email marciawilson@earthlink.net
STORIES AND DREAMS SHOW at the NOYES MUSEUM 2002
Here's the entrance to our show. My pieces are in the way back; Susanna Bergtold has the pieces in the front half of the room. Flanking the doorway, the tall narrow piece is a 10' piece of cherry carved by Susanna. My clown is on the right.
This is a closeup of my carved wooden clown hanging on the right of
the entrance to the show.
I borrowed this piece from an artist's son who had bought it in 1978 when he was a young man. The clown is carved from two pieces of basswood that I think I glued together along the base of the hat. I sawed out the shapes on my bandsaw before carving them. Carving the collar with gouges was quite challenging. The frame was made separately, and I carved out a little "nest" so the clown would seat comfortably. Then I screwed the clown in place.
Back then I wanted my work to look old, so I smeared "mud" on it and
wiped it off, to give a distressed look, kind of like the way people
used to dip fake antique rugs in tea back in the 1920's. The "mud" I
used was a combination of raw umber pigment and a glazing medium.
The paint underneath was japan paint, as I recall.
Now I feel like repainting this piece, but some collectors told me
they wish ALL my woodcarvings looked old like this!
This is Susanna Bergtold's work in the first half of our space. There is
a bronze lizard, and two wooden horses (bought by me), and a bronze
bird along the wall. There is a carved blue wooden coelecanth on the floor.
I collect her work and love it.
This photo shows my daughter Becky on the right, and the curator
Hsiao-ning Tu, on the left, just after the show was installed
in January, 2002. I am very happy with the way Ms Tu hung the show.
A side view of the Frantic Defender which I carved in 1993 from
pieces of maple furniture that my neighbors had thrown out in the trash.
The finish is oil base "paint markers." I carved this piece in 1993 to
immortalize the time a woman (unsuccessfully) sued me for a million dollars.
I made the hair and teeth of this statue from copper electrical wire, probably 10 romex, that I melted with a torch so it balled up at the end. The hair was painted black; the teeth were painted white. I drilled holes and epoxied them into the head.
I am not exactly sure why I put the voluptuous young woman in the stomach. It could represent the woman's teenaged daughter, or it could represent an aspect of herself that needs defending. The nice thing about art is I can do it and think about why I did it later.
A man and wife in Philadelphia were kind enough to lend this piece for the
show and I was happy to see it again after almost 10 years.
I carved this lady and her dapple pony in 1978. I forget the kind of wood but
I carved the woman from a branch of a tree. It might have been elm that someone
in Oradell NJ gave me. The lady is pegged onto the horse but not glued. Some
dear friends from Morristown, NJ lent this piece to the show.
I painted it in oil base enamel, I think, and added that "mud" I talked about earlier.
The arms are made from twigs from my privot hedge,
attached with rubber bands and eye hooks. Now I use elastic pony
tail holders instead of rubber bands; they last longer.
Ricky of Luna Park (his web page is linked to mine) lent these two jointed dolls to my show. The Goddess in flowered stretch pants is carved from a log I had. I don't think I know what kind of wood it is. We were splitting it for kindling when I said "Stop! That looks like good carving wood." I made about 3 sculptures out of it.
She is painted in casein, I think, with some oil on top. I got the idea of doing her by seeing a sculpture on the internet by some woman, carved from a tree trunk or tree roots or something, and the sculpture had amazing high heels on. So the shoes were a motivating factor in this image.
The old man next to her ended up with his hairdo when the bandsaw accidentally sliced a big gash in the top of his head. I woodburned strands on either side of the cut and that's how he came from bald into hair.
The idea for the man came from me observing that a neck in profile is higher in the back
than in the front. Previously I had been carving my sculptures with round collars, the same
in front and back. So I enthusiastically carved this one with the big sloping collar and
lo and behold it ended up looking like Ed Sullivan.
This carving was made about 1978, one year after I started woodcarving "seriously," in 1977. It was carved from a piece of maple from my friend Susanna Bergtold. (Susanna loves relief carving from very hard woods, but I prefer basswood.) I only made two relief carvings from this maple-- this queen (owned by a NYC woman who bought it in the Village art show a long time ago) and a king (that is owned by the same people who bought the sidesaddle lady on a horse.)
This queen shows the effects of the previous 4 years I had spent doing batik and trapunto. I used to stuff figures of queens and embroider them extensively with colored threads and all kinds of beads. This queen has a collar that is studded with pearls from garage sale necklaces. I used a Dremel tool with a round burr to grind holes and epoxied the pearls in.
Maple is not only resistant to carving, it is VERY resistant to woodburning and you can hardly see the detail in this queen's dress. Of course, back then I had a flimsy woodburning tool. Now I have one I can crank up to much hotter temperatures.
I am still fascinated by queens. Of course, I grew up in the 1940's when there was still an
aura of mystery and glamor about the English royals. But queens, like clowns, are kind of
symbols to me, of people and their positions in life. When I think of queens, I think of my
mother because she was the most important and powerful person in the world to me (when I was a
small child). When I think of clowns, I think of my wonderful boyfriend, and everyman
in the sense that we are all so small and powerless in this big big universe.
This is a pug bank, the last of a series of pug banks made over a period of years. My daughter in Hawaii has the first one which is very small. I made it for her because I thought she would laugh at a bank that looked just like one of our dogs. (I do a lot of things just to get a laugh out of people.) The second pug bank was really a box because it had no slot, just a sliding head and I have forgotten where that one went. The third one had peg legs and the Sutton Place owners dont answer my emails or phone calls. sigh. (Some people think just because they buy something, they own it.)
So this is version number four, and I am everlastingly grateful to his owners who live in Hoboken NJ and were generous enough to lend it to the show.
His tail has been repaired and he has a dent on his forehead and his back because he fell off the window sill one windy day, but he's still adorable. I love the little spiky teeth.
I made the pug banks as long as I had pugs, which was
up until August 1984. I lose the sense of a dog when I no longer have it.
I got the idea of making banks from first making boxes. And I got the idea of making boxes from Whit Kent, a woman (alas, since deceased) born in 1913 who was a neighbor of mine in Leonia, NJ.
Whit made georgeous wooden boxes that opened up-- a woman on the back of a tiger and a tattooed lady were particularly fetching-- but none were for sale at a price I could afford. As a result, I decided to make my own. Whit and I were great friends and to her dying day she said I should stick to etchings and forget about woodcarving.
Whit had told me she made the box first and added things to it, so I purchased an old tackle box from an antique store and glued boards to it. Then I carved it. After a few broken tools I realized I should have removed the nails first.
This pug bank was I think the last one I ever made. It was modelled after my dog Odette, but I turned her into a boy because to get the money out you twist off the naughty bits. The "cork" part is wood, but there is a groove around it and a rubber band serves as an o ring to make a tight fit.
The finish is a combination of woodburned lines and oil base enamel in cans from the
hardware store. Back in 1983 I think I was using expensive oil paint from Laura
Ashley.
This walking cat was carved about January 1984 just in time to be in a show for
NJ craft fellowship winners. It was lent to the Noyes Museum by an architect and
his wife from Roosevelt, NJ. I made this piece out of pine, as I recall. It is
laminated from big boards. There is a hole in the mouth and a hole under the tail
and if you look in there you can see light from the mouth. I always like my
sculptures to do something and that may not be much, but it was all I could think of
at the time.
The cat is modelled after my late cat Red. He was a great cat. It's funny the way
I can remember personalities just from a sculpture. The sculpture is finished with
oil base enamel paint from cans and some gold leaf, especially on the eyes.
I carved my Self Portrait as Olympia about 1995, from basswood. It is painted in casein paints. I carved this because Salute to Women in the Arts announced a call for entries for art around the theme of Manet's Olympia.
I looked at a reproduction of Manet's painting and sketched it on a scrap of paper and did not look again because I did not want to be very much influenced by it. Then I imagined myself as Olympia and gave myself a big smile. Most people say I look more like the handmaiden bringing the flowers.
This carving was done to remember my late uncle Karl H. Sandmeyer who became an artist after
he retired as chemical engineer. Uncle Karl had done a watercolor of his wife's antique
doll wearing only a black ribbon around its neck. He had a show in the local library
and told the ladies to be prepared for a "nude" but not to worry, he did not think it
would offend. Uncle Karl was a wonderful artist, like his father, my grandfather, and
my great grandmother who came over from Switzerland with a great deal of artistic talent.
My boyfriend Paul Binner did the engineering and I did the carving of this whirligig, finished
in 2000. It all started when I entered a whirligig show at the Noyes Museum a few years earlier,
entering two or three figures, engineered by the boyfriend, but quite simple. After my boyfriend
saw the complicated pieces that Janet Fenimore's husband John had engineered Paul decided to try
something more difficult himself.
He has since regretted that decision since it took at least
six months of trial and error to get this thing going. The flag moves up and down.
The dancer on top jumps three times for each rotation. The Noyes Museum bought this piece.
I would not mind making more whirligigs but I think the boyfriend has had enough of engineering
them.