than anybody, and there wasn't any use in talking to me. I was completely obnoxious. And I was twenty-two years old!

When did you begin to get involved with other artists? Did you show with other artists when you came to New York?

The year that I was in the Dalton School I started working with Leo Calapai. I had to keep making master prints, because I showed in group shows at this workshop on 3rd Street with white artists like Richard Florsheim and Doris Lee and saw the works of Krishna Reddy for the first time.

What was the name of the place?

It was called The Intaglio Workshop. I didn't get involved with Black artists until I decided to get my Master's degree, out of boredom. I had taken a job as a textile designer for Dorothy Liebes. Although I was a weaver, design seemed to be too far from painting and etching, so I told her that I couldn't work full-time anymore and needed at least one day to go to school. I enrolled in New York University's Master's program, and it was there I ran into Hale Woodruff again. I had never really known him in Atlanta, but he was a professor of Art there, and he helped to get me admitted. I showed him my portfolio of etchings, and I guess it was on his recommendation that I got into the program, although I'm sure that at forty-five dollars a credit they were taking almost anybody who could pay! Later in the year he called me in and asked me if I would be interested in coming over to Spiral. They needed someone, a woman, someone young and technically good. He told me about a lot of the problems that they had with some of the members of Spiral who were not really very well trained. They were lousy artists, so they were trying to change all that, and were going to look at my work and decide whether it was good, etc. They did, and invited me to join.

Reggie Gammon talks about Spiral too, and this whole feeling of the older artists showing with the younger artists. There had been complaints, and that somehow they were not deserving of membership. He said there was a
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feeling that maybe they were not happy he was in it. I think Richard Mayhew got him in.

The membership was in place when I got there. I never saw anybody else come in after me.

Had they dropped any of the people?

I don't think they ever dropped anybody, though they would have loved to. They just didn't have the nerve to do it. There was a discussion about, "Why don't we have this person or that person?" and I think that they actually didn't approach somebody like Jacob Lawrence because they figured that he wouldn't have time.

Who were "they"?

I guess the leading lights of Spiral were Romare Bearden and Norman Lewis. Hale began to drop by the wayside after a year or two. He couldn't come to all the meetings, was very busy and had begun to be sick. Charles (Spinky) Alston was also a leading light. Between Spinky, Norman, and Romare there was continual verbal sparring. They pretty much set the tone for what went down there. They felt a lot of the younger members had been foisted on them by people who were marginal in some way. It was not nasty; it was what you'd expect when you get any group of people together on semiprofessional grounds. Who is going to set the standard? You don't have a board of directors for a silly club.

They were really the hierarchy of the group, the driving force. You were one of the young artists. Reggie was one of the young artists at this time, wasn't he?

I don't think he was considered young; he was considered unestablished.

How about people like Calvin Douglas, Perry Ferguson, Al Hollingsworth, Felrath Hines, William Majors, Earl Miller, James Yeargans, and Merton Simpson? What roles did they play?

All you can get is my personal opinion of them. I will make it clean. There were people whose work reflected fine craftsmanship, and what I would say was good work. Amongst those people were Bill Majors, Mayhew, Woodruff, Norman Lewis, Romare Bearden, Calvin Douglas, Hollingsworth, and Feldrath Hines. I really couldn't get into the work of Charles Alston. Now, Spinky's work was classified as being very good, but I thought it was old hat.

Some people classify his work as eclectic.

That was something that disturbed me about it. Something like that about Hale's work too. I had been raised with Hale Woodruff's work. It was often that WPA-looking mural painting. Very beautiful, very Siquieros, very strong. I cannot see his work without thinking of how the Atlantic murals were so dynamic and beautiful. I don't really know how much of it was his style, and how much of it was just what was going down at that period of time.

Was he into abstract expressionism?

He had been into abstract expressionism, but I only saw one painting. So I don't know what his newer work was like. Merton Simpson was a very
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interesting person who has a beautiful African sculpture gallery here. It was said to be one of the best in the city.

Where was it located?

On Madison Avenue.

Does he still have it?

Yes, I think so.

Is he the one who has a great collection of Henry Tanner's paintings?

He probably has. He lives in Paris and can put his hands on anything. Merton could do anything. He didn't seem to paint enough, as he was also a jazz musician, but I don't know how he got into the group as a painter. He was an interesting person to have around because he had such marvelous taste, knew a lot of people, and gave great parties. Earl Miller's work I didn't really know too well. I think Earl had a show while he was at Spiral, and I missed it. Jimmy Yeargans was a sentimental favorite of some of the older members. Reggie's work I thought was too much like poster art. The theme to me is never of the most import.

Did you see his latest show?

I saw the first one, and I thought that he had made many good changes. But that is because he is painting all the time. Anybody who paints all the time is going to improve. I hardly paint anymore, and my work has gone downhill because of it. I think his work has greatly improved and he is not leaning so heavily on just the ethnic.

You were the only woman in the group. Were you asked in partially because you were a woman?

Yes. I really don't know why they asked me. They really are a bunch of chauvinists, every single one of them! However, it was awfully nice of them because they didn't have to! And if they were going to get a woman, why didn't they get Vivian Browne? They probably wanted to get someone younger who they could manipulate. Anyway, I was flattered as all hell, and they flattered me at all the meetings. I was the baby, and I was the chick.

Were you the secretary?

No, I never was the secretary. I never did a bloody thing except go there and run my mouth!

Who was the secretary?

I don't know if there was a secretary. I think I tried to take notes from time to time, but I don't consider that being a secretary. Any letters that had to be written were written by Romy. I remember we got together to write a letter to Canaday about some mention he made about Black artists. I went home, wrote it, and brought a copy in. Nobody else had done it. So I think from right then they decided that I could write! I was asked to take notes, but I am kind of hazy on that.

How often were the meetings?

Once a week. We had a little storefront meeting place on Christopher Street; it was our own, and it was very nice.
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What would transpire at these meetings? How many exhibitions had Spiral had?

We had several. We had a show called the "Black and White Show," in 1965, and we also had a show at Long Island University called "The Spiral." Most of the members were at a show that Romy helped organize at the Harlem Cultural Council. But it was not called "Spiral," because there were other people in it.

At the meetings we would talk about the person who wasn't there, number one. We talked about trying to rev up interest in working together. Romy was really hot for us to do a mural or something that we could work out our skills on, and that was how he got into his collage thing. He had not himself been doing collage. He had been doing painting and started collecting magazine things, bits and pieces of this and that. I think he brought them all in twice before I joined the group the first time. None of the members could decide what to do with it. They probably all felt that it was his idea, so why doesn't he go home and do it, and he did! And they are all kicking their behinds now! He had conceived the collage, I think, as a way of getting all those artists to try and see if there was some common vision that they could work together on, and just play.

Almost like developing a school, a common approach to the art.

That was actually what the Spiral was about. It was to find out if there was a common approach. We would discuss that in many ways because we were all so different, and everybody was suspicious of everybody else's work, so you would be talking about it and would be thinking in the back of your mind, "But your work stinks! I don't care what you say!"

We had European painters, we had good old Black ethnic painters, we had people who were becoming aware that there might be some Black art, like Romy. Norman and Hale had been through the WPA thing when they had worked in that school of painting, and they were familiar with that.

Don't you think that they were doing Black art then?

Not Norman. I don't know what Hale was doing. Remember, I only saw one painting of his.

What did Romare Bearden contribute to Spiral in those days?

He was kind of like the leading light. He was very kind and could be counted on to be not mean about anybody's work. If he couldn't say anything good about it, he didn't say anything at all. He didn't involve himself in any serious backbiting, which was really super. He tried to help anybody who asked him anything. Even now, if you can get him on the phone, he's very helpful. He is so nice to people that I don't know when he has time to do anything, but he does. His membership was something that probably kept everybody together. Now, Norman was the same way to me. I never had any trouble with Norman, but I can imagine some people would because he's a feisty fellow. He is very supportive of anybody who is trying to be an artist. All he asks of you is that you not lie and say that you are doing something when you are not doing it.

Were you stimulated? Did you benefit from this?

Absolutely. We used to meet at each other's houses after we lost the lease on Christopher Street, and at the time I had a studio on First Avenue. I wasn't living
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there, so it was very easy for me to have the meetings there, and I did that quite a bit. My paintings were always there, and it was great because I could get all this free advice. Most of them didn't say anything, but every now and then somebody would say something, and I soaked it up like a sponge! You really do want a disinterested eye. I remember when I had my first meeting there, Hale Woodruff came in and said, "My God! You sure use a lot of white!" From that point on the white tube went away! It was an off-the-cuff remark, but I learned something from it.

I showed Norman a wax model I was working on for some bronzes, and I had never had that kind of criticism. It was such a concentrated amount of good stuff you could use. I was overwhelmed. For one, I totally trusted him.

You can go back and use that for the rest of your life, too, because you never will forget what he said.

Spiral closed its doors in 1965 with the closing of the Christopher Street place, didn't it?

No, it went on after that for at least a year and a half when it was meeting in my house. We were written up in Art News of September 1966. Jean Siegel did that article, and she had been coming to meetings. She would be an interesting person to talk to because she has a complete outsider's view. The pictures that were taken of that meeting were taken in my studio. I think it ended shortly after that article came out. Romy tried to have a meeting a year later, and we met at his studio. Almost everybody was there, and that was the last meeting.

If you were to have Spiral now, within the political context of the '70s, would you say you were doing Black art, because it was sort of that ipso facto thing that Black artists did Black art, sometimes? Especially when you were all Black artists.

What we were trying to find out was, was there any such thing as Black art, and we ended up thinking that there wasn't. Because we couldn't get together, and we figured that there couldn't really be a thread other than a kind of cheap thread. The kind of "tears on velvet" stuff. None of us wanted to admit to doing that which passes for Black art, so that every man was for himself, and that was how it turned out. There is, perhaps, some Black art; it's just that we're so involved in it we can't see it. Jacob Lawrence is doing "Black art" and it is beautiful. Romare Bearden is doing "Black art" and it is fabulous.

You mean using Black subject matter?

There is something that is basically "Black" about their work. The subject matter, the historical context, everything about it works for a category called "Black art." Now how many other artists' works fit such a category? Enough so that you could say that there is such a thing as "Black art" is a very difficult thing to say.

I have arrived at a definition that Black art is really not in intent much different from any other socially oriented art that you find in China or Egypt or some other place. If its point is to instruct the people, then it has a social aim; it's art with a socialistic base. Here, if it is within the context of Harlem, how is it socialism? But other than that I don't think there is a
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Black art. We have a Black music that you know immediately.

That is exactly what we decided. That there was nothing like jazz. We just couldn't hit jazz.

But I don't know of any groups that have. We clearly know Spanish music, Indian music. But with western things, is there a clearly defined thing when you start going to the other arts? Like the theatre. Is there a Spanish literature other than that they are writing in the Spanish language?

There is English theatre. There must be.

But that's nationalistic theatre.

There may be a Black theatre too. We don't know that yet. It is like being in the eye of the hurricane. We don't know exactly what's happening.

I think if you define the American thing, which is a conglomeration, then it is part of the American theatre, and part of the American theatre is also European theatre.

And it may be also part of what's going on now is to be self-conscious, and we are so self-conscious.

So when you finally decided to end Spiral for the last real meeting, did you all do that together?

We knew when we left that it would be a while before anybody else would have a meeting. If Romy called a meeting, and we all came, then the next person to call a meeting would be somebody like Norman, and Norman didn't. He was involved in getting his studio together. I could have, but I felt that I had had all those other meetings, and somebody else should have taken a turn and they didn't. So that meant it was really officially over.

There was no more energy to it.

It just had petered out.

After Spiral, what did you do?

I was working as a designer all this time, from 1961 to 1969, and I was maintaining a studio until I got pregnant in 1966. In 1967, my son Nicholas was born, and I had to give up the studio mainly because I couldn't get there. I wasn't painting for about a year. I was still doing printmaking, but I did only one or two prints that year. By the time the show "Lamp Black" came along, I was expecting my second child, India, who was born in 1970. Barry Gaither sent a film crew to interview me for films they were doing in connection with this show. It was great fun, and an interesting interview, except I was about seven months pregnant and I looked like a cow! I never found out what they did with the interview. After the "Lamp Black" show, there was a spate of shows that we were invited to.

The "Lamp Black" show was a fairly extensive show?

There were lots of artists in it. I think it was a very good show, but I never went up to see it.

You didn't go to see it?

No. The New York Cultural Council's show, which was held up in Saratoga Springs the following year, was very nice. I don't know who saw it, but I did go up for the opening. That was in 1970. India was about three weeks old. Since
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then I don't think I've been in any group shows at all because I have been inundated with children! I did a print that the National Council gave a grant to the Printmaking Workshop to make, and there is an edition of works by seven Black artists, including Norman Lewis, Eldzier Cortor, John Wilson, Benny Andrews, Vivian Browne, and me. We finished that last year. I've done at least one etching a year since then, and I have been working on a big series of paintings of seated figures, but my whole style of painting has changed because I don't get to paint everyday like I used to. It is completely different, and I am not very happy with it. When I can get some more time to work, then I am sure it will go back to the way it was, fresh painting. I'm a very fast painter and I usually can do a canvas in a day. The canvases that I am doing now are taking three and four months to do.

How long ago did you start going to the Printmaking Workshop?

I have been going to that workshop since Leo Calapai moved his workshop to Chicago. I think he left in 1963, and I started going there about that time.

You are one of the old veterans there. Has that workshop changed very much since then?

No; it is still a terrific workshop, one of the best that I've seen, because it's so free and there are such beautiful presses there. There is no one to tell you what to do. At Calapai's workshop, he was himself a master printer and was very fussy about who was using his press, and how, and he wanted certain kinds of work to be done. Of course, Bob Blackburn isn't at the workshop all the time, so he can't really supervise like that, and he wouldn't want to. He assumes that you are able to do it yourself. It's a marvelous place.

On the painting, the energy that goes into being a mother, wife, and an artist, do you think it is possible when the children are small to be able, as an artist, to divide your life into those segments and focus on major work?

I don't think so. I need all the help I can get. That's one of the reasons I find Norman's friendship so rewarding. He continues to think of me as an artist even after I've stopped thinking of myself as an artist. All day long I'm considered a Mommy or a teacher of weaving, which I am most of the time now, and very seldom am I thought of as an artist. Except for the tons of mail that I still get asking me to be in this show and that show. I don't answer it, because I don't have that much current work. The current stuff I send to my gallery, the Associated American Artists (which has been my print gallery since 1963). Printmaking Workshop puts me in group shows all the time.