Part 1

COUNTRY CALDER

Country Calder was designed, engineered, and built by artist Al Garnto. Mr. Garnto, from Blairsville, Georgia, works in a variety of mediums including oil paints, composite fine art photography, and kinetic sculpture. Recently his kinetic sculptures have received lots of attention. They are made from recycled materials and then put into motion by harnessing the wind's energy. Al says, “Kinetic means pertaining to motion. The kinetic energy of an object is the extra energy that it possesses due to its motion. Kinetic energy is defined as the work needed to accelerate a body of a given mass from resting position to its current velocity. Running, walking, dancing, and playing are all kinetic activities that take place here in Meeks Park.”

He explains, “A lot of my sculpture is directly related to the working community and area in which I live. Most of the time my designs come out of the materials I find from work places like sawmills, machine and welding shops, construction sites, dumpsters, and old barns that are being torn down. I design and engineer my sculptures to come out of the recycled materials I find.”

Mr. Garnto has used art and sculpture to overcome a severe learning disability (a rare form of dyslexia). He says, “It does not matter how far teaching technology has progressed to a person like me that processes my information in a completely different manner. Thank God for Young Harris College and Dr. Austine Hunter Wallis who spotted my learning disability, had me tested, and worked with me to develop ways to over come it! Austine and the teachers at Young Harris College helped changed the course of my life.”
Al intentionally manipulates the audience's perception of his artwork. He blurs images, words, and phrases into his paintings and sculptures to impart to the audience the frustration he deals with every day.

Part 2

ART HISTORY LESSON

Al Garnto's County Calder, part of the Appalachian Sculpture Project here in Meeks Park, is constructed out of recycled materials salvaged from an old barn located at the home place of Tom and Mary Lance in the Dooley District of Union County. Mr. Thomas M. Lance and Mrs. Mary L. Lance built the barn in the mid 1930's before the start of World War Two. The old Lance barn, a part of Union County's heritage, stood for over eighty years and is now being immortalized by Mr. Garnto's kinetic sculpture.

Artist Al Garnto has given this sculpture the name Country Calder in honor of the late great Alexander Calder (the father of mobile sculptures). Although Marcel Duchamp is credited for making the first kinetic sculpture, Calder's work brought large-scale mobile sculptures to the forefront of public art. Calder's work can be found in almost every major museum around the world. One of his sculptures called WTC Stabile (also known as Bent Propeller) was installed at the entrance of the World Trade Center North Tower in 1971. It stood in front of 7 World Trade Center until it was destroyed on September 11, 2001. Al Garnto, who majored in painting and sculpture, was influenced by Alexander Calder's work while he was a student at Young Harris College and the Atlanta College of Art.

Part 3

ART LESSON

When drawing or painting, everything you see in life can be reduced down to three basic shapes…the cube, the sphere, and the cone (or the square, the circle, and the triangle). Theses shapes are also in both the positive and negative spaces of your subject matter.  The sculpture in front of you contains many examples of the three basic shapes. Do you see both the positive and negative spaces in the subject? How many of the three basic shapes can you find?

Now as you go throughout the park, pay close attention to your surroundings. Make note of everything you see. Can you figure out the basic shapes in everyday objects? A house in the distances has a basic shape of a square with a triangle on top for the roof. What shape does a tree or bush have?

SPECIAL THANKS

Mr. Garnto concludes, “Meeks Park is the perfect place for the Appalachian Sculpture Project.  I would like to thank all the individuals in the community that helped make this project possible. I would like to extend a special thanks to Sole Commissioner Lamar Paris, Larry A. Garrett (Union County Government), Doug Hughes and Ma Deuce Metal Work, Inc, Travis Colwell, Colwell Construction, North Georgia News Reporter Janice Boling, Blairsville-Union County Chamber of Commerce President Cindy Williams, and the Grassroots Arts Program.

The funding for this project was made possible in part by the Grassroots Arts Program. This decentralized funding mechanism was created by the Georgia General Assembly and the Georgia Council for the Arts (GCA) to ensure that every county has access to state-supported arts programs and funding - especially small, traditionally underserved communities. The Grassroots Arts Program is administered by the Georgia Appalachian Studies Center at North Georgia College & State University. The Georgia Appalachian Studies Center at NGCSU is a Regional Partner for The Grassroots Arts Program, supported in part by the Georgia Council for the Arts through an appropriation of the Georgia General Assembly.