Date: Fri 17-Oct-1997

Publication: Bee

Author: DOTTIE

Quick Words:

Zimmermann-Gutbrod-artist

Full Text:

(feature on artist Virginia Zimmermann-Gutbrod & show @McLaughlin Vineyard)

The Big Skies Of North Dakota As Inspiration

(with photos)

BY DOROTHY EVANS

When artist Virginia Zimmermann-Gutbrod, a lifelong Queens, New York,

resident, was suddenly transplanted in 1987 to Minot, North Dakota, she was

almost overwhelmed by her new environment.

The broad expanse of sky, a trademark feature of the northern prairie, offered

limitless views from horizon to horizon.

It was something she had never experienced before, not while growing up in

Queens, and certainly not in Paris, where she had studied art at the Parsons

School of Design.

Her trained artist's eye was continually discovering the vanishing point,

measuring those vast, unbroken vistas, taking it all in.

"Something happens to a person when day after day they can see twenty miles in

any direction," Ms Zimmermann-Gutbrod stated in a press release for the

current exhibit of her works at the McLaughlin Winery in Sandy Hook.

Titled "An Unobstructed View," the exhibit includes pastel paintings and

charcoal drawings completed by the artist during her four years in North

Dakota and shortly thereafter, when she moved back east to Connecticut in

1991.

The show will continue through October 31, and visitors to the McLaughlin

Vineyard -- located on Alberts Hill Road off Walnut Tree Hill Road -- are

welcome to view Ms Zimmermann-Gutbrod's paintings and drawings displayed in

the winery building.

`A Crystallizing Time'

In 1991, when Robert Gutbrod accepted a position with Airborne Express, the

family bought a home on Walnut Tree Hill Road in Sandy Hook. Their third

child, Dieter, was born soon thereafter, joining his two sisters, Jacqueline

and Sarah.

Now, nearly seven years after leaving North Dakota, Ms Zimmermann-Gutbrod

feels settled in Sandy Hook, with the girls attending Hawley School and Dieter

going to Trinity Day School.

She pursues freelance illustration work from her Sandy Hook studio and is also

enrolled at Southern Connecticut State University, working toward and master's

degree in fine arts and a teaching certificate.

Yet, she remembers those four years spent on the northern prairie with great

pleasure.

In many ways, "that was a crystallizing time in my life," she said last week.

In New York, "everything acts on you. You're always moving, coping, adapting."

In North Dakota, "you slow down and look around you. All that space is freeing

in a way. You realize that whatever you want to do, you can do," she said.

Ms Zimmermann-Gutbrod had discovered that while living in Minot she could

manage her resources to carve out creative time by using the rental income

from a two-family house she owned back in New York.

The extra income paid for a full-time mother's helper.

"I used to get up very early and go out and draw the landscape," she recalled,

telling about one incident that happened while she was finishing the charcoal

drawing of the barn with three turrets called, "John's Place."

"The owner came up to me, riding on his huge tractor and wearing a Canadian

Railroad hat. At first he seemed very gruff, asking me, `What are you doing to

my barn!'

"Then we got to talking and he told me all sorts of things about that old barn

including the fact that during the 1950s, the local high school held dances on

the second floor," she said.

"Sadly, a month after we left, the barn was hit by lightning and burned to the

ground."

Winter Code Of Ethics

There were other things about living in North Dakota the artist says she will

never forget, namely, the extreme harshness of the winters and the

ever-present wind blowing.

"If the wind wasn't blowing they'd talk about it on the news," she laughed.

Certainly whatever trees could survive the wind and winter didn't provide much

shelter or cover.

"They were short, stubby and tough," she said.

"Still, people surrounded their farms with trees, putting the tallest to the

north for a windbreak and leaving the south side exposed for warmth from the

winter sun."

"They used the land to help conserve water," and they planted wheat down the

median between the roads. In winter, you'd see dog sleds going up and down

those medians," Ms Zimmermann-Gutbrod said.

Referring to the wintry landscape as depicted in the movie Fargo , she said it

was "just like that" -- all snowy whiteness and black fence lines with no

trees.

"Minot was probably the third largest city after Bismarck and Fargo," she

added.

Travel conditions on North Dakota roads during a blizzard were so hazardous,

residents adopted a "standing code of ethics" for wintertime survival.

"If someone was stranded, you picked them up or they would die out there."

"Also, you never stole someone's block heater [plugged into the car's engine]

while they were parked outside a public place [such as a grocery store or

library], because within two hours without the heater, the engine would freeze

up and they'd be stranded."

"When faced with such severe weather, you behave a certain way," Ms

Zimmermann-Gutbrod concluded.

Ditch Insurance?

At first, Ms Zimmermann-Gutbrod found the surrounding landscape to be alien

and frightening. As she grew more familiar with the vast open spaces and long

views, she found unexpected beauty there.

She mentioned the brilliance of the noonday sun and the seemingly endless

summer days when the sun didn't set until 11 pm. You could watch the clouds on

the far horizon to see what the weather would be in about two hours' time.

The county roads were built up to a higher level than the fields, she

explained, because, in between the roads, they dug gullies to catch the

windblown snow, also to store the accumulated snow as it was plowed off the

road.

Then in spring, when the gully snow melted, the water was used for irrigation.

During blizzards the wind would be swirling and there would be the awful

whiteouts.

If you went off the road into one of those ditches, you could die there

because it was impossible to get out.

"They actually sold Ditch Insurance," against that sort of disaster because it

was such a common an occurrence, she said.

Even the North Dakota farmers had a sense of the monumental beauty of the

northern prairie.

"They'd park their huge combines high up on a bluff so you could see the

metallic silhouettes against the sky like gargantuan pieces of sculpture," she

said.

Everything in North Dakota was done on a large scale, it seemed, even the art,

such as the familiar tourist statue of the folk hero Paul Bunyan.

Ms Zimmermann-Gutbrod found her own paintings and drawings were becoming

larger as time went on.

"Your tendency is to make things big because the spaces are so overwhelming.

It's as if you are saying,`I want somebody just to know I was here.'"

Finally, Ms Zimmermann-Gutbrod could not resist talking about the one thing

that always inspires landscape painters -- the quality of the natural light.

"People don't realize it but in North Dakota, the sunlight is so intense it's

almost delicious. Very surprising," she said.

That would explain the brilliant greens and deep browns in her pastel painting

of the one-room "Prairie School," where earthy colors of prairie grass are

contrasted to clear lemon yellow and salmon pink planes highlighting the

school house walls and roof.

A High Vantage Point

Only one of the artist's charcoal drawings included in the McLaughlin

Vineyards exhibit was inspired by an area other than North Dakota.

It is "Visitors," a picture of three people standing in front of what looks

like an old Victorian farmhouse, except that at the far right of the picture,

one glimpses the rounded edge of a conical-shaped structure.

"That's a lighthouse," Ms Zimmermann-Gutbrod said.

It turned out the subject of her drawing was situated on a high promontory,

near a favorite family summer vacation spot in Woods Hole, Mass.

"Can you tell that's my husband? He's the foreigner from New York City wearing

his dark glasses and his big city shoes [Reeboks]. He's remote," she said.

The girls, who look more relaxed in their surroundings, are her two daughters

and the situation, she said, was typical of her family's way of life.

"Unless we've settled down and are actually living in a place, we are always

traveling -- always envisioning someplace else," she said.

"Sometimes, we need a high place to stop and look," a vantage point from which

we can piece together our lives.

"We all need places where you can't ever touch the far reaches of where you

see," Ms Zimmermann-Gutbrod concluded.

On the East Coast, that's rare.

Virginia Zimmermann-Gutbrod's current show of pastel paintings and charcoal

drawings, titled "An Unobstructed View," will continue at the McLaughlin

Winery through the end of October, on view at the winery building, Alberts

Hill Road in Sandy Hook. The Vineyard is open 11 am-4 pm Monday through

Sunday. For more information, call 426-1533.