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The God he believed
in gave Willard Stone a superb gift—a mind and a soul and
hands that could transform a block of wood into rhythm and
movement and poetry. Stone, the wood sculptor, is the study
of humility, quiet warmth and penetrating vision. He was a
man close to the soil. He lived on a rocky hillside farm
east of Locust Grove, Oklahoma. In this rural setting,
surrounded by children and animals, he found his
inspiration. As a boy, Stone knew the harshness of the land
as well as its beauty. His father died when he was an
infant, and his mother raised the family, working as a
sharecropper in the cotton fields near Oktaha, Oklahoma. An
accident (a dynamite cap explosion) almost destroyed his
zeal for living at the age of 13. His keen interest in
drawing was thwarted by the loss of portions of his right
thumb and two fingers, and he withdrew from school. His
natural ability found a new outlet—that of modeling in clay
the things he knew. Willard always relished rainy days, for
as a boy, they provided his only respite from the cotton
fields.
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Walking
home, he could scoop up damp, red clay from the
banks and carry it home to mold into animals and
things in nature with which he was familiar.
Friends, aware of this, encourage him as a teenager
to enter his work in the Muskogee State Fair. His
models drew the attention of Grant Foreman, the dean
of Oklahoma historians. Foreman was impressed with
the talent of this reserved, part-Cherokee boy, and
he encouraged him to seek formal training. Stone
entered Bacone Indian College in 1936. Acee Blue
Eagle and Woody Crumbo began guiding him along a
path of an artist. They soon discovered that he
already knew much of what they had to teach him, so
they made a studio for him by cleaning out a storage
closet. Here he began to develop his own style of
sculpting. He would search for the exact piece of
wood, which would portray with color, grain, and
mass, the image he strove to produce. As he worked
with wood, his fascination with the medium grew.
After leaving college, where he won national
recognition, Stone discovered that a knife and
chisel earned little money for food for himself and
his bride. For several years he worked at common
jobs to support his growing family. In the 1940s,
oil patron and art collector, Thomas Gilcrease, gave
him an opportunity to strive for perfection and feed
his family at the same time. A three-year grant as
an artist in residence at the Gilcrease Institute of
American History and Art made it possible. Today,
the Institute owns a large collection of his work,
particularly from that period. During his tenure at
Gilcrease, an art critic wrote, “This young artist
shows promise of becoming the finest wood sculptor
in the United States . . . any subject seems to lend
itself to his individual effulgent style.” Upon
leaving Gilcrease, Stone againfound it difficult to
support his large family with “critic’s praises.”
Some people sought him out to buy his carvings, but
he still found it necessary to work—first as a
pattern maker with an iron firm and die finisher
with an aircraft firm in Tulsa. Experts, slowly, one
by one, |
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across
the country began to “discover” this “rare genius”
that resided in an unknown community somewhere in
Oklahoma. Galleries began to respond, and
individuals became more insistant in their demands
for his work. By 1961, it reached the point where he
could resign his regular job and devote his hours to
his art. His sculpture became so popular with
collectors, and he had such a backlog of
commissioned pieces, that he found it difficult to
retain enough pieces to honor exhibit requests. This
schedule continued until his death from a heart
attack on March 5, 1985. |
Willard Stone was a
Non-Government Enrolled Descendant Cherokee American.
Although he was of mixed heritage, his Cherokee heritage was
most important to him, and he raised his children to be
proud of this heritage. He sought to preserve this through
his art. The Cherokee Nation of Oklahoma adopted Stone’s
“Exodus” sculpture as that Nation’s logo. He would always
find time to represent the Cherokee nation at local, state
and national functions. He was always encouraging young
artists—of all nationalities—to be all they could be. Stone
is buried in the Stone Family Cemetery at his home in Locust
Grove, Oklahoma. Also located on this farm is the “Willard
Stone Museum,” which houses the largest collections of his
works.
Willard Stone
had a native sense of line and form which won him
recognition as the foremost wood sculptor in the United
States.
His work is
highly stylized, emphasizing the aspect of the subject which
best expresses the idea he had in mind. With a chunk of
wood, a chisel, a hammer and a pocket knife, he comments on
the pathos of “Today’s Full Blood” waiting for commodities;
captures the bond of love between mother and child, and
transfers human foibles to fur and fowl.
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Stone’s is an
art concerned with human values. His workshop stands behind
the house where he and his part-Choctaw wife Sophie have
nurtured ten children. Life permeates the Stone farm. There
is always a human element in his work, and animals represent
the Indian’s attitude toward the wild life around him. It is
in his creative pieces—those he conceived and developed for
his own satisfaction—that Stone demonstrated his genius.
These are the pieces that are so alive, so fluid, so
dramatic, so expressive. To produce a piece, Stone sketched
his mulled-over idea on paper, then selected a seasoned wood
that had the right grain and suited the color of the
subject. His figures are executed in maple, walnut,
sassafras, cherry, and Oklahoma red cedar. He felt that the
warmth, the color, and the grain of wood made it the ideal
medium, and that by playing the grain, the sculpture was
strengthened. He sketched on the chosen wood, blocked it out
with a knife and chisel, and then, slowly and precisely,
carved the details with a pocket knife. While in this phase
of work, Stone worked without stopping until he had created
the image he sought. The pieces are intricate in detail and
striking in appearance. Many of them have flowing lines and
a feeling of movement. After the carving was completed,
Stone would work for weeks on the finish, using linseed oil
and polishing the wood with his hands. With the finished
piece on the shelf, Stone would go “pishin,” as his then
4-year-old Rocky called it, to relax and clear the image
from his mind. He sought solitude, more than a string of
catfish, to sit and sketch ideas for future pieces.
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A critic and
personal friend of Stone has written:
“Stone combined the
Indian’s love of symbolism with his deep understanding and
appreciation of nature, and the result is art that
transcends its regional origin and becomes universal in
expression. Nature is his source of inspiration, but he
renders is in terms of personal interpretation, rather than
in terms of imitation. It is this dimension of his work that
gives it stature in the ranks of contemporary American art.”
For all of his
life, Willard Stone worked in the same simple crowded
studio, striving to create the perfect pieces of sculpture.
“A
man spends his whole lifetime trying for perfection, but he
never makes it . . . this is for God alone.”
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