America Seen in a Minor Key
Illustrator Reveals Heart, Heartland at Crystal Bridges
Last updated Thursday, August 7, 2008 5:57 PM CDT in Weekend
By Becca Bacon Martin
The Morning News
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Uniquely American entrepreneur Sam Walton and illustrator Wendell Minor never met, but you might say they were cut from the same canvas. It seems perfectly appropriate that Minor's uniquely American art will be showcased this summer at Alice Walton's Crystal Bridges Museum.
Minor was raised around Aurora, Ill., a smallish city he refers to as part of "the rural heartland" and "fly-over country." His father was a World War II veteran turned machinist - "a blue-collar guy" - and the family table was often set with squirrel pie or rabbit stew. Minor says proudly that his mother, after quitting high school to help her Depression-era family make ends meet, earned her equivalency diploma at the age of 45 and was director of the nursery school at her church for 35 years.
"We had Field & Stream (magazine) and the Bible in the house," he recalls. "If you wanted an art education, you went to Shafer's Drug Store and looked at magazine covers."
Discovering Art
Minor did just that. And what he saw - things like the Saturday Evening Post covers by Norman Rockwell - steered him toward his lifelong avocation.
"Art critics like to criticize the American narrative, but American illustration is fine art for a mass culture," he asserts. "It's something we live with every day, and yet it's so anonymous.
"Thomas Nast created the donkey and the elephant (political symbols) - oh, and the modern vision of Santa Claus! Winslow Homer was a narrative reporter of the Civil War for Harper's Weekly. Thomas Moran went west and stirred up interest in Yellowstone, the first national park. There's power in them there pictures!
"When I was working in the slaughterhouse after high school, getting up at 3:30 in the morning to clean the barns and haul the hides, I knew it was purgatory at best," Minor adds. "I thought, 'If I have one scintilla of talent, I'd better get on with it.'"
Art Discovered
Again, he did.
After completing his studies at the Ringling School of Art and Design in Sarasota, Fla., in 1966, Minor began creating book covers for publishers in New York - and he soon found his name associated with a library full of best-sellers: Pat Conroy's "The Prince of Tides," Fannie Flagg's "Fried Green Tomatoes," "To Kill a Mockingbird" by Harper Lee, "Alaska" by James Michener, "Terms of Endearment" by Larry McMurtry, "1776," "John Adams" and "Truman" by David McCullough and pretty much everything Fayetteville author Donald Harington ever wrote.
It was the just the beginning. Minor has received more than 250 awards from major graphics competitions, and his work has been exhibited at a score of venues including the Norman Rockwell Museum in Stockbridge, Mass. In 1988, he was among artists commissioned by NASA to document the shuttle Discovery's return to flight, and he's a popular lecturer at schools and colleges across the country.
Now 64, the cowboy boot-clad illustrator has reached a prominence in the art world he could never have imagined in his youth. On Saturday, he'll add "solo show at Crystal Bridges" to the list of his accomplishments.
"I think the work will speak individually to each person," he says of the two-month exhibit, which includes 64 original illustrations and 22 children's books Minor has illustrated. "I hope (viewers) will go away with some curiosity: 'What's that picture about?' A good picture is like a puzzle with a piece missing - that last piece is you, the viewer."
"Minor has said he is focused on American history and the American sense of place," says Lynn Berkowitz, director of education for Crystal Bridges. "His work is in the tradition of classic American painters such as Homer, Hopper and Wyeth. Rich in color and precise in detail, Minor's illustrations capture the authenticity of our country's natural beauty. We are excited to showcase this exhibition, which is so well suited for Crystal Bridges at the Massey."
Art With Purpose
For many years, Minor has directed his art along the trail his heart follows - nature, the environment, patriotism and instilling the passion for all of those things in children too often plugged in to television and video games. Activities at Crystal Bridges will invite young people into the gallery to see and learn - and remember, he hopes.
"It's incumbent on all of us to know not only our country but its history," he says. "I'm fascinated by American folk art because this is a country of immigrants, people who left their home countries to re-create themselves - and in the process, they re-created their vision as artists.
"We have a strong and unique American vision."
Minor credits much of his personal vision to his father, who "dragged" him into the fields and forests and never settled for good enough, and to a sixth-grade teacher who read to the class for half an hour every day.
"If nothing else, I hope the books I do on the environment will touch some kids," he says. "As PlayStations and iPods affect a younger and younger audience, I'm trying to do books for a younger audience. You have to get kids interested!"
To that end, Minor has collaborated on a score of books for children: "Christmas Tree!" with his wife, Florence; "Reaching For the Moon," a picture book autobiography of astronaut Buzz Aldrin, the second man to set foot on the moon; "Yankee Doodle America: The Spirit of 1776 from A to Z," which he wrote and illustrated; "Luck: The Story of a Sandhill Crane" by Jean Craighead George; a new edition of "Nibble Nibble" by Margaret Wise Brown; "Ghost Ship," Mary Higgins Clark's first picture book for children; "Sitting Bull Remembers" by Ann Turner; Robert Burleigh's "Abraham Lincoln Comes Home," out this month; and in December, his second collaboration with Florence, "If You Were a Penguin," will be published.
"We're still in that period of romance with technology - any new technology has to seek its proper proportion in our culture," Minor says. "But read to a child for the first seven years of his life, and you've given him a gift for the rest of his life.
"We do these books in the hope that they change people's lives," he says. "I may not know the specific stories, but when I'm struggling in the studio, wondering if I'm just pushing these paintings out the door and into a black hole in space, it's good to know people have taken notice.
"Twenty-five years ago, I was thinking seriously of becoming a gallery painter," he muses. "My heart and soul are really in landscape painting. But I wondered, going into the 21st century, how best might I communicate to the largest audience possible? Books will reach the kid I was at Shafer's Drug Store."
On Show
'Wendell Minor: In the American Tradition'
Dates: Saturday through Oct. 19
Gallery Hours: 10 a.m.-5 p.m. Thursday; 10 a.m.-8 p.m. Friday; 10 a.m.-5 p.m. Saturday; and 1-5 p.m. Sunday
Schedule of Events:
Saturday - 10 a.m. and 2 p.m. Meet Wendell Minor at the Bentonville Public Library
Saturday - 11:30 a.m.-1:30 p.m. Family Time at the Massey: Discover Art
Thursday - 10:30-11:15 a.m. Preschool Story Time featuring books by Wendell Minor at Crystal Bridges at the Massey
Aug. 21 - 1-2 p.m. Art Buzz: Guided Tours of the Exhibit
Aug. 22 - Noon-1 p.m. Lunchtime Movies at Crystal Bridges at the Massey
Aug. 26 - 6-7:30 p.m. ArtBook Teen Talk Part I with Lynn Berkowitz, Crystal Bridges director of education, at Bentonville Public Library
Sept. 23 - 6-7:30 p.m. ArtBook Teen Talk Part II: "The Red Badge of Courage" with Sue Ann Pekel, children's librarian, at Bentonville Public Library
Admission: Free
For information, call 418-5700 or visit massey.crystalbridges.org.
Artist in Print
Children's books illustrated by Wendell Minor include:
• "If You Were a Penguin" by Florence Minor, due out in December
• "Cat, What Is That?" by Tony Johnston
• "Ghost Ship" by Mary Higgins Clark
• "Nibble Nibble" by Margaret Wise Brown
• "Reaching for the Moon" by Buzz Aldrin
• "America the Beautiful" by Katharine Lee Bates
• "Rachel: The Story of Rachel Carson" by Amy Ehrlich
• "Into the Woods: John James Audubon Lives His Dream" by Robert Burleigh
• "The Red Badge of Courage" by Stephen Crane
• "Snow Bear" by Jean Craighead George
Adult book covers by Minor include:
• "Truman" by David McCullough
• "The Prince of Tides" by Pat Conroy
• "Fried Green Tomatoes" by Fannie Flagg
• "To Kill a Mockingbird" by Harper Lee
• "Alaska" by James Michener
• "Terms of Endearment" by Larry McMurtry
• "Butterfly Weed" by Donald Harington
- Source: www.minorart.com
The Words of Wendell Minor
'A picture invites a viewer into it and offers a sense of mystery. It lets the viewer become part of the process. A good picture, like a good story, is timeless.'
'If we lose touch with nature, then we lose touch with ourselves.'
'I think this country needs heroes again.'
'A book can be around for decades - possibly longer. If that is the mark of what you do, every book had better be your best effort.'
'I still work with paints and brushes and pencils. Oftentimes I feel like the village blacksmith seeing too many Model Ts come down the road.'
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