Contributed by Carmen Summerfield
The Wasilla Centennial Celebration Committee asked the Valley Arts Alliance to paint a plywood cut-out for their Centennial Celebration events, held throughout this year – 2017.
The idea we came up with was: Miners from 1917 meet “American Gothic”. Just to refresh your memory, American Gothic is the iconic painting by Grant Wood, painted in 1930, depicting a man holding a pitchfork, standing next to a woman in front of a farm house.
For our cut-out, we styled the hanging lantern from the house window in that painting, American Gothic. The setting for our American Gothic is a mine, since mining was an important industry in the Wasilla of 1917. We dressed our two characters in a blend of mining and farming clothing and tools, all appropriate to the Wasilla of 1917.
It was a lot of fun painting these cut-outs, I’d like to thank Dianne Boyd, Gale Glenn, Terry Koch and Kathy VanZant for helping on this project. We also painted the smaller cut-out with chalk board paint, so you can chalk or create your own iconic painting.
All these cut-outs are on display at the Dorothy Page Museum on Main Street in Wasilla. Stop by and take a picture!
