Norman Rockwell (1894-1978), “Breaking Home Ties,” 1954. Cover illustration for “The Saturday Evening Post,” September 25, 1954. Norman Rockwel Museum Digital Collections. ©SEPS: Curtis Publishing, Indianapolis, IN.
Norman Rockwell Museum is busy preparing for the installation of its newest exhibition, Wendell Minor’s America, opening Saturday, November 9, 2013. An award-winning artist and member of the Museum’s board of trustees, Wendell Minor has long been a fan of Norman Rockwell’s work, which partly inspired him to become an illustrator himself.
“I would go around to Schaefer’s Drug Store, and always looked for Saturday Evening Post, notes Minor. “The one I remember most is Breaking Home Ties, which came out in September of 1954. I was ten years old at the time, and I looked at that cover and saw this farmer sitting on the running board of a Model A Truck; his son is all spit and polish, ready to go off to college, and the dog has his muzzle on the boy’s leg, being very sad. This kid is all ready for tomorrow, and I thought, yeah, I’m going to do that some day… Literally less than ten years later my father was taking me, not to the train station but to O’Hare Airport to fly to art school, and I never forgot that connection with that cover—you realize that boy was breaking home ties, he was leaving his rural roots in a way, and creating a whole new life for himself. He had to reinvent himself to be what he needed to be. I know a lot of my classmates, they would say ‘how did you have the courage to leave?’ and I said, ‘I think it would have taken more courage to stay.’ I knew that I didn’t belong there in context to what I needed to do. I always appreciate my rural roots… I think it’s the kind of artist I am today, but I had to leave in order to appreciate it, and to create my vision of myself as an artist.”
For the official Wendell Minor’s America exhibition page, click here.
For the Wendell Minor’s America press release, click here…
Wendell Minor, “Heartland (Red Barn Flag),” 1989. Cover illustration for “Heartland” by Diane Siebert, Thomas Y. Crowell, New York. ©Wendell Minor. All rights reserved.
Photo of illustrator Wendell Minor is his Washington, Connecticut studio, August 2013. Photo by Jeremy Clowe for Norman Rockwell Museum. ©Norman Rockwell Museum. All rights reserved.
Click here to RSVP for the opening of Wendell Minor’s America, to be held Saturday, November 9, 2013, 6 to 8:30 p.m.
Pre-order the exhibition catalogue for Wendell Minor’s America in our Museum store