Lakeland PBS presents Common Ground, brought to you by the Minnesota Arts and Cultural Heritage Fund and the citizens of Minnesota.

Production funding of Common Ground is made possible in part by First National Bank Bemidji continuing their second century of service to the community, Member FDIC.

Welcome to Common Ground.

I'm producer/director Scott Knudson.

In this special Moving Lives MN episode of Common Ground Chris Hamilton shares his immigrant grandfather's sculptures at Bemidji's Watermark Art Center.

My name is Chris Hamilton.

Right now we're in downtown Becida, which I like to call a suburb of Bemidji and in the winter of 2019 I had the opportunity and really the honor of exhibiting my grandfather's artwork at the Watermark Arts Center in Bemidji, Minnesota.

I currently own a small real estate company in Bemidji.

I've done that for 17 years now, called Lake-N- Woods Realty.

I grew up down in the Cities, down in Minneapolis in Golden Valley.

I escaped the Cities in 1986.

Went up to BSU for school, stayed up here for about well until my junior year in college and joined the Marine Corps in 1990.

Came back here in 1995 after tour service was done and haven't left.

Love it up here.

So I grew up with my mother.

My mother met my father in Germany when he was in the service and she naturalized in 1965 or so.

My mother grew up in southern Germany in Bavaria.

My mother's father actually my mother's father and her mother and up, up the the family tree, all artists or artisans of of sorts.

My grandfather was a sculptor.

His father a goldsmith and quite an accomplished goldsmith, my mother's mother also an artist, a wax sculptor but my grandfather's artwork really gained some notoriety.

That was his life's work.

That's what he did for a living and his name is Joachim Berthold.

I'm probably butchering his name.

If my mother said it she'd roll an "r" or two and I I just I simply don't have that so that's that's my pronunciation.

And so I grew up with the art.

I grew up with the art in my in my mother's household and there was there was sculptures that that I would roll my Hot Wheels cars on and play with in indiscriminately and not realizing that this is art.

This is a piece of my family history and I really didn't gain an an appreciation for it.

His primary medium was bronze castings of varying sizes, largest pieces eight feet plus tall and some of the smaller pieces can fit in the palm of your hand.

The forms are more abstract forms and so I really didn't have an appreciation for the for the pieces or the or for the art at all until much later in life and until he came out with a couple of pieces that actually reached out to me and connected with.

Ah ha.

This is where he's coming from.

This is what he's talking about.

This is the message that he's trying to convey.

Once I was able to grasp a connection with those pieces then I'm able to look back at the earlier pieces that are a little bit more abstract than his later pieces and see where he's coming from.

That's kind of been a nice evolution for me and it's nice to actually be able to appreciate the work instead of look at it and say, "Well, he made a good living doing this.

I'm glad somebody likes it."

Now I do too.

I have in my possession 75 to 80 pieces plus I don't know how many plaster originals in the corresponding molds.

Additionally I've got numerous flat work, original flat work pencil drawings or well they're not charcoals but they're painted line drawings.

He was very minimalistic about how he would try to convey a message.

He would do it in as few strokes as possible.

Where I've got some artistic talent but I'm a detailed guy.

I draw everything because that's all I know.

If I were to try to draw the planter over there I would have to draw every, every detail.

Whereas a quote, artist would draw the representation of that and I don't have that capacity to represent.

I need to replicate.

My grandfather had two daughters, Ursula and Sabina Berthold.

When he died in 1990 I believe it was, he was survived by my grandmother and I believe she died in 1998.

At that point the two sisters gathered together and they divided the collection between the two of them.

My aunt stayed in Germany, moved to Herford with with her husband Carl and moved her half of her now her half of the collection to Herford.

She's now back in [inaudible] where where she grew up.

My mother took half of the collection and moved to the states, to the east coast Washington DC area and Virginia so her half of the collection now resides with me.

I now caretake that half of the collection.

The honor of exhibiting a small portion of what I have, at the watermark in the winter of 2019.

Maybe it's 25% maybe 20% if that.

One of the major pieces that was exhibited at the watermark The Pacing Man, which is one of my favorite pieces just because of the size and the magnitude and just the the presence of the of the piece.

You see a picture of it and you think to yourself, oh wow that's good, that's kind of neat.

But you stand next to it and stand in front of it and then circle around it.

You get a completely different perspective of it.

In appreciation I think appreciation for it.

For just the vision to create this.

[music] There's a responsibility there.

There's a burden there.

I hate to call it a burden but it is.

But I guess I'm fortunate to be where I am in life, both at the age that I am to have the capacity for it.

And to be able to spend a little bit of time paying attention to it.

I hope to be able to devote more and more time to to the collection as time goes on.

But there's a responsibility.

I try not to take it too lightly because it's... what do you do?

What do you do with all of this artwork?

Sometimes I wonder or often times I wonder.

Well what now?

So we have we have an exhibition at the watermark.

Loved it!

Again what a great honor to be able to to display it in my hometown now.

And to have that level of appreciation from the watermark and the level of professionalism from the watermark.

To put on such a such a an incredible display.

The next step though, Where is that?

My grandfather exhibited in well all over the world and notably New York City Vancouver.

But after he died the attention to the collection and the business of the artwork waned.

And after my grandmother died and this collection split again.

The attention to the business of the of the artwork waned yet more.

It's to the point where the interest in the collection from true collectors.

I'm trying to regenerate that.

That's a difficult thing to do because I don't know how to do it.

[music] [music] [music] I guess I have the benefit of being able to detach myself personally or emotionally.

From what folks think, might think.

Or if somebody wants to buy a piece or not buy a piece that's their prerogative.

If somebody passes on something, I'm okay.

They're not insulting me.

Where as if it was my grandma, grandfather or my mother, who is much closer to my grandfather.

Because she grew up with this.

And there's much more of an emotional decision-making process for her than it is for me.

I knew my grandfather but I didn't grow up with them.

I grew up with the artwork but there's a detachment there to.

Where I'm not emotionally connected to boy I have to do something with this.

I'm going to try to do something.

And if it takes me 10 years to do something that's okay, if it's 20 years well that's okay too.

If things start to happen next year great but I'm under no expectation of any timelines or benchmarks to achieve or anything of that nature.

My process is going to be mine.

And I'll dictate the flow of that based on the give and takes of whoever I'm working with.

[music] The manner in which this whole thing started.

Patrick Dunet from The Watermark, walked into my office after The Watermark had opened.

The Watermark operates under grants and and private donations.

So Patrick was walking into the door looking for me to write a check.

The subsequent conversation wasn't one that he was looking for.

Over the past few years I'd been talking with my mother about specifically the pacing man.

Which is this eight foot bronze sculpture, that's been standing in her backyard for the last 20 years.

And we'd talked about well what do we do with the walking man?

And I talked to my wife about putting the walking man back here into the back, so we could enjoy it.

But that's not good enough you know.

That's great for us but the whole purpose of creating artwork is for everybody to enjoy it.

And especially this particular artwork, which is designed to be outside in the elements.

It survives the elements just fine on public display.

As soon as Patrick walked through the door and started introducing himself... Oh yeah, we we know each other a little bit from previous workings.

We helped The Watermark out in locating their office.

I started telling them about my grandfather and evidently he had gotten stories like this before introductions to conversations like this before.

Well my great aunt has a bunch of paintings that I have in my basement.

And can we display them at The Watermark?

You know that was I think that's the conversation that he expected to be getting from me.

But I started out with well my grandfather is a sculptor and you know, got through the eye rolls.

Said well no this is a little bit different.

Well okay he's heard that before too.

Let me get you one of the books.

And so I went back to my desk and got a book, that one of the galleries had published about the scope of his work.

And It happen to be sitting next to one of the pieces that's the small version of of the Pacing Man.

This is one of the pieces.

And oh wait a second this might be for real.

And so the more we talked and he started leafing through this book.

And oh this is different.

We're going to have to talk to the board.

And so we talked initially essentially loaning the the Pacing Man to The Watermark on an indefinite basis for an outside display.

Or an outside exhibit on fifth and Paul Bunyan high traffic location.

Everybody can see it.

That's the place for the Pacing Man, not my backyard.

[music] So the future of the collection I don't know what that looks like.

Ideally the communication between my aunt and I, which we've begun to communicate.

And I've always liked my aunt being able to cooperate and coordinate with her as well as my cousins.

I think that's a very realistic thing.

And I think that's very important to be able to not necessarily unify the two halves of the collection.

But work together and cooperate and exhibit.

I think that's what my grandfather wanted.

Show the artwork and get people in front of it.

So that it gets people to think and to be able to I guess realize his message.

And if that turns into a transformation or a reinvigoration of the business of the collection, cool.

That's great.

That's not a critical component for me.

But it's what he wants, you know.

So one of the potential futures contributing the artwork to a museum or to some non-profit that has the wherewithal and the desire to set up on on permanent display.

And the ability to rotate out the pieces because there's so many pieces.

That setting up one exhibit can't encompass the the entire body of work.

And there's such different facets of work that I think correspond with each other or that complement each other.

That exhibiting a couple forms of work with or together naturally excludes another certain form of work.

And so being able to transition out or do multiple exhibitions I think is important.

I've spoken with Lori the executive director of The Watermark Arts Center recently about setting up another exhibition because there's so many important pieces.

I think important pieces.

That were excluded from this last exhibition.

Because they're different pieces.

And so having having another exhibition I think is key.

My hope is that former collectors begin to come forward or that that I'm able to reach out to former collectors or their children perhaps.

Because this was 1970, 1980 into early 1990.

So we're talking, what 29 years ago.

Where a lot of those collectors were older individuals at the time.

So trying to reach out to them or that or their children and and just let them know.

That we're trying to restart this engine of putting the artwork out there.

And getting some interest back in there.

Because it's hard to keep on trying in putting this in front of people and without getting some positive feedback.

Because it takes a lot of energy and I'm sure just for the artist.

The artist needs to create.

I don't need to do this, I want to.

But I want to enjoy it and that means getting positive reinforcement and positive feedback from people that truly enjoy the work.

Thank you so much for watching.

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Production funding of Common Ground was made possible in part by First National Bank Bemidji.

Continuing their second century of service to the community member FDIC.

Common Ground is brought to you by the Minnesota Arts and Cultural Heritage Fund with money by the vote of the people November 4th 2008.

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