Katie Runde Chosen to Paint Twilight Portrait for Vermont State House, and There’s More . . .
Check out the chalk art.
Artist Katie Runde was just selected by the State of Vermont to paint a portrait of Alexander Twilight, a Vermont educator, legislator, and 1823 graduate of Middlebury College. According to Middlebury, Twilight was the first person of African descent to receive a baccalaureate from an American college or university. The life-sized portrait, which will take a year to complete, will hang in a to-be-decided location in the Vermont State House.
Runde is a portraitist who makes her home in Middlebury, but at least part of her heart remains in the Upper Valley. She moved to Vermont about ten years ago to teach in Chelsea VT. Prior to her recent move to Middlebury, she spent seven years living in South Royalton, followed by a few more years in Bethel VT. The subject of her portrait, Twilight, shares some near Upper Valley roots as well, having been born in Corinth, or possibly Bradford VT.
Twilight, an historical figure from an era not saturated with photographic images, is a challenging subject. I asked about that.
Q. I have seen exactly one photograph of Twilight. What other reference and other materials will you have available to help you to construct the portrait?
“Fortunately, there are a couple images to work from, but really . . . not a lot. And certainly not a lot for a life-size portrait. The translation from tiny, dour daguerrotype to life-sized, full-color portrait with the good sense of humor Twilight’s students attested to is going to be difficult.
As for references, though, I’ve been lucky enough to have the help and expertise of not only Bob Hunt and the Old Stone House Museum in Brownington, but of Professor William Hart, Twilight scholar. Thank goodness! They have helped flesh out Twilight to a significant degree already, and the Friends of the State House have also helped in the brainstorming process. I feel like especially with a subject matter with this degree of ambiguity—Twilight passed as white during his own life—working in a group with voices of expertise and experience has been an incredible, essential help.”
My initial investigation into Runde’s receipt of this commission uncovered at least two additional and intriguing aspects of her work. One is her chalk art (see Vermont Dairy, top). Read what she has to say about it (just below) and then click here and scroll to “time lapse” to watch her magic in progress, complete with a sound track from Swan Lake.
“Chalk art is a lot of fun—it can be like being a kid in the sandbox. Usually my work is labored over for days to months in the studio, where chalk art lasts at most the week of the chalk festival hosting it, and often just the original day of creation. This particular piece was at the Sarasota Chalk Festival in Sarasota, FL, and the largest I’ve ever done. It took several grueling 10-hour days on a hot airstrip! The theme that year was . . . “Eat, Drink, and Be Merry” and I wanted to do a Vermont tribute. My introduction to VT was via working on a friend’s dairy farm, so I also have an abiding love of cows . . .
I love chalk first and foremost for the community around it, but it’s also fun because it’s performative (I’m also a musician, and it feels somehow in between studio art work and music in feel) and athletic. More often than not, if I’m doing a single-day commission, I will essentially be doing squats for 8-10 hours straight and have a hard time walking for several days after.”
A second discovery is Runde’s contemporary portraiture. While rummaging through her website, I stumbled upon Hancock Gothic, above, a commissioned portrait of Dick and Dorothy Robson, and was transfixed. So much of it—the couple, the stance, the clothes, the architectural detail in the background—fairly shouted Vermont. Of this piece, Runde agreed that it “wound up celebrating not only the Robsons, who have their own spark, but a kind of Vermontiness.” And she added “Not that I would be excited to paint flannel again in the near future.”
(A biography of Alexander Twilight can be found here. Click here for Katie Runde’s website.)
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Susan B. Apel shuttered a lifelong career as a law professor to continue an interest (since kindergarten) in writing. Her freelance business, The Next Word, includes literary and feature writing; her work has appeared in a variety of lit mags and other publications including Art New England, The Woven Tale Press, The Arts Fuse, and Persimmon Tree. She connects with her neighbors through Artful, her blog about arts and culture in the Upper Valley. She’s in love with the written word.