Mort Kunstler Long Island Artist Telling the American Historical Story

The amazingly precise art of Mort Kunstler, Oyster Bay Artist, is being presented at the Long Island Museum in Stonybrook, featuring American History, Art, and Carriages.

 This exhibit fits in beautifully with the mission that I have come to know regarding their emphasis on teaching and  displaying Long Island Art and artifacts.

 Carriages.

Mort Kunsler is a Brooklyn born artist that lives in Oyster Bay.  His work is outstandingly faithful and accurate due to his artistic excellence, and to his pursuit of actual objects and places that he renders in each of his compositions.

 His work had been on display at the Norman Rockwell Museum in Stockbridge , Massachusetts.  But a collection of his art, incredibly varied, is on display at the Long Island Museum in Stonybrook. until May 30, 2016.   Mort Kunstler has the ability to portray historical events and themes with super real drawing and rendering.  The works are researched for authenticity.  He graciously smiled for me and was so charming and kind.

 The Art Museum housed in a separate building on the property, is up on a hill.  It has a majestic entrance.

 Inside the Mort Kunstler exhibit was presented.  It included illustrations, paintings for Movie poster art assignments, commercial art, historical oil paintings on canvas, gouache paintings ( an opaque form of watercolor,) a sculpture of a horse, preparatory drawings in pencil and charcoal, covers for magazines, and toy model kits, and  patriotic renderings of American History, and so much more.

 This is a composition of his 1942 Brooklyn Dodger team with their actual autographs.

 In this series of three paintings, Kunstler parodies a famous painting, Washington Crossing the Delaware 1851, Metropolitan Museum of Art,  by Emanuel Gottlieb Leutze.   The assignment was commissioned by the Yellow Pages Directory.  

My favorite painting in the exhibit was The Culper Spy.   It depicts Robert Townsend of Oyster Bay sitting in a room in Raynam Hall.  Abraham Woodhull, the first spy, signed his letters to Washington as Samuel Culper Sr., and Townsend  signed as Samuel Culper Jr.  This had special meaning to me because a few hundred feet from the Jarvis House stood the Widow Platt's Tavern.  Washington stopped there for lunch on his 1790 tour of Long Island.  He made that tour to inspect the topography, the soil conditions, the crops that could be grown here on Long Island,  but the subtext of his trip was to thank the Culper Spys that helped him win the Revolutionary War.  His lunch at the Tavern is noted by him in the journals that he wrote on this tour.    Kunstler went to Raynam Hall to authentically recreate the image of Townsend and Long Island history.

Anyone interested in a remarkable Long Island Artist should visit the Long Island Museum in Stonybrook.  People at this show were lovingly standing up close to the detailed paintings, in wonder that this artist could capture history in such a thorough and exquisite manner.

Theodore Roosevelt Sculpture at the American Museum of Natural History, NYC

On my bucket list for last year was a trip into NYC to the American Museum of Natural History to see and sit next to the very realistic bronze sculpture of Long Island's own past United States President, Theodore Roosevelt.

The trip involved a ride on the Long Island railroad, then on to a NYC subway to the museum's underground stop at 81st street.

There were amazing mosaics of animals on the subway walls.

Looking down, this was one of the floor tiles at the subway s top.

 Outside the front entrance to the museum, an equestrian sculpture of Roosevelt stands.

 It maybe because the design of this portrayal of Roosevelt is a bit too idealistic, that the museum decided to use a more human, trail blazing, adventurer styled bronze of the President.  His hat, binoculars, neckerchief, and explorer's clothing appear in the new bronze. 

 

 Quotations from Roosevelt are engraved into the building's facade.  The museum is a tribute to his life long interest in the environment and natural history.  There are exhibits inside from his youth, and lists of the National parks and expanses of land in the United States that Roosevelt set aside for  future generations.  Sometimes he had to go against big businesses and the houses of government to get this done.

 For the holidays, the Museum decorated the front steps with topiaries of dinosaurs.

 There is a magnificent display of the universe with huge models of the planets and the solar system, explaining the relative sizes of the heavenly bodies and the distances between them.

 As a child, I remembered the many beautifully designed, painted, and sculpted dioramas of animals and geography.  As an adult, I am taken by the efforts to replicate all of that by the many artists that worked on these creations.

 When I look at indigenous and primitive artifacts on display, I cannot help but connect these with modern artists that used them for inspiration.

 Fossils and

 recreations of ancient animals,

 dinosaurs full size on display,

 and the bones of past creatures reconstructed, so that visitors, adults and children can marvel at their size and ferociousness. 

 When I got to the museum, I looked for this particular diorama of a cross section of garden soil with its leaves and bugs.  It was still there, and still giant!

 Some of the exhibits are large and hanging,

 some are cast and small.

 One of the areas that I most enjoy is the portrayal of human development.

 Then, there is a area dedicated to minerals and gem stones.

 Huge crystals are displayed in the walls.

 Geodes and

 gem stones are on display.

 But the thing that made this trip to the American Museum of Natural History was the new realistic sculpture of President Theodore Roosevelt.  Visit the museum soon,and discover all of the things that you remember from your childhood visits, and see the new exhibits that make us appreciate anew, the contributions of Roosevelt. Located at Central Park West at 79th Street, NY, New York 10024.

Hanging an Exhibit of Paintings

Suzanna Hsu, a longtime friend and colleague from my art teaching days, asked me to help her mount an art exhibit of her paintings at the Half Hollow Hills Library.

 The gallery space was downstairs.  We carefully wrapped all framed paintings in blankets and placed them in our SUVs  back to back, front to front, trying not to damage anything.

Fortunately, the library was using the Walker Display, of Connecticut, system of hanging artworks.  The system consists of moldings, hanging rods, and two types of clips.  The beauty of this system is that you can slide the rods along the molding, and also slide the clips up and down on the rods, making the hanging of paintings simple.  It also eliminates putting holes in walls and  re-Spackling.

 The first paintings we hung came in a series of three square unframed pieces.  For this arrangement, we measured the clips on each rod to match, and used the large clip which notched into the back of the wooden stretcher.  We used the shorter rods because we did not want them to show below the artworks.  Each painting was placed, considering the directionality of the composition.  Some were left facing and some were right facing.

 Suzanna is adjusting the paintings on the second wall, for height. This second wall went quickly because the paintings were closely related in color and subject.

 We started with the center, and placed the largest piece in a dark frame, and worked outwards to the ends of the walls.  At first we thought that we should match the bottoms or the tops of the paintings, but later decided to split the difference and work from the center up and down.  The paintings were placed on the floor below the rods, at first, and  after shuffling them around for color flow, we put them on the rods, and adjusted them for height.

 We borrowed a ruler, ladder, and pliers from the library.  But we should have brought a 25 foot tape measure or a laser marker and level.  Anyway, we eyed the arrangement and it came out well.  Adjusting the paintings really took the two of us,  one on a ladder, and one at a distance.  Having someone stand back to look at the walls from afar, was essential.

On the third wall, Suzanna placed her favorite painting.  This was the wall which would be seen from one of the entry points.

 She steps back to see if the height is correct.

 We arrange the other paintings on that wall.

 On of the things that we tried to do was to get the colors to flow around the room in a continuous wave.  Colors in one painting were picked up in the next painting.

 

By moving the paintings around, we achieved this successfully.

The last wall was the most difficult because the paintings were less connected in color, and subject.  We placed them on the least prominent wall, the wall not seen from the stairs or from the entrance hallway.

 On this wall, the painting on the left continued the color scheme from the previous wall.

Suzanna Hsu

 She arranged a guest book for comments, and her calling cards.

Suzanna's exhibition is open to the public for the month of April, 2013.