Front Lines: Sculptor Lundeen helps define Loveland’s core

George Lundeen will tell you that success as an artist requires more perseverance than talent. “You just have to outlast everyone else.”

And, “counter to what the larger art schools teach, you can earn a decent living (working on commissions) and still be true to your work,” he said.

Lundeen sculpted the bronze of Kenneth Monfort on the University of Northern Colorado campus, Astronaut Jack Swigert in Statuary Hall in Washington, D.C., and at Denver International Airport and many life-size pieces around the region.

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He is an integral part of an ever-growing sector of the Loveland economy centered around the visual arts. Lundeen is personally responsible for an annual payroll near $200,000, depending on the year.

“I also pay property tax, sales tax and all the other taxes I’m told I owe,” Lundeen added amiably.

“We also help a lot of people in crisis situations through the Artist Charitable Fund (at the Northern Colorado Community Foundation) and support Hospice and many other charities. Requests come in daily.”

Yet something called “code-by-complaint,” based on archaic downtown zoning, is “trying to drive me off” main street Loveland, he said, and out of the three previously condemned Fourth Street buildings he and his family purchased and renovated as gallery space.

“I paid several thousand dollars in fines just last year because of zoning that still thinks downtown Loveland is anchored by J.C. Penney’s.”

His problem, though, is becoming an opportunity for a coalition of people who have an interest in revitalizing downtown and encouraging the growth of Loveland as what Carol Garton of the Northern Colorado Economic Development Council called “the art Mecca of Colorado.”

While representatives of the city of Loveland, Economic Development Council, Loveland Chamber of Commerce and select business owners formulate a 20-year plan for historic preservation, economic development and new city codes for downtown Loveland, Lundeen continues to “pay fines, show up every day and work hard.”

But he said he is getting tired and looks forward to the day he can just enjoy being a sculptor.

“I still get excited when a mother tears up when she sees a sculpture of her child,” he said. “But it’s getting harder.”

He arrived in Loveland in 1975, the year before the Big Thompson Flood, and recalls “a steady decline in the vitality of downtown (Fourth Street).”

Lundeen estimated that the three major foundries in Loveland and Berthoud employ well over 100 people. Plus associated businesses such as mold makers, bronze finishers, photographers, base makers and galleries bring the number of people employed directly in support of sculptors to several hundred.

Loveland hosts two of the largest sculpture shows in the world the second weekend in August, and those shows draw about 300 sculptors and 200 other artists and crafters for a three-day event that draws between 25,000 and 30,000 visitors and does more than $2 million annually in sales.

“Motels and other lodging throughout the region are booked solid that weekend,” Garton said. “Many people book a year in advance.”

Cultural Services Director Susan Ison said the city is working to measure the impact of Loveland’s art scene as an economic engine.

“Art is big business in Loveland,” Ison said. “We are working on an impact study to determine just how big as part of our long-range planning.”

The city also has worked to invest in building its art foundation. In 1985 Loveland became the first city in Colorado to institute a 1 percent development tax for Art in Public Places, according to City Manager Jane Brautigan.

Ison’s study began with an inventory of city-owned artwork, mostly sculpture. She found 198 pieces with a current value of $4.3 million, plus 10 new pieces waiting to be installed. Her report will be available later this year.

Lundeen laughed when asked for the “CliffsNotes” version of the part he plays: “I knew Cliff (Hillegass from Rising City, Neb.). I did a sculpture of him for the Museum of Nebraska Art (MONA) … holding the CliffsNotes of Romeo and Juliet.”

Lundeen always knew he’d end up in art. He started a sign-painting business in Holdredge, Neb., when he was 14. Throwing pots and selling class projects paid the bills through his undergraduate at Hastings (Neb.) College and master’s at the University of Illinois.

Lundeen has spent a lifetime studying faces and expressions but said, “I learned anatomy in the back seat of my ’57 Chevy.”

After a year in Italy as a Fulbright Scholar, Lundeen found being a “full-blooded Swede” did not help him get a job in the early ’70s. So he tended bar in Hastings until some art professors from Kearney State College (now the University of Nebraska at Kearney) found him.

He taught at KSC for a year, then moved to Loveland to “sweep floors” for Art Castings of Colorado and Bob and Mary Zimmerman, and cast some of his own work.

“Their little foundry was doing the highest-quality casting I’d ever seen,” he said. “They’re the ones who deserve credit for putting Loveland on the map … and artists like Fritz White, George Walbye and Glenna Goodacre. There have been so many.”

Lundeen opened his own studio in 1976, incorporated in 1978 and bought the first Fourth Street building in 1980.

The Lundeen enclave now includes brother Mark, brother Nelse’s wife, Bets, and George’s wife, Cammie. The business center includes three buildings with five rented studios and two retail outlets.

“I am the only one incorporated, but we help each other when asked, and Nelse is my accountant,” Lundeen said.

It took the brothers Lundeen and 30 kids from Illinois on a senior trip to Washington to put the Swigert statue in Statuary Hall.

“Mark and I did the sculpture,” he said. “But the (Statuary Hall) architect wouldn’t accept shipment because Swigert was wearing his white astronaut uniform and the rules only allowed for bronze-colored sculptures,” Lundeen explained.

Nelse was in Washington and took possession of the one-ton Swigert and the kids helped move it into place. “It’s now the most photographed exhibit there,” Lundeen said.

Art, Lundeen said, is like no other pursuit of a living.

“It’s a tough business,” he said. “There aren’t too many jobs where your stuff is out there for everyone’s opinion. … Once you have some success you have to keep having success or you can go down the tubes quickly.”

Then, faced with damage to some of his work in public places, Lundeen observed, “The worst case of vandalism was dished out by the art critic for the Denver Post.”