By Nicole Diseker
Director for the Centre Art Gallery and SE alumna, Janie Umsted has worked as a professional artist for over 40 years. Through her passion for artwork and volunteering with organizations in Durant such as Red River Arts Council and The Durant Main Street Program, she was given the opportunity to design a sculpture of Dixon Durant for Market Square.
The unveiling ceremony took place Jan. 21 in Market Square. Chief Gregory E. Pyle and Assistant Chief Gary Batton of the Choctaw Nation were honored guests that day. Umsted said the two are very close friends of hers.
“It’s really obvious I’m proud to be Choctaw,” said Umsted.
The ceremony was the first time Umsted had seen her work of art in a year and a half. She said it was the highlight of the whole experience.
After the Durant Main Street Program was founded in 1997, revitalizing downtown Durant became their main focus. A statue was discussed as a possibility, but it would be almost 20 years before this would become a reality.
“At the time we started talking about a sculpture. Someone mentioned a bronze and investigated the cost of putting it together and it really scared everyone away,” said Umsted.
The Red River Arts Council gave money, but only enough for a pedestal. This pedestal would eventually be the base of Umsted’s sculpture.
Umsted was part of the team from RRA to design the marker. They chose images of Dixon Durant, founder of Durant, Ira Eaker, whom the local airport was renamed after, and Robert L. Williams, the third governor of Oklahoma.
“After the pedestal was finished, we didn’t touch the idea again until about five years ago when we began to plan for a statue,” said Umsted.
RRA then created a contest of sorts. They requested designs for the statue from artists, afterward a panel would judge the artists’ concepts entered.
“When I was coming up with my idea for the statue I knew that it had to be Dixon Durant,” she said.
Once her design for the sculpture was chosen, it became incumbent on Umsted to figure out a way to create it on a budget.
She went to the RRA to see what kind of a budget she was to work with. The city of Durant would also provide money from a Local Challenge grant to fund the project.
Umsted chose to do the sculpture pro bono.
“I knew how important it was to me, and I felt I could do it without any pay,” she said.
It was Umsted’s responsibility to find a foundry, someone to caste the statue. J&S Manufacturing in Wilson would prove to be much more helpful throughout the entire process than Umsted had imagined.
“These guys agreed to help me out knowing I had never done anything like this before,” said Umsted. “They were very encouraging and helpful. They kept me positive and gave me plenty of tips along the way.”
Creating this bronze sculpture required many different steps.The first step in the process was making a base.
“Sculpture, when working with something as large as this, you have to create an armature. Something to give it form and shape. I was using things like rebar, pieces of metal bars welded together,” said Umsted. “Then I had to find something to fill the rest of the body with around the rebar.”
She used Styrofoam, plastic, aluminum foil, polyurethane foam. Once she had the right thickness and the shape she wanted, she then dressed the mold with real clothing she had purchased from a used clothing store.
“I wanted the clothing to be fairly authentic-looking. I started dressing this human shape in the clothes,” said Umsted.
“I used a lot of batting and many cans of polyurethane foam in little bits in order to shape it just right. On the outside I remember using a very strong fabric stiffener from Hobby Lobby and Elmer’s glue,” she said. “I made my own concoction. I had to paint layers of this over and over until I felt it was the hardness I wanted.”
She then began applying an oil-based clay. She chose this clay because it wouldn’t dry out over the time it would take to make the sculpture. The clay had to be lightly heated so that the texture would be just right.
Umsted didn’t want the sculpture to look stiff. Next she had to consider how to give the statue the illusion of movement.
“I wanted the fabric to have movement and I wanted him to look as if he were about to take a step, so I had him holding a Bible in one hand and a hickory stick in the other,” she said.
Umsted used a real Bible that had once been given to her when she taught art at Durant High School to create the mold. The hickory stick is a reference to Dixon Durant’s original hometown.
“I had a real passion for this project. I knew it would be a plus in the end to have meaning to the sculpture,” said Umsted.
“I knew ahead of time that I wanted a rougher, more textured appearance,” said Umsted. “You have to get the pieces to stick together, so I pinched and pushed it into the clay already laid down.”
According to Umsted, this type of sculpture is considered additive, because you’re starting from nothing.
“All I had to work with was a flat, two-dimensional photograph. So I had to use my husband to pose for me sometimes. I would take photographs of people in the community. I needed a profile and back shot, which I didn’t have,” said Umsted.
Umsted was trained to pay a lot of attention to anatomy.
Once the sculpture was finished, the question of how to get it to the foundry in Wilson arose.
“We didn’t want it to get damaged en route, because the clay was still soft. My husband had borrowed a covered trailer with good suspension so the sculpture wouldn’t be shaky. We put the figure in a crate, strapped and secured it in. I wanted to ride back there with it but my husband wouldn’t let me,” she said with a smile.
When they reached their destination, J&S Manufacturing Co. took over.
The first thing they did was paint a layer of liquid latex upon the figure. They did that in sections, layer upon layer. They had to weld it all together again in the end, like putting a puzzle back together.
After the flexible latex mold, they applied a harder mold. After this layer, Umsted said it resembled a giant mummy.
After this caste was made, the clay was removed.
“Section by section, they pulled it apart. They pulled each piece off of the original clay form. They no longer needed my sculpture now,” said Umsted.
But since they couldn’t just completely fill the void with bronze due to the weight and cost to do so, they used what Umsted referred to as the lost art of hot wax.
They filled this void with multiple layers of hot wax until the wax was about half an inch thick. Then they applied one last mold, which filled the space left after the half inch of wax was applied.
There were three layers now, two molds, a negative and a positive, with wax in the middle. To remove the wax, the form was placed in a furnace. The wax was poured out, leaving the two molds once again. Finally, molten bronze was poured into the thin space left by the wax.
“Once cool, they took off the outer mold. But it didn’t look anything like the sculpture you see today,” said Umsted.
The bronze was shiny and slightly yellow with many imperfections.
“That’s when the real hard work began,” she said. “They had to grind off all the imperfections around the seams and fill in the air pocket holes. Then they shined it, buffed it and put a patina on it, giving it that dark color you see on the sculpture now.”
The entire process of creating the sculpture took almost 15 years, from the designing of the pedestal to the finished bronze sculpture that was placed upon it.
“I have this big Zen feeling about it. Everything just fell into place. Even the day of the unveiling, the weather was cold and blustery, but the sun came out and it was just beautiful,” said Umsted.