Quarry Hill Creative Center - History

History

On April 10, 1946, Irving Fiske (born Irving Fishman in Brooklyn, New York, on March 5, 1908), a playwright, inventor, freelance writer, and speaker, and his wife, Barbara Hall Fiske, (born Isabelle Daniel Hall in Tucson, Arizona on September 9, 1919), an artist and one of the few female cartoonists of the World War II era, bought 140 acres (0.57 km2) of mountain, meadow, and brook land in Rochester, Vermont. They had been married on January 8, 1946.

Irving, a 1928 graduate of Cornell University, worked for the Federal Writer's Project of the WPA (Works Progress Administration) during the 1930s. Fiske also wrote for H. L. Mencken's American Mercury, had corresponded with George Bernard Shaw, had written an article praised by critic Colin Wilson, among others, "Bernard Shaw's Debt to William Blake", and had translated Shakespeare's Hamlet into modern English. This was considered a controversial literary action at the time. John Ciardi, who did not approve, reprinted excerpts in the Saturday Review. Most readers wrote in favor of the translation. Barbara was one of the few female comic book artists in the United States during the World War II era. She drew Girl Commandos and other strips for Harvey Comics, signing herself B. Hall because female cartoonists were not held in high esteem.

Read more about this topic:  Quarry Hill Creative Center

Famous quotes containing the word history:

    Don’t give your opinions about Art and the Purpose of Life. They are of little interest and, anyway, you can’t express them. Don’t analyse yourself. Give the relevant facts and let your readers make their own judgments. Stick to your story. It is not the most important subject in history but it is one about which you are uniquely qualified to speak.
    Evelyn Waugh (1903–1966)

    The thing that struck me forcefully was the feeling of great age about the place. Standing on that old parade ground, which is now a cricket field, I could feel the dead generations crowding me. Here was the oldest settlement of freedmen in the Western world, no doubt. Men who had thrown off the bands of slavery by their own courage and ingenuity. The courage and daring of the Maroons strike like a purple beam across the history of Jamaica.
    Zora Neale Hurston (1891–1960)

    Revolutions are the periods of history when individuals count most.
    Norman Mailer (b. 1923)