Wednesday, November 4, 2009

NRECA Commission Update

I'm at the Vermont Studio Center for two weeks, taking advantage of the long working walls and three good meals a day to finish my commission for the NRECA. The approach I'm using for this mural is "WPA Meets Post-Impressionism", combining a stylized landscape with vivid color shapes.

The paintings span from east to west coast, with each panel representing a different region of the United States. The architecture stands in for "the people" here, and every type of building represents a different population--rural, suburban and urban.


Power lines, a generation plant, and a dam also help tell the story of how our country was electrified. Bringing light and power to communities across the United States was a mission of Franklin Roosevelt's "New Deal", and very controversial in its time. It's hard to believe now that anyone would find it dangerous that our government would help a farmer put a light in his barn, or a housewife run an electric washing machine rather than use a scrub board, or a family listen to the radio in their lonely prairie home. But maybe our children will look back in fifty years at our fights over health care and other social programs, and wonder what the fuss was all about.

6 comments:

  1. Susan:

    you write nearly as well as you paint and the issues depicted in your painting remind me of the conflict in rural America between power generation and open space.

    Our family ranch is colocated with a nuclear power plant on the bare coastal prairie of Texas...we have bald eagles and the 24/7 dull hum of the plant..

    I saw Mak Dejehja yesterday out in Old Town. he is such a neat guy...very sharp. You have quite a wonderful group of students..will be seeing Cindy this weekend.

    all best..Helen

    ReplyDelete
  2. Susan:

    you write nearly as well as you paint and the issues depicted in your painting remind me of the conflict in rural America between power generation and open space.

    Our family ranch is colocated with a nuclear power plant on the bare coastal prairie of Texas...we have bald eagles and the 24/7 dull hum of the plant.."nature" in the 21st century.

    I saw Mak Dejehja yesterday out in Old Town. he is such a neat guy...very sharp. You have quite a wonderful group of students..an extensive fan club! I will be seeing Cindy this weekend.

    all best..Helen

    ReplyDelete
  3. Susan, you're making lovely progress. We at NRECA look forward to the installation. I look forward to seeing you again. It has been a gazillion years since to did that drawing for the cover of NAEB's Public Telecommunications Review I edited. So much water over the dam and under the bridge!!
    -- Eleanor Miller

    ReplyDelete
  4. I absolutely love the mural! I look forward to seeing it in person one day.

    ReplyDelete
  5. Dear Susan,

    This is a very interesting project you are doing!!!
    I just love your choice of colors and the way your style links together rural land and generation plant!!!
    When and where will we be able to see the finished painting?
    (Sorry for my bad English I am a French-Canadian from Montreal)
    By the way, I enjoy looking at your website

    ReplyDelete
  6. Thank you for your comments! I've delivered the paintings to the printer in Washington, DC, who will be producing digital reproductions about 1.5 times larger than the originals. These prints are being mounted in the NRECA headquarters meeting room in Ballston, Virginia later in November, in time for their annual meeting. NRECA will frame the originals for display in their building. I'll post the installed mural on the blog as soon as soon as I have a photo.

    ReplyDelete