Creating (and selling) Art in Coaldale

The following is an article written by Mike Rosso and published in the July edition of Colorado Central Magazine:

Tooling along U.S. Hwy 50 between Canon City and Salida at 60 mph, it's easy to zoom right past the hamlet of Coaldale, nestled on the banks of the Arkansas River. But adventurous travelers might want to consider taking a break from the hot asphalt and stop under some cool, shady cottonwood trees to visit the Art Post Gallery at Itty Bitty Lakes and artist Robert Parker. Bob's got his art studio and gallery pen to the public most hours and for those willing to linger a while longer, might get a chance to tour; his wood-sculpting studio, his painting studio,and his monument and steel sculpting studios. Visitors might even get to meet the resident llama, Braveheart and Andalusian Donkey, Bailey. Bob and his wife Kay might be tempted to show off the small lakes, once part of a fish hatchery. All this in what was once the Coaldale Post Office. The point is - sometimes it's worth slowing down to experience the real deal - an artist committed to his work and a rural lifestyle that is the envy of many a strung-out urban resident. His whimsical metal sculptures, hand carved birdhouses and spiraling wood walking staffs are just some of the ways he chooses to express himself through art - talents he has been honing for many years.

We caught up with Bob in Coaldale during a rare moment of inactivity on his part to pose some questions about his background and his work.

"Matilda" 8 foot tall steel sculpture

When did your art career begin?

 I have needed to express myself visually probably since I was born. I sold a few pieces in high school and then more work at Northern Arizona University and University of Arizona while getting my BFA w/ Honors. The last time I was employed by anyone other than myself, I worked for Arizona Training Program at Tucson.  I created a couple dozen wall murals for the students and the residents. That kicked off my career. That was in 1973 or 1974.

Did you have an alternate career path?

 Throughout most of college I had a double major - Creative Writing and Sculpture. One day, almost four years into the process, I decided to become a writer. I transferred to U of A in Tucson where they had a great Creative Writing Department. In Admissions they determined I could not get a writing degree unless I completed two years of a foreign language. My memorization skills are very weak so that day I became an artist.

Any formal schooling/training?

BFA w/Honors in Sculpture from Northern Arizona University

How long you have owned Itty Bitty and a little background on the building and how you came to own it. 

I first came to Bighorn Sheep Canyon on New Years Day 1980. We settled in Cotopaxi and started the purchasing process in 1984. It was a process because I had little money and no credit. In effect I rented the property with an option to purchase with the monies paid applicable to the principal. I had no equity until 15 years later we paid the note off. It was a huge risk, but I always believed that if I worked hard enough we would be able to own Itty Bitty Lakes outright. Kay was a wonderful help and because of her we were able to own it five years earlier than originally planned.

The property was a State leased fish hatchery in the 1930s. Through the years a campground was added, the main building was added to and became a community grocery store, pool hall, post office, diesel garage, information center, real estate office, apartment rental and finally home, studios and gallery for Kay and I.

Did you do shows on the road? If so, where and for how long?

I have shown  and sold in museums, art centers, National Parks, National Monuments, Indian Reservations, wildlife preserves, galleries, stores, convention centers, hotels, officers clubs, military bases, university campuses, residential treatment centers, renaissance fairs, corporate offices, race tracks, city streets, city parks, sculpture parks, shopping malls, strip centers, casinos, coffee houses, restaurants, bars, Arabian ranches and private homes. I have pretty much continuously owned an art gallery (sometimes two) since 1988. I think that brings the total to over 600 shows spanning about 40 years.

Harvester Kachina (not in original article) 24" x 48" acrylic on canvas

How did your interest in portraying native Americans begin?

I grew up in Tucson close to the Papago (Tohono O’Odham) and Yaqui lands. College was just off of the Hopi, Navajo and Apache lands. I lived with a couple of Anthropology graduate students and one Saturday they asked if I wanted to go with them to a Hopi Kachina Ceremony. From that day I was captivated. I also studied ancient European and British cultures and mythologies, but couldn’t afford to go to Europe to study castles, ruins and artifacts. I could study the ancient cultures and mythologies, ruins and artifacts that were virtually in my own back yard. The Hopi Ceremonial Dancers were my first focus. Later, my focus became the Anasazi ruins, artifacts and primarily their ceramics.

Eventually it all led me to Mesa Verde National Park. Mesa Verde became a major force in my artistic life that continues even to the present.

You work in a variety of mediums - do you have a favorite and why? 

For many years I worked in a dozen mediums. Even though my degree was in sculpture, it was very difficult for a young artist to sell sculpture and even more difficult to have the space and tools to create sculpture. Most art buyers at my level were more interested in paintings, drawings and fine crafts and paintings could be created on the road with less need for expensive equipment and space. Over the years the mediums became fewer with my focus being acrylics and pastels two dimensionally and bronzes, wildwoods and eventually steel three dimensionally. For the past six years almost all of my energies have gone into monumental wildwood projects and whimsical steel sculpture.

At work on Harriet, a big steel bird. Photo by Kay Parker

How long have you been able to make a living in art? (by make a living I mean not having to work for someone else)

It has been 36 years since I have been otherwise employed and before that art was the focus of my employment and education.

Who are some of your artistic influences?

Sculptors from Michelangelo, to Rodin, to Henry Moore, to George Lundeen all have a place in my work. I have also studied painters galore. When it comes to wildwoods and steel I am pretty much on my own. At my age it is probably better that way. It is important to study who has gone before and closely watch my contemporaries, but at some point one needs to take that mass of research and study, shake it all up and create one’s own work.

How about some thoughts on the art market in general?

Ploowy! The art market and I don’t see eye to eye. I am too old and cantankerous to worry about it. I won’t change it and it definitely will not change me. I live to create and be a viable member of my family and community. That is enough.

What inspired you to do the large tree pieces (what do you call them anyway?)

Mesa Verde and a 700 year old juniper forest that was uncut, ungroomed and virgin. I started seriously sculpting and finishing wildwoods thirty years ago. I started with a hiking staff format, went to vases and other small sculptures, on to larger works, always asking the tree what where it wanted to take me. It became a joint project, the tree and I, until finally the entire tree became the subject. I would create more sculptures in this genre, but space, location and funding for interior monumental work is very scarce.

"Can't Get These Damn Crows Off My Tail" 4 ft Juniper

Any other thoughts you'd like add would be helpful.

People are often surprised that I work in a variety of mediums. For me this is simply a sane approach to making the creative statement. What can be said in pastels and acrylics not only differs from each in two dimensions, but is different both in form and viewpoint than what can be said in Bronze. Focusing in,- what can be said in bronze, which is an additive form of sculpture with translations from one substance - malleable clay - to another - molten bronze,  and what can be said in steel which is also additive, but requires working in an incredibly rigid substance that refuses to be bent in three directions simultaneously, to wildwood which is totally subtractive and infused with the personality, limitations and history of the individual tree I am working with (all make my complete artistic statement).

Into the above creative equations I mix emotion and the human experience with attention to detail and finish. My individual works are often diverse, sometimes to the extreme, but as a body of work it all flows to become a single lifetime’s observation of the universe and how this artist is reacting to it.

I enjoyed the above article, as I enjoy virtually every article in "Colorado Central Magazine". I highly recommend it to any of you who are interested in the various aspects of life, history, politics, travel and most other elements of Central Colorado. You can subscribe to the magazine at www.cozine.com  .

 

Let Freedoms Work

Last year Kay and I were passionately fighting for healthcare reform. We signed countless petitions and wrote letters to our Congressmen and to our President. We went to rallies both as supporters of health reform and as protestors of the anti-reform movement. We listened to speeches of candidates and office holders alike. I even made a few. Our initial dream was for a single payer system as personified in John Conyers’ HR676. But as the months wore on Single Payer was dropped and we continued to fight for first a Public Option and later extending Medicare to cover far more people. These efforts failed yet still we were able to bring into being, real (though flawed and diluted) healthcare reform. We call it Obamacare.

One of the many reasons we fought so hard was that we were two of the 45 million Americans who were un-insured.  We were insured in the past but realized that while taking a large portion of our monthly income the insurance policy we had would eventually only pay less than half of any major hospital bills we might incur in the future. We canceled the policy and went looking for more reputable insurers. This was when we found that for us they simply did not exist. An agent from Blue Cross Blue Shield came to our home to sign us up. During the interview and application process we were informed that because we both had skin cancers previously removed Blue Cross would never cover either of us for any cancer ever. Then when informed that I had once had mildly high cholesterol which had been lowered successfully with diet and exercise, the agent told us Blue Cross would never cover any heart related condition or event ever. Kay has the mildest of asthma so Blue Cross refused to treat any respiratory ailment of Kay’s ever. Needless to say , we bid the agent a polite farewell.

So there we were healthy (I had never spent any time in a hospital) and active, hoping to stay that way until we would qualify for Medicare.

Every April, 9Healthfair comes to our canyon and to Salida. This year along with my usual blood work, I had a PSA test done. I had it done a few years ago and really knew nothing about it. I didn’t know what PSA was or how it mattered. It was recommended so I said, “Sure go ahead.”

A few days later I received a phone call from 9Healthfair telling me to see my doctor immediately. I had a PSA level of 13. That phone call sent me on a journey that changed my life for ever. I had prostate cancer. I was un-insured. My urologist after reading my biopsy (a process that took two months itself) told us my cancer was aggressive and there was no cure. He said there was an 85% chance the cancer had spread outside my prostate. He shook his head a lot and while giving me treatment options implied I was going to die.

We were shocked, stunned depressed and scared. We knew nothing good of the system and nothing about prostate cancer, where to go for treatment or how we would pay for any treatment we received. The biopsy alone set us back significantly even though the good doctor gave us a deal.

It is now more than six months later.  Due to intensive research by my sister Dr. Cindy Parker, my brother-in-law Dr. Steve Shapiro, Kay and myself; Due to incredible support by family, friends and even people we do not know well or in some cases know at all; Due to Obamacare’s Pre-existing Condition Insurance that in Colorado is called GettingUSCovered; Due to one of the nation’s finest surgeons undertaking a new minimally invasive surgery; And due to finally being accepted as a patient at one of Colorado’s premier hospitals I am at least technically cancer free and back to leading a productive life.

As I have written earlier, I believe the corporate right is effectively keeping progressive media on an unequal footing with what has become the NeoCon’s Tea Party Propaganda machine. If an American has access to a television or radio they can and most likely will be subjected to the likes of Fox News, Glenn Beck, Sean Hannity and Bill O’Reilly or AM radio’s Rush Limbaugh and Michael Savage and a host of other mouth pieces for the likes of Big Oil, Big Health Insurance and the Republican Party. The same is nowhere as true for progressive media. Obamacare’s unpopularity can be easily traced to this problem. The right spins deceit and lies about Obamacare while the left has a much smaller platform to inform the public about what is in the healthcare bill and how Obamacare is saving lives and improving the quality of life for probably millions already and most people in the future.

Here is where we come in. We are poor and definitely not famous. We have very limited media contacts, but we do have a story, we are creative and we can work hard, so we are organizing a group of people to work to bring explanations and defense of Obamacare on a point by point basis and to bring progressive thinking to more people in our region. While our base is the active Democrats of Fremont County we will also be working with people of many diverse disciplines and areas of expertise.

For months we have been nibbling verbally around the edges of this problem, discussing possibilities and obstacles.  Now we are beginning to act. On Thursday December 2, 2010 we held our first meeting to begin the hard planning towards increasing our progressive media footprint.

First, Kay and I along with Gloria Stultz and Dick Carney are going to go public with our story and to help show people what Obamacare really is and how it works. It did save my life after all.

Second, we hope to buy a column in the local newspaper (s) that will be dedicated to explaining the new healthcare system on a point by point basis and other progressive issues. We want the column to build into a once a week affair.

Third, we are starting a feasibility committee to look into the possibility of starting up a community radio station in Canon City and any other ways of reaching people through their radios and their computers.