Michael Dunbar still has a problem with his
early school years: “When you know what you’re going to do and you have to
listen to teachers and figure out ‘How does this apply to
me?’, it makes school a real challenge.” Young Michael knew what he
wanted to do for a living at a very early age — he wanted to
be an artist. And that’s exactly what he is today.
Born in Santa Paula, Calif., in 1947, Dunbar
came to Springfield when he was 4 or 5, graduated from Springfield
High School in 1965, and attended Southern Illinois University at
Carbondale, Illinois State University at Normal and the Chicago
Academy of Fine Art. He has worked all over the state of Illinois
but returned permanently to the capital city in 1977.
“I knew as a kid I wanted to be an
artist. My challenge was discovering what kind of art I could excel
in. I tried commercial art and didn’t like it; tried
cartooning and didn’t like it. I decided to complete my
college education and figure it out then. I had always been
sculpting things but never realizing I could make a career out of
it. When I was a junior at ISU, I saw my first bronze pour [pouring
of molten bronze into a cast].”
Dunbar was hooked: “When I was at ISU,
I worked in the foundry and ran all the pours to the point where we
would do all the castings. I just loved it.”
As with many area artists, the public first
became acquainted with his work downtown. “I showed my first
work at the Old Capitol Art Fair and then moved on to other
things,” Dunbar recalls. He has participated in many local
shows over the years, and along the way, earned a degree in arts
management from UIS, a career decision that led to regular
paychecks. He resurrected the art gallery at the Illinois State
Fair and directed the Galesburg Arts Council along the way. He
co-founded Chicago’s Pier Walk, the biggest U.S. exhibition
of large sculpture, which draws artists from all over the world.
When he returned to Springfield in the
’70s, he rented a studio from Roscoe Niccolls on Niccolls
Road. Because money was short and he didn’t have the
equipment needed to work with bronze, he decided to sculpt in
steel. Dunbar purchased welding equipment and taught himself how to
weld. “I didn’t have a shop to do the work for
me,” he says. “I knew I had to control my art, and the
way to do it was to do it myself.”
Dunbar’s first piece of large
sculpture, crafted from steel, was constructed there.
“Highway 66 Goodbye”was created the year the Mother Road was replaced
by Interstate 55. “It was a pivotal piece — the first sculpture than was larger than
myself and a way to say goodbye to my childhood. Steel was a way to
make sculpture when I was learning how to be a sculptor,” he
says. “The whole trick to this business is to learn what you have
to do so you can do what you want to do.
“There are so many things they
don’t teach you in art school. Finding your own voice is the
most important thing. They don’t talk about the power of your
personal vision and the importance of weathering the early going.
It’s also important to take your work to the people, because
they will not come to you in the early days. I have drawers of
rejection letters to prove it.”
Dunbar’s first large bronze sculpture
was produced for Eastern Illinois University in 1982.
Each of his creations is first sketched, then
modeled in wax. Drawings made from these models are used to produce
a maquette, French for “small model.” Each component of
the maquette is machined to high precision and assembled. The
large sculptures, based on the small renditions, are fabricated of
bronze plate and attached to a framework of welded stainless steel.
The foundry assembles the piece at the site of the
sculpture’s new home.
Some artists paint large paintings and
sometimes produce smaller works for diversion. Dunbar is committed
solely to large bronze. Even so, the maquettes crafted in preparation for the one-off large
piece are produced in “single-figure editions” for
sale.
UIS professor emeritus Larry Shiner
attributes an “industrial aesthetic” to Dunbar’s
creations, evident in “the economy and precision of fine
machinery. Shiner continues: “The more I study Dunbar’s
best pieces, the simpler and more economical they seem without ever
becoming boring; each curve, each plate, each notch — and its
often matching block — seems to be there for a reason.”
In Springfield, Dunbar’s creations may
be appreciated at Lincoln Land Community College and the Sangamo
Club. “There are no examples of the new level of
‘superbronzes,’ which I’ve been doing since
1995,” Dunbar says. “There are smaller maquettes in
local homes.”
“Three Rivers,” a 24-foot tall
sculpture, is being fabricated for the Great Rivers Research Center
near Alton, close to the confluence of the Mississippi, Illinois,
and Missouri rivers. A maquette is on display at the UIS gallery, and Dunbar
says that he expects that the work will be completed “in the
next year or so.”
Known internationally, Dunbar is proof that
an artist doesn’t have to live in Chicago or New York City to
be successful there, nor does he have to rely on his hometown for
success.
“Enjoy Springfield for what it
is,” Dunbar says. “It’s a beautiful town, and
it’s so easy to live here.”
A reception for Michael Dunbar in celebration
of his exhibition Machinist Studies will be held at the UIS Visual Arts Gallery
from 5-6:30 p.m. Friday, April 1. An artist’s lecture, slide
show, and talk about Dunbar’s career and art will be
presented at 7 p.m. Thursday, April 7, in room C/D of the UIS
Public Affairs Center. The events are free and open to the public.
This article appears in Mar 24-30, 2005.
