An Interview with Aristides Demetrios
2016/11/07

Tell us your memories of your mother, Jinnee?
What was she like? What kind of person was she?

As a mother, she was a saint. She was very loving – she arranged her schedule to accommodate us. She worked from 4 to 7 in the morning, gave us breakfast, worked until 2 o’clock, then did the affairs of the house, prepared us supper, and went to bed at 8. She tried to walk everyday, usually accompanied by whatever dog we had. She loved her dogs and flowers; she loved anything that grew. She was fantastic. My brother and I both wanted to be the favorite one. She was diplomatic and said to me, “you are the best older son I ever had,” and said to my brother, “ you are the best younger son I ever had.” We all laughed.

Your favorite book is Choo Choo, right?

Because I was the only son, I was her favorite. When my brother was born, we had to split the favorite. She was a fantastic mother. She balanced writing the books, running the Folly Cove Designers, and teaching her friends how to draw. The first of those women was her friend who babysat us in return. Within a year, there were a group of women that lived within 3 miles that wanted to learn to design. This was the depression there were no cars, so they could walk to a monthly lesson that Jinnee gave about design.

She had standards. You had to do it all yourself, and the designs had to be something that was alive or lived. The whole process had to be done by them. Neither machine, nor anyone else could do it for them. They would draw the designs, turn them into print blocks, and then print them. They would print napkins that had fringed edges, they got so good at it that within five years they were in Life Magazine, the biggest magazine in the United States. This is coming from a tiny village, Lanesville, with no more than a 1000 people. What she believed in as true is that art exists in everybody, when you think of her and her ethos, it’s really American, and that’s why it’s so successful.

What did she consider to be important for design or creation?

It had to be something you loved, something that you looked at, something that you understood. Otherwise the design wouldn't work. There is passion and love in all of this; most of the designs are something that happened around them. Whether it was a boat, a flower, or a child. I can look at the blocks and tell you where they came from. The first exhibit of all the designers was in 1938, in Jinnee’s barn. Later, they were given a place of their own.

What was important for her in her designs?

In design you try to find the essence of something, you have to love it and absorb it. The essence of a flower is in a circle so you just see the circle and not the flower anymore.

You have to combine the two. In other words, you have to make an abstraction of the flower, and put that into two dimensions. Then you put that on a piece of linoleum and cut it out so that you get a print. You roll the paint on with a roller, put the print down on the cloth and press - they stood on the press - their first press was their feet.

Jinnee went to Japan in 1964.
Did you hear about her memories in Japan?

She was very close with her contact, Momoko Ishii; they were like sisters. My mother would talk in English and sometimes Momoko would talk in Japanese, but they understood each other, like best friends.

One winter, she went somewhere in central Japan, and loved it. She loved everything Japanese – she loved the designs. Comparatively, America is a young country; we don’t have the lineage that you do. Furthermore, we come from everywhere, and we are still trying to figure out whom we are. The Japanese have a stronger sense of culture, whereas we are not sure of ours, and we make it up all the time. However, there are some great things about that. There is more freedom here than anywhere else in the world, Jinnee proved that anyone can be an artist.

Which means, there is art in everyone and that was her lesson. It’s truly a metaphor for a lot of good things – the Folly Cove Designers and how she taught – but she would say, “that’s nonsense, we are just good designers,” and to not intellectualize her. Her instincts were perfect. She had the spirit and the discipline. Her father was from a long line of New Englanders, he was a dean at MIT, and my grandmother was a flower child. She was that, three generations ago, dancing and whatever out of this world. So Jinnee has both of those roots.

Her books always reflect herself.

She saw the beauty in anything. The way she wrote the books, the designs they have, a little dandelion - when she got through it - was a rose. She loved that, and had many books on nature, like flowers. All the animals in the books are spunky. Calico the Wonder Horse, that’s Jinnee, a little bit naughty but can do anything, save everybody. Her character is in all of the books.

If you were to take all children’s books during the 30s and 40s, when Choo Choo came out, most of the heroes were boys.

If you look at all her books, there is a solution to everything. That’s the way she was, an “I can do it” attitude. That’s why I think the books are so good, because it affirms something. The children want the books to be read every night for two years. Unlike other fairy tales, instead of the “big bad jungle” is going to get you, in her books, something wonderful is about to happen to the child as they grow up.

You said that she is very American, meaning that she is very free in sprit? She was also disciplined.

She is also very human, a complete human being who happened to be feminine. She is a good soul, and that quality is there in every one of her books. They are simple and grand, they won’t say, “I’m a good soul, I go to church everyday;” she doesn’t preach like a minister, but woos the children. She asks the children “Look what happened,” and they would answer, “I want to do it too!” She is a real miracle. It has gone on for 80 years since the first book.

She’s a perfect human being.

Yes, she is, though she had a rough time. Like the great myth about Atlas, the Greek god, she just shrugged her shoulders and said “bring it on, I can still do it.” It was incredible.

Do you know what year she got the new studio in Folly Cove?

She got the new studio in the late 50s or early 60s. It is a beautiful place. She could work with seagulls, and carried her notebook around all the time; it was wonderful.

My grandparents had three children, and when my grandmother developed respiratory problems, they moved to New Mexico because the air is dry. They spent two or three years there, and my grandfather would come in the summers on a train and they would be together. Then they moved to Carmel, where they stayed until Jinnee was 14. Then my grandmother fell in love with my grandfather’s student and left, and the family separated. Jinnee went to a town in the mountains of California and spent 4 years there. She won a scholarship to art school in San Francisco, and lived across the bay. She would take a bus, to the ferry, to the cable car.

She loved to draw. She found that if anybody detected that they were being watched and drawn, they turned their head away. So she learned to sketch quickly, like taking a picture with a camera. She could draw like that. When she went to Boston, she became the visual reporter for the Boston Transcript. She would do what Hirschfield use to do for the New York Times. She would go out, memorize, make a sketch, and draw it out so that it could be printed by 2 o’clock. She had a fantastic eye, just like stopping on a frame of a regular camera. She developed a special talent of how to organize how you see the subject.

Jinnee can develop anything, she wanted a talent for design - she got it. She had a marvelous mind. She was eager to learn everything, like a sponge. An amazing woman, she could be a model for all women.

Inteviewer: Satsuki Uchiyama    Atsuko Tanaka    Michiyo Okabe
Translation: Motomi Tanaka    Atsuko Tanaka

a. Aris and Mike with their mother,
    whose storybook scenes-a train
    rolling down the tracks,
    romping cowboys,
    Mary Anne digging holes,
    a beaming sun –decorated her sons’
    bedroom walls and ceiling.
    ©1944 THE CHRISTIAN SCIENCE MONITOR
b. Untitled (Locomotives and railroad workers)    1964, Collection of Tokyo Children’s Library
c. “CHOO CHOO” ©Aristides Burton Demetrios
d. Sketchbook    Undated, Collection of Aristides Demetrios