Art is process, and art is best viewed with knowledge of that process. This is the theory behind the Elizabeth Rubendall Artist-In-Residence program at the Great Plains Art Museum. Each year, an artist from the Great Plains region is selected to create a commissioned artwork for the Great Plains Art Museum’s permanent collection. The interactive residency prescribes that the artwork is created live in the Great Plains Art Museum lobby. Gail Sundell, a stone sculptor from Cheyenne, Wyo., will be creating an original figure grouping of Plains Tribe natives titled “Women of the Plains,” in alabaster. She will be working April 21–26, sculpting from 10 a.m.-noon and from 2-5 p.m. Tuesday through Saturday, and from 1:30-5 p.m. on Sunday. The public is invited to observe and interact with the artist while she works.
Gail Sundell has been sculpting in alabaster since she was a child, cutting and sanding paperweights for her family’s quarry just outside of Fort Collins, and eventually moving on to lathe-turned utilitarian art such as vases, lamps and bowls. Her work as an adult artist focuses on the legends, spiritual life and family connections of Native Americans. She draws from intensive research, her father’s stories from his early life among the Cheyenne/Arapahoe Indians in Oklahoma, and the “special advantage to being a woman sculptor.”
“The hours that I have spent caring for and nurturing my family and friends has enabled me to relay a depth of feeling to my work that speaks to those who view my creations and leads them to share in the wonder of life created from stone,” said Sundell.
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