Wolf Niessen's life-size aluminum alloy sculptures of whooping cranes created for Regina Municipal Airport, 1961

One of the two life-size aluminum alloy sculptures of whooping cranes created by Wolfram F. Niessen for Regina Municipal Airport, Regina, Saskatchewan. Anon., “Regina Honors the Whooping Crane.” The Ottawa Citizen, Weekend Magazine, 18 November 1961, 38.

Let’s talk about art, humans. All the humans. Louder now. Help me out. – Wolfram F. Niessen, John Cullen Nugent and the life-size aluminum alloy sculptures of whooping cranes created for Regina Municipal Airport by 

By: Rénald Fortier, Ingenium Channel (link at the bottom of page)

Let us indeed talk (read?) about art, airport art to be more precise, my reading friend.

When the Second World War came to an end, in 1945, the terminal buildings of Canada’s largest airports were by no means huge buildings. Indeed, one could argue they looked a lot, and felt a lot, like bus depots. As the accumulated desire of passengers to travel was released, these terminal buildings became busier and busier. In 1946, approximately 837,000 people travelled by air in Canada. By 1956, approximately 3, 924, 000 people did the same – an increase of about 16.7 % a year. Understandably enough, Canada’s airport terminals quickly became inadequate. They were deemed to be antiquated, disgraceful and / or embarrassing.

As a result, Canada’s Department of Transport (DOT) launched an airport terminal building project in the mid-1950s. Said project led to the inauguration, between 1958 and 1968, of eight, I think, large buildings of this type located in large airports in Alberta (Edmonton), British Columbia (Vancouver), Manitoba (Winnipeg), Newfoundland (Gander), Nova Scotia (Halifax), Ontario (Ottawa and Toronto) and Québec (Montréal). No less than 14 mid-size buildings were constructed in 14 mid-size airports.

And yes, the National Aviation Museum, as the Canada Aviation and Space Museum, in Ottawa, was called when it opened its doors in October 1960, a happy event commemorated in an October 2020 issue of our absolutely banger blog / bulletin / thingee, could be found in the terminal building of Uplands Airport, near Ottawa, but I digress.

The management of DOT made sure the 22 new terminal buildings completed during the 1950s and 1960s would not be antiquated, disgraceful and / or embarrassing. Indeed, each of them was designed by local architect firms, under the supervised of DOT’s chief architect between 1952 and 1967, William Alexander “Alex” Ramsay, as complete International Style packages which would raise the reputation of Canadian airports both at home and abroad. Each terminal building package included distinct contemporary design furniture and commissioned works of artwork developed in conjunction with the look and feel of said building. One could argue that the goal of the airport terminal building project was to portray Canada as a modern, sophisticated and united yet diverse country.

Would you believe that part of Ramsay’s personal archives is with the Canada Aviation and Space Museum? Would I lie to you, my reading friend? Come on, answer the question.

From the looks of it, half of one percent of the construction costs of the airport terminals was allocated to these works of art. Said works were produced by well-known Canadian artists.

Sadly enough, at the time, some people expressed displeasure at the idea that taxpayer money had been used to acquire works of art when many rural communities lacked such practical necessities of life as roads and airstrips. Other people expressed displeasures at the idea that taxpayer money had been used to acquire abstract works of art. Sigh.

At the risk of incurring the wrath of similar people, such opinions might perhaps bring to mind 78 words from the world-famous 1943 novella The Little Prince by Count Antoine Marie Jean-Baptiste Roger de Saint-Exupéry:

I know a planet where there is a certain red-faced gentleman. He has never smelled a flower. He has never looked at a star. He has never loved anyone. He has never done anything in his life but add up figures. And all day he says over and over, just like you: ‘I am busy with matters of consequence!’ And that makes him swell up with pride. But he is not a man – he is a mushroom!

One could argue that the airport terminal building project came as a consequence of the groundbreaking 1951 report of the Royal Commission on National Development in the Arts, Letters and Sciences, also / better known as the Massey Commission, after its commissioner, Charles Vincent Massey, a gentleman mentioned in a May 2019 and October 2021 issues of our blog / bulletin / thingee.

Other consequences of the Massey Commission included the creation of the Canada Council for the Arts, the founding of the National Library of Canada, today’s Library and Archives Canada, the preservation of Canada’s historic places, and the transfer of federal moolah to Canadian universities.

And yes, in 1951-52, parroting his usual provincial autonomy routine, sorry, sorry, ever watchful in his defence of said autonomy against the evilness of the federal government, the Premier of Québec, Maurice Le Noblet Duplessis, a person mentioned many times in our blog / bulletin / thingee since January 2018, formally prohibited the management of Québec’s universities from resorting to said moolah for the management of their institutions. This situation changed only after the death of the blue boss, in September 1959, and the defeat of his party in the June 1960 general election.

Before I forget, it was / is all too true that the Massey Commission’s interest in refinement and taste was a tad elitist. It was equally true it had precious little to say about the preservation and promotion of Indigenous art and culture. This being said (typed?), its report was / is / will continue to be a landmark moment in the cultural history of Canada.

One of the consequences of the Massey Commission was the magnificent and huge nonfigurative / abstract mural which adorned the walls of the main terminal at Winnipeg International Airport between 1964 and 2011. Known as Northern Lights, it was designed by well-known Canadian artist John Graham.

Despite strenuous efforts by art lovers and other people, Winnipeg Airports Authority Incorporated seemingly did not see the need to install Northern Lights in the new terminal building officially opened in October 2011. The municipal authorities were seemingly by and large equally indifferent. Dare one ask if the people involved in these decisions were red-faced gentlemen? You might but I will not.

In the end, Graham’s epoch-making mural was donated to the Canada Aviation and Space Museum (Hello, MMcC!), where it was / is stored.

As fascinating as Northern Lights was, is and will be, the work of aeronautical public art I would like to bring to your attention today hailed from Regina, Saskatchewan. It was on display in the sculpture court of Regina International Airport.

Said work of art was comprised of a pair of life-size aluminum alloy whooping cranes, one of them in flight and the other in the process of taking off.

When Europeans launched their devastating (genocidal?) invasion of the Americas, in the 1490s, the whooping crane, one of two species of cranes native to North America and the tallest (up to 1.6 m (5.25 feet)) bird on the continent, could be found across North America. As of 2021, barely 600 of these magnificent beings, either wild or captive, were still sharing the Earth’s biosphere with us.

Why did the whooping crane almost go extinct, you ask, my reading friend? Just look in a mirror. Homo sapiens took over much of its habitat. Not only that, but our species also mercilessly hunted whooping cranes for their meat and feathers. More red-faced gentlemen perhaps? Sorry.

A successful Canadian sculptor, the late William Ayton “Bill” Lishman, also known as “Father Goose,” pioneered the use of ultralight aircraft to guide young birds during their first migration flight, in the hope of reintroducing endangered species to their former habitat. The world’s first guided migration flight was made by Lishman, a colleague and 18 Canada geese, in October 1993, between Ontario and Virginia. This successful and well publicized journey and media event led to the formation of Operation Migration, a registered charity, in 1994. Ultralight aircraft were later used to lead trumpeter swans and whooping cranes.

Lishman’s activities inspired the filming of Fly Away Home. The world premiere of this very popular award-winning American family movie with stunning images of Canada geese in flight took place at the Toronto International Film Festival, in September 1996.

And yes, Lishman was mentioned in April and July 2019 issues of our you know what. Better yet, the collection of the Canada Aviation and Space Museum includes 2 ultralight aircraft used by this gentleman, who was certainly not a mushroom: a seriously modified American-designed Ultralight Flying Machines Easy Riser, one of the first widely available ultralight aircraft and the very machine Lishman used during his early experiments, and a French-designed Cosmos Écho made up from a wing and a nacelle of the 2 ultralight aircraft used for the world’s first guided migration flight, mentioned above.

Even though the name of well-known Canadian sculptor and educator John Cullen Nugent was / is often / usually associated with the aluminum alloy whooping cranes, these sculptures were in fact created by a Regina naturalist and sculptor, Wolfram F. Niessen, who worked as an exhibit artist at the Saskatchewan Museum of Natural History, in Regina, an institution known in 2021 as the Royal Saskatchewan Museum.

The design of the sculptures was based on a concept developed by a Regina professional interior decorator. An interior design graduate (1946) of the University of Manitoba, in Winnipeg, … Manitoba, and a lecturer there for some time, Elizabeth Victoria “Betty” Gillespie, born Elizabeth Victoria “Betty” Spence, in Regina, saw said concept as a symbolization of the intersection of the east-west routes of Canada’s main airlines and the great north-south bird migration routes followed by, among other species, the whooping crane.

If truth be told, Gillespie / Spence chose the whooping crane for her concept because of their beauty, power, rarity and uniqueness. In 1961, less than 40 (!) wild whooping cranes were still sharing the Earth’s biosphere with us.

The information used by Gillespie / Spence to prepare said concept was provided by Fred G. Baird, Junior, a whooping crane expert who was also the director of the Saskatchewan Museum of Natural History.

The project caught the eye of the local Member of Parliament early on. As a member of the party in power, Kenneth Hamill “Ken” More facilitated things.

And no, neither Niessen nor Gillespie / Spence were mentioned in the article found in the 18 November 1961 issue of the Weekend Magazine of the daily The Ottawa Citizen at the heart of this week’s issue of our you know what.

Indeed, Niessen’s name was nowhere to be seen on the plaque which identified the work of art he had created. The only name on said plaque was Gillespie’s. Niessen was understandably disappointed. Nugent felt that Niessen’s contribution should have been recognized. The director of the Norman MacKenzie Art Gallery, a Regina art museum affiliated with Regina College, as today’s University of Regina was called back then, well known abstract artist and teacher Ronald Langley Bloore, was shocked to see on the plaque the name of Gillespie, who was no more than the contractor for the project, but not that of the artist.

Gillespie’s explanation was that Niessen had chosen for some reason or other not to sign his sculptures. She had offered the plaque to Regina Municipal Airport, as the airport was called back then, to provide an explanation of what said sculptures were all about.

The actual production of the aluminum alloy whooping cranes took almost a year. Niessen began this process by modelling the birds in plaster of Paris over a steel frame. These plaster birds were then transferred into wax. Niessen retouched these wax birds before moving them to the St. Mark’s Shop lost wax foundry in Lumsden, Saskatchewan – an establishment unique to Canada whose operator was, you guessed it, none other than Nugent. Would you believe that Niessen’s cranes may, I repeat may, have been the first work of art produced by St. Mark’s Shop?

The aluminum alloy whooping cranes may have gone on display in April 1961.

Born in Krefeld, Germany, in August 1923, Niessen seemingly emigrated to Canada in the early 1950s. Indeed, in 1954, he sculpted one of the 5 plaques depicting the history of the telephone which decorate the building of the Saskatchewan Government Telephones crown corporation, today’s Saskatchewan Telecommunications Holding Corporation, or SaskTel, in Regina. Niessen’s sculpture depicted Alexander Graham Bell talking to his assistant, Thomas Watson, during what could be described as the world’s first telephone call, in March 1876, in Boston, Massachusetts.

And no, Bell was never a Canadian. He was a Scot, in other words a British subject, who became a naturalized United States citizen in 1882. At the time, any person born or naturalized in Canada was also a British subject.

By 1958, Niessen was an instructor at Regina College. He obtained a master’s degree in fine arts from Michigan State University in 1963. By then, he was apparently a display / exhibit artist at the Michigan State University Museum. Niessen taught at the University of Regina, in… Regina, in the early 1960s, before moving to the University of Wisconsin-Stout, in Menomonie, Wisconsin, in 1964. He taught at Northern Michigan University, in Marquette, Michigan, during the 1970s.

Known (legally?) at the time as Ben Monte Auburn Lancaster, Niessen passed away in September 2004, at the age of 81. “Betty” Gillespie, on the other hand, left this world in September 1996. She was 71 years old. Nugent, finally, passed away in March 2014, at the age of 93.

Yours truly would be delighted to inform you that Niessen’s whooping cranes were still on display at Regina International Airport. Sadly enough, this is not the case. The sculptures disappeared at some point, possibly during a mid-1980s renovation. Their current whereabouts are unknown.

Unfortunately, none of 22 aforementioned terminal buildings completed in the 1950s and 1960s remained complete as of 2021. Indeed, few of them still exist. To use words spoken quite often by a late volunteer at the Canada Aviation and Space Museum, sic transit gloria mundi.

Let’s talk about art, humans. All the humans. Louder now. Help me out. – Wolfram F. Niessen, John Cullen Nugent and the life-size aluminum alloy sculptures of whooping cranes created for Regina Municipal Airport | The Channel (ingeniumcanada.org)

Wolf Niessen, Sculpture of Christine Usdin, circa 1982

In 2006, Christine Usdin wrote and sent scans of Wolfram sculpting a bust of her in the studio. In her email she wrote: 

"In 1981-1982 I had training courses in different art foundries in the United States and my first course was at Nothern Michigan University in Marquette. My master was Professor Wolf Niessen who taught me sculpture and art foundry. Within the university he had created an art foundry studio, which had very good and modern equipment. We used the lost wax process and the students' sculptures were cast in bronze such as Wolf's sculptures. Wolf said he built the furnace which was, as far I remember, quite a big one and worked very well. All the students I met were proud to have such a great teacher.

One day Wolf decided to make a bust of me, but I told him that I shall not pose. He said it doesn't matter and sculpted me while I was sculpting. It took about two days, and everybody was proud of the result. It looks like me! Later Wolf told me the bronze is in a museum in Washington D.C. But where? I would like to know if ever somebody knows.

Now since1987 I run my own art foundry in a medieval and very touristic village named Perouges, about 20 miles north of Lyon. I still remember all the advice he gave me concerning art. I studied a lot with him."

Wolfram Niessen

Many of the pictures here have been obtained (with respect) from Gordon Niessen's photo site.

Letter to Wolf from Phillip B. Klingler, May 1993

 Wolf-

I've divided your letter into three sections- an attempt to interpret each of the three and to find correlations...

The first section making reference to "modern" art, pertaining to Expressionism, Art Brut, or even moreso the COBRA GROUP- who began in 1948 with the manifesto: "The esthetic principle must be abolished. We are not disillusioned because we have no illusions. We do not even know the laws of esthetics and the old idea of choice according the principle of beautiful and ugly... is dead for us, us for whom beautiful is also ugly, for whom everything that is ugly also has beauty in it..." Even my sound work, which is often referred to as "noise music", has precedents in the Futurist movement, as Luigi Russolo wrote "The Art Of Noises" in 1916. (a nearly scientific treatise and categorization of 'types' of noises and their musical applications).

(Wolf writes in margins: "Esthetics: no laws, only agreements. Esthetics is of little concern to the historians, priests, bankers, police, dictators. Ethics must be considered as a priority over profit, docility, hero worship, manner, creed. Ethics makes for the stronger bond after mother-father love for child. woman - man / friends - are subject to ethics)

Here you've written a strong statement: "to become aware that this is not 'art' but life and that if he goes further there is the end?" But you finish it with a question mark because 1. can we go any further? and 2 if we can go further what does await? (only an ending?)

There is an evolution happening for those who choose to follow that path, a path that is obviously very personal and can only be charted (uniquely) by the individual. We know that fighting disease with antibiotics evolves the virus, improves it's ability over time to defeat the antibiotic, so a difficult path is not without it's casualties. But most are not brave enough to choose anything that presents obstacles- and the path of least resistance saves energy but doesn't promote change. In seeing clearly, we must accept the fact that art cannot cause social revolution- any aesthetic breakthrough is (probably) only relevant to the individual.

Jackson Pollock pushed painting to the brink, but not the end and, really, a new beginning (even when there are those who push the ideas that we could not go further). So, you're correct in saying that there is still much to be seen. Section 2 of your letter explains the reason for art having the need to push the "victim" to the brink, because his indoctrination will not allow him to see. Plato's cave...

Evolution takes place on a small scale, the triumph is a personal one! Just because Pollock's (or Van Gogh's) works now sell for millions doesn't mean that the buyer, or public, understand them any better. The ones who assign dollar value to art are keeping us caught in a quagmire. If they can diminish or eliminate wholly the importance of personal (r)evolution, they will use many cunning tricks to do so. With art, it is the joke of playing money games with it. With Jesus it is religious tomfoolery. With most of the others, Krishnamurti, Bertrand Russell, the passage of time and obscurity. (after awhile it is impossible to find them, they've been essentially wiped out of history for the majority of people)

In the third section of your letter is the resolution of ugliness into beauty. Because we can see the reason and necessity in the approach- that the motivation is out of love. Will the majority understand and see it? Will they have the strength and conviction to strip away the mystification, the silliness, the irrelevances? 

Even within my own self, where I feel all the same events (or non-events) that happen to everyone else, mine is a guarded sleep, abrupt awakenings, fighting against laziness. Remember you told me once that your reason for teaching had something to do with "dialogue"- a feeling or a wish to communicate. What a disappointment to have the student turn a blind eye, but what a thrill to find the few who can learn, share and reflect back on the light you've given!

And those are things I learned from you, those are things I share with you. I have found my "few" just as you have found yours. I'm glad to have been your student and friend my dear Wolf...

Sculptures (busts) 1993

on reverse:

 

Bohr at the height of his creativity breakthrough in his twenties. do you know Niels Bohr? 1885-1962 perhaps the foremost brain scientist, philosopher, family man, helper to many people to come into their own.

Book = Niels Bohr by Abraham Pais (splendid)

Book = Niels Bohr by Ruth Moore (splendid)

 -written so that you and I can understand-

Niels Bohr: Nuclear physicist / complementarity / Quantum phsyics.

in your tongue = [light years ahead or beyond relativity]

"Einstein study" 1993 

 

I just stood at the window taking in the sight

 28 June 1988

Dear Phillip, 

How are you? -very busy and enjoying life with your family?

Here the battle is a familiar one = (1) no rain for months, (2) the ground is dry to 3 feet deep, (3) all the main ingredients for a water tank are here yet the lifting and welding depends on a neighbor (we are all doing more than we have time for)

The joy of today are various thunderstorms! 3/4" of rain so far. for an hour I just stood at the window taking in the sight. 

-the first rain in 2 1/2 months.

-a month ago I began modeling in wax, figures, gestures, (man) human beings and snakes. How to co-exist? (not only with snakes)

-just now the water pump is running again. the power was out (thunderstorms). Now I can heat the wax - back to work; a work of love.

always thinking of you

Wolf

Do you know how the great greek thinker, Heraclitus (500 BC) died? at 60 he crawled into cow manure, a big steaming pile, therein he died at age 60.

We advanced somewhat in taking care of one another!

We seem to be paralyzed in grasping everything at once

4 July 1986

Woodlot

Dear Phillip:

Once more, I like to thank you for your sharing thoughts and feelings, letter May 8, the death of Krishnamurti in February, the bulletin, a copy of which you sent. This in turn I gave to various students, friends as Bill Fleming (studio courses, 1970-72).

You are saying that you are moved, not so much by the words but by the acknowledgement of the truth (fact) the reality Being (Heidegger) of life itself. hold it right there. try to find with me together an expression which describes your feelings, thoughts, inner constellation without the adding: it self. life! yes! that I share with you and Krishnamurti before his death. It is his saying that we shall live wholly as one. when we say: life itself we begin to separate life and us from it. but that is exactly the miracle - which in some sense is not a miracle but the truth or fact or being or whatever is is called that we are

everything under the sun

the sun included

i.e. nothing excluded

nothing: not a thing or thought or feeling or or or excluded [this is the most difficult to live]

we just seem to be paralyzed in grasping everything at once. all our education: pinpointing (as in one and one is two)

a friend and student, Hannah Hultgreen, was taught by her mother how to count. Mother: "Hannah, you do have two apples here, give one apple to Danny" (also 4 years old). Hannah did so. Now her mother asked: "Hannah, how many apples do you have now?" and Hannah promptly replied: "two." Mother exasperates not. "Let Danny eat the apple". Hannah agreed and all sort of waited while Danny ate the apple. Mother: "how many apples do you have now? Hannah!" Hannah: "Two: one in my hands and one in Danny's tummy." Mother: But Hannah, you gave this apple away as a gift to Danny." Hannah: "Yes, mom, so I gave it to him, I would give him all of my toys, I like him so much." pause "But the apple is mine, you said so yourself - it is my apple I gave it to him..."

Over 20 years later the lady, Hannah, still remembers her feelings = sure, it is my apple - and Danny ate the apple - but I (Hannah) wanted him to have al I could give him, so this apple [and in it my love for him] it is still my apple that made him relish the meal of an apple.  Hannah: "I lost nothing but I gained his expression of joy!" So much for our accounting system...

My best thoughts are with you Phillip, 

Love, Wolfram

Below is a scan of Wolf's plan for building a root cellar included with this letter:

A short list of books I am reading

Oct 22, 1985

I will share with you a short list of books I am reading:

Inside The Brain by William Calvin, PH. D./George Ojemann M.D. (Mentor book 80-81134 ISBN $4.50)

Understanding Physics: Light, Magnetism, Electricity by Issac Asimov (Mentor book 451-ME 2121 $2.75)

Understanding Physics: Motion, Sound, Heat by Issac Asimov (Mentor book 451-ME 2365 $4.50)

Particles (An Introduction to Particle Physics) by Michael Chester (Mentor book 451-ME 1899 $2.50)

Understanding Physics: The Electron, Proton and Neutron by Issac Asimov (Mentor book 451-ME 2402 $4.50)

The Brain by Richard M Restak M.D. (Warren Books 0-446 32282-2 $4.50)

We all do push to begin to work, this is normal, we have to overcome one momentum with another one

21 Oct 1985

saturated reds and yellow radiate in the evening sun's shine over and through the trees = autumn. and deep, blue sky.

Dear Phillip,

Your letter brought joy. Your thoughts are open and healthy. Often I admire you insight into human actions. Since action is so thoroughly interrelated to feeling and thought (therefore) it does not matter where we search (dig) or study; we can paint a house, a billboard, a painting- soon we come to similar thoughts, similar feelings, similar advance in wisdom.

what does matter, profoundly so, is out attitude, our longing - as our longing is synchronized or peripheral or opposed to what we are doing. 

when our doing is neutral, then our longing can continue to unfold.

when our doing is contrary to our longing, we are soon frustrated - the longing will obtain two stages - one of which we fall into, the other we lose it or we become fanatic in holding on and become neurotic about it.

Once more, the poorest person can be of highest dignity. what we can observe is = when we rush - we lose all or at least much of this state. [dignity = insight, clarity, responsiveness = feeling, recall and foresight] And from your letter I can see that you are aware of all of this. You are saying what I think, your way, I'm saying what you think my way. So we are at ease and at home. 

The disappointment at the art competition (art competition = is that not a contradiction in terms?) So many times I went through this - as you. In part, I was spoiled because between 1952 and 1972 I made just about all and any show I applied for - then came the great surprise - I wanted some of my portraits accepted! --No way--! And who can judge it better what matters, and what does not, but the maker?

Phillip - let us remind one another, at times, that our social structure is such that we need arts- period. Arts - nothing else. the face, the human face is a power house, an enigma so powerful that this society with this structure of Art-need cannot bear the sight of an individual, unless a membership is emblazed upon the face which makes it a machine part.

Again I say, do what you do to earn your place to sleep and food. Let us not try to confirm, convince, change or inform others. Not yet. two good reasons 1. the lot (or bunch or the many) are not ready to give up their dope or drug or addictive whatever. 2. the very few, who are acting in accord to natural dispositions are all in a most gentle way (inductively, indirectly) just doing this, which we are all advancing to - insight, little by little - very slowly - time means nothing to the natural event. actually time does mean something to the natural event as the 9 months of pregnancy versus 6 months or 12 months, still it is the time it takes which we are often not willing to wait for. we push, we rush - and we lose our senses.

Therefore I will retire as soon as possible. (this "as possible" is not more of the old rush, but patiently waiting for the moment when I can retire with a little bit more than just my shirt). I heard that by December a package is ready. Soon I have an interview with our president = it is he who can advance or stop such action.

For all the years I said = let us save during this time that we have no money: it will be the only time when saving is possible, let's save some for retirement. Now that I intend to retire I realize how the pennies then would mean dollars now. But now no saving will help much. I need a studio, foundry...

But 29 years ago the pennies would bring a difference. Still, I feel good about stepping aside and begin 100% effort on sculpting. Not for show, exhibit... but friends.

You are describing the death, illness of your father. Again I admire you acumen, your perceptive ability, your insight. Again - no confrontation will help, nothing will help but our own action (doing), affording, bringing out our own careful work, honestly felt, the kinks worked out. That is slow, but that is development. the only one worth to have - around the globe!

Spring 1985 - Yes - what a great thought you are evoking by asking if I will be at our woodlot. Yes, of course, this is quite vital to me, the sculptor. Welcome, help building a studio. thereafter, welcome and use the studio! [It is 12:35 the next day - another art class History Of Western Art Forms. teaching is, in general, from 10 a.m. to 10 p.m. drawing and psychological aspect at night] I am already out the door and beginning my lecture haha! It is demanding - taking it seriously. So is everything. Your job the same way. therefore remain at ease with yourself. paint - but do not push. you are by now clearly distinguishing between pushing yourself to work from pushing the work. We all do push to begin to work, this is normal, we have to overcome one momentum with another one.

-in admiration for your working as a painter. more tomorrow. 

Love, Wolfram

There are people who think without words

30 September 1988

Woodlot

-we sometimes think in words.

-at those times we depend on words to sense the sense they make.

-then there are people (thinkers, poets, artists, housewives, children) who think without words.

-paintings, forms, instrumental tone, the unthought tone of voice, brought about without the help of language are, more often than not, the clearer, deeper (more eloquent) expressions of our being as it is in a total world (which we have assimilated).

(to this world we intend to live intelligently Latin: inter = Engl: between; Latin: legere = to gather, to choose)

we are disturbed (quite early in a lifetime) by a society with a fixed set of codes (of conduct, response, work station, school expectation, religious expectations)

-in my letter to you of May 5, 1986 I related to you how Thomas Cappuccio and I were quite unable to bring about verbal responses to your paintings as represented by photos (which you had sent to us). And that by means of careful exchange of many words a few hints to the propensity of your work (paintings) emerged (as in: Blue Contained)

perhaps (I am not uncertain when I write perhaps) we have to paint (we, all of humankind) and paint and paint, little or much or none at all, for a while.

When you talk to your wife - free of "words", when you hug your child in that way - that is painting at it's foremost. That is living at it's highest. (If we could only trust that most personal experiencing)

The greatest thinkers, artists, poets are those who do sense, as you do and begin to realize the uniqueness as well as the universality of this taking place within and about them.

And in so living (i.e. painting) we "give" color, pattern, form, touch, exchange of  nods of the head, or looks of the eyes, or a gentle holding of the hand, an ever so faint greeting...

when we, as we do so (and we do so!), we begin to stand on the foundations of humanity - human being - being.

Once we are aware of it, we will feel an inexorable, unstoppable vigor, a strength to convey this awareness. To help others to experience life, to live life out of this magnificence, this ease, as Krishnamurti writes: "the beauty of all of it."

The counterpoint to this deep insight experience is the "follower", the one who wanted to be told what to think, how to think, where to think.

personal experience, self reliance - (an ordinary school experienced individual is void of such capacity... has been decapitated). this is our way of domesticating animals like cows and horses and rabbits. the world population becomes rapidly such, or is such since thousands of years? (you can read this sentence also without the question marks)

The dialogue, the exchange and the questions we have from deep within us - they are timeless, and are our treasures. In exchanging: we strengthen, widen, live.

for over three months most of my activity was to bring water from the pond (our own) to the trees, which stood in soil that was powder dry to a depth of four feet. thousands of tree (seedlings and up to 3 feet) dimply died. I could not bring water to 17000 trees, yet I drove with the tractor and 500 gallons water wagon day in day out, walking in the hillsides with 5 gallon pails and 1 1/2 thick hoses. Some - those who received their water rations regularly, even thrived, since the sunshine was during those days: continuous. Last week we had 4, later 2 inches of rain. now this week i became a bit more human in that I have "time". time to do else but run for water, time to visit, time to read, time to feel, time to think and time to write, time to say hello!

Today, a long-time acquaintance accorded a bust commission. As soon as my left ring finger can flex again (got squashed against a log splitter) I will begin modeling. A fine man - with a concern for the well-being of all with whom he comes in contact.

We had our first frost. Since I have a woodstove, wood is needed. The forest is full of "fire wood". Now: getting it.

The shelves (storage) are full of plaster molds to be transferred into plaster casts (well over 30)

two bronze casts completed, 6 small modelings in wax, ready for casting - when?

slowly, ever so slowly a begin.

And yet, I feel fulfilled. 

with love, 

Your Wolf

Independent thought, independent from indoctrination and any belief

13 July 1988

Studio

Dear Phillip,

Thank you for your two letters, thoughts, greetings and questions. Immediately I am flooded with possibilities to illuminate the "area" in which you are standing as an artist. However, to do justice to the intense seriousness and commitment of yours, it will be more appropriate  to be specific (references to sources - as you are specific when mentioning Krishnamurti) and precise, short enough to be understood. Therefore I am pleading for a day or two to write and rewrite and find what is familiar to me, but better, more concisely said by others - to photocopy these in some instances, translate some thoughts written in another language.

You are a magnificent companion with your sharing your own personal inquiries into the meaning (goings-on) in life. Soon I will reply. 

Love, Wolf

P.S. Independent thought, independent from indoctrination and any belief = trust your senses, all of your senses. Your body (brain included) has survived the general pool for hundreds of millions of years. YET, each individual cell, from the beginning on, has to afford itself to the ultimate of it's best "know-how" to survive. 

We have come up from physical survival into a realm of psychological survival! You are doing well in keeping up your efforts to gain a clearer view of 1. what is hindering the psychological success? 2. what promotes psychological success? (psychological event is a specific physical event)

You are living a life of awareness. Nothing higher can be achieved.

8 March 1988

Monday

Mild

Dear Phillip, 

Your letter brought much joy! Soon I will write you a reply.

Marcus (#1) and Lisa and Cliff (#2 son) and Belva and (their) daughters and I visited the Aerospace Museum on Constitutional Avenue Wash D.C. We were astonished in wonderment and surprise how wide the "Voyager" airplane was, how thin the material, how small the cabin for two people to lay in flat - like a pencil. 9 days 3 minutes and 44 seconds is a long time under those conditions. 

My reading (midnights) = Jean Piaget (child psychologist) The development of thought (Equilibration of Cognitive Structures) makes fascinating brain food. Often enough he comes close to Heidegger's description of Being. (an ?active? = letting be)

His (Piaget) central idea is = knowledge proceeds neither from experience with external objects nor from intuitive or logical internal processes, but knowledge develops from a series of cognitive structures, built one above the other, requiring continuous adjustments and leading to further constructions.

like your daughter's "latching onto something only to let go a week later"... (Arnold Rosin)

Piaget: "To understand is to invent."

Also I am learning the Hebrew alphabet.

My Greek studies continue.

Mike Piechocinski (1974-76) has an exhibition here at Washington DC on April 2 - 27. I intend to be at the opening.

--No comparison!--

Your work is: an event, is inventive, arises, rises from your live substance!

Piaget = "Most important not to get stuck with one solution." Not only are there many solutions to a problem or question, but also it is likely that we find better, easier (conservation of energy), more appropriate solutions with other directions.

As I can see you are living a life of awareness. Nothing higher can be achieved. I hope to see you this year. Love, Wolf

Every single thing is connected with all there is in a most magnificent, enticing way

 22 February 1993

Dear Phillip:

What a joy to receive your letter. This envelope of yours is surely packed with a lot of news. Your family is now situated in a kind of paradise! The land, the hills and vegetation must be beautiful. Your wife is teaching. And you cannot find work. For a while, this may be a blessing in disguise? Working, thinking as an artist, that means to sense life as it is. Few artists are truly artists - because they cannot, will not sense life, clouds, mountains, plants, children, people as they are. Why not? Why can these many people not sense life as it is? --preconceived ideas? You bet! In a rush? You bet! once in a rut there is hardly any chance that these people ever come to their senses; ever. 

Proof? Well we may look at what Nixon called the silent majority. Silent? Perhaps the more appropriate term would be = silenced !!! Well, you are still thinking and aware. NOT lost yet. Keep up, keep your head above the water, look at life between the rocks, between the leaves of your environment. And I gather you are taking your children with you when walking into this island paradise. Ask them what they see. A Gecko? A lizard? A bird? -what kind? what color? what pattern? what does it live on? The same when we see people = what do they think? Why do they think money-? and not: how can I help you? or how would you like it if I make you so free that can tell me what you think of me! And what we do together, planting a garden, a forest.

Your work, as represented in the photos, show me a person whom we in older time (60 years ago) would have called a master. A master knows/how to/make things work in a given setting. That includes the Zen masters. ONCE a very rich lady in Canada addressed me with that word. I sort of shivered. I thought it inappropriate for me, since I never thought of, to have mastered anything -forever growing into what there is- to let "things" "speak" for themselves. Never a system or structure or method. That is all delightful = the older I says to the younger = teach me.

Perhaps in your remoteness, removed from the self accelerating stimulus of a hectic civilization you may discover what Cezanne (the only painter who did?) discover when he painted simple people, simple landscapes. (If I dare make a verbal statement: and as a fool as I am, I love to dare) Cezanne in his way, and Van Gogh in his, and Gaugin never, neither Renoir or Matisse or... 

Cezanne in his way discovered what every mother knows by heart (until civilization tears it out through education and indoctrination?) that things out there = every single thing is connected with all there is in a most magnificent, enticing way. This I can see too in your work. (only?!!) Cezanne kept the image, the pattern, the direct connection to the very "thing" which was his cause for looking + thinking + feeling + action. He celebrated life, he was in an overwhelming way (illegible) of the interwovenness  of all there is = stone, air, plants, animals, and stars (i.e. our sun, light, room to be in.)

You know all this too well. So? Do not lose it, strengthen your self in it. How? By talking with the children of the land with the land with the water with the people 

                                                                                                  no comma

Now I will go back to my lump of clay. Then to town to mail this letter. Then up into the hills, two feet of snow. I do feed the birds, rabbits, squirrels and deer, one raccoon and one very old (big) opossum. 

Designing a foldable (collapsible) modeling stand to take with me on the airplane - to Europe. The first try weighs 40 lbs, the second 22 lbs, now the third try...? I'll let you know how I make out.

In the meantime, keep your wonderful spirit refreshed with mountain air. Perhaps when convenient I may be able to save enough and visit you over a weekend? Greetings to your dear wife and the children. Soon I will write you again Phillip and send a few photos. Thank you for your photos. 

Love, Wolf

The similarity was there in the first twenty minutes

 St. Peter near Freiburg

(near Swiss and French border)

(6-93)

Dear Phillip,

Your letter and critiques of your publications are still fresh in my memory. And I admire your drive and intent to bring about an improved sense of interrelatedness among the many various outloooks among us human(s).

Here in Germany, as I may have already indicated to you, I am working on a bust in clay of Dr. Maria Schätzle (Dr. M.A.C. Otto) author of many books; especially = The Begin (archai). The similarity was there in the first twenty minutes. However, that which inspired me in the book (and other books of this author) required considerable changes during the ensuing days - and there are still more changes to be initiated.

Yesterday evening, the publisher Dr. R. Jona of Freiburg arrived with his wife for a little celebration and we all had a lively exchange of thoughts, as they had occurred during our life.

Saturday I will visit my step mother (near Heidelberg).

Often I wonder how you and your dear wife and child make ends meet when there is no work? Why is there no work when the banks and the stock of the large companies are at an all time high?

Take care; best greeting, my thoughts are with you.

Your Wolfram

In Atlanta I was immersed in an entirely new world

Virginia 1993

7, August

Dear Phillip,

Your letter followed me from Wheeler to Atlanta, Georgia to Manassas, Virginia - long enough that I want to write you now some greetings. Not much time is left in my work for private time. Especially in Atlanta I was immersed in an entirely new world - reading the gestural and physiognomic pattern-forms of primates, especially Bonobos, a "related form" of small chimpanzees (they are not chimpanzees look superficially similar). The request is = can a bronze sculpture be made, which conveys by gesture of body and face an intention of the Bonobo to help a child which is unable to speak (totally mute) to express itself via a "keyboard". (keyboard = a plate with symbols, when touched will give (illegible) the sound of the meaning of the symbol). I entered this task with great commitment, as it should help the children to receive such keyboards and to further the research in general on an improved approach to teaching (NOT training)

With Cliff and Belva I had the chance to discuss the project of research and the form given in clay for bronze, in detail. 

Soon more of it's development.

How are you? Did you obtain some work? When you left California did you know the conditions at Guayama? You were properly informed or not?

Best wishes, your Wolfram

Exhibition Press Release: University of Minnesota Duluth, 1963

October 31, 1963

A UMD art faculty exhibition of paintings and sculpture opens with an 8-10 p.m. reception November 5 in Tweed Gallery. It will remain up through December 1.

The contributors will be: J. Dorrance Kiser, Rudolph I. Schauer, assistant professors; Orazio Fumagalli, associate professor; and Forrest R. Bailey and Wolfram F. Niessen, instructors.

Fumagalli and Niessen will show sculpture. A first-year member of the faculty, Niessen's work deals chiefly with life experiences. Many of the pieces were done while he was at Michigan State University.

 

Stout State University Sports and Fitness Center, 1966

MENOMONIE (August 19, 2020) - The sculpture on the east wall of the Sports and Fitness Center has caused students over the past 50-plus years to pause and take a look at it. After studying it, the sculpture appears to be a football player getting ready to catch a ball.

But, like any art form, the sculpture can be more than that, according to the artist who created the sculpture - Wolfram Niessen. 

Niessen, a Stout State University art instructor at the time, designed the all-aluminum sculpture to be attached to the building in 1966, two years after the 1964 completion of what was then called the Health and Physical Education Center.

The following is a Sept. 9, 1966, article from the The Stoutonia, the school newspaper, outlining Niessen's work on the project and what his vision of the project was.

ATHLETIC ACHIEVEMENT FOR STOUT FIELDHOUSE (Sept. 9, 1966, The Stoutonia)

In designing an image of athletic achievement, a Stout State University faculty sculptor instructor captured the integral spirit of athletics striving throughout the entire university in his latest work for the University's Health and Physical Education Center. 

 

Wolfram Niessen, assistant professor of art and sculpture, has designed and constructed a 36-foot by 21-foot piece of sculpture in recognition of Stout's athletic achievement this past year. 

 At the suggestion of president William J. Micheels, Niessen designed a figure that was to represent the Stout athletic teams – the Blue Devils; however, the artist feels that his aluminum sculpture can be interpreted in many ways. 

 

"The essence of the idea is to convey the spirit of the university, whether an individual or a team," Niessen told the student newspaper The Stoutonia. "The design represents a figure. He could be a football player, a man in space or a man reaching and receiving at the university. It could also be a Blue Devil, due to the two horn-like projections on the "head," but they all culminate in the explicit urge of reaching and receiving." 

 

Wolfram Niessen assembles the sculpture that will be affixed to the health and physical education building

Wolfram Niessen works on the sculpture that would hang on the east side of the Sports and Fitness Center.  

The artist chose to carry out his two-dimensional design with sheet aluminum to complement the new health and physical education center on which the complete work is mounted. 

 

"The brick wall of the physical education center is such a covering over a steel skeleton that the wall itself has not much body compared to the entire building structure. Since the weight is relatively light," said Niessen, "the open spaced aluminum sheet sculpture work is a most fitting enhancement as the brick shines through the open design." 

 

The four-piece sculpture, completely hand-worked by Niessen, is mounted six inches from the east wall of the physical education building, facing the athletic field. 

The German-born Niessen has also taught drawing and sculpture at the University of Saskatchewan and the University of Minnesota, Duluth. He has exhibited three or more works at Kunsthalle, and Kustveriese, Schloss, Manheim, Germany; Bilkende Hande, Stuttgardt, Germany; Franfurt, Germany; and the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts, Montreal, Canada. Niessen taught three years at Stout, from 1965-68. 

 

Our educational (system) ... destroys the potential for the individual ever to make for themselves a whole world again

2 January 1987

05:40 calm, cloudy, 32° F

Dear Phillip,

Repeatedly I am reading your letters.

The last one, where you describe your impression of the wind and clouds is so well expressed, so full of life, that I can identify feelings of similar kind, an insight and presentiment of strongly being moved by the deepest recesses of our feeling, knowing and wanting to act, all at the same time.       It shows your favorable disposition to be an artist in that you drew some patterns in your letter. Oh! If people only would know how important, decidedly and singularly it (is) to be a preposition to be active. [the dope, the inhibitive poison generated by watching routinely T.V. or listening routinely to a person talking or looking, thinking, doing anything routinely without the active innermost elicitation and awareness of the full participation of our being (thought, feeling, action) plus (notion, sensing vaguely, still other involvements and implications and to be in movement physically). Various thinkers express this state as with the word = awareness. It would be totally misleading to think of awareness without the full presence of action. Your drawing is action, this can be seen readily, your wish to point out your awareness at the moment when the event over powered you (impressed itself upon you, which is an overpowering, overriding of all else) is less obvious to be recognized as direct action, since it is on a more covert location in us and little does come to the fore.

The "artistic" action is a sane happening (actually: a must, an absolute must to progress from passive to active).

comparison = [the bankers
                        the military
                        the industrialists] are active

                        [the "workers"
                        the "teachers"
                        the "farmers"
                        the "artists" (the many with the preference of "making" art which of course is not art)                                       the million fakes] passive

_______________________________________________________________________________

Let us remind one another to the fact, that no one on earth is singularly active. In the same sense of grasping the core of this concern = no one is singularly passive.

Let us be observant and see: when a person becomes to any extent passive, the person feels "imbalanced". Initially it is this fact, that the person feels. Should the feeling be "lost", the imbalance will increase until we recognize "sickness".

                                                        (my explanation
                                                                excursion - may be too fast)

In some way I see you do know ( in your action, your life, your drawings, your paintings) the degree of certainty is somewhat different since our educational (system), without knowing, destroys the potential for the individual ever to make for themselves a whole world again.

That makes these people "dependent" = i.e. passive.
[in that same sense = the football hero on the field is passive! -though he is running successfully a touchdown yet this is a mechanical toy that is running. The human being, the Mr. Hero football player is passive in that he is imbalanced and has no means to restore balance; someone would have to help him there -of course no one does- surely not the coach, "teacher" who made him dependent in "helping" him to "act" so well.

The writing so far, is a sequence of excerpts, short blurbs of a vast store, a writer will sort this - having time.

I have very little time at this moment for writing. If I do not cut wood and carry it out of the woods I will freeze.  Since there is no money for oil, coal, gas or "electric heat". If I do not move now and put up the 2 x 4 as liners and the sheet rock as covers I will live on a concrete floor and fiberglass open walls - contamination of lungs and inner organs.

If I do not move now  …  I remain out of balance.

Therefore, Phillip, forgive me for the shortness of this letter, the inadequacy of response to your most important events. I love you, I trust you are being /as there is so much evidence/ active.

                                                  to be active: means too = to balance feelings and thought.
                                                  to be thinking: means also = to balance action and feeling.
                                                  to be feeling: means too = to balance thought and action.

The funniest thing = when we are imbalanced  we become aware!

When we are balanced (painting) 2 or 5 hours "go so fast" we are unaware of the time that passes.

Back to the 2 x 4's! With love, Wolfram



                     

This ought to be on the higher level of love

06:03 20 Nov 1985

Dear Phillip:

We are here "in the middle of" I.A.P. (Individual Art Production). It took us years (you know how slow human beings communicate and how long it does take us, indeed, to implement physically, of which we are aware of, as if we are paralyzed by some injection)        To take some of the terror out of this I.A.P. experience.

1. I never liked the name (still, it is offensive to me)
2. This ought to be on the higher level of love. The student trust(s) us with his/her best work to look at, to make our best comments, to give our best feelings and thoughts. Great. So what could be distressful?

______________________________________________________________________________

Of course, it is not on the level of love - but on competition, conformity of various kinds and indoctrination - at least to some extent. So, we are working on an improvement, whereby the student will find larger and greater possibilities for personal development.

At this moment, it looks to me as if the people/powers who guide the curriculum, do not see or even believe a bit, that a well developed student is equally a cheerful and effective citizen. [this is one of the many conditions which baffle me about human behavior]

I wish you a cheerful day, Phillip.

Your, Wolfram

Wolfram with students at the woodlot cabin