{"id":20111,"date":"2013-04-04T16:14:49","date_gmt":"2013-04-04T22:14:49","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/?p=20111"},"modified":"2020-03-16T14:33:49","modified_gmt":"2020-03-16T20:33:49","slug":"public-art-the-patron-the-paintings-and-the-place","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/public-art-the-patron-the-paintings-and-the-place\/","title":{"rendered":"The Patron, the Paintings and the Place: Changing the community with a public art commission"},"content":{"rendered":"

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It\u2019s all very Michelangelo. You\u2019ve got your patron, your artist and your building in need of a triptych. (It was just one painting to begin with, but the space begged for three and the patron graciously agreed to pay for them.)<\/p>\n

The building is the Natural History Museum of Utah where the work goes on display April 16, the artist is Mark Knudsen and the patron is Guilford Funston. As the three come together, the entire community benefits.<\/p>\n

The Patron<\/strong><\/p>\n

Guilford Funston became a collector when, following the death of his wife, his friend Darryl Drage, owner of Brushworks Gallery, told him he really needed to get a hobby. He took this seriously and now his Utah art collection, all of small paintings (because he has a small house), is said to be premier.<\/p>\n

\u201cMost people think with collecting they have to have something that\u2019s 3 foot by 3 foot. You can get a nice Randall Lake and it\u2019s only 10\u201d by 14,\u201d Funston says. \u201cThe first LeConte Stewart I got, it\u2019s just a small little sketch. Most people think, \u2018Oh, LeConte Stewart, you have to pay $10,000 or $12,000\u2019 \u2013 well, you don\u2019t. If what you\u2019re interested in is who the artists are and you want to put together a collection you can do it very reasonably. Collecting art is very accessible. People get confused about it.\u201d<\/p>\n

He encourages talking to the artist. \u201cSome, like [Jeff] Pugh, do big stuff. One of the things I bought was a study for one of his big paintings.\u201d Later, in talking to the artist, he said he had size issues and Pugh replied, \u201cGreat, I\u2019ve had something I\u2019ve been thinking about painting and it would look good in that size.\u201d And, Funston says, \u201cIt\u2019s a perfect Pugh.\u201d<\/p>\n

He has some rules: \u201cYou don\u2019t get between the artist and the gallery because that\u2019s not fair to anybody. But dead guys are fair game. You negotiate and play hardball on re-sales of dead guys but when I go into a gallery I don\u2019t negotiate. That\u2019s the price.\u201d (Unless, of course, they want to give him a deal.)<\/p>\n

Funston became a patron after his home simply couldn\u2019t hold more art. He determined it was time to give some to the public and commissioned the work from Knudsen. He points out that people have been doing this since the Renaissance: \u201cLook at what the Medicis did and the popes and even the Borgias. In some ways they did it to promote themselves . . . but to put art out there so that the population itself could enjoy it, to be able to say, \u2018OK the \u201cDavid\u201d is there. Everyone on the plaza is going to be able to see that and enjoy it.\u2019 It was appreciated as doing something for everyone.\u201d It is not, he emphasizes, about the person that commissions and donates it, but about the art itself getting out there. \u201cIt\u2019s something a civilized society does.\u201d He would like to see several families get together and fund a work for the NHMU or another institution. \u201cLet\u2019s be creative about art and where we can put it — and not just in the City & County Building.\u201d<\/p>\n

The Paintings<\/strong><\/p>\n

After a 30-year career as an artist for\u00a0The Salt Lake Tribune,<\/em>\u00a0Mark Knudsen is coming into his own as a painter of the New West: His fourth and most recent show at Phillips Gallery, this one with wife and former student Leslie Thomas, was a near sellout; he was in two shows at the Utah Museum of Fine Arts in 2010; and he is regularly included in the Charles M. Russell Invitational Auction in Montana.<\/p>\n

But it was two paintings that are hanging in the American ambassador\u2019s residence in Kuwait that got him the NHMU commission. A story, with photographs, about the paintings and how they were selected by the State Department to travel to the Middle East appeared in\u00a0The Tribune<\/em>and caught Funston\u2019s attention. As part of an annual event, members of the Copper Club, the museum\u2019s donor group to which Funston belongs, and NHMU officials went to the Salt Lake City couple\u2019s second home in Moab to see some of Knudsen\u2019s work. Afterward, the idea of a commissioned painting was born. (Funston would later acquire a Knudsen and a Thomas for his personal collection.)<\/p>\n

The group could see that Knudsen\u2019s art is singular, linear and literate. He takes a viewer to places no one else goes and includes things in some of his landscapes, like power lines and trucks stopping to gas up, that no one else does. Working from photographs, he makes the West real and irresistible. Sarah George, museum executive director, recalls, \u201cThey had some gorgeous work on display, and I already was familiar with Mark\u2019s. One key thing about Mark\u2019s work I\u2019ve loved from the very start is that he almost always includes some evidence of humans in his painting, and that is the way life really is\u2014I felt that this was an important element to include in the work, and told Guil so.\u201d She adds, \u201cOur mission is \u2018to illuminate the natural world and the place of humans within it.\u2019 Mark\u2019s work does exactly that!\u201d<\/p>\n

After learning landscape\u00a0en plein air<\/em>\u00a0as a youth from Vern Bullough, a student of LeConte Stewart, Knudsen studied under men he calls \u201cgiants\u201d at the University of Utah: Doug Snow, Tony Smith, Alvin Gittins, Earl Jones, George Dibble, \u201cthese hugely effective artists.\u201d At the time, he says, \u201cthey were just the water in which I was swimming. I didn\u2019t realize, as kids seldom realize, how lucky I was to be learning from these people. I doubt if there was a school in the country that would have offered better art training than the U when I attended.\u201d<\/p>\n

Knudsen painted small and in oil before a bigger studio and work at the newspaper caused him to make the transition to the large works in acrylics he is known for today. He recently shared a couple of secrets with his framer Travis Tanner: He does his skies by \u201cpainting fast as hell. You have to get it all down there before the paint starts to dry. I paint wet into wet to get dark to warmer light as it goes down towards the horizon. I do that on skies. But most of my gradients in paintings are achieved by scumbling. It seems to work pretty well for me.\u201d<\/p>\n

For this artist the Great Basin Desert is like Walden without the pond. He not only paints it, he hikes it, writes about it and philosophizes about it. (He is similarly smitten with the Colorado Plateau.) \u201cThe western cliffs flash, and thunder moves through the valley like darkness debating the light. . . . A line of homeward pelicans, fluent with purpose, crosses the horizon to the west.\u201d<\/p>\n

And birds are also central to each of the 2\u2019 X 7\u2019 paintings in the commissioned triptych. Knudsen checked all his literature to make sure each was in its proper range for the time of year he was portraying and otherwise just used birds he considers \u201cgorgeous.\u201d The peregrine falcon in the first work was taken from a painting he had done for\u00a0The Tribune<\/em>\u00a0in oils many years previously. Of the second painting, the artist says: \u201cRavens are ubiquitous in Moab and the Arches areas, you can\u2019t look at the sky without seeing a couple and they\u2019re also a very evocative bird and convey some of the edge and danger that is always lurking around the edges of a desert scene.\u201d On the day he shot the cliff face for the third painting from a motel balcony there were magpies flying about and, although the photo he got wasn\u2019t usable (the sky was all wrong) when he did the final work magpies were a natural choice.<\/p>\n

The sky is essential to these paintings, in part because they will hang at the back of the canyon in the stairwell just before you enter the Sky Gallery \u201cas a symbolic transition from the land (the galleries lower in the building) to the sky (the highest level of the facility),\u201d according to the NHMU director. George insisted that the sky progress from a sliver in the first painting to full sky in the last \u2013 a suggestion Knudsen initially resisted. He had intended for the scanty sky to be a unifying aspect to the triptych and feared \u201cjust ending up with three paintings.\u201d But, he says, her idea \u201cactually made me work harder, be more creative and undoubtedly have a stronger triptych than I would have had if I\u2019d followed my own first impulse; the reason being that the unifying principle instead of being static became a dynamic.\u201d The sky grew and the work clearly is even better for it.<\/p>\n

Rock formation is a major theme. Marjorie Chan, professor and past chair of the department of Geology & Geophysics at the U suggested that the rock layers in the cliff faces be arranged from earliest to most recent in time, something Knudsen wishes he had thought of himself. The first painting, \u201cThe View from Kane Creek Road,\u201d was set along that small tributary to the Colorado River nine or ten miles outside of Moab. \u201cIt shows Wingate sandstone with iridescent desert varnish on it,\u201d Knudsen says. The second painting is \u201cPark Avenue North with Ravens\u201d and depicts Entrada sandstone in an area of Arches National Park very near the entrance called, not surprisingly, Park Avenue North. \u201cThere\u2019s a hiking trail into it,\u201d the artist observes. The third one, \u201cCap Rock Ridge at Crescent Junction,\u201d is along I-70, \u201cthe Book Cliffs, looking north from 1-70 near Crescent Junction; it\u2019s Mancos shale,\u201d Knudsen says.<\/p>\n

A sense of place is something Knudsen hopes his viewers \u201cget\u201d from his paintings and he likes to show the kind of scenery people typically don\u2019t notice when they\u2019re on their way to the redrock country \u201cbut that is equally beautiful.\u201d He was delighted when a couple he\u2019d never met, but who had collected several of his works, showed up at his recent Phillips show with maps in hand, demanding that he point out precisely where each of their paintings originated. Knudsen in turn provided the museum with small images of each piece and Google Earth satellite photos of the exact places he painted.<\/p>\n

The Place<\/strong><\/p>\n

This isn\u2019t the first art commission for the Natural History Museum of Utah, nor will it be the last. \u201cWe made a conscious commitment early in the design phase that art would play a crucial interpretive role in this science museum,\u201d George says. \u201cWe felt very strongly that it is important to interpret science and the natural world from many perspectives, including the artist\u2019s perspective. Different visitors learn best using different media, and the art you find throughout the museum contributes to an aesthetic of beauty and immersion that creates in people a sense of excitement and interest. \u201c<\/p>\n

She points out that the museum has commissioned painted murals and landscape photos found throughout the facility. \u201cMy personal favorite is the Basin and Range photo in the Land Gallery by Adriel Heisey|2|<\/strong>\u00a0\u2014it is gorgeous, and when you look at it you totally understand the geologic processes that created that landscape.\u201d<\/p>\n

The institution used 1% of its state funding to commission the Land and Time pieces by Susan Narduli (which was named to the top 50 public art projects of 2012 by Americans for the Arts)|3|<\/strong>\u00a0and commissioned the terrazzo floor map of the Great Salt Lake prehistoric shorelines.|4|<\/strong>\u00a0It also has commissioned a lot of film.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe commissioned a variety of objects to be made by American Indian artists for our cultural gallery, Native Voices,\u201d the director says. \u201cA few of the many artists we worked with in commissioning materials included Mary Holiday Black\u00a0|5|<\/strong>\u00a0and Rios Pacheco\u00a0|6|<\/strong>. In these cases, we gave them free rein to create whatever they would like, with the only requests being a \u2018basket\u2019 and an \u2018outfit.\u2019 The pieces they created way exceeded our expectations\u2014they are beautiful and are truly labors of love.\u201d<\/p>\n

The four murals in \u201cPast Worlds\u201d were a close collaboration between NHMU paleontologists, exhibits director Becky Menlove, and the artist, Doug Henderson. \u201cBased on fossil evidence, he re-created four ecosystems for the four time periods we focus on in the gallery. The murals were then photographed, blown up, printed on billboard material and put on the walls,\u201d says George.|7|<\/strong><\/p>\n

A showstopper, of course, is the Simon Heijdens (simonheijdens.com) light sculpture \u201cLightweeds,\u201d the result of a collaboration between the artist and the museum.|8-9|<\/strong>\u00a0George recalls that she, Menlove and exhibit designer Tim Lee saw the artist\u2019s work at MoMA in 2008. \u201cWe\u00a0loved<\/em>\u00a0it and decided to inquire whether he\u2019d be interested in a commission. He was, and we were able to get an NEA grant. With that support, he spent a day in our herbarium looking at plants and talking to our botanist, and then selected four native species [Gambell oak, aspen, two species of ferns] that he subsequently \u2018built\u2019 into the interactive light projection.\u201d<\/p>\n

Such projects will continue, George says. \u201cWhen we have an opportunity to add art that contributes to the learning experience in the museum, we will do so. Just like we keep adding new dinosaurs — two since we opened!\u201d|11-13|\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n

She didn\u2019t say whether these were collaborative efforts.<\/p>\n

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