Footprints of Pacifism - Lewis & Clark Digital Collections - Lewis ...

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