MIDWESTERN STATES
'American Gothic's' Grant Wood lived here
Iowa's soil nurtured the artist who created the classic painting, and the state hasn't forgotten its native son.
Trundling along the gravel roads of eastern
Driving along the one-way streets of downtown Cedar Rapids, past a familiar mix of banks and office buildings built of stone, you would be hard-pressed to believe that just last year many of these streets and buildings were underwater.
In one of the worst natural disasters in American history, the storm-swollen Cedar River burst its banks in June 2008, covering 10 square miles of Cedar Rapids with muddy water. No one expected it to reach the Cedar Rapids Museum of Art, but it did, prompting a scramble to rescue the world's largest collection of Grant Wood paintings.
"We moved up, but not out," curator Sean Ulmer says of the successful effort to rescue thousands of pieces of art, Wood's included, from a basement filling with sewage.
"We daisy-chained works up the stairs," he adds. "There was no electricity, so we worked in absolute darkness with a couple of flashlights."
It took a year for the museum to get back on its feet. Now reopened, the museum showcases several of Wood's classics in various media in a new, permanent gallery devoted to Cedar Rapids' favorite son.
Wood, best known for "American Gothic," his Depression-era painting of a stoic farm couple, was born and raised near Anamosa, a small town northeast of Cedar Rapids that's best known as the home of the state's largest prison. When Wood was 10, his father died and the family moved to Cedar Rapids. He taught art in the public schools before creating "American Gothic" and his fanciful landscapes of the rolling Iowa countryside.
Wood painted many of his most famous works in a converted carriage house in Cedar Rapids. The first floor became his studio, and the second floor became living quarters he shared with his mother and sister.
"American Gothic" hangs in the
"Grant Wood was very much a champion of the Midwest," Ulmer says. "He believed there was a lot of subject matter in the Midwest that was worthy of being painted."
But, as the Cedar Rapids Art Museum makes clear, Wood was much more than just a talented painter.
"He was an artist working in many different media at the same time," Ulmer explains. Besides Wood's paintings, the gallery has examples of his wood and metal work.
"A true art expression must grow from the soil itself," Wood wrote in 1932. It's, therefore, no surprise that the gallery is illuminated by a grand chandelier Wood created for an Iowa hotel chain. The lights sprout from atop golden ears of corn.
 Should we take offense, order a drink, or what? That depends, of course, on where you think these words turned up. |
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