Quiet Mountain Essays
Copyright©, 2004
Ruminations
by
Emilie Noble
Introduction
I took a print making class at Kala Art Institute in Berkeley, California. During one of the classes a fellow
artist mentioned to me that Kate Millet was looking for women to come to her Art Colony Farm for the
summer. I was, of course, immediately interested, and began to telephone and correspond with Kate over a
period of a few months. We finally both agreed that I would come to the Farm for six weeks and that I would
also be her silkscreen assistant, as she wanted to silkscreen some of her drawings.
Being at the Farm was a very special time for me, one that I will never forget. Kate is largely responsible for
my wanting to become a serious writer. I never will forget when she said to me one evening, ”You will write
when you have something to say.” And now I do.
Silkscreen Studio at Millett Farm
It took a long time to get started. The weather wasn’t cooperating. We first had to order chemicals,
which meant talking to a variety of vendors and figuring out which photographic film worked better:
poly blue versus pink pulsar. We also had to check: solutions, inks, light source, paper, degreaser,
distilled water, bloc-out, and a number of other things, before a print run could be attempted.
Images had been sentimentally chosen, and evaluated with the loving tenderness that can only come
from and at the hands of the artwork's originator. “Sophia’s Christmas” was the first image that my
eyes fell upon; an image of sexuality transmitted by barely perceptible lines of a hand and buttock;
sensually and lovingly drawn by someone who had loved and adored its subject. The original work was
on a paper which, many years prior, had been taken with a sheet of acetate to a photo engraver in New
York in order to have a photopositive made. Due to the age, fragility and the slightness of the lines of
the image, there was no way to tell if we could even get to the print run stage with it.
However, armed with enthusiasm, watches with a second hand, aprons and steely determination, we
began on a cold Saturday morning to make a good silk screen - a melding of scientific and artistic
expertise to be sure - which, if not performed with exactitude, would leave nothing to print, no record or
imprint of its creation. We set out to make a screen that would hold up and not fall apart; a screen that
would embody the lasting image of someone once loved so intensely by another human being that a
field on Millet Farm was named for the angry outbursts of these two lovers: “Screamers Field”.
The Call to Pilgrimage
It began with a simple question, “Do you know who Kate Millett is?” I found myself interrupted by
Andrea, a fellow artist, while painting. I had to search the storage bins of my mind for lost information,
bits of memory that lay in repose ready to be recaptured. After running the name Millett through, I
responded, “Yes.”
Andrea continued, “She is looking for women to come to her Women’s Art Colony Farm this summer.
Would you be interested?”
Stunned and excited at the same time, I answered without hesitation, “Yes, yes.” Without knowing or
asking anything more, I resumed painting, mentally going over what had just fallen to me. Over and
over, I worked and reworked paint onto the same canvas space, until I finally gave up. It was no use.
"The vase isn’t right," I said to myself, then gently saved the dabs of paint that I had applied to my
palette board. With my palette knife, I scraped away all the paint that had been so carefully mixed and
applied on the canvas.
I found release in these singular acts. From the sheer pleasure of mixing paints, to drawing over and
over again the same object with no success. These acts were more pleasurable to me than an orgasm, or
the release felt when I really cry.
My frustration level with painting had reached its peak for the day and my determination was slowly
ebbing away. I soaked my brushes in the can of turpentine that sat on the table next to my easel. What
was it that Degas had said about Manet? “He was greater than we ever thought.” When murmuring
these words on his way out of the cemetery in Passy, after Manet's funeral, Degas summed up his
friend’s life in a single sentence. Manet had consistently rejected everything established by convention –
the slavish reproduction of nature, moral or social significance, history and anecdote, the exaltation of
beauty, the geometrical treatment of space (Orienti 7). I agreed with Degas about his friend Manet,
that’s why I had chosen a subject of his for my painting, not solely as a lesson in replicating an old
master but to try to feel as he had felt.
Screamer’s Field
She poked her head from around the side of the tree that we were shearing. My first time in the field,
and her thousandth time. Tough work, and so many insects that I was almost paralyzed with fear. But
I was working with a resolve not to be a sissy city girl that couldn’t carry her weight in the field. Kate
looked up at me with a childish grin and words began to come out of her mouth which were at once
unfamiliar to me, yet immediately recognizable. In that moment, I stepped into her world and Kate
into mine, as she began singing the words to a Bessie Smith song...
“Cause I done cut my good man's throat
I caught him with a trifling Jane
I warned him 'bout before
I had my knife and went insane
And the rest you ought to know
Judge, judge, please mister judge,
Send me to the 'lectric chair….”(eLyrics.Net).
Silkscreen Studio at Millett Farm
“I’ve decided to tell you something,” she said as she walked into the Silkscreen Studio one afternoon. I
looked up from what I was doing and gave her my full attention but I already knew what she was
going to tell me. Without hesitating, Kate began, “I am in the middle of a real estate transaction,
having decided to sell off some eighty acres of my farm. You should be told about this.”
There had been many phone calls from realtors and lawyers since the time of my arrival at the farm;
phone calls she had taken in her private living residence and not in the Silkscreen Studio, all clues to me
that these were very private conversations and not for my ears, so I had taken her cue and not imposed.
After all, I was raised not to ask questions about private conversations, or answer someone else’s phone
unless directed to do so. I was raised to be a lady in a town that had once, a long time ago, been owned
by my father’s family. To this day, buildings there bear his name. I was raised with the expectation
that I would marry and marry well befitting someone of my social standing. Yet, I had not chosen
matrimony, had produced no progeny, nor opted for a house, and I had not remained in the same town
long after my father’s death. Instead there was a stolen inheritance and, decades after a once-privileged
life had deteriorated to an abysmal California address, I spent most of my adult life dedicated to
working hard and making money, motivated by stock options and living in the suburban bubble of my
choosing.
I respected Kate's life and she in turn gifted me with a level of intimacy. All of this from a woman
whom I hardly knew and had only read about in college when, even then, I had not fully understood
nor appreciated her intellect or status as a feminist writer, her place in the world, and the full import of
the contribution that she had made, all the while paying the price for living a queer life. She "had
gotten to change things while others stayed the way they were” (Millett 283). I, on the other hand, had
lived pretty much according to the rules, although I, too, lived a queer life, only not in respect to
sexuality.
After having run some initial experiments to figure out which photographic film would garner the better
image on a screen, we settled on poly blue film. It had been used time and time again and had proven
to be a little obsolete, in that it no longer held the same promises of a new product, such as time
efficiency in drying, ease of handling, or being safer. I enjoyed the precision of scientific inquiry, of
understanding a carboxyl hydrogen bond, doing calculations, and timing the film while it was exposed
to the light source. It was all still comforting to me, even though long ago, armed with a degree in
biology, I had discarded the idea of becoming a medical practitioner or bench scientist.
Working with the film demanded dexterity, as it came in sheets of 11 x 14, and was terribly hard to
work with and manage. Not only did it have to be used sparingly because it was costly, but the film
needed to be cut down to a size that was a little bit larger than the image, and that had to be done in a
darkroom so it would not be exposed to the light. We managed the preparations, and then set the timer
for fourteen minutes, after determining that was the right amount of time to expose the film to the light
source in order to get an image. Well, we got it! Then came the rinsing off of the chemical, to see just
what kind of image we had gotten. We hoped it would be one that was good enough to use to make a
print.
I held the slippery poly film while Kate rinsed, and we prayed that we could get a good image without
having to start all over. Thankfully, it looked good enough. I put the screen on the table and Kate very
carefully placed the piece of poly film with the exposed image onto the screen. I immediately grabbed
sheets of brown paper that I had readied, to absorb any moisture. Again, and again and again, we
blotted, until finally we could both examine the labor-intensive poly with microscopic precision. It
looked good. Good enough to say, “Let’s let it dry overnight.” And so we did.
The next morning, I crawled out of “The Coop”, a real chicken coop that had been fashioned into the
cottage in which I stayed, and we had breakfast, then went back to the Silkscreen studio. The screen
looked good. We just needed to use bloc-out on the areas that would bleed through during printing. I
picked up a brush and applied bloc-out to all the areas we agreed needed to be protected. Still, there
were no assurances that, after all of this, we could have a good print run. We hoped that by the next
morning, after the bloc-out had dried, that we could print. That was the easy part.
Getting to the printing stage was cause for celebration at evening’s dinner. Kate and I feasted on a fine
dinner, with Kate being more talkative than usual that evening. We had achieved a small victory, and
for a little while, she had been pulled back from the depths of a kind of depression and despair that I,
too, had experienced in my own life.
The next day, before making the print, I ran a mental list: get ink ready, it may require thinner; clean
drying racks; place screen on table and hitch to kick stand; get twenty four sheets of printing paper
from the upstairs studio; ready Scott rags; figure out which size squeegee to use; use paper and tape to
block out the areas outside of the image on the screen; ... and, pray!
Ready! We were cautious, but our adrenaline was running high. I gave Kate a nod, and with that we
began. I put the paper down where pieces of tape indicated its proper registration. She poured the ink
at the bottom of the screen, the edge facing her. We both looked up, and I asked, “Ready?” I lowered
the screen down and Kate, with strong artist’s arms, pushed the squeegee over the screen. I lifted the
screen up to see that the image was intact. We had the beginning of a successful print run. Then in
quick succession, we repeated those steps until we had used all of the paper allocated to print on. We
didn’t have to exchange any other words that day.
Millet Internalizing in AD
..."All right. I accede to that; you are a Minneapolis swell, my aunt’s friend and neighbor: I’m a Bowery artist
she perhaps didn’t like. You win; you have always been right: you inherited and own the town, I’m an exile, even
a pervert—have it your way. But must you bully, hurt my feelings so? I have written you a charming letter,
asking for your friendship, for reminiscences of my aunt, even a foolish lover’s line asking if she had ever spoken
of me to him. His follow-up letter will say it in indelible linear type: My aunt mentioned me only once in his
company and the reference was perfectly neutral. I don’t dare ask what it was: that I wrote, was a feminist—or
just the reference in her will. ”…
(Millett 149-150).
The Hudson Line
I boarded the train that would take me to Grand Central Station and couldn’t bear to look around. I
didn’t want to look around! At what, an empty train car that was a bittersweet metaphor? But then I
saw the figure outside motioning me over to the window. I immediately opened the palm of my right
hand; fingers outstretched, I placed my hand against the window. I saw Kate's eyes searching mine as
she placed her small, fragile hand in superimposed fashion over mine. And it was more than enough
between two friends.
Works Cited
Millett, Kate. Kate Millett a Memoir AD. New York: W.W. Norton & Company, Inc., 1995.
Orienti, Sandra. Manet. New York: Grosset & Dunlap Publishers, 1978.
Send Me To The ‘lectric Chair [lyrics online]. eLyrics.Net, accessed February 6, 2004; available from
http://www.elyrics.net/go/b/Bessie_Smith/Send_Me_To_The_'lectric_Chair/index.html; Internet.
Contributor's Notes...
Emilie Noble is currently pursuing an MA in Humanities with a writing emphasis at Dominican
University of California, in San Rafael. She recently had an abstract accepted by the American
Anthropological Association and was invited to present her paper entitled: "In the State of Grace:
Pilgrimage and Tourism" at their Annual Conference this year. She lives in Northern California.
