Bayview Woman Goes Face To Face With Art
The faces pop out of everything. Lamps. Walls. Planters. Cups.
They grin, grimace, tease.
Leata Judd’s Bayview, Idaho, workshop is no place for paranoid people or misanthropes.
“I love faces, hands, feet,” Leata says. “Everything I do calls for its own face.”
The faces rise from hardened clay as if Leata had pressed her wet work over gnomes. Hooked noses and wide eyes. O-shaped mouths and apple cheeks.
“You can do anything with clay,” Leata says, her voice dropping in reverence. “It forms in front of you. You can watch your hands work almost like a third party.”
Leata discovered clay in her mid-30s and was hooked. Her father had sculpted, but her mother didn’t approve, so he would hide his work. Leata was a Brownie leader with a knack for art, but then she joined a sculpting class.
It was 1961 and she was “supposed” to be reading recipes and kneading bread dough, not studying nude models and molding clay. The class caused a little tension at home, but “it opened a whole new world for me,” Leata says.
The class ended after three years, but Leata couldn’t stop. Her desire to create prompted her to turn a chicken house into a workshop, then move the workshop into her daughter’s bedroom after her daughter had left for college.
Leata joined the craft-fair circuit to give her a reason other than personal fulfillment for her work. She discovered people either love her creations or hate them.
“A man and his mother came by (her stand) and he was looking at one of my lamps,” Leata says, remembering a tough moment on Sandpoint’s Cedar Street Bridge a few years ago. “He asked his mother if she was interested and she said, ‘I not only don’t want to buy it - it makes me ill.’ I locked up and went for a hike.”
Some people shrink from the faces; others are fascinated.
For her son’s new home, Leata has incorporated faces into the walls.
Her work has helped her release grief, anger, hurt.
“I do have a lot of fun,” she says, as excited about her work now as she was 35 years ago. “And I get rid of a lot of problems.”
Leata exhibits her work at The Blue Moon in Coeur d’Alene and at Art Works and the Michigan Greenhouse in Sandpoint.
Oops
I sent you to the wrong hotel for the Coeur d’Alene Art Association annual wine tasting/art auction this coming Monday. It’s at the Coeur d’Alene Inn in Bays 4 and 5.
The money will go to scholarships for high school artists. Maybe they should save a little for reading lessons for me. …
Buy tickets at the door. Then buy lots of art.
Uncommon courtesy
Hayden’s Candace Finity had no trouble thinking of a person whose courtesy is admirable. Diane Lee at Accent Optical in Coeur d’Alene always walks her customers to the door and opens the door for them when they leave. Candace says she didn’t even buy her glasses at Diane’s store but probably will next time. Diane has won her over completely.
Old cheerleaders
Today I hit the road for Boise to cheer on Lake City High School swimmers at the state championship meet. I’ll yell until I’m hoarse, bounce up and down on the side of the pool and alienate nearly everyone around me except my team. I’m not embarrassed, because it’s heartfelt encouragement, not harassment. At least that’s the story I’m sticking with. …
Who do you know who goes bananas at athletic events and what does he or she do that’s so funny? Tell Cynthia Taggart, “Close to Home,” 608 Northwest Blvd., Suite 200, Coeur d’Alene 83814; or send a fax to 765-7149, call 765-7128 or send e-mail to cynthiat@spokesman.com.
, DataTimes ILLUSTRATION: Color Photo