Friday, July 18, 2008
When the lights go on again 2
Related to the Oklahoma Classical Era that I've been discussing in Polistra's Dream. Because this happened in Tulsa in 1941, I couldn't quite jam it into the narrative. Nonetheless, it's a great story with an up-to-date Classical Revival at the end:
So she posed for sculptor Clarence Allen, who created a small version of the"Goddess of Oil", intended to be a 40-foot-tall centerpiece for the Exposition. But Pearl Harbor interrupted the effort.
Now a Tulsa organization is trying to build the full statue at long last.
The full story is here.
PS: Marjorie Morrow Anderson achieved her dream and became a successful artist. Samples of her beautiful work are here.
PS 2: It appears that Anderson died just last week. I was looking for more samples of her art and ran into an obituary, dated July 10.
The world has lost an excellent artist. ¶ 7:20 PM
It was boomtime Tulsa, the summer of 1941. Close to war, patriotism was at a fevered pitch and so was the oil business. The International Petroleum Exposition held here was a major international event, and to the big boys in the petroleum industry, oil really could be personified as a "goddess." A symbolic figure holding aloft a flame was what they wanted, and Marjorie Morrow Anderson had a face and shape for it. ... "I wanted to take art lessons, and decided if I got the job posing I'd use the money to pay for them," she said. She was working two other jobs at the time. She was born on Bruner Hill in a house with no indoor plumbing, she said. She knew what it was like to grow up hungry, and she always had to earn her own way. Having known poverty, she didn't like it.
So she posed for sculptor Clarence Allen, who created a small version of the"Goddess of Oil", intended to be a 40-foot-tall centerpiece for the Exposition. But Pearl Harbor interrupted the effort.
Now a Tulsa organization is trying to build the full statue at long last.
Tulsa was once called "America's most beautiful city," and the "Paris of the Midwest." The oil barons wanted to use their new wealth to create a city that could stand shoulder to shoulder with the great cities of the U.S. and Europe. ... Downtown was a beautiful, walkable, urban village where people could work, live, go to school, and play. Some even envisioned our city as being like Florence: a center for the arts and culture. ...
Yet now, a promising new wind stirs the air. Carried on this new wind is a familiar sound. The sound of people wanting spaces where they can live, work, shop and play within a beautiful shared environment. People are pushing for Tulsa to be great again. ... The "Goddess of Oil" is not only a testament to a cherished vision from the past, but also reflects a newborn appreciation of that vision today.
The full story is here.
PS: Marjorie Morrow Anderson achieved her dream and became a successful artist. Samples of her beautiful work are here.
PS 2: It appears that Anderson died just last week. I was looking for more samples of her art and ran into an obituary, dated July 10.
The world has lost an excellent artist. ¶ 7:20 PM
