"The Utmost Human Consequence": Art and Peace on the Oregon Coast, 1942-1946

Abstract

KATRINE BARBERAND ELIZA ELKINS JONES "The Utmost Human Consequence" Art and Peace on the Oregon Coast, 1942-1946 It seems tome that theartist's situation ina community can bestbe understoodwhen compared with thatof the conscientious objector.Both workfor ends thatare of the utmosthuman consequence, but bothdo them in ways thatconflict with currentsocial mores. Societywants entertainment,distraction; theartist insistson giving itreality, charged, concentratedand inescapable. The c.o., ifhe is tobe effective, must become a revolutionist.... He hasfashioned upon an idea that isdynamic, visionary,and he will not be shakenfrom it. He runs squarely into theutmost social resistancebecause society does not understand, does not know its needs, cannot see so far, doesnt care; cant tellhow. So with theartist. ? William Everson1 THE 1950s PHOTOGRAPH SHOWS a smallgroupof people inSan Francisco protesting the atomic bomb. On the left isKermit Sheets, a gay man in his thirties, carrying a sign with the plea "and among these Life," a phrase from theDeclaration of Independence.2 On the right isManche Langley Harvey, an activist with two daughters who was close to ending her marriage to a conscientious objector (CO) who suffered from alcohol ism.3The two protesters had known each other formore than ten years, havingfirst met during WorldWar II at a Civilian Public Service (CPS) camp near Cascade Locks, Oregon, in the Columbia River Gorge. Harvey, a young pacifist who had grown up in Portland, had discovered the CPS camp by chance and became friends with some of theCOs therewho were also artists, including Sheets, who was from California. In October 1942, Sheets relocated toCamp 56 on theOregon coast nearWaldport, where he 510 OHQ vol. 107, no. 4 ? 2006 Oregon Historical Society Kermit Sheets,Bruce Bishop, andManche LangleyHarvey protest theatomic bomb inSan Francisco during the1950s.Sheets andHarvey had met at a Civilian Public Service camp inOregon duringWorld War II. joined other transfers and artists already atCamp 56 to establish a Fine Arts Program ? a loose association of people that had no specific agenda but enabled COs to transfer from other CPS camps for the purpose of creating, studying, and performing art together.Under the auspices of the camp's Fine Arts Program, they discussed the relationship between pacifism and art as they produced plays, wrote and published poetry, played and composed music, painted and sculpted, and designed and made myrtlewood bowls and other objects. "In being pacifists," one CO at Waldport wrote, "we did not forgetwe were also artists."4 Shortly after Sheets transferred from Cascade Locks, Manche Harvey also moved to the Waldport CPS camp, where worked with the Fine Arts Program. She had accepted an invitation from friends to stop at Camp 56 Barber and Elkins ?ones,Art and Peace on theOregon Coast 511 As part of theFine ArtsProgram at CPS Camp 56,Manche Langley (Harvey), Enoch Crumpton, Kermit Sheets,andWilliam Eshelman performedAria Da Capo, byEdna St.VincentMillay, on September 22,1944. and help put on a play and decided to stay. For the next year, she lived at or near the camp, socializing, helping produce plays and work the printing press, and doing secretarial work for the Fine Arts Program. The camp was mostly populated by men, of course, but Harvey remembered "lots of fe males around," including "several wives" who she "became very close friends with." Camp 56's substantial female population was not unusual inCPS. Historian Rachel Waltner Goosen estimates that "two thousand women, and perhaps half asmany children, lived inand near Civilian Public Service camps" across the country.5 When Kermit Sheets andManche Harvey were photographed protesting the atomic bomb in the 1950s, their liveswere still focused on community art production. Shortly after the end of thewar, theyhad joined other pacifists who had been conscripted duringWorld War II,political radicals, and artistic visionaries inSan Francisco, where theyproduced plays at a cooperative the ater, created avant-garde films, and protested war and injustice as part of the OHQ vol.107, no. 4 city's renaissance art scene. Throughout their adult lives, Sheets and Harvey continued towork and socialize with people who had been involved in the fine arts study group at Waldport, all ofwhom were connected to a broader history of national and international political resistance. Neither Harvey or Sheets became...