When I was in school, I worked at the Hallie Ford Museum of Art as the preparator’s assistant among other things. And it was while installing a show with Bruce that I first heard the (tired) joke, “a sculpture is what you back up into when you’re trying to get a better look at a painting.” I’ll say true: at the time, I thought that sounded about right.
By which I mean that I never thought I would ever create a sculpture!
And then I met Renate, an Austrian-American woman who would be participating in Apple Pie. During our interview and in the months that followed it, we talked about which iconic American would be referenced in the allegorical portrait of her that I would paint. I kept trying to think along the lines of a hero for green living--something which is important to Renate and which I felt would be a valuable addition to the series. I came to realized that America doesn’t really have any environmentally conscious heros, not of a caliber to match Superman or even Richard Nixon for example. I needed a green icon with immediate pop recognition and I realized that there simply wasn’t one that existed. So I made one up...or rather, I re-made one up!
I blended Renate’s likeness with a certain legendary lumberjack to create Paula Bunyan, a hero who plants trees at a prodigious pace instead of cutting them down. And as I thought about what this painting should look like, I came back again and again to the folk representations of the original Bunyan. It only made sense to create a pouch in which the giant Paula Bunyan could carry around her pine nuts since Paul’s stature is the emphasis of the huge statues of him which appear across the country.
Somewhere in the process documented below, I realized that I was inadvertently stepping out of my usual two dimensions and creating my first non-functional three-dimensional work--an exciting and frightening prospect!
I left the material of the pouch fairly raw, using only two layers of slightly thinned gesso to prime it. I was concerned with keeping the canvas flexible enough to act as a pouch.
Behind Renate’s portrait, I wanted to depict a progression of pines from big to small. Originally, I was looking to represent the growth of the trees she was planting, but then, inspired by Renate’s arresting gesture, the background took on a different meaning. I nestled a small log cabin in among the bigger, more wild trees at left, and showed the smaller, more manicured trees dwarfed by modern American dwellings at right.
Here, the raw canvas is getting the better of me in the face, and I’m having trouble with Renate’s likeness.
Building up layers, correcting things--including the hand which was too big until this point.
Georgia O’Keefe’s The Shelton With Sunspots 1926
I knew that the tops of the tall buildings I was painting in Paula Bunyan’s Pine Nut Planting Pouch would eventually be obscured by the pleating of the canvas when the pouch was closed and hung, so I was looking for a way to evoke the towering heights of the buildings more than represent the way that skyscrapers actually look. I was at a bit of a loss about how to do so until I came across this painting by Georgia O’Keefe.
O’Keefe’s work reflects her time spent under Arthur Wesley Dow’s tutelage. Dow, an artist noted more for his influence on a younger generation of artists than for his own work, believed that realism was the “death of art” and, furthermore, that “art lies in fine choices, not in the...likeness to nature, meaning, story-telling or finish.” For him, an artist is not meant to teach the viewer “to see facts” but instead “to feel harmonies."*
While my understanding of the portrait work I do tends to line up fairly well with Dow’s theories, I required some prompting when it came to painting something besides a face. O’Keefe’s Shelton With Sunspots was just what I needed to look at in order to make sense of the cityscape background I was creating for Paula Bunyan’s Pine Nut Planting Pouch.
It was around this time, too, that I injured my right thumb severely and had to resort to pushing around puddles of watered-down paint on canvases laid out on the floor.
Slowly but surely, I was building up layers that I liked…
...but I was still having trouble with the Renate’s likeness.
Directly after this picture was taken, I covered the face with transparent gel medium, finally sealing the canvas enough to allow me to modulate colors in the portrait in the way I needed to.
Paula Bunyan’s Pine Nut Planting Pouch (Austrian-American)
2008
acrylic on an oversized canvas pouch
34 x 23 x 10 inches
detail image of Paula Bunyan’s Pine Nut Planting Pouch
detail image of Paula Bunyan’s Pine Nut Planting Pouch
The pouch has a back as well as a front--a fact of the three-dimensional artist’s life, but a new and utterly delicious problem for me. Here, I am working on the back of Paula Bunyan’s Pine Nut Planting Pouch.
the back of Paula Bunyan’s Pine Nut Planting Pouch
The image on this side of the pouch echos the one on the pouch which is in Paula Bunyan’s hand on the other side of the piece.
The subject with her portrait at the opening of Apple Pie at the end of last month.
_______________________________________________________________________
*For more information about Georgia O’Keefe and her understanding of Aurthur Wesley Dow’s teachings, see Lisa Mintz Messinger’s Georgia O’Keefe from 2001 (Thames and Hudson Ltd., London).
_______________________________________________________________________