SOG to be included in Art & Antiques article

[Garth Herrick]

Originally Posted by Linda Brandon

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

[Sharon Knettell]

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.

[Garth Herrick]

Originally Posted by Sharon Knettell

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

[Michele Rushworth]

Gorgeous! Why is it called Leonardo's Horse?

[Sharon Knettell]

Garth,

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

[Elizabeth Schott]

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

[Garth Herrick]

Originally Posted by Michele Rushworth

Gorgeous! Why is it called Leonardo's Horse?

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

[Garth Herrick]

Originally Posted by Sharon Knettell

Garth,

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

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

[Heidi Maiers]

I

[Garth Herrick]

[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