Linda Strong sculpts four life size horses for mall - by Gussie Fauntleroy - Strong, a Santa Fe sculpture, had been chosen in a nationwide competition to create a bronze horse sculpture as the centerpiece for a new fashion mall in white plains, N.Y.
After six months of intensive work, Strong completed the bronze horses at the end of February and had them shipped to New York, where on March 16 she will addend a black-tie reception honoring herself and other artists who created works for the mall.
Strong's sculpture, An Afternoon Gallop, is the largest she has done to this point. The 8-foot-tall stallion weighs 1,300 pounds and splashes through a 30-foot-long green marble fountain, the mare and filly following close behimd. Surrounded by palm trees, the fountain is in the center of a three-story-tall atrirm in the mall.
As soon as each full-scale clay model was complete it was shipped to a foundry in Prescott, Ariz., to be cast.
Geno Miles then assembled the cast pieces and studio assistant Michael Mass did the finish work, creating a water-resistant gold and green patina on the horses.
"When that truck (shipping the sculpture to New York) pulls out, I'm going to find a big pinon tree where no one can find me for two or three hours and take a nop. Then I'll go for a (horseback) ride."
Born in Albuquerque, Strong moved with her family to Santa Fe when she was 3 and had her first horse by the time she was 7. She remembers riding to the movie theater, tying the horse behind the theater and going to see a movie.
A couple of years later, she went through a 36-hour ordeal that left her scarred for years and deepened her appreciation for the sense of freedom horses represent for her.
Strong said she was kidnapped and held for a day and a half by a female doctor demanding $20,000 in ransom from Strong's stey-father builder Allen Stamm.
Strong wasn't physicallyy harmed, but in her young mind, Strong could make no sense of the terrifying experience and for a long time afterward wondered if she herself was somehow responsible, she said.
Meanwhile, she began a lifetime of involvement withe art, her second love after horses, As a teen, Strong studied under Joseph Bakos one of the Concos Pintores, of Santa Fe. For two summers she built stage sets and costumes for the Santa Fe Opera.
And she watched her mother. a ballet dancer who instilled in her a love of the fluidity of graceful movement, which she later learned to translate into figurative sculpture.
Formal training came at the California College of Arts and Crafts and the San Francisco Art Institute, as well as five years of working at Shidoni Foundry, where she learned all aspects of bronze casting.
In 1979, Strong created the Children's Fountain, of Santa Fe.
Before beginning the mall sculpture, Strong was in the process of welding a 16-foot-tall steel horse out of horse shoes and barb wire, she will finish it now that the mall piece is done.