And my recollection was it was sort of cramped, with people bumping into one another. It was an old Victorian building, and I remember it being partitioned up into these rather small spaces. I can't tell you the streets-ĮLMER BISCHOFF: -the exact location. MARY MCCHESNEY: Where was the center located at that time?ĮLMER BISCHOFF: Well, it was downtown. So, you worked mainly with him as far as your class was concerned.
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He was given this position of director of the center. And I was rather startled to see him come up there in Sacramento. He had been at the university the year ahead of me, and was, I think, one of the prize students at Cal, a painter. Probably was very short contact, if I had any contact at all, Carlton Lehman was the man who came in as director. The person that I-or I don't remember him. MARY MCCHESNEY: Who was the director then, Cunningham, Ben Cunningham?ĮLMER BISCHOFF: Yes, and then the person I-I didn't know Ben Cunningham. Had the center been in existence very long before you began teaching there? Or was it just getting started?ĮLMER BISCHOFF: It was just getting started. It was always promoting this, to get them underway. And not so much in furthering a set of offerings that were really underway, I never felt that things really got underway. And it seemed to me, my impression thinking back on it, was that the excitement was about drumming up activity, and future activities, and largely social activities in order to stimulate it in the community. The contact, in those terms, was pretty disjointed. MARY MCCHESNEY: Who were the other teachers who were there at the same time? Do you remember any of them?ĮLMER BISCHOFF: No, I don't remember the names of the other people. There was no great expansion, no world-shaking accomplishment. And I don't recall any great thing taking place in that program. The center didn't have a great deal of money, so the equipment was the barest minimum for equipment. And I don't recall just how long it was this class went on, a very small group of people involved, mostly housewives. And I was teaching crafts, ceramics and jewelry construction, and was asked to offer a class in ceramics, because they didn't have any equipment for jewelry construction at the center, downtown, second level. Let's see, starting in '39 and was there until-at the high school until '41, when I went into the army. MARY MCCHESNEY: How did you first make any contact with any of the government sponsored art projects?ĮLMER BISCHOFF: Well, this was in Sacramento, and before the war, I got a job there teaching at the Sacramento High School. MARY MCCHESNEY: The University of California here in Berkeley. MARY MCCHESNEY: And where did you go to art school? MARY MCCHESNEY: In Berkeley, what year was that? First, I would like to ask you, where were you born? MARY MCCHESNEY: This is Mary McChesney interviewing Elmer Bischoff, spelled B-I-S-C-H-O-F-F at his studio 2571 Shattuck Avenue in Berkeley. The reader should bear in mind that they are reading a transcript of spoken, rather than written, prose. This transcript has been lightly edited for readability by the Archives of American Art. In 2021 the Archives created a more verbatim transcript. This interview is part of the Archives of American Art's New Deal and the Arts project. The interview took place in the artist's studio, 2571 Shattuck Avenue, Berkeley, California, and was conducted by Mary Fuller McChesney for the Archives of American Art, Smithsonian Institution. The following oral history transcript is the result of a recorded interview with Elmer Nelson Bischoff on January 20, 1965. This interview conducted as part of the Archives of American Art's New Deal and the Arts project, which includes over 400 interviews of artists, administrators, historians, and others involved with the federal government's art programs and the activities of the Farm Security Administration in the 1930s and early 1940s. Biographical/Historical NoteĮlmer Bischoff (1916-1991) was a painter and educator from San Francisco, California. Summary: An interview of Elmer Bischoff conducted 1965 January 20, by Mary McChesney, for the Archives of American Art.īischoff speaks of his first involvement with the Federal Art Project, teaching ceramics at an art center in Sacramento some of the accomplishments of the art center the art community in Sacramento in the 1930s the Federal Art Project's effect on the community, and on American art generally public perception of the project his opinions of government support for the arts art in California and what the influences were on its development. Reformatted in 2010 as 2 digital wav files. Format: Originally recorded on 1 sound tape reel.