Albany Times Union, November 2020
Read below or go to: Albany Times Union.com Sculptor Bacon creates by following the lines
It was through drawing that Linda L. Bacon learned the secrets of sculpture. “What the drawing teachers gave me is that the line should be fluid and graceful,” she says. This strict attention to lines can be seen in the edges of Bacon’s ceramic sculptures, the places she describes as “where the air begins.”
Flow and elegance are principal elements to her creative output from the past decade and a half. Working with hand-formed clay, she makes curvaceous vertical forms about 20 inches tall. There’s a ripe organic quality to the body of these hollow pieces and they top out with edges that are as crisp and fine as the lip of a seashell. The resulting shapes create a gentle interplay of light and shadows on the smooth off-white surfaces.
Bacon has exhibited in numerous galleries in the Northeast and this fall she received the juror’s citation in the regional show ofCooperstown Art Association. For 10 years prior she was selected for the organization’s national juried show.
Her journey as an artist began in first grade where she was obsessively drawing instead of following along with lessons. She got away with such behavior because, being tall, she was seated in the back row of the classroom. Consequently her early reading skills were weak though her art was impressive enough that the teachers kept passing her along. They even once dedicated an entire bulletin board to her drawings and today Bacon considers that her first solo show. As for her reading ability, it picked up just fine once the books at hand were more interesting and worth the effort.
While attending Albany public schools, Bacon also received instruction at the Malden Bridge School of Art, which was founded by the noted portrait painter Betty Warren. It was at UAlbany that she found her most influential teachers. The modernist sculptor Richard Stankiewicz instilled the importance of negative space. This was in his drawing class.
“He told us that space can have movement or it can be staid,” recalls Bacon. “We had to draw an apple and a long tube from gift wrapping on a square and make the negative space look dynamic. That was the focus of many, many classes.”
From the painter and sculptor William Wilson came other principals that remain with Bacon. “He taught that drawing lines can be broad and interesting or boring and sloppy. That added to what I knew was important,” says Bacon.
Passing on skills and insights was the initial focus of Bacon’s career as a teacher who put in 17 years of service with South Colonie Central School District. For much of her tenure, she spent mornings in one building, afternoons in another, and managed to eat her lunch on the drive between. Though maintaining two classrooms and mounting the requisite hallway art shows could be exhausting, she took delight in the youngsters' enthusiasm and surprising talent.
“They’d soak up everything I said and make wonderful things,” says Bacon. “I taught second-graders Van Gogh’s "Sunflowers", where the light was, and the overlapping stems and petals. The kids would do large pictures that were remarkable. If you take it step by step, they’ll put it together. It was wonderful.”
After retiring in 2005, Bacon didn’t waste much time in getting into another classroom, this time returning to the role of student. At the Arts Center of the Capital Region in Troy, where she’d taught calligraphy, she signed up for a clay class. “I’d always wanted to try clay but didn’t get the opportunity in high school and got shut out of the classes at SUNY,” says Bacon.
There are currently two streams of work coming out of Bacon’s studio, which occupies the second floor of her home in Troy. First are the large, abstract and colorless forms that require hundreds of hours to produce.
Then there are the depictions of nature, both real and imagined, that are rendered in earthen tones and on a scale that can often fit in your hand. These include little hedgehogs whose backs have the veins of leaves. Ribbed shells and other nautical items in iridescent tones are what Bacon calls “mermaid fossils.” Quiet and meditative faces are also common in this series. Oak leaves frame a feminine face that’s crowned with an acorn, and peaceful visages appear on stonelike shapes. For the latter, Bacon uses another made-up term “facial rock-ignition,” a spoof on “facial recognition.”
“I’ve been playing these last few months and am getting ready for some more formal stuff,” she says. “A dialogue with my ancestors is what I think I do. There’s some aspect of an ancestral aesthetic in my DNA.”
While her larger works remain pleasantly mysterious, in the more recent pieces human anatomy seems to be emerging from the clay. At a casual glance, one might recognize the flared line of a hip muscle, or the upward curve of a buttock. The piece that won the recent prize in Cooperstown is rather explicit in its suggestion of female anatomy and is titled “Georgia O.,” an homage, of course, to American painter Georgia O’Keeffe.
“I build these things from bottom up with little idea of where it’s going. My hands just do it,” explains Bacon, who doesn’t use models and makes no initial sketches. “Sometimes my hands want to fight with each other and I just watch and stay out of it. I let my hands do the work.”
Bacon tries not to get too verbal about her work. Other than her teachers, she cites no influences or forebears. Her art is visceral and intimate, requiring no pencils or brushes, which she calls “middle men.”
“I love taking an earthy heavy lump of clay and infusing it with an essence of grace and spirit,” says Bacon. “It just comes out of my gut.”
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