Oral history interview with Jean Holmes, 1965 Apr. 12

Transcript

Preface

The following oral history transcript is the result of a recorded interview with Jean Holmes on April 12, 1965. The interview took place in Kentfield, California, and was conducted by Mary Fuller McChesney for the Archives of American Art, Smithsonian Institution. This interview is part of the Archives of American Art's New Deal and the Arts project.

The original transcript was edited. In 2022 the Archives created a more verbatim transcript. This transcript has been lightly edited for readability by the Archives of American Art. The reader should bear in mind that they are reading a transcript of spoken, rather than written, prose.

Interview

MARY FULLER MCCHESNEY:  This is Mary McChesney interviewing Jean Holmes, spelled H-O-L-M-E-S, who is now Mrs. Jean LeBlanc, L-E-capital B-L-A-N-C, who lives at 29 Terrace Avenue in Kentfield, California. First, would you tell me, where were you born?

JEAN HOLMES:  I was born in San Francisco.

MARY FULLER MCCHESNEY:  What year was that?

JEAN HOLMES:  1910.

MARY FULLER MCCHESNEY:  And where did you receive your art training?

JEAN HOLMES:  Well, I got part of it at Glasgow School of Fine Arts in Scotland, and I went to the California School of Arts and Crafts in Oakland for a few years, and went to different night schools. Wherever I was, I always went to night school. And then I had my family. And then the Depression came along, you know, [laughs] and I didn't know what to do.  My husband couldn't get work. He finally got on the Writers' Project. And he got ill. He got iritis and was very ill with it. He couldn't see and in great pain. So, I applied for the Art project and became the breadwinner.

MARY FULLER MCCHESNEY:  What year was that, do you remember?

JEAN HOLMES:  1940.

[Recorder stops, restarts]

MARY FULLER MCCHESNEY:  You were just saying that actually it was 1939 rather than '40.

JEAN HOLMES:  Yes. Yeah, and I was given assignments to work on at home so that I could take care of my family. And all I had to do was take my paintings down—I've forgotten the address now [laughs]—but take them down and turn them over. And I think our supervisor was Mr. Beck Young.

MARY FULLER MCCHESNEY:  That's Beckford Young.

JEAN HOLMES:  Beck—uh-huh [affirmative].

MARY FULLER MCCHESNEY:  Was this in San Francisco?

JEAN HOLMES:  In San Francisco, Mm-hmm [affirmative].

MARY FULLER MCCHESNEY:  Mm-hmm [affirmative].

JEAN HOLMES:  And I got the idea of starting a project—a series of portraits of modern composers because I felt everyone knew what Beethoven, and Mozart, and Haydn, and these people looked like. But nobody really was too familiar with the face of Ravel and Debussy. So I talked to Mr. Young about it and he said that he thought it was a good idea. So I went to the library and did some research on the history of these people and made drawings of the face and put the design—made the design out of their compositions, like Debussy with The Faun [Prelude to the Afternoon of a Faun] and The Cathedral Under the Sea [The Sunken Cathedral] and one thing and another. So, I painted a couple of these, and Mr. Young felt that the painting—that medium, was not—that my type of work was more graphic. It should be more graphic. Not in color. So, he thought that I should take up lithography. And it was a marvelous course. It was as good a course as you could get in any art schools, this course in lithography. And I was fascinated by it.

MARY FULLER MCCHESNEY:  The easel project paintings that you were doing of these composers, were they in watercolors or in oil?

JEAN HOLMES:  Oil.

MARY FULLER MCCHESNEY:  In oil. Mm-hmm [affirmative]. How many did you do?

JEAN HOLMES:  I think I did Ravel, and I did Debussy. And that was all, that I completed.

MARY FULLER MCCHESNEY:  What sort of style were you working in then? Were they very realistic paintings or—

JEAN HOLMES:  Not exactly, I wouldn't say. They weren't abstract, but they weren't photographic, either.

MARY FULLER MCCHESNEY:  And you used themes from their compositions for the background material of the portrait?

JEAN HOLMES:  Yes, uh-huh [affirmative].

MARY FULLER MCCHESNEY:  Mm-hmm [affirmative]. Was this the first project that you did on the easel project, or had you done other paintings before?

JEAN HOLMES:  You mean for the WPA?

MARY FULLER MCCHESNEY:  Mm-hmm [affirmative].

JEAN HOLMES:  Oh, I did other paintings before. As a matter of fact, I got—I did one, and I took it down. And it was accepted at the California State Fair. And I remember saying to Mr. Young, Well, dear me, that's no kind of a show. That doesn't have any prestige. And he said, How fussy can you get? [They laugh.] He thought it was a very good show to get into. I mean, to get into any show is fine because when you kind of have a lapse of—you get rejected and rejected, then you begin to realize that anything you get accepted by you better be grateful for it.

MARY FULLER MCCHESNEY:  Who were some of the other painters on the easel project when you were on who were under Beckford Young?

JEAN HOLMES:  Karl Baumann and—let's see. Oh, their names are always getting—I suppose—I suppose I could see some of the names in these things here.

[00:05:08]

MARY FULLER MCCHESNEY:  Do you remember what kind of work Karl Baumann was doing then?

JEAN HOLMES:  Pretty much the same kind of work as he's doing now, I think. I haven't seen his work in the past three or four years. But it was pretty much the same, abstract—abstract taken from nature, based on nature, and some little floral, delicate floral things. He had one painting that was—I thought was very fine. It was called Things We Walk On, and it was little weeds and little fragile blue flowers that we walk on, you know, when we just walk across the lawn.

MARY FULLER MCCHESNEY:  Oh, that's a good idea.

JEAN HOLMES:  Uh-huh [affirmative]. It was a very sweet painting. And yet, he could do extremely formal abstractions as well.

MARY FULLER MCCHESNEY:  How many painters did a supervisor like Mr. Young have under him. Do you know?

JEAN HOLMES:  You mean working for the Project? Um—

MARY FULLER MCCHESNEY:  Well, as I understood it, one supervisor would have a certain number of painters that were—

JEAN HOLMES:  Uh-huh [affirmative], mm-hmm [affirmative].

MARY FULLER MCCHESNEY:  --sort of his little group that he took care of or supervised.

JEAN HOLMES:  I guess there would be about 10 or 15.

MARY FULLER MCCHESNEY:  10 or 15?

JEAN HOLMES:  Mm-hmm [affirmative]. And I really—didn't really pay much attention. Then he had an assistant. I've forgotten his name too [laughs]. Neininger [ph], I think his name. He was Mr. Young's assistant.

MARY FULLER MCCHESNEY:  Irving Neininger [ph].

JEAN HOLMES:  I think so.

MARY FULLER MCCHESNEY:  Mm-hmm [affirmative]. You worked in your studio?

JEAN HOLMES:  Yes.

MARY FULLER MCCHESNEY:  And then took the paintings in—

JEAN HOLMES:  Right.

MARY FULLER MCCHESNEY:  —what, once a month?

JEAN HOLMES:  I think it was oftener than that. Then you'd pick up your materials, too, at the same time. You know, these marvelous brushes and the best pigment, everything was just the best.

MARY FULLER MCCHESNEY:  Was there any limitation on you as far as the number or amount of materials that you took?

JEAN HOLMES:  No. There might've been, but you just took what you needed. And I suppose whoever was in charge would realize that this would last you a certain—should last you a certain length of time. And you couldn't go every week and—you know, and get a whole fresh pound. [Laughs.]

MARY FULLER MCCHESNEY:  Did they set you a quota of paintings you were supposed to turn in? Were you expected to produce a certain amount?

JEAN HOLMES:  No.

MARY FULLER MCCHESNEY:  No?

JEAN HOLMES:  I don't think so. But you always—you were supposed to be at home and work at this for eight hours a day, you see? So, you always had to have your easel up and your brushes out and maybe a little smudge of paint on your face because they used to come out and inspect you to see what you were doing. Because—[laughs]

MARY FULLER MCCHESNEY:  Who were the people who came out to inspect? Would Beckford Young do that?

JEAN HOLMES:  No, no. No, that was a different—that was—I don't know who they were.

MARY FULLER MCCHESNEY:  Timekeepers, probably.

JEAN HOLMES:  Timekeepers, that's right, something on that order. They're—I don't think they were artists. And then of course, we got—it had nothing to do with the painting, but we did get our groceries, and supplies, and things like that. And then sometimes, these people would come out, and they would look in your cupboards to see were you hoarding it up or what you were doing with it. And were you being extravagant. And I always felt they should've looked in people's garbage cans—they shouldn't have looked in the cupboards—to see what people threw away. [They laugh.]

MARY FULLER MCCHESNEY:  This was through, probably, the Surplus Commodities Relief.

JEAN HOLMES:  Yes, mm-hmm [affirmative].

MARY FULLER MCCHESNEY:  Did you have any trouble getting on relief when you wanted to go on the Art Project?

JEAN HOLMES:  No. My husband got on. He got on.

MARY FULLER MCCHESNEY:  Oh, he was on the Writers'—

JEAN HOLMES:  He was on the Writers' Project. Uh-huh [affirmative]. And he got on through—let's see, Phyllis Wrightson and Bernard Zakheim. Phyllis married Zakheim later. But it was through Phyllis that we got on relief. We were staying with her when I was pregnant with my first child. But I wasn't on the Art Project then. As a matter of fact, we'd just come back from Europe, and we were thunderstruck at what had happened. We had no idea that, you know, he couldn't just go right back to work. And so, here we were absolutely [broke –Ed.], with a pet monkey and me pregnant. [They laugh.]

MARY FULLER MCCHESNEY:  And no money.

JEAN HOLMES:  And no money. So—

MARY FULLER MCCHESNEY:  Was the situation very bad in San Francisco at that time, in '39?

JEAN HOLMES:  Yes. It was bad, uh-huh [affirmative]. Now this was—this was '38 when we came back to—from visiting my father in Europe, in Scotland. But everyone was full of courage. But before my husband got on the Writers' Project, of course, he was some kind of a labor gang digging ditches and leaning on his shovel like all the rest of them. [Laughs.]

[00:10:05]

But they were great—they were great days. They really were. I don't think—well, of course, I didn't like to see him get ill or anything like that. But I think that that period of painting at home and being poor and eating at the cheapest places, where you could get a nice lunch, big lunch, for 35¢. And you know, the Iron Pot, and all these places down around in there. They were great days. And everyone loved what they were doing, and everyone—I don't know, seemed to behave very well. Nobody drank or fooled around with other people's wives or anything. It was just—it was just wonderful.

MARY FULLER MCCHESNEY:  Were you living in the North Beach area of San Francisco then?

JEAN HOLMES:  No, no. I lived out in Belvedere Street, out on Twin Peaks. There were—there were quite a few people that—Karl Baumann lived out that way and—oh, there was somebody else. No, I didn't really have much time to associate with the other artists because of my family, you know, the two girls and a sick husband. So, I didn't really go down around the monkey block in these places. I never did get very friendly with the artists. Like I said, the only time when I would see them would be at art association openings and things like that. Those were the big things in my life, get in a show and go to the opening night and have some free wine. [They laugh.]

MARY FULLER MCCHESNEY:  After you were—after you transferred from the easel project to the lithography project, you probably had more contact with the artists there at the lithography workshop, didn't you?

JEAN HOLMES:  Well, yes, yes, yes. I did.

MARY FULLER MCCHESNEY:  Where was it that you went to learn lithography?

JEAN HOLMES:  On the Project. Oh, for the—oh, the—

MARY FULLER MCCHESNEY:  It was under Ray Bertrand, wasn't it, Raymond Bertrand?

JEAN HOLMES:  I think so, mm-hmm [affirmative]. It was a—it was a marvelous studio, and they had this press, you know? And it was such a privilege to learn this new thing, and contact the stone with this sensual sort of pencil on this cold stone. And Mr. Young thought that my lithographs were really quite fine. I have three of them here. You weren't really supposed to take any of them, you know, because they belong to the government. But he said, Well, there might be a little thumbprint on this one. We're gonna throw it away anyway, so take it. So, I—he gave me prints.

MARY FULLER MCCHESNEY:  I thought you were allowed to take one of an issue, that you worked—

JEAN HOLMES:  Maybe, maybe. But I had more—I had more than one, I know, because I used to give them away to people. [Laughs.]

MARY FULLER MCCHESNEY:  How many different lithographs did you do on the Project? Do you remember, just about?

JEAN HOLMES:  Five.

MARY FULLER MCCHESNEY:  Five?

JEAN HOLMES:  Mm-hmm [affirmative].

MARY FULLER MCCHESNEY:  What were the subject matters? What were the subjects of them?

JEAN HOLMES:  Um. Actually, I'll show you.

MARY FULLER MCCHESNEY:  We were just looking at three of the lithographs that Mrs. LeBlanc had done on the Project. One of a fire and one of her having her first child in the hospital and another landscape with a bare tree and spring in the foreground. But you did a total of five?

JEAN HOLMES:  Yes. I don't have prints of the others.

MARY FULLER MCCHESNEY:  Do you know where they were allocated or who they were allocated to?

JEAN HOLMES:  No, I don't.

MARY FULLER MCCHESNEY:  How many would they print at a time, of say each one of these?

JEAN HOLMES:  Oh, a set? That's the second print of 15. There would be 15 printed. I think 15 was about the—oh, but this was 29 of those—I guess it depended on—I don't know—the mood of the person [laughs] that was doing the printing.

MARY FULLER MCCHESNEY:  Say, do 15 or maybe 30.

JEAN HOLMES:  Yes, uh-huh [affirmative].

MARY FULLER MCCHESNEY:  And they were given to the schools?

JEAN HOLMES:  Yes, schools and libraries. And lots of them went to the libraries.

MARY FULLER MCCHESNEY:  Did they ever have exhibitions of the lithographs that were done on the Project during the time you were on the Project?

JEAN HOLMES:  Not that I know of, no. These were shown in—you know, they were all accepted in different shows, the art association in Oakland and Laguna Beach and Sacramento. They've been all over the place.

MARY FULLER MCCHESNEY:  You did these actually at the lithography workshop in San Francisco?

JEAN HOLMES:  Yes.

MARY FULLER MCCHESNEY:  Who were the art people, other artists, there at the same time? Do you remember any of them?

JEAN HOLMES:  I don't remember.

MARY FULLER MCCHESNEY:  Do you remember how long you were on this project?

JEAN HOLMES:  The lithograph project, about a year, I guess.

MARY FULLER MCCHESNEY:  About a year?

JEAN HOLMES:  Mm-hmm [affirmative].

MARY FULLER MCCHESNEY:  Would you go every day?

JEAN HOLMES:  No, because I would do some of the—I would do the sketches at home and then go down and—just in the morning, I think.

[00:15:02]

Get down there about 10 [a.m.] and work until about two [p.m.]. And you didn't have to work all day because you were supposed to go home and do other things. You see, it was kind of half and half. I was still on the easel project in a way.

MARY FULLER MCCHESNEY:  Oh, I see.

JEAN HOLMES:  I was still supposed to be doing things at home. But I don't remember if I took any stones home or not. I probably did take some of the stones home and work at home.

MARY FULLER MCCHESNEY:  Did your sketches have to be approved by anybody before you went ahead on the stone itself? Or was it completely up to you?

JEAN HOLMES:  No. I think—it wasn't—they didn't have to be approved. I'm pretty sure they didn't. You were given free reign. You were supposed to be good enough to know what you were doing, you know?

MARY FULLER MCCHESNEY:  You were on the Project then for a period of, what, about three or four years?

JEAN HOLMES:  About three years, I guess. 1939 to 1941. Well, of course, you see, my husband got better, and the war came along. And people could get work in shipyards and make hundreds of dollars a month instead of [$]92 [laughs] or [$]84 or whatever it used to be. And that was the ruination of everybody.

MARY FULLER MCCHESNEY:  So, that was when you went off the Project, when he went to work in the shipyards?

JEAN HOLMES:  Mm-hmm [affirmative]. That was terrible. That really was dreadful. [Laughs.]

MARY FULLER MCCHESNEY:  Why do you say that?

JEAN HOLMES:  Well, because our whole way of life changed. It became—oh, it wasn't so good. I think if we lived the way we had done on the WPA and nursing our pennies along and being happy that we might not have got a divorce. We got two full-blown, too much drinking and stuff, you know?

MARY FULLER MCCHESNEY:  Mm-hmm [affirmative].

JEAN HOLMES:  You know, it was too bad because he was—he was a good writer. And John McLaren of Golden Gate Park was my godfather. And he gave my husband permission to write his biography, so we used to go down there and interview Mr. McLaren. And so, he rented a little place so he could be alone and away from the noise of the children. And I was—I was still on this lithograph tack. And so, he was all set up with his typewriter and everything, his notes. And his brother came to visit us and said he had got this marvelous job as an electrician up at—oh, Bethlehem Steel, I think. And my husband said, Well, I don't know anything being an electrician. And he says, Well, just go out there and tell them you're an electrician. [Laughs.]

So, he did. And they gave him something to do that he could do, funnily enough. And paid him a lot of money for doing something he didn't know anything about. So, he forgot all about his writing. And everything just went to pieces.

MARY FULLER MCCHESNEY:  What had—what had he been doing on the Writers' Project? Was he involved in the biography at that time?

JEAN HOLMES:  No, no. That was his own private project. He was on the theater—he did a lot of research about the theater in San Francisco, very interesting. And got reports from old newspapers about all the stars, the old stars, Edwin Booth and all these people that were here, and Lotta Crabtree. And it was—it was a wonderful book that they did on the theater. I'd like to get a hold of it sometime.

MARY FULLER MCCHESNEY:  Was it finally published?

JEAN HOLMES:  Yes, mm-hmm [affirmative].

MARY FULLER MCCHESNEY:  I've never seen it. I've seen those WPA guides of the states that they did, which were very good too, I think.

JEAN HOLMES:  Mm-hmm [affirmative]. Well, this theater—this theater in San Francisco is such a marvelous thing. I think there were about four fellows working on it. But, you know, doing different—one would take music. One would take just plays and stage. And I think they all enjoyed themselves, just like I enjoyed myself. They felt they were doing something worthwhile.

MARY FULLER MCCHESNEY:  Mm-hmm [affirmative]. Did you have any contact with any of the mural projects?

JEAN HOLMES:  No.

MARY FULLER MCCHESNEY:  You were never asked to do designs for murals?

JEAN HOLMES:  No.

MARY FULLER MCCHESNEY:  What were the main influences on painting in San Francisco at that time, during the WPA period? What kind of painting were people here interested in?

[00:19:58]

JEAN HOLMES:  Well, towards the end of the Project, of course, everything got more and more abstract, where the prizewinner to show would get a prize for a blank canvas with one dot on it in some place, you know? [Laughs.] But, oh, there were people like the Howards and—who—Robert Howard did some marvelous things. And Jane Berlandina and—

MARY FULLER MCCHESNEY:  Was she a painter?

JEAN HOLMES:  Mm-hmm [affirmative]. She married one of the Howards, I think.

MARY FULLER MCCHESNEY:  Yes, I think John, the architect.

JEAN HOLMES:  Mm-hmm [affirmative]. And of course, they—to me, they were the elite of the art world. And they were too. And we used to chat at the shows, but I never did get really friendly because I would always want to leave early or something, and didn't live down around them, North Beach, around the monkey block. But Dorr Bothwell, she of course is still going strong. And I used to admire her work.

MARY FULLER MCCHESNEY:  Was there any kind of surrealist influence on the people who were working on the lithography project then?

JEAN HOLMES:  Oh, yes. Oh, yes. There was—there was a lot of—if I can just—I can remember some of the paintings, but I can't remember who did them. [Laughs.]

MARY FULLER MCCHESNEY:  Oh, mm-hmm [affirmative].  I was thinking of Shirley Staschen. Do you remember her? She did some lithographs that are rather surrealistic. I was curious to know how that happened in San Francisco, what the cause of it was. Somebody suggested that there might have been a large show of Dali's here at that time.

JEAN HOLMES:  Yes. There probably was, uh-huh [affirmative]. But there was a great variety of work here, just all kinds of work. And now of course, if you paint something that's too realistic and send it in to a show, you're pretty sure it's gonna be rejected. But in those days, if your work was good, it didn't matter whether it was abstract or realistic or what it was. If it was good, it had a chance.

MARY FULLER MCCHESNEY:  Mm-hmm [affirmative].

JEAN HOLMES:  Now it's different. [Laughs.]

MARY FULLER MCCHESNEY:  Do you think that was a good period in San Francisco art?

JEAN HOLMES:  Oh, I think it was marvelous. I think it was marvelous because of this variety of work. You could go to a show, and the way the paintings were hung, I guess it must've been pretty difficult because of the variety of styles, techniques, and mediums. People did all kinds of things for the first time in those days, like putting sand on a painting to get texture and working together—working tempera and oil in the same painting, putting some wax on in some places.

MARY FULLER MCCHESNEY:  Mm-hmm [affirmative]. There wasn't very much contact apparently between the people on the easel project and the people working in the mural projects?

JEAN HOLMES:  No. No, there wasn't. The only time that you really saw these people would be if they came in for supplies when you were in, or if you—well, met at some of the museums.

MARY FULLER MCCHESNEY:  You mentioned, though, that Bernard Zakheim was a friend of yours so that you must have had some contact through him with what he was doing?

JEAN HOLMES:  Oh, yes.

MARY FULLER MCCHESNEY:  Mm-hmm [affirmative].

JEAN HOLMES:  Yes, that's true. But that—I mean, I was friends with his wife before, you know—years and years and years ago when we were children.

MARY FULLER MCCHESNEY:  Oh, Phyllis?

JEAN HOLMES:  Phyllis Wrightson, uh-huh [affirmative]. She did some fine things. She was—she was his assistant on the mural project.

MARY FULLER MCCHESNEY:  The one at the UC Medical Center?

JEAN HOLMES:  Yes, uh-huh [affirmative].

MARY FULLER MCCHESNEY:  Oh, mm-hmm [affirmative]. Do you think it would be a good idea for the government in the United States to sponsor the arts again?

JEAN HOLMES:  Mm-hmm [affirmative]. I certainly do. I think it'd be marvelous.

MARY FULLER MCCHESNEY:  Do you think there's a need for it?

JEAN HOLMES:  There might not be a need for it right now because there seems—things are so prosperous, you know? Of course, I don't approve of that too. [Laughs.]

MARY FULLER MCCHESNEY:  If they did decide to sponsor the arts again in the United States, would you have any suggestions about how they might set up a program that would possibly be more successful than the WPA was? Or did you have any criticisms about the WPA projects?

JEAN HOLMES:  No. I didn't. I certainly didn't. No. I thought that the supervisors and the people that were organizing things were very efficient and sincere and had faith in the artists. And most of the artists had a lot of faith in themselves, which was important.

MARY FULLER MCCHESNEY:  Mm-hmm [affirmative].

JEAN HOLMES:  Everyone seemed to be very sincere. I don't know whether that would go these days or not. There didn't seem to be anyone doing work with his tongue in his cheek, say, Well, the government's paying me for fooling around having a good time. Everyone seemed to want to do the best that they could.

[00:25:18]

MARY FULLER MCCHESNEY:  Mm-hmm [affirmative]. Did you ever see shows at that time of work that was being done in other parts of the United States on the WPA? Did they have traveling shows so you could make some kind of a comparison between, say, what was happening in New York and what was happening in San Francisco?

JEAN HOLMES:  I don't remember. I don't think so because I don't ever remember any of our work being sent any place. So, I guess it's—I don't remember any shows, anything like that. There was—they took your work, and you don't know what they did with it. You have no idea what became of it. There's an article out there in the paper that says there's stacks of it in some basement in the city hall or something.

MARY FULLER MCCHESNEY:  Oh, really?

JEAN HOLMES:  Didn't you—didn't you see that article?

MARY FULLER MCCHESNEY:  No. Is this the new one?

JEAN HOLMES:  It's not very nice. It's not very nice. [Voice is far away, returns with paper.]

MARY FULLER MCCHESNEY:  [Paper crinkles.] Oh, this is from the Christian Science Monitor Saturday, March 13th, this year. Is this talking about San Francisco? I'd like to borrow this and—

JEAN HOLMES:  Sure.

MARY FULLER MCCHESNEY:  —take a quick look at it.

JEAN HOLMES:  Sure.

MARY FULLER MCCHESNEY:  I hadn't seen it yet.

JEAN HOLMES:  Well they said that when the stacks of paintings got too high, that a few—after a few years, they took them, and they dumped them in the Bay. So, I think about all my nice little lithographs with all these fish nipping at them.

MARY FULLER MCCHESNEY: [They laugh.] They wouldn't last very long, I'm afraid, down there.

JEAN HOLMES:  I don't think they mention San Francisco. But—

MARY FULLER MCCHESNEY:  They're talking about—

JEAN HOLMES:  Well, you keep this because your—I mean, this is part of your work, isn't it, to know about these things?

MARY FULLER MCCHESNEY:  Yeah, [the library likes (ph)] to have it. Mm-hmm [affirmative].

JEAN HOLMES:  You have it then, because it'll just get burned. I wouldn't—I wouldn't keep it.

MARY FULLER MCCHESNEY:  Do you have any other general thoughts about that period in American art history or in American life? Or have we covered it?

JEAN HOLMES:  I just know I was happy. That's all. [They laugh.] Happy and poor.

MARY FULLER MCCHESNEY:  Thanks very much for giving us the time for the interview.

[END OF TRACK AAA_holmes65_158_m.]

[END OF INTERVIEW.]