Context Podcast Digital Collection

David Pettyjohn: Greetings everyone. My name is David Pettyjohn. I am the executive director of the Idaho Humanities Council. I want to thank each of you for joining us this evening for another one of our connected conversations. Before I kind of introduce our speakers, I would like to, first of all, remind each of you that, we will have a question and answer session.

So we'd like to to remind you that this is just one of the many programs that we offer here at the Idaho Humanities Council. And if you're not familiar with our work, I encourage you to go to our website, which is Idaho humanities.org. So tonight we are, going to learn about Archie Boyd Teater, art, architecture, artifacts and archives.

What a name. And joining us tonight is Chelsee Boehm, Lester Taylor and Henry Whiting. And they'll each say a little bit about themselves. So I will now turn it over to Chelsee. Welcome, everybody.

Chelsee Boehm: Thank you. David. I'm Chelsee. I am a public historian. I currently work for the Idaho State Historical Society, at the Idaho State Museum.

Lester Taylor: And we. Why don't you start?

Henry Whiting: Well, I'm Henry Whiting. I am the owner of Teater's home. And I'm looking forward to, to talking to everybody. I'll introduce myself more, more comprehensively and a little bit when I get started here.

Lester Taylor: Okay. I'm Lester Taylor, and I don't know whether you're supposed to do it this way or not, but I'm talking to you from my library in Tucson, Arizona, and, although I, I have written a book about, art, but I'm not an artist. I'm an art historian, and I not critic. I'm an economist. And I look forward to talking with Henry and Chelsee about art.

And these are all right.

David Pettyjohn: Thank you all very much. So, Chelsee, I think, we'll kind of turn it over to you now to kind of lead the, the discussion.

Chelsee Boehm: Thank you. So, yeah, I'm Chelsee, I am presenting this evening. I'm participating this evening from Boise, which is the ancestral homeland of the Shoshone Bannock people. So before we begin, I want to pay my respects to the members of that tribe, both past and present. So a little bit of of a summary about how tonight's gonna go.

I am going to turn the time over first to Lester, and he's going to tell us about, Rita's life and his art. And then Henry is going to talk about two years now, and then I will follow up at the end with just a brief bit about the archival collection. The writer, the Archie Boyd Teater archival collection at the Idaho State Archives.

And some of the artifacts at the Idaho State Museum. So let me share my screen. Oh, can I have permission to share my screen? So, Lester, to begin. Can you tell us a little bit about Archie and his early life?

He oh, this is an interesting slide because this shows him when in the in the, sometime in the 1920s, in his stone dugout that he dug, which actually is, and Henry can correct me on this, Henry took me down to, to this site, several years ago. It's probably about a mile or so from, in, from Peters Mill.

And this is kind of what was left from, from Teater's, dugout, on the bank of the, of the, of the snake River. And the only thing that's left in it other than the rocks is that, is that iron door from, from his stove. But, then in the 1928 first went to Jackson Hole and where he spent summers for essentially the next 50 years, in, in this painting and the Tetons, like in Jackson Hole.

Archie was, an enormously prolific, artist. I can personally account for the whereabouts, obviously not my, my own paintings, although I do have a number of upwards of 4000 of his paintings. And my estimate is that he did at least, double that quantity of the order of the eight, 8000 paintings. This is a painting that we're looking at now.

This is a painting that was done in Hagerman Valley. They wanted, the house in a water wheel and, he did, many, many of his paintings were done in the, in The Hagerman Valley. But also a great, number of them were, done. And they sought to this, this this painting here, was done in 1941, just shortly after Pearl Harbor.

And it shows it's called the sheepherder, and his dog. And it probably is just it's a generic setting, probably in the Hawaiki, plateau or in the, in the white Hawaii and very south, southwestern Idaho. This is, a number of, another of, a very typical, type of painting that, it did of Idaho.

And it's Dance at Slaveys, which, this was a, it was a bar. And, Ketchum that was extremely popular in the 1930s. And the. You will notice the, up at the top, the mermaid, that it actually did that painting and it hung in the, in the slaves for many, many years. And I personally have been trying to locate that painting for a number of years, but so, so far with that and with that success, then there should be a painting coming up.

This is, that they chose this sought to use this is an old Stanley, kind of what old Stanley looked like, almost certainly in the early 1930s. And this is a north end of this sawtooth. Then there should be a painting that, that, that shows, this was entitled Dust Storm. Another fairly typical, type of, painting that he did.

And this is actually a very autobiographical painting because in the middle of the snake, you will see that there is a boat and, that really is, Jesus father, and his brothers and they are capturing, what was then just absolutely gigantic, sturgeon and the sturgeon. The sturgeon who is then, caught and then in, over, toward the left, side of the painting, you will see a wagon with sturgeon in the back.

And, that was 1928 as he made his first visit and he subsequently, then spent virtually every summer, for the next 15 years in, in Jackson Hole. And during much of the latter part of that, he, he had, his own, studio there and he, among other things, he, painted many, many, Jackson Town scenes.

And the title of this would be Jackson on, Jackson on that Saturday night. And, this is for those of you that know Jackson. This is now Broadway. This is Broadway running through the, into Jackson, looking into the south side of the, of the Jackson County square. Okay. And this is just a fairly typical, genre scene of, Archies.

And this is Archie's painting. Painting, so to speak, what he called the Elk Massacre. What's next, Chelsee?

Chelsee Boehm: So, Lester, we're getting a little tight on time. Is there something you want me to jump to? That you want to make sure that folks see or.

And this is, this shows, Archie's whimsical, side, his really fun side. One Saturday night, he was out for a walk, and there were, two, ladies from the cowboy bar. They got into a fight. They took the fight out into the, into the Jackson town square. And this is just this Okies.

Winters in 1938, he did this painting of, what, southern Manhattan look like. And that's the Brooklyn Bridge. And and why we can save other things till later. Chelsee.

Chelsee Boehm: Okay. Are there any that you want to make sure that you talk about or. I'm just flipping through really quickly? Archie traveled the world and got to paint in a lot of places, so that's kind of what I skim over.

Lester Taylor: Okay. Back up to, One more. One back up. Okay. He loved parrots and it in that. Starting in 1958, Archie and Patricia traveled to more than 100 countries and they spent, much the winter, for the last 20 years. He lives in those 100 countries, more than 100 countries. Archie painted every room. And there was, there's the sand, nighttime on the sand, which, Kabul, in Afghanistan.

That's the nighttime, the longest on the sand. And this is Kabul in Afghanistan. And I think the next one is the upper house in, Sydney. Then I'll keep the rest to later. Thank you. Chelsee.

Chelsee Boehm: So are we. Are we going to turn it over to Henry now?

Lester Taylor: Oh, yes, by all means.

Chelsee Boehm: Okay. I'm going to stop sharing my screen for a second so Henry can talk a little bit about himself and how he kind of got to. There's no. Yeah. Henry, whenever you're ready.

Henry Whiting: Okay. Can you see me now? All right. Welcome to Teaters. No, all. I'm sitting at the dining room table here as as I, talking to you. I first learned of the Teater Studio in 1974, when I was in college, from a book called The Architecture of Frank Lloyd Wright by William Allen Store. It was the first book published that had photographs of all of Wright's extant work, including the Teater Studio.

Because of my interest in Wright, I immediately sought out the Teater studio, which I first saw in 1977. When I purchased the studio in 1982, I knew of it only through the connection of Frank with Frank Lloyd Wright. It has been one of the great joys of my life to learn about Archie and Patricia Teater through their friends and acquaintances, as well as the documents found at Teaters Knoll.

Okay, could we go to the first slide? The.

And over the past, however many years, that really hasn't changed much, except it has probably less traffic now. Okay, next slide. This is a little bit closer view. Taken a little bit later that shows the studio from from the south and you see those little trees that are just above the retaining wall. Those have now grown to be about 40ft tall.

And the whole, studio is the whole property at Teaters. And all this all has mature, vegetation all around. The river is on the left hand side below that wall. There's a 200ft cliff that leads straight down to the river plain. And then the river is perhaps a quarter mile away. Next slide. This is a picture of Archie sitting on his on his patio wall.

With, with the studio nearly complete. And I'm guessing that all of that rock that you can see piled up is going to be the, flagstone patio that they built. Now, what's important to notice in this picture are the windows of the main studio room behind Archie's back, and how the window sills slope parallel to the to the, plane of the roof.

They are not horizontal, and that has quite a profound effect when you get inside the studio. The higher roof, the clear, starry roof. And above Archie, is is where the bathroom and the kitchen are, as well as the small, storage, workshop. And the high masonry is, is the fireplace chimney. Next slide.

But their collection of books and on the left side of the upper, shelf, you'll see a portrait of a person. And that is Frank Lloyd Wright. Next slide.

Here is is Archie, painting? This is where he painted in the studio, in front of him, closer to me is the dining room table. And I guess you would probably say I'm sitting in that chair right now. The, you're looking at the back of, on the left hand side of the picture. But Art had his easel always set up at the very north end of the studio, and that was where he painted.

Now, the the dining chairs, the dining table and much of the furniture at Teaters Knoll was designed by Frank Lloyd Wright. Here you can see how the windows sloped upwards. The curtains I have since removed these curtains that the teachers were very, paranoid about that studio being broken into. And so they had these curtains that they could pull when they were not in residence.

The the light fixtures above the dining room table, I'm guessing, were designed by Pat Teater, but certainly not Frank Lloyd Wright. Next slide.

This is Artie's painting of the inside of the studio. He painted it, numerous times, but this gives a little sense of how it was arranged. And much of this furniture was there when I got there. The large sofa in the front right and the sofa back against the the window, the green sofa and the large globe was not here.

That had been taken away. I mean, you can also see the, the brightly colored Ottomans, they're hexagonal Ottomans that were, in the studio are still in the studio. Next slide.

But I will skip this because this again, is, my my picture of Lester's that Lester talked about the dugout. That was about a mile upstream of Peters Knoll, but still looks like this next slide. This is what is called the Bootlegger Shack. And this was where Archie Archie bought this from, from, pair of bootleggers who had used it as a still during, prohibition years.

And they built a using using the the native rock and and use the spring water for, for, for distilling their alcohol. And it's kind of an interesting thing, but he bought it from them and fixed it up and made it into a house. And you see a couple of things here. You see the red rocks. That on the top of the, chimney are sort of his, his sort of puckish sense of humor and the, the the, curved ridge line of the main studio room.

The specifications called for it to follow the the pattern of the rock at Fallingwater in Pennsylvania, the famous Kaufmann house that sits over the waterfall. And it has a horizontally laid rock that makes it look as though it naturally grows out of it. So this rock is Oakley stone, and it came from the town of Oakley, where Kent, grew up.

And he essentially opened the quarry to, to do to build Peter's Knoll. And it has just some of the finest rock work as well as some of the finest Oakley stone as as well in the in the Rock. And Kent came back to work for me on two separate occasions. So he worked here in 1953, in 1983, and then again in 1998 when he was in his late 70s.

He was a remarkable friend and I was very fortunate to know him. Next slide. Here are Art and Pat, sitting on the window as the window frames have just gone up. And I show this because they were very much hands on when they when they were building the studio, they may have had their difficulties. And so you in particular was a difficult client for Wright to have to deal with.

And he eventually washed his hands of the project. And it is truly remarkable. It got finished as closely to his design as it did without any supervision from, from apprentices or with Wright's participation. Next slide. Here is pat up on the roof, varnishing some of the fascia boards that are there in the background on the right hand side of the picture.

They tried to pay laborers working on the job, not in cash, but through Teater, paintings. Next slide. This is kind of a fun story. I mentioned how what a great joy it has been to meet people like Lester and another friend who I have met earlier was Monty, later from Saint Anthony, who was the friend of the Teaters through the 1960s and 70s and a close friend.

And, they met often in Jackson, but also the leaders came to, to Noel and met with them as well. But one day Monty got a call from Archie and he and he said, asked asked him if he and Bev could come over to Twin Falls and meet him, that he had something he wanted to show them.

And there was Archie, and I can't remember exactly what part of his outfit was the same color, but he was also wearing orange. And he was Archie was just just beyond himself with excitement and, and and anyway, he said, come on out here, my money, I have to show you something. And they got in the car and, Archie sat in the driver's seat and Monty was in the passenger seat, and Archie reaches up and pats the the, dashboard of the Porsche.

And he says one painting, one painting. And what he meant was he he paid for the Porsche, won the sale of one painting. And that was when Archie knew he had really made it as an artist. Next. But. This is how it all looked when I first got here. And the carport is on the on the right and the front door is the left, center and you see that TV antenna thing on the left hand side of the picture that is supporting a 15ft cantilever.

And that was not part of Wright's design, but then Wright didn't there's didn't, include a way to support that roof properly. And so that was one of the things that I had to deal with when I got here. The clear storey, roof, you can see as well. Next slide. This is the view that I first of all, as I looked over the road, you see, you see the diagonal knee brace that supports the cantilever of what we call the prow.

And the prow is a 35ft cantilever. And again, Wright hadn't specified as to how that was to be supported. And that and that they ended up putting that knee brace there, which really bothered my eye when I first saw it. You can see the blackout curtains, in the studio, but the very first thing I did after I bought it was to take that awful the barbed wire down from the from the, fence there that that was, that really bothered me.

And that was the first thing that got changed. Next slide. This was what it looked like probably in the summer of 1982, shortly after I had purchased it. And, and we turned the whole studio into a woodshop and, and put those fluorescent lights hanging from the ceiling and the and the various saws and the equipment. What we were doing here is replacing all of the 105 pieces of glass in the studio with thermal paint.

It was all single pane glass, and it had condensed on the inside and, and, stained all the, all of the wood. And, and that was something that really bothered me. So we replaced it with thermal paint. And it was a project that took, at least six months to do. And, and, really didn't change the general view of the studio that much.

Other. Sure made it look beautiful. Next slide.

The these are the two floor plans that I drove, for my first book, that I wrote about Teaters Knoll and the upper floor plan is the is Wright's original design. And that's the way it looked as I got it when I got to the studio. It is basically a one room, one room studio. The bedroom is actually just a partitioned off area of the of the main studio.

The fireplace is at the heart of the house, which is very typical of a Frank Lloyd Wright house. But what bothered me tremendously was the the workspace, which is Frank Lloyd Wright's word for kitchen and the bathroom are two rectangular spaces that are stuck in the middle of this beautiful geometry that are created by this these equilateral parallelograms.

And that was the second major facet of, of the project. And, and the in the lower right hand corner is where the bunk house is, which I, I believe I have a picture of later that I designed and built that area. Next slide. This is what teachers know looks like today. From down near snake River pottery. Looking up at the studio, you can see the cliff below it, and you also can see the prow projecting out and the wood that is kind of illuminated.

There is the cladding that we did to, to cover up that diagonal knee brace which is still there, but you just can't see it. Next slide. And here it is from directly across the river. You can see what a beautiful piece of organic architecture this is. Organic meaning it grows out of the site and, and feels like a part of the site, which is very much the way it was a very important part of Frank Lloyd Wright's architecture.

Next slide. And this is the view from underneath the prow. There you could get a much better sense of how we basically extended the lines of the window sills to through that rock mass, to become this stepped detail that supports that cantilever. Next slide.

And this is the the view looking towards the front door. In 1998, my, my late wife Lynne, and I, enclosed the carport and you can see the carport is the close right close in this view. And the rock walls there are where the the car would have driven in and you literally would have had to have a, Porsche or a car.

The teachers originally had a Karmann Ghia in order to get it in that airport. There's no way a pickup truck could fit that could fit in, but it now serves as an office and storage for us. And that wall, that's closest to you is Kent Hale's last wall. He did that in 1998, in his late 70s.

Just just a remarkable story. Next slide. This is the interior now, looking back towards the front door and showing the the large beam that supports the whole roof coming out of out of the, fireplace and leading to the front. This beam was actually put in place by Artie and by Fisher. Together, the two of them using two hay derricks, raised this this beam into place.

And it had been in in the, lumber yard. And Wendell for a few months, the Teaters hadn't paid their bill. And, the lumber man had said that that, he was would rather see that beam get made into matchsticks than have the Teaters get it. And so they they asked their friend Mardis if he would go over and, and, purchase that and bring it to that.

Right. It's 12in wide by 18in, high by 46ft long. And after they got up, put into place, the Teaters paid for us with two bottles of whiskey. Next slide.

This is looking basically in the opposite direction towards the prow, and you can see the, the window seat is as it was the way Wright designed it. And the those chairs in the picture are called origami chairs. And they were designed by Frank Lloyd Wright, but never, put in the, in the studio. But the drawings were there.

So we built, three of them and the sculptures on the right hand side of the picture and those, those lanterns, are the work of my late wife, Lynn Fawcett Whiting. She was a sculptor, and we we were married in the house, and she lived there for 20 years before passing away about five years ago in the studio.

And she was a very gifted, person and, very integral part of the saving of Teaters. No. Next slide. This is the view of the river. And this is from the bunk house deck. And it gives you a sense of of, of the connection with the river and how close it is. This it, of course, is called Frank Lloyd Wright Rapid.

Next slide. This is one of my favorite pictures of Archie and Pat Teater. At the studio, gives you a sense of the, great kindness of Archie. I never knew him, but I, I wish I did, especially when you see a picture like this. And that concludes my slides. But I would just like to say one thing quickly is that people, the many, many people want to come see the studio.

And we're trying to raise money and awareness to build a museum for the for the, Historical Society, which will in part be dedicated to to Archie Teater and I would welcome you to all sign up for that, or hopefully we can do it this coming year. We weren't able to do it last year, but we've we've done it in early June, which celebrates, Frank Lloyd Wright's birthday in general.

So in any case, thank you very much.

There were about 25 boxes in the Archie Teater collection at the Idaho State Archives, and I went through every single one, and I put my grubby hands. Not really. They were clean, but I put my hands on every single document in that collection and organized the collection into something that researchers can use, and easily find documents.

And and that took a little over a year. The cool thing about the Archie and Patricia Teater collection is that it has all kinds of documents. There's correspondence, letters, receipts, furniture, catalogs, and here's an example. Patricia, Archie's wife, kept a lot of these little tiny diaries on the left side of the screen. You can see, you know, one sitting in my hand for scale.

And I have big hands, but they're just little diaries. And on the right you can see where I've gone through and made folders for each of those little tiny diaries, so that you can find what you're looking for. This, like I said, there's a lot of cool stuff in the in the Teater collection at the Idaho State Archives, and this is a letter to the teachers from Frank Lloyd Wright signed by Frank Lloyd Wright.

It's it really is a joy. Early this year, I transitioned from the Idaho State Archives to the Idaho State Museum, where I now help care for artifacts. And it just so happens there was a box of terror related artifacts that were waiting to be processed and, you know, put into proper packaging and those kinds of things and be stored.

So on the right hand side is one of the artifacts I got to work with. It's a lay figure or a mannequin of a horse, you know, that an artist would have used, to create an image of a horse. And on the left is a sketch of horses right from the Teater collection. So you can see how Archie was using these artifacts that are at the State Museum and kind of how that materialized in the archival collection at the Idaho State Archives.

And this last one, this is a palette knife. There are many paint brushes of all different sizes, that are part of the Tudor collection at the Idaho State Museum and a bunch of palette knives. And everything is really fun because it's all covered in paint. This particular palette knife, is really cool because as you can see in that image in the bottom and he has carved Teton has carved his name into the palette knife.

Like I said, there are about 25 boxes. And that's kind of been the culmination of my work. But I'm so thankful, for this opportunity and to get to talk about, art and to listen to Lester and Henry talk about Archie. So thank you both so much. I think we can turn it over to David for questions.

David Pettyjohn: Yes. If you'll kind of stop sharing your screen for a moment. Oh, and they've got some.

Chelsee Boehm: Go ahead. Yes. Sorry. Very quickly. If you have any questions and you want to contact us, there's my my email and there's Lester's phone number and email. As Henry mentioned, he lives he lives in Titusville. So don't show up to his house and ask for a tour. Please be respectful of his space. But.

Yeah, sorry.

David Pettyjohn: No. That's great. Thank you so much. Chelsee, Lester and Henry, greatly appreciated all that wonderful knowledge. We have just a couple questions, and that's, you know, I don't have much time, so I'll go ahead and, ask these. The first one are prints of Archie's paintings available for sale? If so, where?

There's also a large number of his there's a substantial number of his paintings in Jackson Hole, and the public can see them at what is called the drugstore, which is, a restaurant. But, a good number of his paintings are available there. Also, hey, I have a substantial collection of his paintings myself, and I do enjoy showing them to people, but unfortunately, yeah, as far as I know, no prints of these, paintings are available.

David Pettyjohn: Thank you, thank you. And, somebody asked, Will this program be made accessible for a time? Absolutely. This is being recorded, and we will, it'll be available on our website, which is Idaho Humanities council.org. So, time for two more questions. The first one, this is for you, Henry. After nearly 40 years of being president of teachers.

And. No, please tell us some thoughts and feelings that occur now on a daily basis regarding your relationship with the House and its placement in the environment.

Henry Whiting: Well, that's that's a good question. That's a hard one to answer shortly, but I will just say that I have I observe I'll take a step back. Frank Lloyd Wright homeowners will inevitably tell you, and almost every one of them will say this, that they see something new, in their house every day. And it's one of the great things about it.

And the other thing I would say I discovered this many years ago, but but what happens late in the day too, is that the sun will reflect off the surface of the snake River, and it will project itself onto the ceiling of the of the studio, and it will be brightly lit. And actually some days, if it's just bright, you can actually see the reflect the water, the surface of the water projected onto the ceiling, and you can actually see it moving.

And what's interesting is because it comes through the, the, the window, prism somewhat like it actually is flowing in the opposite direction on the roof that it is flowing on or on the floor. And these kind of magical, things just come from spending enough time at the studio. I, you know, of course, I didn't see the see that.

Realized that whole projection thing on the ceiling for about 20 years. And it makes you feel kind of like, what were you doing for those first 20 years that you didn't notice it? Because now it's so obvious. But those kind of secrets keep revealing themselves. And it's it's one of the great spaces I've ever been in. And it's, it's one of the lesser known right buildings, but it's one of the great interiors that's just full of diagonal lines.

It's, it's it's for an artist. It's a place for creation. It's not a place. It's not a house that's meant to be repose. Well, it's meant to be somewhat agitating and and to inspire creativity.

David Pettyjohn: Thank you so much, Henry. And our last question is for you, Chelsee. Are there plans to feature in any upcoming exhibits?

Chelsee Boehm: Hopefully. I have been advocating for an exhibit, about Tudor and his wife at the museum for for a while now. So hopefully, fingers crossed.

Lester Taylor: Can can I add something here?

David Pettyjohn: Yeah.

There.

David Pettyjohn: Thank you so much for that. And Chelsee, Lester and Henry, thank you so much for sharing your knowledge. It was beautiful. I've seen several, comments of people just saying thank you, for opening up teachers and all, you know, to us and for sharing all those wonderful paintings and for Chelsee, for your dedication in preserving his legacy at the Idaho State Archives.

We're going to take a break next week for the Thanksgiving holiday, but please join us on December the 1st when our next connected conversation will be on the history of Wallace. So thank you all so much. Have a wonderful evening and a wonderful Thanksgiving holiday. Thanks, everyone.

Lester Taylor: Thank you. I'll see.

Henry Whiting: Thank you.