A Pioneer of the Arts

Miss Adele Clark, Distinguished Artist and WPA Head

By Helen Irwin

  Robert Henry, one of the greatest teachers of art, once said: "Art is simply a question of doing things, anything, well. It is not an outside, extra thing. When the artist is alive in any person...that person becomes interesting to other people...because he is interesting to himself. He becomes an inventive, searching, daring, self-expressing creature."

Adele Clark, who studied under Henri, in New York, must have listened well. Because, although she is an artist in the strict interpretation of the word, she is also an artist as Henri defined one. She is essentially a person; her interest in painting serves not only as a supplement to her life but as a well-spring of it. She does not live in the Ivory Tower. She is active, vital, because she regards her own work, and art in general, as a functional thing and not as an esoteric craft. Miss Clark is State director of the W. P. A. art projects. Under her direction artists all over Virginia are engaged in work that benefits not only themselves but the public, backed and supervised by the Federal art program. She has achieved her position not only because she is herself an artist of merit but because, all her life, she has been interested in making the art of painting and its kindred crafts a more functional thing in the life of the community.

Helped Create Art Group

She was instrumental in establishing an art commission in Virginia in 1916--a commission which passed on all works of art accepted by the State and which, by its very existence, furthered a state of interest in art. With Nora Houston she was active in forming the Virginia League of Fine Arts and Handicraft in 1920, which later merged with the Academy of Fine Arts in Richmond. She has taken time from her own work to do newspaper articles on art, to lecture in various parts of the State, to teach. She has, in effect, proved Henri's theory that the essence of the artist is vitality, not only in work, but in life.

She was born in Montgomery, Alabama, but her family moved early to Richmond and her childhood memories are of Richmond. She was educated at Miss Ellett's school, which later became St. Catherine's. Ever since she was a little girl she wanted to be an artist--and thereby became the renegade of the family, who were all musicians. Adele, too, took piano lessons in the family tradition and nearly drove her mother (herself an excellent pianist) to distraction because she could not learn to play.

Strangely enough, she had an ear for music, and even now disharmonies in sound affect her sensitivities much more painfully than disharmonies in color. After a time that must have been somewhat painful for everybody concerned, the music lessons ceased and it was a recognized fact that Adele's hands, with their long artistic fingers, were intended for the brush and pencil and not for piano keys.

There was no formal art course at Miss Ellett's school, but Adele became her "class artist." After finishing her education at Miss Ellett's, she studied at the Art Club of Richmond, and after that came New York. At the Chase School, which formerly had been and later became again affiliated with the Art Students League, she studied under William Chase, Robert Henri, and Kenneth Hayes Miller. After that preparation she came home to Richmond to paint, to teach, and to take her active part in the art world here.

Work Often Exhibited

She has exhibited her work all over Virginia, in New York, Washington, and in many of the Southern State Art League shows. One of her paintings is among the few that hang in the permanent collection in Richmond.

Henri, again, told his students that "Museums of art will not make a country an art country. But where there is an art spirit there will be precious works to fill museums."

Miss Clark subscribes wholeheartedly to that idea.

"What any community needs, what we need here in Virginia, is not so much a few wealthy individuals who act as patrons of art. Although they, of course, have their place, and a valuable one. The barrenness of art in the South is due to the fact that interest heretofore has been limited to a few patrons. What we need is a general interest in art, an acceptance of the artist's place in community living.

"Although the Federal art projects have grown out of misfortune, out of the need of skilled artists for governmental help, I think it is a good thing. I believe the Government projects are only the start of Federal interest in fine arts. After all, we are one of the few countries in the world that has no minister, no governmental department, devoted completely to that sort of thing. After the present necessity for such governmental participation is over, I think the idea and the general working plan will continue."

Takes part in Civic Work

Aside from her work, Miss Clark has found time to take an active interest in the League of Women Voters. As a representative of that organization she has spoken in many States, has participated in many campaigns. She has shown that two such apparently foreign interests as politics and art can mix; and that one can grow, quite natrually, out of the other.

She likes painting and lithographing (she does her own lithographic printing) best. For her subjects she draws on Virginia scenes and people she has known. One of her favorite pictures--and one that has attracted considerable attention--is of her mother, listening to a radio speech of President Roosevelt during the last election. It is in such simple scenes that she finds her greatest pleasure.

And it is because of this constant outgrowing of herself, instead of the traditional ingrowing of the fictional artist, that Miss Clark is, as Henri said, interesting to other people because, in the variety of her intersts, she is alive and vital and useful within herself.