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Footprints of Pacifism
The Creative Lives of
Kemper Nomland & Kermit Sheets
An exhibit at the Aubrey Watzek Library
Lewis & Clark College
February-July 2007

We thank the following for their generosity to the Watzek Library Special Collections over many years, for
sharing their research on World War II pacifism, and for their donations and assistance to this exhibit: Kermit
Sheets and Norma Miller; Kemper Nomland; Henry and Mary Blocher; Katrine Barber; Doug Beloof; Brian
Booth; E. J. Carter; Charles Davis; John Ellison; William Eshelman; Tracy Falconer; John Hawk; Eliza Jones;
Jim Kopp; Jeff Kovac; Manche Langley; Pat Rom; Julian Schrock; Charles Seluzicki, the estate of William
Stafford; Doug Strain.
Exhibit, text, and catalog by Doug Erickson, Paul Merchant, and Jeremy Skinner. All
photographs, artwork, and book illustrations taken from items in the Lewis & Clark
College Special Collections.
This catalog set in Centaur MT Std, a font designed by Bruce Rogers and used as the
house font for Kermit Sheets’ Centaur Press.
The Berberis Press
Lewis & Clark College Special Collections
Watzek Library
Portland, Oregon
2007
Front cover: “Anti-war rally 1968 at Westlake Park,” pastel by Kemper Nomland, 1994.
Back cover: watercolor of Columbia Gorge waterfall by Kemper Nomland, 1942.
Inside back cover: Windsor Utley, oil portrait by Kemper Nomland, c. 1942.
To view a digital version of this catalog and learn more about this and other Special
Collections exhibits go to: http://www.lclark.edu/~archives/specialcollections/

Footprints of Pacifism
In recent years three generous donations of World War II and later pacifist materials have been made to Watzek
Library Special Collections, joining and giving context to the Carter Burden collection of William Stafford
materials already at the library. The first was the complete papers and printed materials of Kermit Sheets related to
publishing and theater at Cascade Locks and Waldport CPS camps, the postwar Centaur Press, and his acting and
directing in San Francisco and London theater and film. The second collection, from Kemper Nomland, contains
Waldport publications, wartime and later paintings, and items relating to Kemper’s successful career as an innovative
architect in Los Angeles. The third major donation was the collection of 1,300 negatives and prints of photographs
taken at Cascade Locks and at Fort Steilacoom State Hospital by Henry Blocher and Henry Dasenbrock, housed
by the Blochers in the wooden case jocularly known as the Dynamite Box.
To these three collections we have also begun to add copies of items relating to Robert Beloof, to Glen Coffield, to
Charles Davis (printer at Waldport), to William Eshelman, to Manche Langley, to Mark Schrock and Charlie Davis
(two directors at Cascade Locks), and to Adrian Wilson. The collection also contains newsletters from a dozen CPS
camps, and transcripts of interviews with over seventy surviving Waldport COs.
This exhibit selects from these donations and from the college’s pacifist collection to present a portrait of two gifted
men, representatives of the twelve thousand conscientious objectors, as an introduction to their wartime creativity
and to their postwar lives, which (like the later careers of so many other COs) were lived at a high level of cooperation
and innovation in the arts and in civic responsibility.
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The three COs in this photograph are (L to R)
Kemper Nomland, Don Baker, and Kermit Sheets,
known to their colleagues as “The Clique,” who
were responsible for much of the printing at
Cascade Locks.

Pacifism, Friendship, and Art — Case One
During World War II, pacifists were a small minority. Each conscientious objector (CO) represented one thousand men
in the U. S. armed forces. COs were given the option of serving prison time or enlisting in the Civilian Public Service
(CPS), a program that gathered men in camps to conduct work of national importance. In the Pacific Northwest, this
work took the form of forestry and mental health work. Men who worked in the CPS camps forged close, life-long
friendships, and found time to express their creativity through all forms of art. An example of one such bond was that
between Kermit Sheets and Kemper Nomland.
Kemper Nomland
Both Sheets and Nomland explored graphic design, illustration, and publication
layout, but each also found opportunities to pursue the arts for
which they were formally trained. Sheets wrote the satirical plays Mikado
in CPS and Stalingrad Stalemate. He also acted and helped design sets for
numerous other performances. Nomland applied his “simple and direct”
architectural skills to redesigning the Wyeth chapel and library. An admirer
of the Bauhaus, Nomland looked to create form and flow in his
designs and layout, which is reflected in his architectural designs, printing,
and paintings.
Sheets and Nomland met in January 1942 when both were assigned to
CPS Camp 21, an old Columbia River Gorge CCC camp at Wyeth, Oregon.
Sheets was a pacifist artist, printer, actor, director, and stage designer
who was born in California’s Imperial Valley on August 14, 1915, grew
up in Fresno, and graduated from Chapman College in 1936. Nomland
was a formally trained architect, who was raised in southern California,
and graduated from the University of Southern California. The two became
fast friends and co-editors of the camp newsletter The Columbian
and an arts journal, The Illiterati, which published some of the earliest
work of CO William Stafford, later a professor at Lewis & Clark College.
Sheets and Nomland also collaborated with William Everson, William
Eshelman, and other like-minded artists to establish a fine arts focus at
the new Waldport, Oregon camp in 1943.
The Illiterati 1, 1943: This first issue of Sheets and Nomland’s arts magazine
was confiscated and destroyed by the U.S. postal service for its portrayal of
a nude woman to accompany a poem by Glen Coffield. This is one of the few surviving copies.
The Illiterati 2, 1943: The second issue of the magazine was the first to be distributed to readers and featured poetry and
essays by William Everson, William Stafford, Tom Polk Miller, Harry Prochaska, Kemper Nomland, Kermit Sheets,
Larry Haggen, and Glen Coffield.
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Kermit Sheets

The Mikado in CPS: performed in February 1944; published at Waldport, Oregon CPS
56 in February 1945 with illustrations by Kermit Sheets.
The Columbian 1:1: the first issue of the camp newspaper for CPS 21, edited by Kemper
Nomland and Kermit Sheets among others, from January 1942 to February 1943.
War Elegies by William Everson: published at CPS 56 by the Untide Press in 1944 with
illustrations by Nomland.
Cartoon by Kermit Sheets: published in The Compass, Summer/Fall 1944.
Stalingrad Stalemate published by the Illiterati: Script for a play written by Kermit Sheets
and performed at CPS 21 in 1943. Also displayed is a letter from Kermit Sheets
describing the premier of Stalingrad Stalemate, with two production photographs showing Bill Webb’s set design.
Photographs: Kemper Nomland holding a copy of The Illiterati #1; Nomland standing in a doorway at CPS 21;
Kermit Sheets reading at CPS 21; Don Baker and Nomland printing The Columbian; view of the CPS 21 chapel window
designed by Nomland; interior of the Cascade Locks chapel; interior of the Mark Schrock Library at Cascade
Locks with interior design by Nomland; Sheets as Trigorin and Goldie Bock as Nina in a performance of Anton
Chekhov’s “The Seagull” at CPS 21 (1946).
Kermit Sheets and the Centaur Press — Case Two
After being released from Civilian Public Service in 1946, Kermit Sheets and others of the Waldport camp theater
personnel settled in San Francisco, establishing the Interplayers in association with Adrian Wilson and Joyce Lancaster
Wilson. At the same time, in collaboration with poet James Broughton, Sheets founded the Centaur Press, publishing
and distributing poetry and drama by Broughton, Anais Nin, Robert
Duncan, Glen Coffield, Madeline Gleason, and Muriel Rukeyser.
Robert Duncan, Medieval Scenes: Robert Duncan, with Kenneth Rexroth one of
the fathers of the San Francisco Renaissance, was probably at the time (and
remains) the most significant poet published by Centaur Press. His Medieval
Scenes is a linked sequence of poems written on ten consecutive evenings in
February 1947: “The Dreamers,” “The Helmet of Goliath,” “The Banners,”
“The Kingdom of Jerusalem,” “The Festivals,” “The Mirror,” “The Reaper,”
“The Adoration of the Virgin,” “Huon of Bordeaux,” and “The Albigenses.”
Composed partly in response to William Carlos Williams’s comment
on Duncan’s earlier poems that there was no American language in them,
these poems take Duncan’s trademark fantasy of style and subject matter to
a new level, taking themes from biblical, Greek and medieval mythologies, in
“a shade of language dragon red with hope.” The volume was designed by
Kermit Sheets and hand set in Centaur roman and Frederick Goudy’s Deep-
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dene italic, with a title-page woodcut also by Kermit
Sheets. It appeared in an edition of 250 copies signed
by the author. Also exhibited: a playful letter from
Robert Duncan to Kermit Sheets.
Glen Coffield, The Night Is Where You Fly: This volume
combines the talents of four men who were associated
through the fine arts activities at Waldport CPS
camp. Its author was Glen Coffield, the education director
at the camp, and prolific poet and song-writer,
who in the postwar years published large quantities
of mimeographed poetry by a wide variety of poets.
The design and hand setting, in Centaur roman and
Arrighi italic, were probably by Kermit Sheets. The
printing was by America’s greatest postwar printer,
Adrian Wilson, who lived in rooms above Broughton
and Sheets. And the woodcuts were by California artist
Lee Mullican, who had contributed drawings to
Illiterati, including the cover of Illiterati 5. The edition
was 100 copies. Also exhibited: a postcard (October
28, 1949) from Glen Coffield to Centaur Press,
concerning the distribution of review copies, and
describing his eccentric house on Eagle Creek, near
Cascade Locks.
James Broughton, Musical Chairs: Broughton’s third and
last collection from Centaur Press, and his most substantial,
is a gathering of witty squibs in the manner
of nursery rhymes and folk songs, featuring his trademark
delight in wordplay. The volume was designed in Deepdene roman and italic by Kermit Sheets, with abstract
designs by Leee Mullican in the endpapers and at the head of the five sections. It was printed at the Centaur Press
in Summer 1950 in an clothbound edition of 500 copies. Our copy is inscribed by the author “To Bill / especially
and always” perhaps to William Barrett, the book’s dedicatee. Also exhibited: The press announcement for Musical
Chairs, dated November 10, 1950.
James Broughton, An Almanac for Amorists: By 1955 Broughton and Sheets were in Europe, where (with the help of
Lindsay Anderson, already an Oscar winner with Thursday’s Child and later the director of This Sporting Life, If, and
O Lucky Man) they had made their fourth film The Pleasure Garden, a prize-winner at Cannes in 1953. The last book
designed by Kermit Sheets was An Almanac for Amorists, pleasantly suggestive songs by Broughton arranged under the
four seasons, with Kermit’s equally suggestive cover design, title-page illustration, and four drawings accompanying
the book’s sections. The book appeared from Collections Merlin, a subsidiary of Olympia Press, the imprint
of Maurice Girodias, publishers of Burroughs (The Naked Lunch), Miller (Tropic of Capricorn and Tropic of Cancer) and
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Nabokov (Lolita). This collection was distributed in three states, all seen here: 26 lettered and hand-colored copies
on Arches paper in a glassine jacket, 150 numbered on pur chiffon paper in green wraps, and 500 on offset paper,
unnumbered in a pink jacket. Also exhibited: Anais Nin’s House of Incest.
More Centaur Press Publications — Case Three
James Broughton, The Playground: One of the early Interplayers productions directed by Kermit Sheets was The
Playground, written by poet and film-maker James Broughton. The play satirized a public indifferent to the dangers
of nuclear war, and ran for months. Its text became the first volume of the Centaur Press, founded by Sheets and
Broughton, symbolically linking Kermit’s two enthusiasms, for printing and theater. Designed and printed by Sheets
from type hand set in Bruce Rogers’s Centaur roman and Frederick Warde’s Arrighi italic, The Playground also featured
playful drawings by Zev (Dan Harris) and appeared in 1949 in an edition of one thousand. So many friends
attended the book launch that the publication paid for itself on the first evening. Also exhibited: the review copy
cover letter of March 23, 1949.
Madeline Gleason, The Metaphysical Needle: Unjustly neglected today, Madeline Gleason was (with Kenneth Rexroth
and Robert Duncan) one of the leading figures in the creation of the San Francisco Renaissance. Born in Fargo,
North Dakota in 1909, she spent her late teens as an itinerant vaudeville performer. Her first settled employment
was in Portland bookstore, before she moved to San Francisco in 1934. In April 1947 she organized the First Festival
of Modern Poetry, featuring over two evenings Rexroth, Duncan, Rukeyser, Everson, Spicer, Gleason, and six
other poets. This is now recognized as the start of the city’s poetry renaissance, eight years ahead of the Gallery Six
reading that launched Ginsberg and Howl. Centaur Press published The Metaphysical Needle in 1949, with vivid illustrations
by Hal Goldman. The issue was 483 copies, hand set in Centaur and Arrighi to a Kermit Sheets design. The
poems are wide-ranging in subject, and treat philosophical themes with a lyricism occasionally reminiscent of Emily
Dickinson. This copy is signed by author and illustrator. Also exhibited: a draft of the Sheets letter to Gleason offering
to publish the collection.
Muriel Rukeyser, Orpheus: Born in New York in 1913, Muriel Rukeyser had been well known as a poet since her first
collection Theory of Flight was chosen in 1935 for the Yale Younger Poets series. Strongly activist throughout her life, in
social causes ranging from the Spanish Civil War through agitation for improved working conditions for miners to opposition
to the war in Vietnam, she was one of San Francisco’s leading poets in 1949, when Centaur published Orpheus,
a narrative sequence on the death and rebirth of the god of song. The poem brings together themes of feminism, masculinity,
and the sources of poetic inspiration in a rich imaginative exploration. The issue was 500 copies, designed by
Sheets and hand set in Centaur, with a frontispiece etching on a classical theme by Picasso, from the Albert M. Bender
collection at the San Francisco Museum of Art. Also exhibited: the two-page contract for Orpheus, 2 May 1949.
James Broughton, The Ballad of Mad Jenny: Broughton’s second Centaur Press volume is a single poem in eighteen stanzas
of varying lengths, a deathbed testament in the manner of François Villon, a riot of inventive language and high
spirits. It was designed by Kermit Sheets and hand set in Arrighi italic in December 1949 and published in 1950 in
an edition of unspecified size. Our copy is inscribed by Broughton to Sheets “For the loveliest printer in the world
from its most grateful poet.” Also exhibited: the press’s first printed prospectus, in the form of a small booklet.
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Kermit Sheets in Theater and Film — Case Four
The programs and advertisements shown here are samples
of the busy postwar life of Kermit Sheets in San Francisco
theater and film: A mailer for the plays Aria Da Capo (Edna
St. Vincent Millay), Don Perlimpin (Lorca) and Heartbreak House
(Shaw) playing in repertory in August and September 1947,
the three earliest Interplayers productions. Three programs
with Sheets as director, designer, or actor: Sartre’s No Exit
(July/August 1948); Broughton’s Fête Gala of poetry, theater
and film; Fanny’s First Play by Shaw (August/November
1951, the last production before the Interplayers split into
two companies and Broughton and Sheets left for Europe.All
these items were designed by Interplayers co-founder Adrian
Wilson, later one of America’s finest printers.
Also exhibited: titles and stills from two films, the second and
fourth of Broughton and Sheets’s Farallone Productions, both
starring Kermit Sheets: Loony Tom the Happy Lover (California
1951), and The Pleasure Garden (London 1953), winner of a
Cannes Festival award for poetic fantasy.
After his return from Europe, Sheets became managing director
of The Playhouse until the early 1960s, mounting many
successful productions, including Helen Adam’s long-running
San Francisco’s Burning (December 1961–June 1962) with music by Warner Jepson. In 1965 he married Jane Steckle,
who died in 1999. From 1970 to 1980 he was director of the Center at the Lighthouse for the Blind.
After retirement he spent much of his time writing and traveling with Jane. He died on April 6, 2006 in San Francisco.
Kemper Nomland’s Work After the War — Case Five
After the war Kemper Nomland returned to southern California where he and William Eshelman continued to issue
volumes of The Illiterati and publish works of poetry with the Untide Press imprint. Kemper also resumed his career
as an architect. Initially, he worked with his father Kemper Nomland, Sr. Among the Nomlands’ projects was the
design for Case Study House #10. The Case Study House project was an idea created by the founder of the Arts &
Architecture magazine who wanted to create modern homes for the booming post war housing market in California.
The Nomlands’ design for Case Study House #10 exhibited Kemper’s focus on simplicity and functionality.
After his marriage to Ella Kube, who taught psychology at Lewis & Clark College (1950-51), Nomland continued
to be a sought after Southern California architect. Notable among the homes and public buildings he designed was
a redesign of Moore Hall at UCLA. Nomland also continued to experiment with drawing, painting, and ceramics.
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In 2006 Kemper Nomland Jr. donated a group of his paintings and Untide Press materials to Lewis & Clark
College. He currently resides in Seal Beach, California.
Eckbo, Garrett. The Art of Home Landscaping. New York: F. W. Dodge Corporation, 1956. This text features photographs
from the Frimkess house in Los Angeles designed by Nomland.
Smith, Elizabeth A. T. Case Study Houses: 1945-1966. London: Taschen, 2006. Photographs and floorplan for Case
Study House #10.
The Illiterati, no. 5 (Summer 1948) & no. 6 (Summer 1955), Pasadena. These two post-war imprints of the The Illiterati
were edited and designed by Nomland, Tom Polk Miller, and William Eshelman. They feature poetry, essays,
and art by Kenneth Rexroth, William Stafford, William Everson, James Broughton, Glen Coffield, and others.
Walker, John. Arma Virumque Cano. Pasadena: The Untide Press, 1950. A poetry volume with linoleum cut illustrations
by Nomland.
Woodcock, George. Imagine the South. Pasadena: The Untide Press, 1947. Printed by Eshelman and Nomland.
Coffield, Glen. Three Songs. Pasadena: The Untide Press, 1951. This work was the last title issued by the Untide Press,
and represents Nomland’s final presswork. It features a reproduction of his war-time oil painting of Glen Coffield.
Nine Paintings by Kemper Nomland
This wall-mounted exhibit presents four paintings (three oils and one watercolor) made by Kemper Nomland at the
Civilian Public Service camp for conscientious objectors at Cascade Locks, along with photographs of two lost paintings
by Kemper Nomland, an illustration for
The Illiterati, and two later pastels.
Kemper Nomland’s oil portrait of Glen
Coffield was reproduced in Illiterati 3 (Summer
1944) and in Glen Coffield’s book
from the Untide Press in the same year, The
Horned Moon. Coffield, born 1917 in Arizona,
and education director in the Fine Arts
program at Waldport camp, was a prolific
poet who continued to publish his own and
other poets’ poetry, mostly in mimeograph.
His one cloth-bound collection, The Night Is
Where You Fly, printed by Adrian Wilson for
the Centaur Press, is on display in case 2.
After the war he was associated with the Interplayers
Theater in San Francisco, before
moving to Oregon in 1947 and starting the
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Grundtvig Folk School on Eagle Creek in the Columbia Gorge, close to Cascade Locks. He died in 1981.
Windsor Utley, in blue shirt and trousers, smoking a pipe, painted c. 1942 (see reproduction opposite). Born in
1920 and trained in music at UCLA, Utley made a number of paintings at Cascade Locks. Utley committed himself
full-time to art in 1947, painting mainly abstract impressionist inventions showing some kinship with those
of his friend Mark Tobey. A teacher in Seattle, he died in 1989. His correspondence with Tobey is archived at the
Smithsonian.
Bill Webb (born 1919) is shown against the background of a framed female nude and socialist slogans. This painting
was completed around 1948. Bill Webb contributed three items to the first (1943) issue of the journal edited
by Sheets and Nomland, The Illiterati, which was confiscated by the postal service. He also designed the set for the
satirical drama Stalingrad Stalemate in October 1942 and acted in the performance; he is seen lying on the bed in the
production photographs (case 1). He left camp and entered prison in May 1943. After release, Webb worked as a
textile designer and photographer.
The watercolor of one of the Columbia Gorge waterfalls close to the CPS camp is signed “Kemper Nomland June
1942.” See back cover of catalog.
Mark Schrock, director of the Cascade Locks camp, is standing beside his portrait by Kemper Nomland. This oil
painting, which hung in the camp library, was lost when the library burned.
Kemper Nomland at Cascade Locks camp holding his portrait of Kermit Sheets. This oil painting’s whereabouts is
currently unknown.
Kemper Nomland’s essay “The Metaphysical in Graphic Art” was published in Illiterati 2, Cascade Locks, Summer
1943. His ideas are captured by the following statement from the essay: “By branching into the realm of the abstract
one can convey a whole new expanse of ideas that is impossible in realism. Also it is possible for a number of moods
and ideas to be conveyed both simultaneously and consecutively.” Kemper’s experiments in abstraction are exemplified
in the three later pieces: a design made for Illiterati 5 (1948) and the two pastels, “The Concert” (1992) and “Anti-
War Rally 1969 Westlake Park” (1994), shown on the front cover.
Also exhibited: passages from Tom Polk Miller’s memoir War’s End, Portland, which was inspired by events in Portland
on the day of Kemper Nomland’s trial for refusal to obey a Selective Service order. A large part of his narrative was
drawn upon by William Stafford for the penultimate chapter of his 1947 memoir Down in My Heart.
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