Details And A Sitting

Sculptor Bridgette Mongeon has been collecting period clothing and absorbing everything she can about Grandma Gatewood and the Appalachian Trail. Many Women from her Houston Women’s Hiking Group have been helping her to work through a pose, collect period gear, and finally put a pose together for a client to approve through a photographic sitting. 

A photo sitting with a pose is essential for several reasons. 

• It helps the artist define the gesture and angle.
• It helps the artist figure out how the sculpture will fit into the setting (Fitting in the location is very hard when you need to know exactly where you will place the second sculpture of Grandma Gatewood on the Appalachian Trail.)
• The artist can look at folds and lines, fabric, and details.
• A pose is the beginning of finalizing a design, which in turn affects the landscaping around the sculpture as well as being able to complete the costs involved with placing a sculpture. (Again, the artist can only confirm the total costs for the sculpture once she confirms a second location. Two of everything -two sculptures means two installations, two deliveries, and two areas to the landscape.)

This portion of the process helps the artist connect to the subject. Bridgette puts herself in the place of her subject. What energy does she want to portray in the sculpture? What is the subject thinking and feeling? One person told her, “You develop a relationship with the deceased.”  Indeed, She and Grandma Gatewood, are spending a lot of time together.

Please consider donating to the Grandma Gatewood Statue project, through a GoFundMe or by contacting Paul Maxwell at Ohio Valley Memorial Gardens. 

Where Will Grandma Gatewood Be on the AT?

When sculptor Bridgette Mongeon and Paul Menzell from the Ohio Valley Memorial Gardens first got together about the project of a sculpture of Grandma Gatewood, the idea was to create one sculpture that would sit on Grandma Gatewood’s Grave.

Bridgette also longed to bring Grandma Gatewood back to the Appalachian Trail. Two sculptures are easy. It means the artist sculpts one design and casts two bronzes. One for the trail and the other for the cemetery, but where would a sculpture of Grandma Gatewood go on the Appalachian Trail?

Finding a place for Grandma Gatewood is a big challenge. The Appalachian Trail is over 2,190 miles and 14 states; according to the Appalachian Trail community,

“There are 51 communities along the Appalachian Trail’s corridor that have been recognized in the A.T. Community™ program. These towns and cities are assets for everyone who uses the A.T., providing food, supplies, recreation, history, volunteer opportunities, and so much more. Find special events and promotions, plan your own A.T. adventures — whether for an afternoon or for multiple days — and explore everything these communities have to offer.”

Bridgette, Paul, and the Grandma Gatewood family have some choices, so where will Grandma Gatewood go? There are all sorts of hurdles in getting Grandma Gatewood back on the trail. How can we place her on the trail without encroaching on designated land that may have regulations? We have our eye on some places. But for now, it is a mystery. We do hope to announce soon once we finalize all the details. So stay tuned.

Searching For Clothes

It may appear quiet in the studio, but it does not mean we are not busy with the Grandma Gatewood Statue Project. Trying to find vintage clothes, i.e., pants, shirt, and shoes, in the model’s size, has been a big undertaking, and slowing our progress to a crawl. I’ll also be looking at glasses. Her glasses did not appear to have wireframes in many pictures, but we have to have wireframes for bronze. We might even have to beef them up. After all, we don’t want anyone coming and stealing Grandma’s bronze glasses. The glasses are the least of my worries. I can get them relatively quickly. It is the clothes.

The steps in this part of the creative process are:

1. Find clothes.
2. Schedule a photo sitting. In this photo sitting, we will try several poses and present the best to the cemetery and family.
3. We may have to have a second sitting once we decide on a pose. In this sitting, I take photographs all around the model. These will be my reference, and will soon litter the floor and walls, like the pebbles on the trail.

How to pick the right pose?
We would like to raise enough funds for two sculptures. This process of picking a pose is tricky, as we must pick one that will work in both spots. One statue will go to her cemetery plot, and the other will go somewhere near the Appalachian Trail. The second bronze statue’s placement will have more factors in the pose and how it relates to its surroundings. Finding a second place would help us know the best pose in the studio. Sure, I could do a, here is “Grandma Gatewood,” like you see in most of the images of her- a static pose. However, I don’t believe Grandma Gatewood was ever “static.” I’d like to see her in motion.
I have posted the clothing search on the Houston Women’s Hiking group. I’m chatting with two members who are helping with the search. Someone called yesterday and said they have shoes, and Tammy, a member of our group, is getting measurements on Grandma Gatewood’s homemade bag and making one for me.

Meanwhile, I search the internet for vintage clothes and hope it all comes together soon. Stay tuned. We are getting there.

Photos: Top- My intern pulling together a wire armature for me to use in making the maquette.
Bottom-a friend from Houston Women’s Hiking helps with ideas.

From Bridgette Mongeon’s studio.

Trail Days

May 19, 2023- May 21, 2023, was Appalachian Trail Days In Damascus, VA. You may have seen Paul Maxwell there talking about the Grandma Gatewood Statue project if you went. You can’t miss him with the banner and postcards he was handing out. Thanks to fundraiser team member Christina Sizemore for creating the banner and postcards to bring attention to this worthy project. There are other images we would have loved to put on the postcard and banner, but we didn’t have any that were high resolution and needed something fast. They turned out great. Image-Paul Maxwell- head of the fundraising committee, Anne Van Curen is an actress on the fundraising committee. Matthew Myers is a friend of Paul’s that first told him about Grandma Gatewood many years ago.

Many thanks to Ben Montgomery for providing some signed copies of his book “Grandma Gatewood’s Walk.” Olive Stirckland from Bristol, Tennessee, was one of the Lucy recipients. Olive is a fan of Grandma Gatewood. Paul said she knows more than most adults.

Meanwhile, Tammy, a friend of the artist and a member of the Houston Women’s Hiking group that Bridgette Mongeon- the sculptor, maintains, was hiking a bit of the AT trail at the same time as Trail Days. She took it upon herself to try and get some fliers placed in different areas and establishments along the trail areas. Please let us know if you would like the file for the postcards or flyers. We would appreciate you helping us get out the word. We have a lot of money to raise.

There are tentative talks about placing a second life-size bronze in the edition along the AT in Damascus, VA. More on that later.
Any help you can give the fundraising team to get the word out about the sculpture is greatly appreciated. To donate go to the Grandma Gatewood Go Fund Me.

Grandma Gatewood Brainstorming

Friday night was Grandma Gatewood night at my studio. I invited some members of The Houston Women’s Hiking group. Everyone has been so encouraging on the group. They have been posting their stories about the AT and sharing their thoughts on Grandma Gatewood, her pose, clothes, etc.

Wanting to keep them in the loop, I opened my studio to talk about creating a life-size sculpture and brainstorm some poses. I had already put a call out for models for the statue. These people will dress like her and pose in the pose we decide, and I can take reference photographs all around the model. Reference photos will help me with the folds, sculpting, and proportions.

After several poses, I wondered, “What if we had her going up?” Could we put her on a slight berm where she is going up and have some bronze rocks at her feet, like she is on the trail? It was a productive evening, though we broke the stick three times. We are still working out the design. Now on to finding clothes for my model. And of course fundraising. We still need to raise the funds for this project. Please donate at the Go Fund Me page.

Meanwhile, Paul Maxwell went to trail days to talk about the sculpture—more on that in the following posts.

How do you start a sculpture of a person you have never met?

From Bridgette Mongeon’s Studio
The most important thing is getting to know my subject through those who knew and loved her. I’m having regular conversations with Grandma Gatewood’s granddaughter and, of course, immersing myself in everything Grandma Gatewood.

I would like to video conference with other women who have studied her. Women like Dixie – Wanderlust, who studied what Grandma Gatewood used on her hiking trips and tried to hike like her. Or Ann Van Curen, who recreates her in performances.

What pose would people relate to?
What images of the many photos on the web do I use to influence me in my process? We have settled on Grandma Gatewood wearing pants. Although Grandma Gatewood used scarves, she will not have a scarf in this sculpture. She has to have her sack, which I’m told –
“Her bag was canvas, she made from fabric. She had more than one bag that she used over the years. Denim or khaki colored canvas sturdy cloth.”

I have posted on Houston Women’s Hiking, the hiking group I’m involved with in Houston, to see if anyone has the same body build as Grandma Gatewood. I’m not shy when trying to find models. Good reference photographs mean everything to a sculptor. I posted on my neighborhood forum when I was looking for a model for Alice in Wonderland. I told them I was looking for a little girl that was about 7 or 8 that I could dress up as Alice in Wonderland. I was also looking for a neighborhood trampoline so I could have Alice jump on the trampoline, and I could take pictures of her with her dress up in the air as she was “falling.” My neighborhood has seen so much of my work. No one called the police on me on that one. Sometimes I need a body model, as is the case of Grandma Gatewood. I’m told she was about 5′ and 110-120lbs, depending on if she was going into the woods or coming out. I learned she would more likely wear a dress while hiking the Oregon Trail, as it went near major roads, and if she were on the AT, for this statue, she would be in pants because I hope to raise the money for two and put one on or near the AT.

Like Dixie, who documents what she brought on her youtube station and how she dressed, I too will look for period clothes from that time. However, It won’t be for me but will be for my body model.

Meanwhile, while I’m working on another commission, my assistant will begin to build a small wire armature of Grandma Gatewood, and add clay to the armature.

Stay tuned.

Announcing— The sculptor of the statue- Bridgette Mongeon

Paul Maxwell announces the sculptor of the Grandma Gatewood tribute statue—Bridgette Mongeon.

For several reasons, we chose Sculptor Bridgette Mongeon as the official sculptor of the Grandma Gatewood Sculpture. First, her work is amazing. She is known for sculpting such celebrities as B.B. King, Willie Nelson, and Bill Monroe. Her monumental sculpture of Alice in Wonderland’s Mad Hatter Tea Party, with over 150 hidden things in Bellaire, Texas, is one that everyone must visit.

Bridgette is all about history and capturing the essence of loved ones in clay. Her art studio will install a monumental sculpture of Booker T. Washington in Houston this summer. Recently she has been excited about focusing on powerful, strong women. The All-American Girls Professional Baseball League commissioned her to do a portrait of Penny Marshall for her involvement in the movie A League of Their Own.

When asked recently by a friend, “Is there anyone you would love to sculpt?” She answered, “There is no one I can think of that excites me, accept Grandma Gatewood.”

Why does Grandma Gatewood mean so much to the artist? For years Bridgette, like Grandma Gatewood, would go into the woods alone. “I’m going in. I’ll be out in an hour.” She would text her daughter for safety reasons. “Great, Mom, I have your GPS; I know where to tell them to find the body.” Her daughter would joke. “Mom, please start a group.” And in 2016, she did just that. She started a Facebook group called Houston Women’s Hiking. It has grown to over 14,500 women in Houston, with 50 -100 new members weekly, and is changing many lives.

Bridgette has shown the Grandma Gatewood movie at her home around the fire pit with friends. I sculpt a lot of deceased loved ones. Someone said, ‘You develop a relationship with the deceased.’ Bridgette says, She looks forward to becoming friends with Grandma Gatewood during this journey.

Hiking for Bridgette is a family affair. She travels with her family monthly. Her Daughter Christina Sizemore is co-admin of the group. Bridgette’s ten-year-old granddaughter, another generation of hikers, is writing a book with her grandmother about traveling the Texas State parks. Christina is also joining the Grandma Gatewood fundraising team with a marketing and public relations background.

You can follow Bridgette’s work and progress on Instagram.

“I have a kinship with this woman I have never known.” States Bridgette. “She knew the power of walking in the woods, how it could heal, and how much the woods had to give. She knew how to encourage other women by simply putting one step in front of the other. We must celebrate her; a sculpture is the only way I know how.”

The Grandma Gatewood Tribute Sculpture is Coming!

The Ohio Valley Memory Gardens in Gallipolis, Ohio, is the cemetery where Grandma Gatewood rests.

He reports that with the movie Trail Magic: The Grandma Gatewood Story airing on PBS and the book Grandma Gatewood’s Walk written by Ben Montgomery, Grandma Gatewood is getting her share of visitors. People tell the story of courage, fortitude, and trailblazing of our beloved Grandma Gatewood. The project is evergreen, and the love for this woman renews through generations of hikers

“When I’m dead and gone,” Emma told her daughters Lucy and Louise once, in a tone that was certain and not at all arrogant, “They’re going to erect monuments to me.”

Please help us to raise the money to create this sculpture for Grandma Gatewood’s cemetery plot at Ohio Valley Memory Gardens. Also, follow along as we share the Grandma Gatewood Statue story.

WRPN Women’s International Film Festival

We’re so excited to announce that TRAIL MAGIC received a designation of Excellence in the Documentary Category and Anne McEvoy (our Grandma Gatewood) received the Excellence designation in the Lead Actress Category of the WRPN Women’s International Film Festival! We thank the Festival staff for including us in the festival and for this honor. If you haven’t seen TRAIL MAGIC yet, there will be an on-line screening sponsored by the Rocky River Library on Thursday, November 5, 2020 at 6:30 p.m. There will be a Q & A after the screening. The program is FREE and open to the public. For more information, contact the library at 440-333-7610. Registration is requested.

Indie Gathering International Film Festival Nominations!

We just learned that “Trail Magic, the Grandma Gatewood Story” produced by Bette Lou Higgins and Eden Valley Enterprises, written by Kelly Sagert was nominated for “Best Director, Ohio”, Peter Huston and “Best Editing” Peggy Foley. Special shout out to DPs Bruce Lundeen, Tom Whaley and assistant editor Kaleb Grine. Congratulations all around!