JAMAICA HIGH SCHOOL MURAL ABOUT THE MURAL
INTERVIEW OF SUZANNE LINDA MILLER, FEBRUARY 11, 1965
The following are remarks made by Suzanne Linda Miller during an "Oral History" interview on 2/11/1965. Ms Miller was approximately 83 at the time of the interview, which was 34 years after she had painted the JHS mural at the age of approximately 49. The transcript of this interview was obtained from the Archives of American Art, a Division of the Smithsonian Institution. The complete transcript consists of 26 double spaced pages. Below are only the remarks that relate to the Jamaica High School mural.
Among other things, Ms Miller describes below how wallpaper paste caused the canvas to shrink when the paste was used instead of a white lead adhesive. Now that we know of the dangers of lead in the environment we know that the unexpected use of wallpaper paste was a fortunate accident which quite possibly saved the mural from later destruction during a lead abatement program."Well, the librarian and the historian at the school asked -- there were ten of us who were competing for it, it was an invited competition, and they said they would like something that was between a tapestry and a Persian miniature...
"So they looked up most of the history, and I looked up books and costume books and various things and made sketches, and I was the fortunate one. I won the competition, so I got the commission.
"It was oil on canvas...1929, I think, I started it. It took me a year and a half.
"...they were at the entrance to the auditorium. There were six doors, and the panels were over the tops of two doors and then between two doors so it was 25 feet across the top and it was, I guess, 15 feet across the main part of the panel and I think it was about eight feet high, something like that. There were three of them.
Each of the 3 panels covers 116 square feet.
Total painted area is 348 square feet.
Large panel: 12 feet across by 8 feet high.
Vertical strips: 8 feet high by 6 inches.
Panels above the doors: 1 foot by 6 feet.
(D. Jensen)
"So I divided the island. I used the topographic map of the island to get the feeling of a tapestry or miniature where things -- the perspective was anything but true perspective, because the things at the top were just as big as the things at the bottom, but I had a road running all the length of the Island out to Montauk Point.
"...I had expected them to put it on [the wall] in white lead. Instead when the paperhanger came, he said, "No. I'm going to put them on in regular wallpaper paste." And the water shrank them. Fortunately, I had left enough canvas but I had to paint almost a foot out on each side. It was very disgusting, because I didn't expect them to shrink at all. They shrank...There was a heater, a big heating flue behind one of the walls and I think that was why he decided not to use white lead. I'm not sure why, but at any rate he did use paste and water...Well, as far as I know, it has [adhered permanently]. I haven't been back to see."
BACK
