Dallas Anderson is a local sculptor. He is best known for the large public sculptures "
Playing in the Rain" in Riverside Park, Neenah and "
Ring Dance" in City Park, Appleton. The
Appleton Art Center currently has a show on which is a retrospective of his work, and in association with that show they offered a tour of his
studio, which I attended yesterday.
About 12 of us attended, 5 who work with the Art Center and the rest interested patrons. We drove from the Art Center to Dallas Anderson's house. His studio is a large structure in the back, a big open space with tall windows and a peaked roof like a barn, and then an office in the front. He greeted us personally. He's 77 years old and due to some recent health problems walks with a cane, and is very deliberate in his speech, but he's still very smart and thoughtful, and has a lovely dry sense of humor.
He started by telling us his overall aim in art, which seemed an odd way to start but the themes carried through in everything his said so they really are the foundational principals of his life's work - he said that his work is to capture a certain truth, a human truth about the things he chooses as his subjects. And that sometimes when working against a deadline, one can fall short of fully attaining that truth, which can feel shameful, it's better that time is not of the essence.
After this introduction he invited us into his office, which he described as a mess but to me it looked like nirvana - a desk facing a window, a set of bookshelves held up by stands that looked like carved teak ladders (very 1950's, something I can imagine my Dad having in his early life), a big wooden table covered with photographs - some of models, some of finished works, some that were clearly just inspiring shapes and images. We spent quite a bit of time in this room, where he spoke deliberately and precisely to describe his entire career, tracing from the time when he was 2 or 3 years old and watched a WPA worker sculpting little animal shapes - a giraffe, an elephant - out of clay. He spent more than 18 years as a teacher, which might be why the explanations were so precise - he could explain in a single sentence the impact a certain event had on his development, or the idea he was trying to achieve in a certain work, or the aspect of the story that was most amusing.
He spoke in such a relaxed, reflective way that one might have thought he was putting rambling thoughts together, but in fact it was a careful and complete autobiography. He explained all the major periods of work that are represented in the show. The earliest work there is a wood carving that he completed in his final year as an art major at St Olaf College in Minnesota. He said, "A teacher will set a certain challenge, which one responds to; that was to be a work with two holes." And he looked up at us and smiled, because his work is so much more than just a work with two holes. It's an abstract piece but represents a human figure reading skyward, in shapes that almost look like flames. It's called Human Ascent, and he said his idea was the human ambition to go beyond and rise above.
He also talked about his period as staff sculptor for the Rev. Robert Schuller (who I saw advertised in the paper just this morning for a motivational speaker tour - I guess he's moved away from the religious broadcasts). Schuller wrote a book called "Tough Times Never Last, But Tough People Do", and for that, Dallas did a monumental sculpture out of marble depicting Job, who is the ultimate representation of that theme out of the Bible. He talked about size - in this work if Job were to stand he would be nine feet tall (I think he said nine). He said the size amplifies the figure in the surrounding environment, just as rock musicians amplify their voices to fill the space at a concert. He said this is important in a park area - the kids in Ring Dance are life sized plus 20%.
He also talked about how classical human figures are idealized, and you can see this in many of his works, especially those with Bible themes - the figures are stronger, taller, more beautiful, more ascending I guess you could say, than ordinary people. And in his public works especially where he depicts children, they are completely innocent, completely beautiful, with calm smiles on their faces. Most of his girl models came from the local ballerina school, so they are lithe and graceful with dancerly poses. My first impression of these sculptures was that they were a bit twee, a bit too nice. But in the Art Center show there are also some very powerful pieces depicting human struggle - one just called "Struggle" with a mass of human figures striving to hold up a granite block above them; one called "Adam and Eve" with the figures on opposite sides of a while marble block, Adam in that same struggling pose bent to hold up the marble above him, Eve in a post of utter shame, her elbows up and arms raised to cover her face, which you can't even see because it's hidden up in the raw stone. And the best one, the clay figures that were models for "Peace Be Still", depicting the story of the apostles being caught out in a storm and Christ walking across the water and commanding the wind and waves to be still so they could get home safely. The Christ figure didn't move me at all, it's a bit over the top and sanitized, but the apostles struggling against the storm are just amazing, depicting the whole range of human responses to trouble, from strength and courage to paralysis and despair. Robert Schuller canceled this work because of its "turbulent nature". I have been back to see it three times now and am still moved. Dallas Anderson is known for public works that depict unmitigated fun and innocence, and most of his professional life was funded by religious institutions (he taught at BYU before joining Schuller in California), but the retrospective shows that he understands the full range of human emotion and experience, and because he is such a skilled craftsman he can use his representational talent to express these harder truths and move us.
In the show there are a whole group of pieces, about a foot high each, of school children. These make a wonderful collection, but in a way go against all the other themes. He did the pieces when touring in area schools in 1989-1990. He would visit the school and find one child who "was outstanding", whose manner and movements interested him enough to make them his subject. He would meet with the child, and then visit the school and do a sculpture demonstration, creating an image of their classmate in clay over an eight-hour period. These pieces were all created quickly, on tight deadlines, and instead of heroic classical figures of human striving and amplified ascent, they are in the Roman tradition of literal realism. Many of them show little kids in winter coats, and one is of a boy in a fall jacket with shoulders hunched up so his hands go inside the cuffs of the sleeves - the women on our tour loved that one especially, "because you know kids will never wear their mittens." The set of pieces makes a collection that depicts Wisconsin childhood, and they're just lovely and fun and realistic.
As the last part of the tour, he invited us back into the main room and he unveiled two pieces he's working on at the moment, both busts of prominent artists in town. Most of the folks on the tour knew the men, and gasped at how much the pieces resemble them, but Dallas didn't feel they were finished. As he talked he rubbed at them with his thumb, in turns - walking back and forth the few steps between the two stands, a smudge to define the line of the brow on one, a small scrape with a broken stick to create patterns in the hair of the other. It was amazing to see the thumb of a master sculptor, in contact with the clay, so commanding and looking like it was almost a part of the sculptor. As he worked he talked about the men and the process, and how the existence of plastic bags made it possible to continue working over a long period. Back in the days of having to soak sheets and bedspreads to cover the clay to keep it moist, you couldn't walk away and leave it, you had to press on and work every day, which, again, affected his ability to find the truth he was seeking in each piece. Someone asked how long he'd been working on the first piece and he first said, "You're not supposed to ask that," and we laughed, but then he answered, "Two years." He said, "Time is definitely not of the essence. Once you pass 70..." It's good advice for all of us to follow. As he worked he became more absorbed in the shapes, and just before we had to interrupt him because we had to go, he had grabbed a rather thick shaping stick and, with a look of stern determination, started scraping strongly along the hairline just at the figure's right cheek.
The time came for us to go, and he thanked us for visiting and asked us to sign his guest book. Each person shook his hand. And my ringer, the host from the Art Center, said, "Ellen, did you get your signature?" So she helped me - I procured a pen from someone else, got out my book in which I'm recording Hunt events, and presented it to him to sign.
He wrote his name and the date first, and then you could tell he was trying to think of something to write, but as we hadn't conversed during the tour nothing came to him, so he wrote "Best Wishes", saying "There's nothing particularly original about that message." But what made it original is that it came from him.
Here's a picture of the book itself, which now has white clay dust on the opposing page and in very slight finger prints on the back cover.
