SOG to be included in Art & Antiques article
 

I was just interviewed by the writer for the article about commissioning a portrait. I know Nelson Shanks was interviewed also. Not bad company! I'm told it should be the April issue.

:thumbsup: :thumbsup: :thumbsup:
Congratulations, well deserved!

Ditto Chris :thumbsup: x3

That's great! I'm looking forward to seeing it when it comes out. Can you let us know? I like to print these things out and put them in my portfolio.

Congratulations, Cynthia! This is wonderful news!

Thank you all! Yes, I'll let you know when it's out.

Oh I love that magazine!

Way to go Cynthia, what a wonderful feather in your cap!

I used to suscribe to that magazine and I loved it. It is a very classy venue. Congratulations Cynthia!

A Kingdom for a Horse.
 

That's wonderful news, Cynthia! It is a classy, well respected magazine and has always been.

My "Horse" sculpture was featured in the September 1990 issue. I think I could have been famous. Unfortunately they got the sculptor's name wrong, as Garth Williams the book illustrator! They apologized in the November issue. It was an awesome experience though to watch the professional photographers spend a whole morning just balancing the output of the multiple flashes. An unforgettable day!

Congratulations to you and Stroke of Genius!

Garth

The first and second images are a two page spread. The third image shows some of Capt. Dent's extensive art collection (which no longer exists).

Wow, Garth! I want this horse for my studio. I'd even settle for the hoof!

You are a very talented guy, even if you're not Garth Williams.

Thanks Linda! I will gladly make you another Horse.

Cynthia, I apologize for hijacking your thread.

Sincerely,

Garth

Garth,

You mean that terrific sculpture no longer exists. What happened?

As to my lapsed subscription. I was running out of shelf space and just let it run out. I think I will resubscribe now.

I stopped my American Artist magazine subscription when they put Thomas Kinkade on the cover and started featuring his column.

Dear Sharon,

It was exciting and exhilarating to be at the middle of that high visibility sculpture production between 1988 and 1991. The sculpture I generated had enough scholarship credibility to garner quite a bit of publicity and press in those years. In 1992 this Horse was cast in Fiberglas, and exhibited worldwide. I don't know where this cast is hidden now. Capt. Dent wished on his deathbed in 1994 for me to see the project to completion as the sculptor. However, the Leonardo's Horse, Inc., Board of Directors had other plans and engaged another artist with a bigger name than mine in 1996, who completely revised the Horse away from Capt. Dent's aesthetics and vision to a very modern and stylized horse that was unveiled at a racetrack outside Milan, Italy in 1999. Meanwhile that same Board let the original sculpture disintegrate to the point where it had to be tossed into the dumpster literally! I guess this is the end of the story. The moral I would like to pass on is to all here is to never create anything as an artist under a "Work for Hire" agreement. That is almost always bad news. I had zero rights to what I sculpted for three years of my life!

While I never actually signed any "Work for Hire" type agreement or any contract while sculpting this Horse, it was considered work for hire because this sculpture was commenced a year prior to the Berne Convention in 1989, which revolutionized artist's copyrights and moral rights on a world wide basis. From 1989 to the present, an artist automatically has the copyright in all his/her creations unless the artist specifically signs in a written agreement that the work in question is a work for hire. Works created prior to 1989 may have no such copyright protections. Something to think about!

Below is the Horse I sculpted in May, 1991:

Garth

Gorgeous! Why is it called Leonardo's Horse?

Garth,

I forgot to mention in the last post that I DID SEE that article and I remember what an amazing project that was.

Garth... so much talent, so little time! Wow!

Oh Michele,

Thanks for your interest!

I guess I should back up and explain this from the start. The late Charles C. Dent was an airline pilot, self taught artist, lifelong collector of Italian renaissance and antique bronzes, French impressionist paintings, and visionary for a better world. Upon forced retirement from flying at age 60, he needed something really big to do for the remainder of his life..... So why not complete that Equestrian monument planned to honor Ludivico Sforza in 1493 that Leonardo da Vinci was commissioned to create beginning in the 1480's, but for many technical and political impossibilities, it never quite happened. Fast foward 500 years, and Capt. Dent is resurrecting a dream Leonardo lamented having never completed on his deathbed. As it turned out, Dent also lamented the same on his deathbed in 1994.

I met Capt. Dent in the summer of 1986 (that was an unbelievablely WOW experience, as he was building his geodesic Dome Studio) and made it perfectly clear I intended to work with him on his dream. In March, 1988 he formally invited me to begin sculpting the eight foot life sized Horse! What an adventure that became!

We (Dent and I) based the conception of this horse on the extant drawings and accounts of Leonardo da Vinci, as they pertained to this Sforza equestrian monument commission. We had close communications with all the leading da Vinci scholars around the world. One Japanese scholar tried to knock the wind out of Dent's dream by creating a 26 foot tall Sforza equestrian monument of his own (in white fiberglas), which was unveiled in Nagoya, Japan in 1989! On April 19th, 1991, for breakfast and discussion, 40 of the world's leading scholars gathered together in the Dome Studio around the sculpture I made in the photo above (including that one scholar from Japan), during an international symposium held in honor the Horse sculpture at Lehigh University. Wow, Wow, wow is allI can say about that day! I felt so humbled in the presence of these scholars and art historians.

At this point, the sculpture seemed complete, so there was not much else for me to be employed about this project. It was still difficult to raise the several million dollars needed to cast this beast in bronze, and unfortunately Capt. Dent died waiting for his dream to be fulfilled. What transpired after his passing is another whole chapter.

Below are two pictures from the spring of 1988 (sorry about their poor quality), that show the beginning of this sculpture: a cartoon after Leonardo scaled to life size, and the armature under construction.

Wow, I really have hijacked this Art & Antiques thread now! (Sorry!)

Garth

Sharon, I am always amazed at how many people I meet on an everyday basis, clearly remember reading about this Horse!

Here's an excerpt from that September, 1990 Art & Antiques article:

These sketches by Leonardo were highly influential on our sculpture (and it did seem like a loony project, even to those involved in it).

Garth

I

[QUOTE=Heidi Maiers]
Garth, what a fascinating experience that must have been. And from the looks of you(?) in the photo, you must have been all of what

I can only imagine what dramatic turns of events this Leonardo's Horse project must have immersed you in, especially the fact that it has to do with visionaries' dreams, and crossing a few centuries no less.

There must have been SO much heart and soul poured into the project. I am very sorry it turned out the way it did in the end. But as some would say "It is better to love and loose than not have loved at all"

Thanks October,

You express your thoughts so nicely, I think I feel the same as you have expressed it. I'm glad to have given the Horse my best effort. Just like our last election, things don't always go the way you hope or expect they will; but life goes on anyway, with new challenges and dreams to latch onto.

It's funny, given the nature of Capt. Dent's art collection surrounding me in the Dome, it was not hard at all to feel immersed into fifteenth century Italy. However, when I tried to complete the effect by playing 15th century Italian music on the LP, sonorously projecting out of a tiny walkman speaker filtering down 50 feet from the top of the Dome, the rest of the staff cried in horror to return to the eighties! The Dome itself could be a loudspeaker. Listening to period music Leonardo might have heard, was definitely going TOO far!! :D

Garth

This topic was closed because it went totally off-topic. Per Forum policy, posts should be kept on topic.

I received my complimentary copy of Art & Antiques magazine yesterday. I don't know if it's yet on the newsstands. But, I've scanned it and you can view the pages here:

http://portraitartist.com/graphics/m...tiques-pg1.jpg
http://portraitartist.com/graphics/m...tiques-pg2.jpg
http://portraitartist.com/graphics/m...tiques-pg3.jpg
http://portraitartist.com/graphics/m...tiques-pg4.jpg

Good for you, Cynthia, and thanks for posting the scans!

This is WONDERFUL publicity, Cynthia, which you so well deserve! I can't wait for this to hit the news stands.

Garth

Very impressive Cynthia! Thank you for posting the article, I enjoyed reading it.

Jean

Well, of course, I'm happy for them to recognize the site overall, but the most important thing for me is the potential clients it brings for the artists.

Thank you, all!

It is nice to see that Art and Antiques has done an article on how to solicit portrait artists and in particular on educating their readers about the process of obtaining beautiful works of commissioned art. Cynthia, the mention of

Great article, great recognition! Your diligence and hard work deserve to be highlighted!!

Thank you Enzie, Chris and Jean. I see "getting known," whether for my site or individual artists, as a growing thing. The more places you can be seen the better and the more chance you'll be seen more places.

Cynthia I must say when I picked this issue up downtown where I have my hair cut - everyone in the place had to suffer through a presentation of your site! HA!

Simmie looked great and you were right, he is as nice as can be, very generous with his time!

There is nothing like having SOG mentioned in a magazine that uses premium paper! :thumbsup: Your hard work must pay off constantly!

Congratulations, Cynthia! This is a wonderful article which I'll keep for my files. Thanks again for all your hard work, it is much appreciated.

SOG, in many aspects, supplements deficiency of government agencies, schools and art magazines, to name a few.

For instance, SOG represents some of the first-rate China born artists, while a known art magazine failed to do so.

Just think of the condition of SOG: it is a new enterprise, without financial support, with minimal staff, and so forth, yet it surpassed those are already established, well funded, therefore deserve better expectation. But they are disappointing.

Cynthia did give me a big boost. SOG is a GOD-Send gift for me.

Me too.

Thank you everyone - makes my work worthwhile! Unfortunately, I learned that the image captioned as Ron Sherr's is not his.

Cynthia,

There is always an upside - an editor's correction which gives another article/exposure in the correction.

Cynthia,

I remember when I first met you in New york, was it 5 or 6 years ago? You showed me your site. I had never seen or considered anything like it.
I had always somehow considered the internet somehow tacky until I saw your elegant site, so I signed up then and there!

I am so proud to be a part of such a classy venue that has only increased in reputation and regard over the years.