FOLLOWING YOUR DREAM
Unfortunately for Craig, growing up in Minnesota on a farm meant you would be a farmer like your father, and his father. The Lendskip men farmed the land. That’s what you did. Being an artist was not an occupation. It was a hobby. Building twine balls was on your own time. Even Johnson worked his farm. Art was not a real job, but a curiosity.
Craig understood his role in life. He was content working the farm during the day and constructing small twine sculptures at night. He was an only child, so he would inherit the farm and the Lendskip legacy. His fate was cast. Craig would sit for hours in harmony with the elder twine artist, neither speaking. The twine was their words. Craig liked to dream of what might have been if he had been born in New York instead of the middle of Minnesota. He did not regret his life but still he wondered. Then his opportunity to leave came, but as with most of us, it was not ever how we imagined or wanted.
November can be dangerous in Minnesota. The most notable day that drove home the point was the Armistice blizzard of November 11, 1940 that killed 49 Minnesotans. A monster storm that caught most by surprise, it was a date Mr. and Mrs. Lendskip would regret not remembering forty-five years later. In 1985, the snow came early, and Craig’s world diverged from his preordained farmer’s path in one instantaneous moment.
Craig’s parents were coming home from the feed store in the family farm truck. Craig was at Johnson’s, with his latest ball of twine. Craig usually would make the weekly store run but his sculpture was nearly finished and his father could see in his son’s intent eyes that his twine was calling. He yelled to Craig through the barn door, “Keep working, it’s looking good. You finish by the time we get back home. Your mom and I got this one.” With those final words of encouragement to his only child, the elder Lendskip and his wife made the trip instead. The weather wasn’t bad when they left, a few snow squalls, but heading home it changed with a vengeance into a whiteout. The first blizzard of November became a fierce storm more typical of January. The old truck was filled to the top with this season’s winter supplies and was traveling slow, more by instinct than visual landmarks. Taking longer to get home than usual, the Lendskip truck arrived at the railroad crossing the same time as the Burlington Northern heading to Minneapolis. The Lendskips never saw the 7 o’clock train barreling at them. The monochromatic conditions, overloaded truck, and rattling of the old vehicle obscured both the sound and image of the train as they crossed the rural farm route as they had a thousand times before.
Craig Lendskip suddenly lost his only family other than his close friend, Mr. Johnson. His life was upended. To succeed on a farm without the help of a committed family is nearly impossible. If your heart isn’t into it, you’re doomed to failure. Craig valiantly continued his father’s dream of being a farmer for one more season. It didn’t go well. Without his family pushing him to farm, Craig simply spent more and more time working the twine than the field. His last field of corn he simply let go to seed. “The birds need to eat,” he rationalized as he labored to finish a particularly complex twine sculpture.
The family farm of three generations went on the sales block the week after he finished the twine masterpiece. He took the highest offer for the property and all its contents, excluding balls of twine, and made plans for his new life.
You would think leaving Darwin, Minnesota, for Manhattan is a huge step for a simple farm boy with a rural education, but for Craig the drastic change in environment was seamless. Maybe when you come from Darwin it’s easier to evolve to the next level in life. There was no longer any connection to Minnesota other than Mr. Johnson’s ever-growing ball of twine. Craig remembered having seen a LIFE magazine article on David Smith, an abstract expressionist sculptor, a Midwest boy like himself. Smith had worked as a welder on an automobile production line in South Bend, Indiana, where he discovered his love of sculpting. Smith’s large sculptures of round metal elements intertwined, forming unique shapes that reminded Craig of his own intricate little twine sculptures.
Craig would follow David Smith’s path, which had worked out so well for him. He would move to New York City to try to make a life as a sculptor. He wished he could visit Smith and get his insights, but like his own parents, Smith had died in 1965 in a tragic car accident, his artwork doubling in value overnight. Craig was shocked how much one of Smith’s sculptures would bring. Craig Lendskip did art for art’s sake, not money. In fact he had never sold any of his little sculptures, though he had given many away to friends, including a masterpiece to Johnson for all his encouragement. His hope was to live in New York City and find other individuals who were like himself and Francis A. Johnson. It was if he were looking for a separate race of people—those humans who were genetically coded to make art. In 1986, New York City was the Mecca for these individuals, with the largest congregation of artists in the country.
Arriving at 19 in the largest city in America with no friends, no gallery, and very little money, might seem foolhardy at best. The farm—after all the equipment and taxes had been paid off—was worth less than what one of David Smith’s smallest sculptures would sell for. But youthful ambition somehow blots out all the overwhelming negatives one has to face. If one actually knew how tremendous the odds against succeeding were, there would be no artists.
Craig Lendskip’s first stop after finding a small apartment was the Guggenheim Museum to see the exhibit Transformation in Sculpture: Four Decades of American and European Art. The museum show featured several of Smith’s great sculptures. Lendskip thought seeing the great works in person would be one of those pivotal moments in his life, just as when he was seven and saw the great ball of twine.
The show was only sculpture and was the first exposure Craig Lendskip had to other artists’ work other than Mr. Johnson’s twine ball and the headstones in the Darwin Cemetery where his parents were buried. A guardian angel must have been watching over the young man as he looked intently at the exhibit’s entrance piece: a monumental sculpture, an important masterpiece of stacked metallic boxes by Donald Judd. Peering at the shimmering steel geometric forms, Craig’s robin’s egg-blue eyes became almost black as his pupils dilated to their maximum width trying to take it all in. Then, as if the museum’s walls were watching, he heard a melodic voice ask, “How do you like it?”
Without ever turning around, gazing motionless at the stainless geometric forms, the shadowy back light projecting an ephemeral design against the pure white wall, Craig slowly replied, “It’s almost as if God’s hand must have been guiding the artist. His ability to visualize such a heavenly concept is truly genius. I never knew sculpture could ever be so pure.” Still staring intently at the sculpture, small tears flowed from Craig’s face, melting onto the gray concrete floor. The obviously intense gut reaction in the young man deeply touched the gentleman who had asked the question, who at this point now also had tears flowing from his eyes, his tears mixing with Craig’s on the floor to form their own geometric shape, appropriate for two gifted sculptors. The middle-aged man who had asked the question was none other then Donald Judd, the famous sculptor whose work Craig was staring at.