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We're here But because this is a labor event, you know we have to talk about other things first, um. Room here and there's also a bathroom over in the labor archives. And there also will be a um the labor archives will be open after the program

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for you to see the exhibit, continue to see the exhibit. There'll be some light refreshments. Some cal soda water and cookies which we'll pass off here and we'll take them also over there so it will be an informal and relaxed evening. Um, I wanna briefly introduce

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the staff who's here, uh, Karen Lewis. Who's our curator And Susan Sherwood, who is the assistant director. Pauline, who is a volunteer from the very beginning, we're almost 10 years old. Modern Her there a lot and Tom Carey was the curator of the pea leaf dubbet.

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Miss anyone Leon, are you here? No, OK. Keely Dula began her art career at the California School of Fine Arts. Oh God, Carol, Carol, can you note. No, it's a longtime librarian at the IOW, and we have been so fortunate that she now is coming to

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us 3 days a week and the flowers are from her and she's always thinking ahead and she'll be the one helping pass out the recessions. Yeah She recently completed processing the California Labor School materials we have here, which is one of our finest collections, so we're

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very pleased. That she was able to do that. So starting again, even the lab began her art career at the California School of. San Francisco Art Institute at the age of 14. In 1931 she went off to New York to continue her studies and then went

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off to Europe before returning to her native San Francisco in the early around 1934, which was during of course the Pacific maritime strike. She worked with the Maritime Workers Industrial Union at the time, and between arrests on the picket line, she began drawing cartoons for the

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Western Worker and the Waterfront Worker. I don't want to give away the whole story, so I'm not going to say anything more about Keely. She's a woman, of course, known for her great dedication and work for social justice as well as her artwork. It was actually

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Tom Perry's idea to have an exhibit of Pele's work here at the Labor Archives, and we were delighted when she said, sure. This year I'm doing it Thought we should have an evening program similar to the format they used at the Herbst Theater, uh, down at

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the, uh, city center, and we tried to think of who would be the best person to bring Pele's story out of her and guess who. Jessica Mitford, her old friend and neighbor. Jessica's wonderful Writing the American Way of Death published in. Way of Birth published in

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'92 and probably most of the people here know of her fine autobiography, A Fine Old Conflict. A couple of years ago, I attended a biography and autobiography conference at Stanford and they used your book and were reading it. Way you should do it To support to

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many causes and we are grateful for her appearance here tonight, of course, and so. The lives of two outstanding Californians, Keeley Delap, in conversation with Jessica Mitchell. Thank you. Well, thanks very much for that lovely introduction. Pele and I, needless to say, have been hashing this

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over on the way, coming over the bridge and that, um, and, um, uh, we're really going to have a conversation, chats to each other, um, hopefully, you know, lots of people in the audience will have questions, etc. of Pele, and so, um, I thought I'd begin.

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But with my introduction saying how Pele and I first met, well, it was in 19. 43 or thereabouts when I first came to California, and Pele was one of the first people that I was fortunate enough to meet, and I've known her ever since, I mean,

00:05:04.640 - 00:05:23.500

what are we talking about, that must be 50 years probably, whatever it is, anyone who's, OK, you, some people are brilliant at math, she said 51, but um. The point is that, um, I immediately, we got to know each other very well, and we used to

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sing bawdy songs. She's, uh, but, uh, Peter said, for God's sake, don't sing bawdy songs tonight. On the other hand, if there's, if there is a demand, we might do it. But, but that, that will be later on. But the point is that um when I

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first knew Pele she was doing these marvelous cartoons in the people's world. It was Vicky and Vicky for victory I suppose wasn't it that idea yeah it was during the war and um and the cartoons were just smashing and terribly perky and perking people up. So

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that's how I first, you know. Now, I thought that we should start off with bits of Pele that I don't really know much about. I mean, I, I've recognized her talent over the years, not just in, in, in the cartoon. But in many, many other ways

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and some of her paintings and so forth, wonderful stuff. And to me, it's always frightfully interesting how people began doing anything at what, uh, the earliest age that they can remember when they started getting interested, um, in Peter's case, how she first, you know, digging back

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into her earliest memory, how she knew that she was going to be an artist, and what, what her first experiences were as an early as a child in early childhood. I'm sure a lot of it comes from her father and that. I said let's hear from

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Pele, just that beginning part, and then we'll go on to some other. I didn't know I was gonna be an artist. I, it was just assumed, um, because my father was an artist and, uh, a, a wonderful caricaturist. It was his, uh, favorite. He was a

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commercial artist, uh, so we had to do a lot of shit work and to make a living, and the way he got. His own self-expression out was to do caricatures of all his least favorite people like William Randolph Hearst, for example, was one of his pets

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and uh and and he did several um uh caricatures for the for the what was then the Western worker before the People's World and um I was just a kid then well even before that. Uh, when I was about, 07 or 8, I guess, we used

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to, uh, draw together at restaurants on tablecloths, the other people in the, in the restaurant. That was great fun, and you, you worked out a lot of your feelings of Of concern and hostility that way I find. And um so we did a lot of that

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and um he taught me a great deal and it was just assumed that um Uh, I was, I, I drew, uh, because I was around him and he was drawing all the time. Um So, actually, he gave me my first commercial job. It was really funny.

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Um, I guess I was about 10. And um He worked for McCann Erickson, which is this big advertising agency, and they wanted a drawing done by a little child with a very naive look to it, and uh, so my father asked me to do it, and

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it was to be of a, a banker, a farm woman. And a worker and and and I did them all just the way they were supposed to be and I had the banker holding a big bag with a dollar sign on it and everything and he

00:09:09.540 - 00:09:26.910

had a top hat in those days bankers wore top hats. The farmer was holding a, a tin fork, a pitchfork, of course. He looked something like, you know, that famous pitchfork, but this was pre that, you know. And the farm woman was just standing there. Oh,

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and a little schoolgirl. I insisted that there be a little schoolgirl in there because that was what I was, and she was holding a lunchbox. And then my father spoiled it all by touching up the feet so that they all had a commercial artist look about

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them. What was the feet? Tell about that. Well, the feet, uh, uh, had been sort of clumsily drawn by me, and he them all pointy and neat, you know, he just couldn't resist. Well, he had to ink it in, you see, I'd done it in pencil.

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Did he do the face? No, no, he, he, I, I still have the drawing. It's it's not bad. Oh, I should have brought it along. Oh Lordy. That should be I got $5 for it. That was my, my first. Well, that was a lot in those

00:10:15.470 - 00:10:39.530

days, right? So that was my first drawing for sale. The very next drawing for sale was a totally different, and that came as, uh, calendar leaves flutter past. We come to 1931. Um, and I was drawing with the Blanches and with Frida. How old were you

00:10:39.530 - 00:10:56.580

then? Uh, 15. And uh I used to sit around, well, I was going to art school by that time. My father had taken me out of of regular school because I wasn't making it. Uh, I couldn't, uh, do arithmetic or something and it was not working

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out, so he said he would, he would, um, uh, he told the school authorities he would coach me at home in advanced mathematics and Latin and Greek and, uh, that they ate it. And so I went to art school at the age of 14, which was

00:11:18.670 - 00:11:34.190

really where was that in San Francisco at the California School of Fine Arts, which is now the, uh, the Art Institute on Chestnut Street. Easily the youngest person I was, yeah, I had those people were what in oh they were in their 20s and 30s, exactly

00:11:34.320 - 00:11:49.590

that sort of thing. It was kind of weird. Well, I missed out on it though. Well, I did and I didn't. I, I, I think I was missing the, the whole thing that you go through with high school and all that, yeah, uh, but I had

00:11:49.590 - 00:12:05.350

a lot of fun at the time and a lot of anxiety too, of course. But, um, what, what sort of anxiety? Well, well, I was surrounded by these old people, you know, and they had all been there and done everything and, uh. And I, I really,

00:12:05.450 - 00:12:21.900

uh, had trouble adjusting to that. And then I was looked upon as old for my age, but, uh, I really didn't, I didn't feel that way. Well, for about a year, and then I went to Woodstock with the Blanches. Arnold Blanche was my instructor at the

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1516, 15 when you got to Woodstock, 15, yeah. And um Then I Well, I went to Woodstock with the Blanche. I was, I was beginning to fall out with my parents at that point. This is the age when you start breaking away and, and, uh, I,

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I just felt very competitive with my mother and so on. And so, uh, they, they all seemed to be very pleased with the fact that I was leaving. I wished me well and uh actually came back the following winter to New York to see how I

00:13:01.860 - 00:13:20.290

was getting on and and got me installed in in school in art school there at the at the Art Students League. But the first summer in Woodstock was really a sensational experience. Well, it was incredible, yeah. Well, I got to know all kinds of fascinating people

00:13:20.370 - 00:13:40.860

and And worked very hard at drawing and everything, and uh painting and and also partying and drinking and carrying on. And uh it it was great fun. It's it's a great art colony and uh still is. My daughter lives there now. She's carrying on the tradition.

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So, um, well, when you were there, back to the art, I mean, what were you, well, I was, I was still trying to be an artist with a capital A and do easel paintings and oil paintings and that sort of thing, and uh I really wasn't

00:13:57.940 - 00:14:22.130

comfortable with, with, with them, uh, somewhat until I finally met uh an artist whose work I really felt akin to, and that was Reginald Marsh. And Reginald Marsh was painting and drawing exactly the kinds of things that I wanted to, namely people in action in all

00:14:22.130 - 00:14:42.490

kinds of conditions and uh. Uh, very vibrant and lusty and sexy and militant and just alive. Was he, was he, was he up there in Woodstock? He came up to visit Woodstock and then I, I met him in New York and I used to go around

00:14:42.510 - 00:15:00.660

with him to burlesque shows and dance marathons and Hang out in Coney Island. Yeah, it was, it was a lot of fun. It really was. And uh especially going out to Coney Island, that was, uh, I used to go every weekend to Coney Island and, and

00:15:00.660 - 00:15:20.410

ride on everything and then draw things and, and, uh, hang out with the little dwarves and weird people that ran in fun houses there, you know. Uh, George C. Tily's Steeplechase is, is like a palace in my memory. It was just a wonderful place and it

00:15:20.410 - 00:15:37.450

had a big sign that said, Let me be a child again just for a day. That was the perfect place to be. And, um, and I went there with Reg sometimes and then sometimes with my friend Louise. But you were in Paris, but what age were

00:15:37.450 - 00:15:51.930

you? Well, oh, that was earlier on when you were about 9 or 10. Yeah, well, my father, um, had this longing to get away from commercial art, and he'd made a lot of money, and so he decided he wanted to go to Paris and meet James

00:15:51.930 - 00:16:13.550

Joyce. He'd just read Ulysses, uh, a bull, um, smuggled in edition at that time because Ulysses was, um, absolutely banned. Yes, it was naughty. Um, so, um, he was longing to meet James Joyce, and my father was a very, um, uh, interesting guy. He was, he

00:16:13.550 - 00:16:37.950

was a, a frustrated artist, fine artist and frustrated intellectual in a way, and, and he became a Marxist, um, early on, not that early on, but, uh, probably around the early 30s. And uh more or less in connection with the uh Tom Mooney case, he and

00:16:37.950 - 00:17:00.000

my mother got very involved in the, in the trying to free Tom Mooney at that time he was under sentence of death, I think. Um, I'm not Anyway, so, so we all went to Paris and I was 10 and this was an exciting experience, um, and,

00:17:00.020 - 00:17:20.410

uh, we, we actually did meet James Joyce. Uh, my aunt, uh, my cousin Muriel was an entertainer at, uh, a cabaret in Paris, and, uh, she was a very bold, brassy woman. And um so she found out where James Joyce had his lunch uh at the

00:17:20.410 - 00:17:36.510

Petit Trianal and uh so she arranged for us all to troop over there. And there was Joyce sitting in a corner at a table all by himself with an eye patch on. He had very bad eyes. Could you remember anything about it? Yes, I do. I

00:17:36.510 - 00:17:55.970

remember all of that. We'd love to hear that. Well, so, uh, my cousin Muriel went over to him and said, Hello, I'm Muriel Johnston, and I want you to meet my uncle Wes Delap. And so So, um, over West went and sat down and we, well,

00:17:56.010 - 00:18:13.750

we weren't part of that conversation, uh, naturally. So they, they sat and chatted for a while and we all sat at the other end of the room and, and waited for whatever was gonna happen next, and that was really nothing happened next. No, I'm sorry to

00:18:13.770 - 00:18:29.770

say I can't say that I ever conversed with. I just met him, you know. Right. And then, but he did promise to come to the Boeuf sur lerois the next night, and, and he did. This was this great little nightclub. It's, I guess it's fairly famous.

00:18:29.910 - 00:18:52.160

It's, it was a little tiny room with mirrors all around and And uh a bar, of course, and uh tiny tables and the piano with a with a a lamp on which lay a small marmoset, which was my cousin Muriel's pet. Uh, Mickey, uh, well, he,

00:18:52.250 - 00:19:09.690

he lay there because people kept giving him martinis and so he was really in bad shape. He fell off the lamp once and broke his leg. Yeah, uh, we got a, a monkey, uh, my mother had to have. One also as soon as she met Mickey.

00:19:10.710 - 00:19:29.850

So we had to get a monkey too named Bibi and uh so Muriel and Dottie were running around Paris with these pet monkeys in their furs, you know, there was really quite a scene. But, um, everybody seemed to have a marvelous time in Paris. All I

00:19:29.850 - 00:19:46.600

remember is that I rolled a hoop in the Tuileries and I saw a lot of surrealist, uh, exhibits and got acquainted with a surrealist. I was gonna ask you whether, I mean, the art in Paris must have made a huge impression, very much so, and especially,

00:19:46.650 - 00:20:08.650

uh, uh, a lot of, of the African. Masks were, were becoming very popular and discovered at that time. My father got a lot of photographs of them and um so I saw a lot of those and I saw a lot of um Uh, paintings of African

00:20:08.720 - 00:20:28.690

people by, uh, uh, God, I can't remember his name, he's a Russian artist, um, that impressed me a lot at the time, and, uh, we met a lot of interesting, um, expatriate jazz musicians too who were friends of, of Muriel and her husband Bob. And one

00:20:28.690 - 00:20:44.740

of them taught me to the Charleston, I'm pleased to say, at the age of 10, at the age of 10, call that rather extreme. Oh, at Charleston it's a great dance. You had to really jump to get into it. Yeah, so we, um, I had a

00:20:44.740 - 00:21:05.570

lot of fun then. And then, of course, that somehow made my father discover Freud. I don't, I guess the connection was uh through Sylvia Beach's bookshop and and the the kind of people that were hanging out there, um. Oh, he hung out at Sylvia Beaches like

00:21:05.570 - 00:21:24.770

mad, he was just enchanted with the place. He never met Hemingway, but he met a lot of other people there that I didn't meet. But he got interested in Freud, and um so when we got back to San Francisco, he insisted that we all get psychoanalyzed.

00:21:25.670 - 00:21:50.380

Bye. And I was really a drag, you know. I mean when you're 10 years old, you know, so every afternoon after school I would have to go down to Mrs. Moxon's. My mother and father were being analyzed by Mr. Moxon. He was not a doctor. He

00:21:50.380 - 00:22:07.850

was a mister, but he, he had studied with Freud, but he didn't have an MD. Uh, so he wasn't a proper psychoanalyst in that sense, but he was, uh, deeply into Freud. Tell about yours. In other words, Mrs. Mrs. Moxon was an amazing woman. She was

00:22:07.990 - 00:22:26.520

rumored to have had an affair with Adler and a kid by him. And uh and the the little kid was trotting around while I was being psyched. I'd be lying on the couch and the little kid would be crawling around. Mrs. Moxon would, would, uh, try

00:22:26.520 - 00:22:47.700

to evince dreams out of me, and I, I really couldn't remember too many, so I made up a lot. Well, you have to, you know, you have to 50 minutes you're lying there, you have to say something, right? So. Uh, I did learn a lot about

00:22:47.720 - 00:23:03.430

sex though, and that was, uh, that was the best, uh, part of the whole thing because my father had tried to give me, tell me the facts of life and the way he did it was he did this drawing of something that looked like a fried

00:23:03.430 - 00:23:25.260

egg and then then it broke into two yolks, you see, so that was the splitting of cells and that's as far as he got. So And I had this weird thing. What it had to do with fried eggs, I couldn't quite figure out, but that was

00:23:25.260 - 00:23:41.100

as far as we got. So Mrs. Moxon came in very handy for that because she filled me in on all the nitty gritty, you know, and she showed me these wonderful, um, anatomical charts that you lifted up, you know, and there, there were the lungs and

00:23:41.100 - 00:23:58.810

the heart and the uterus and the little baby inside the uterus and everything. And uh am I talking too loud or no, you're being perfect. OK. And um no, that was fascinating. So then I would, I would run back to school and to my girlfriend Elva,

00:23:58.830 - 00:24:17.160

who was younger than I even and uh fill them all in on, on the, on the straight dope I was getting from Mrs. Moxon. And it also, uh, It developed in me a real love of anatomy and drawing the figure, which I've had ever since, but

00:24:17.260 - 00:24:31.550

it was actually had a bit of a time with you. Well, she didn't quite know, as you had no dreams, she had to make. Well, but she, oh, I did do one thing. I, I used to bring drawings to her. Yeah. And they were usually fashion

00:24:31.550 - 00:24:52.190

drawings, you know, beautiful slim models that I've done, sort of in the style of Erte, you know, that kind of thing. And always because in those days, uh, the hipline was where things were, you know, there was no waistline. It was short skirt, exactly. And so

00:24:52.190 - 00:25:15.910

I always did these women with large scarves around their hips and a big oval pin right in front. And that she found very significant. A lot of symbolism there. It was a sexual symbolism. Uh, it was all the rage and you must have had a good,

00:25:15.990 - 00:25:31.820

good time putting her on, I should think. Well, uh, I did the best I could, you know, because I couldn't, I couldn't think of any dreams to speak of. Anyway, that, then the best part about that was, and the trip from Paris was I came back

00:25:31.820 - 00:25:49.490

wearing very short skirts, and that was kind of exciting and shocking to the people at the, in this, I was going to a private school that, which was a very weird place. It was like uh 30 girls and 2 boys and it was run by two

00:25:49.490 - 00:26:10.690

elderly Christian Scientist women and the only reason it was progressive was that that it didn't um grade you the way you got graded in regular public school. You just sort of floated along. Well, yeah, it was fun. And we had chess every Friday afternoon. That was

00:26:10.710 - 00:26:28.840

one of the courses. Anyhow, so, uh, by the way, um, you're writing your, your autobiography, and I hope that all of this is going to be in it because it's so interesting. But I want to get back to the, uh, sort of to the actual creative

00:26:28.840 - 00:26:59.760

process, you know, when you were in, um, um, Woodstock, etc. By now you're almost grown up. 15. Yeah, well, I call that. OK, well, um, I didn't really, all I was doing was painting, um, in Woodstock and doing lithographs also, and that was a great, um,

00:27:00.160 - 00:27:16.470

experience which I'm still doing. Um, I learned about, uh, all the artists in Woodstock seemed to do lithographs. It was a regular thing and, and we actually had a printer who lived up there who did all the printing. And that's my favorite part of it is

00:27:16.470 - 00:27:35.880

not having to do the printing. Uh, because it's a, it's a, it's an art in itself, and, and, um, I don't, I, there are very few artists who can really do proper printing of litho lithographs. So, um, any, any really high class lithographer will tell you

00:27:35.900 - 00:27:54.510

that. So we were all doing lithographs and we, we had the stones which are limestones and we'd grind them away and, and, um, till they had a proper surface and then draw on them with grease, pencil and ink and so on. And, um, many of those

00:27:54.530 - 00:28:16.080

prints, um, have turned up. Well, the weird thing that used to happen in Woodstock was that Um, when you were invited out to dinner and there were many marvelous cooks around there, hostesses who, who, uh, were really super cooks, uh, Andre Ruellyn's mother, Lusette was Particularly

00:28:16.080 - 00:28:34.840

marvelous French cook. And when you went to dinner at any of these people's houses, you took along a print as a matter of course, you say, rather than flowers or wine or anything like that. Exactly. Well, no, print, print, right. So the result is that the

00:28:34.840 - 00:28:58.020

hostesses who still live in Woodstock have an incredible collection of really priceless prints, which I discovered when I went back there a few years ago. And um so, and, and those, some of my prints have turned up since in various odd places and uh including in,

00:28:58.040 - 00:29:20.620

in uh art galleries in, in New York. That's marvelous. Yeah, it's sort of like Chickens coming home to roost after 50 years. I'd like to get back now, so fast forward to. Um, some times that you and I did things together, but, I mean, for ages,

00:29:20.650 - 00:29:39.400

Pele was, was working for a living at a place called More Business Forums, and, um, I mean you can you know what she used to say her son, when, when he was very little and heard that I was working at more business forums, so when did

00:29:39.400 - 00:29:59.800

they get enough business forums? Anyway, I mean the waste of talent of her working in more business forms is unbelievable. Uh, every time, in other words, every time you have to write, I have to get a receipt, let's say, in, in a place where you're doing

00:29:59.800 - 00:30:14.830

business, uh, you sort of think, oh dear, poor Pelo, she had to do that, you know. I mean, it's all frightfully boring, just lines, isn't it, and things, isn't that. And so, um. I think it was around when you were doing that, that we worked together

00:30:14.830 - 00:30:32.270

on on Life Itselfmanship. It was a great release. It was tremendous fun for me because we were, I was writing this booklet, it was all take off on Communist Party jargon. And Pele turned out to be the most incredible, um, I mean her drawings for the

00:30:32.270 - 00:30:53.280

whole thing just simply made it, so we, so we did this pamphlet and then um had somebody in those days there was no such as um. Xerox mimeo, yeah, had a mimograph and tabled it up on the kitchen table, but the, the Peter's drawings were an

00:30:53.280 - 00:31:13.770

absolute scream, for instance, there was one where it said, where it said um. That um Uh, sort of Communist Party jargon, moods of pessimism and despair they would speak of. In other words, if you read things like um, Political affairs and those, you know, yeah, political

00:31:13.770 - 00:31:14.550

affairs and