57 Puddle Jumpers

SOLD
Winning Bid Undisclosed
This item SOLD at 2017 Apr 06 @ 18:24UTC-7 : PDT/MST
Category Art
Auction Currency USD
Start Price NA
Estimated at 250,000.00 - 350,000.00 USD
Puddle Jumpers
Artist: Glenna, Goodacre
Date of Birth: b. 1939
Medium: Bronze, cast number Sculptor's Proof cast
Dimensions: 72 inches high, 151 inches wide
Signed: Signed and dated 1989
Verso:

I was a young mother in 1969 when I started making sculpture, so naturally I turned to my children for models and inspiration. Now I can’t count how many children sculptures I’ve made. I made a couple of almost-life-size kids in the 1970’s, Pawna in 1983, then a full-size teenager Sweet Sue in 1985, and Tug O’ War with five children in 1987. I was encouraged by their success and wanted to do something more ambitious. In 1989 I was looking for inspiration for a big Fall exhibition at Nedra Matteucci Galleries in Santa Fe. It was to be a two-person exhibition with my dear friend Wilson Hurley. In a children’s magazine I found a photo of a whole bunch of kids holding hands, running, jumping, but the most intriguing thing and the challenge for me and for the foundry was that many of the kids were airborne. My assistant and manager Dan Anthony had the idea of tying the figures together with invisible stainless steel. Thus Puddle Jumpers was created with some of the first flying bronze children I know of. In the end, the sculpture itself didn’t look anything like the magazine photo. It was wildly popular and it took the foundries a while to catch up to the orders. Puddle Jumpers became almost a trademark for me, and for better or for worse, it started an epidemic across the country of running, jumping, flying kid bronzes. — Glenna Goodacre