Chapter 24 “Adult Classes, Inge, D. Peterson, Iowa State”
Fate played a part in one of my many trips to Des Moines during those retirement years, and what seemed like an absent-minded act on my part turned out to be a delight and a revelation, an act of Providence!
I was near Red Oak, Iowa when I realized I had left my money home. Instead of turning back, I stopped in Red Oak to borrow five dollars from our good friends, Ann Gray and her son, Bill. Because of Ann's multiple sclerosis, they had left Omaha. Bill was Kelly's buddy and almost seemed one of the family. During my brief stop, a neighbor came in and we were introduced. In the ensuing conversation I casually mentioned where I was going and was surprised when the neighbor let out a gasp when she heard the name “Dwight Kirsch!”
Inga Chase had a heavy German accent and I wondered how she could have heard of Dwight? This is her story: “I lived in Germany in my younger years, and on our farm our elderly grandparent received a lifetime subscription of the Nebraska Farmer Magazine. When it came every month, all chores could stop, and we'd all sit around the table and listen to Grandpa tell about Amerika, and how wonderful it was over there. The middle pages were always torn out for me - Teen Topics, by “Aunt Alice” (Louise Evans Doole, Editor), featured articles by young readers, Pen Pal addresses, and the usual letter to teens from Aunt Alice. I pored over every word of it, and dreamt of Amerika. Some day, I knew I might have the chance to visit my Aunt and Uncle in Amerika, it was a dream only half believed in. Certainly I had no reason to believe that it would ever come true. I wanted to be an artist, but what a laughable ambition that was - I was a farm girl doing chores, with rags wrapped around my feet instead of stockings. I wore my father's cast-off army underwear, complete with a slit in front, in lieu of slacks or warm clothing of my own. We were displaced persons (after World War II), lucky enough to have a grandpa who lived on a farm, and who let us crawl in with him ‘until things got better.’ Germany was thrust back into the middle ages. No shops, do doctors, no dentists, no schools. We just crawled into some hole away from the bombed city, and waited.”
“One day there was a letter in the Nebraska Farmer from a man named Dwight Kirsch. He wanted to further rural Nebraska Art talent, and in his capacity as Head of the University of Nebraska Art Department, he was calling for rural Nebraskans to send in any art work they had done - prizes would be given, and the winning entries would be featured in the Nebraska Farmer.”
“I still don't know what persuaded me to send in two little pen sketches. I sent them to Aunt Alice, telling her in halting English that I some day wanted to be an artist. I was fifteen at the time, and had four years of grade school, lived on a farm in slum conditions, and for miles around there was no one who painted, so I don't know why I sent the sketches in, but I did.”
“Mails took a long time in those days. I had almost forgotten I had sent anything in, when an official letter arrived from the Nebraska Farmer, with a two dollar cashiers check in it, a personal letter from Aunt Alice (that was worth more than the check to me! And my parents were awed - a CHECK! I had won a prize with my scribbling! In Amerika, yet. Grandpa translated the letter, which encouraged me to keep painting. This great man, Dwight Kirsch, had said to the committee: ‘I know she is not technically a Rural Nebraskan, but her sketch shows talent - let's send her a small check and an encouraging note anyway!’ and they did.”
“I'd give anything if I could have held on to the check. I passed it on to my parents, and since it was worth a lot in German Marks, they used it for something or other. It paid me in another way, though. . my parents talked it over, and decided that if an Amerikan News Paper and a great man in a University thought I had enough talent to get paid for one of my scribblings, well, then they would not discourage me any longer. From that moment on, my life drastically changed. I soon was allowed to take a position in a household in Hamburg, Germany, which enabled me to attend evening sessions at an art school there. My uncle in Amerika thought maybe he could use me in his store. . and filed necessary papers for my immigration. Four years later I actually met Aunt Alice, who became my Amerikan Mother.”
“Mr, Kirsch had moved to Des Moines where he was head of the Art Center, and such a ‘GREAT MAN’ that I was content to think of him as a benign figure from afar, but it never occurred to me to go to Des Moines to visit him. Through a set of unusual circumstances I met his niece, who made a trip to Des Moines with me, during which I was either tongue-tied or talked too much, I took in all sorts of impressions about him, his life style and his paintings. I still remember how much we had in common. I was a science fiction buff, and he had some very unusual Ezekiel-like visionary paintings. He was a Mystic, I am sure. I now live in a small house that is very similar to his house in Des Moines.”
“I am so awed by the fact that his life had a great impact on me and on my developments, as an artist, as a Christian. We should be consciously aware, at all times, of the impact our lives are having on others, especially young people. I get letters and visits from unlikely, starry-eyed, would-be artists all the time now - and I drop everything and sit down and answer them. What would have happened to me, as an artist, if it hadn't been for Dwight Kirsch?”
Inge said that the Hitler time was hardly designed to give God credit for anything, her parents raised her to be an agnostic. She gives Dwight credit “for being God's instrument” and that he would have laughed at the idea.
However, she felt “he was very spiritual in his whole being. . always listening with an inner ear.”
“I can still, in my mind's eye, look up from the sofa where we were sitting (in his Des Moines house) and see the weaving grasses of his lawn. He had let his lawn grow until it became a sea of grass, and it was wonderful.”
“He would have been amused, too. It impressed me so much when he told of his visit to Japan. He told me, that all his life he had wanted to go to the orient and eat and paint and live in that inner atmosphere. . he laughed about it, telling me that when he got off the train, word had gone out that a ‘great’ American Artist was coming, and he was cocktail-partied and run around until he got sick of it and went home! He was a Midwesterner in the very best sense of the word, a farm-bred boy who could spot a phony a mile off, and it horrified him when he had to mingle with fawning people, and be deferred to, and he hated anything that had to do with “playing the ART game.”
Unfortunately, Inge never met John, who was either in Broadlawns Hospital or the state mental hospital in Clarinda, when she visited Dwight. She would have understood John!
Dwight's burden with John's problems was heavy not only cost-wise, but emotional. It is no wonder that he dropped his idea of writing. He often called me and asked if I could meet him when he visited John in Clarinda. He never told me what initiated the admission; whether John was violent (which I suspect), or so depressed he was again suicidal. Teaching at Grandview College came to an inevitable end. He could not cope with the dreariness. Little “events” such as meeting Inge helped Dwight, and the adult art classes and Art Shed were his salvation, whereas John’s lack of stability was another matter.
John began to teach adult classes at home. Pat Dinnen mentioned that he was on valium, and I know that at times he took lithium. His hospital treatments were not prolonged enough to make a long-lasting difference, as Peggy Patrick said, “as soon as he seemed better, Dwight would bring him home.” Being home was comforting, but there was no real structure in his life style, no realistic goals - his concerns over world situations over which he could do nothing, access to alcohol, and in his view, no meaning to life. Since he enjoyed the group of home workshop students, Dwight turned them over to him.
Dorothy Peterson wrote, “John seemed to enjoy being with the group, and did some competent teaching. He stayed right with us, and now and then would start some of the group on analyzing a noted composition for space and balance, or quick drawing exercises. He was unhurried, and a gentle critic, trying to say only what would not discourage the student from trying again. John told us that when he was a child, Dwight had been a harsh critic of his artwork. John had been so sensitive at seeing his father mark up the paper on which he had painted, that never would he make a mark on a student's paper. Evidently they had recently discussed this, for sometimes Dwight would say, in answer to our request for criticism, ‘John doesn't believe in my marking corrections on your work - unless you give me permission,’ and he would chuckle, as we generally gave it.”
“Having the two Kirsches in the same house during our workshops was a real bonus - two teachers and two critics and two friends, each so different from the other, all for the price of one. Their fees were so reasonable that they were not doing this just for the money.”
“The two Kirsches were artists to the core. That they were so different made it easy for us to realize there must have been clashes of temperament between father and son in John's youth.”
I remember John's explosions of temper when he was not satisfied with his work, and Dwight's loud expletive-spouting, but I do not recall serious clashes. John's former neighbor-friend, Mick Putney, said John told him it was hard to break ties and move out of the home when “One has parents who give you so little to rebel against.” John's letters seem to echo this observation.
Dorothy Peterson continued, “Once when three of us wanted to try sculpturing a head, John got Dwight to be our model, while John supervised our work from time to time. Dwight enjoyed modeling for us, and passed the time telling stories. One was about the time when he and two other young art students were making a plaster cast on the face of a farmer - and not till they got the plaster on his face did they realize they had forgotten to put Vaseline on the poor fellow first!”
“Though Dwight stayed in his chair most of the time he was modeling, his head kept moving, looking at each of us, and our ‘heads,’ or at the group up in the studio, or lighting his pipe, match after match after match. We were amateurs, and were frustrated that he kept moving. We remembered that he once told us he wants his models to move, for then he gets a fresher, more lively painting or sculpture. We knew he was clever enough to get just that. But we struggled. My ‘head’ went through suffering stages of looking like a thin Abraham Lincoln, to a fat Winston Churchill, to a Roosevelt. . till one day, it was Dwight Kirsch! Enough so the Dwight was pleased, and I won an award with it at an Amateur Iowa Artists Show.”
“John wanted someone to try to make a plaster cast by making a rubber mold of our clay head. I was game to try. John didn't know and we didn't know just how to do it, so we went ahead and experimented. If it worked, the mold could be stretched and pulled over the dry clay chin, nose, ears, etc. in one piece, otherwise, a plaster mold would have to be made in several pieces and rejoined for pouring the plaster cast. Later we learned that if I had had a smaller clay model, and not a life-sized head, it would have worked fine. But then, we never would have had the hilarious time we did. I put on coat after coat of the liquid rubber; then coat after coat of the rubber plus a filler, to make the mold thicker and stronger. I let it dry and heat dry as the label on the rubber product had advised. It took a lot of tugging and a few slits on the neck to get the mold off the head, but it seemed O.K. Then several of the group got into the act, trying to figure how to support the mold while pouring the plaster. We rigged up a big pail, with sand on the bottom, on which we placed ‘poor Dwight” as we called it. Three or four were to pour sand outside the mold while I poured liquid plaster inside, to equalize the pressure. They ran out of sand and hurriedly added vermiculite. After the proper time, as we started to remove the mold, we were excited. This would be an easy way to make plaster casts of our models. I could make a Dwight for everyone!”
“Then our spirits drooped. We took one look, and all of us broke into a laughing session. The head was so distorted it looked like a fat pig! Those sharply chiseled features of Dwight Kirsch were lost in a swollen, squinty-eyed blob. We tried two more times, and got two more pigs.”
“I had too much effort invested in those casts, to throw them out. So it was then that I learned some real sculpturing. I reshaped those heads as though they were rough hunks of wood or stone - and ended up with three pretty fair likenesses of Dwight.”
“I hesitatingly offered one to Dwight. He was very honest and frank, and could have refused it with no qualms. But he not only accepted one, but suggested I paint it black, then put on a coat of green and rub it off, to give the appearance of weathered bronze. He kept it on his piano as long as he was in his house.”
“In spite of the fact he welcomed us in his home twice a week, Dwight at other times guarded his privacy and independence. And we did not overstep that schedule. He did not permit even the U.S. Postal Department to dictate to him; sometimes he would not go down to his mailbox at the end of the drive for days! He was courteous over the phone, but did not use it for any idle chatter.”
“We became almost a family. The group could be chummy with John. He delighted in our helping him do some of the housecleaning. That was his share of the housekeeping. And we felt it was part of our responsibility to help clean, for we did our share of messing. Once we had a “cleaning bee,” and showed up with mops and brooms and cleaners, making an hilarious day of it, with our sack lunches and coffee. Dwight was gone much of that day. When he came home, he expressed appreciation for the cleanliness and orderliness we had achieved, but he was a little embarrassed by having these “students” (some as old as he) feel they had to be a cleaning gang.”