It almost comes across as a dirty cliche, if you invite a sculptor on a horse packing trip with a group of other artists, the sculptor, especially if they focus on animals, is going to sculpt a horse. From the outset when I was invited by the Oh Be Joyful Gallery in Crested Butte, Colorado to join a horse packing and art trip with other artists, that was my commitment: “DO NOT SCULPT A HORSE!”
I have nothing against horses and my mother was convinced she would make a rider out of me when I was younger but I spent more time flying off of the darn things than I did sitting on top of them.
With that said the world of equine art has been well trodden for centuries if not millennia and I just felt my contributions could be made better elsewhere. Okay, perhaps it is in my nature to be a bit of a contrarian, but I was serious. Taking the easy route, or doing the expected, for me is seldom interesting.
Although we did see some foxes on our way to this wonderful trip, and a cow moose and her calf, and even though the outfitter had an incredibly personable cow dog, what did I sculpt? A HORSE. Oish! There goes everything, right out the window!
It is common that when artists get together to do art together outside under the open sky that they naturally think of other painters as there has been a long tradition of planting and Plein Air, but less so for sculpture. I couldn't hold it against the trip organizer– the artist and owner of Oh Be Joyful Gallery Nicholas Reti–-but he gets huge points for thinking to invite this outlier artist and his family along for the trip.
While I did bring some acrylic paints and sketchbooks to enjoy the two dimensional take on life, my heart always falls back to the three-dimensional world. Over the years I developed enough of my own set of tools and equipment, inventing many of them along the way, to comfortably sculpt en plein air. A few of these trappings of the trade were brought on this trip. I have a turntable that clips into any commonly available camera tripod and I often pour my modeling wax into a cookie pan, allowing it to cool into thin sheets that are easier to handle and quicker to warm up and soften in the ambient sun.
In the end, I relented on my commitment of not sculpting those horses. It was my growing affection for them after they hauled all of us up along those winding mountain trails above 10,000 ft. So, I stepped into the corral to get a closer view of the horses and possibly to work on a piece.
That's how I met "Grizz."
One pack horse in particular, named Grizz, decided that HE was going to be the model and none other. What a character! Grizz nosed and hip checked his way in front of the other horses, nudged my sculpting stand, nuzzled my head with his neck, and on and on for hours! It's hard not to reward that kind of determination. You can watch me trying to sculpt amid his shenanigans here:
I've learned over the years that you better get every bit of information from your subjects that you think you might need back in the studio—and then double it—before leaving the field. It is Murphy’s law that once you go home and the moment is over, you wish you had made one more sketch, taken just one more photo, but there's not going back.
So, I made a rough sketch of Grizz in my notebook and at first, due to a lack of tape measure or any other measuring device, used a stick that was broken to the length of the horse’s skull, to find his overall proportions. As I petted and praised him, I gently placed the stick, and later the tape measure, gently along his shoulder, legs and other bodily parts to gauge relative size. Ultimately when one of the wranglers came back to camp with a tape measure, a more formal survey with actual dimensions could be taken based on the various bone landmarks poking out just beneath the skin—top of the shoulder blade to the joint with the upper humerus, point of the sternum to the back of the pelvis beneath the tail—and converted to metric units. It's always easier to reduce and enlarge proportion in metric than English units.
The back and forth exchange between painters, draftsmen and sculptors in settings like this is a thrill; each one of us has our own unique view on things and it has a way of influencing the others in a mutually beneficial way. The other fantastic artists on the trip included painters Nicholas Reti, Taylor Crisp, Ralph Oberg, Jim Wodark, Katie Dowling, Tracy Schwartz, and filmmaker Brendan Hall....each with their wonderfully unique perspective on the high country landscape. Jenny and young George got to go along as well, each having the chance to work on their own art and photography.
As it turns out, three of the other artists on the trip took a break from their plein air paintings and tried their hand at sculpting as a result of my bringing enough extra wax. Each got to learn how to make their own tools in the field— something that is much harder to do for a painter than for a sculptor—and how to best use them when modeling the horses.
If one is truly pursuing the arts in its highest form, one has to stay open; open to the possibilities, and open to the chance that things may not go as planned. Forcing them to go the way you want is usually a recipe for frustration, and yes, even disaster. The beauty in life is celebrating what the world brings your way. Whether Mother Nature serves up some overcast light over your mountain vista or an insistent, sociable pack horse, the ‘good stuff’ comes when you learn to roll with it. And, along the way, you often meet some incredible people and have some extraordinary experiences. I'm grateful to Nick, Tracy and the gallery for creating such an opportunity for magic to happen.
I enjoyed this study so much that I am planning to cast it. Existing collectors only can reserve a piece before it’s released to the public through the Oh Be Joyful Gallery. Estimated retail $600, edition of 22, 5.5"L x 1.5"W x 3 7/8"H. If you're interested in this piece you can contact me directly or Oh Be Joyful Gallery.
Visit George's full gallery here.
You can read more sculpture stories here.
Images and video © Jenny Golding
