Symbol of freedom
A giant eagle sculpture with a painting backdrop hangs in the lobby of Freedom Bank in Columbia Falls. The sculpture-painting was the brainchild of bank president Don Bennett and was created by sculptor Frank DiVita and painter Tom Saubert. Chris Jordan/Daily Inter Lake
New bank's art is one-of-a-kind collaboration
A banker thought it up.
It involved melding sculpture with a canvas painting.
Early this year, bank president Don Bennett just wanted something catchy over the huge stone fireplace that dominates the cathedral-like lobby of Columbia Falls' fairly new Freedom Bank building.
He thought: How about something three-dimensional popping out of a canvas painting, like an eagle?
That random thought evolved into a query.
He called Frank DiVita, a Lakeside bronze sculptor specializing in birds.
DiVita's first thought was no way. It would be an engineering nightmare, especially with a painted 200-pound bronze eagle. The tricky part would be to build something strong enough to support that flying eagle without looking ugly, out of place or inelegant.
But DiVita, 57, also remembered another eagle sculpture he did that was mounted over a huge stone fireplace. The fireplace's stones created too busy of a background for an eagle statue - diminishing the drama of the flying bird.
The right canvas painting backdrop could cure that aesthetic problem, DiVita thought.
He called longtime friend Tom Saubert, a painter living east of Kalispell who specializes in Montana and historical subjects plus landscapes.
Saubert, 56, immediately loved the concept, with the chance to experiment and stretch as an artist.
And both became intrigued by the idea of two artists working in tandem in their separate fields to create a single work of art.
What they didn't want was some funky avant-garde piece that would be described by an abstract explanation with the word "multimedia" in it. The goal was an eagle - wings, feathers, talons and head in apparent motion - attached physically and artistically to an 8-foot-by-5 1/2-foot canvas painting of trees, mountains and a lake in Glacier National Park.
It needed to hang from a stone wall 20 feet off the floor.
"Our benchmark is the collaboration," Saubert said.
DiVita said: "Singers do it all the time. Artists don't. When two singers combine, they create a new third thing."
Saubert continued: "It's an artistic duet. If you have Frank Sinatra and Barbra Streisand sing together, you have something different than when Frank sings alone or Barbra Streisand sings alone. … When you have the opportunity to do it, the last thing you want to do is to sing off-key."
Saubert did reject one of Bennett's initial thoughts. No eagle was going to pop out head-on in any canvas he painted. Slitting and cutting a painted canvas went too far for Saubert to accept.
DiVita and Saubert agreed on a painted bronze flying eagle supported by a bronze tree branch leading into a collection of other two-dimensional branches in the lower right-hand corner of the Glacier National Park painting. The bird is the focal point, and Saubert painted the backdrop accordingly - all of the background revolves around the size, shape and apparent motion of the eagle.
The big headache was engineering.
Two barely visible branches physically connect the 200-pound eagle to the painting and its frame. Visually, the eagle appears to swoop without support.
DiVita and Saubert consulted with engineers. They calculated and recalculated. They crossed their fingers big-time.
"Not until we got it up there [above the bank lobby's fireplace]. That's when we knew we did it," Saubert said.
Their secret? Well, that stays a secret.
The artists believe they've expanded and combined their art forms into new territory, largely unexplored, something that they as discoverers have earned the right to define its parameters.
Taking a statue from Group A and bolting it to a painting from Group B does not fit the pair's definition of what they did. An Internet search shows paintings and sculptures combined in one work. But the results are usually abstract, sitting on a ledge or floor, or not physically connected.
DiVita and Saubert contend that their type of sculpture-and-painting combination must seamlessly mesh together in a common vision of representational art, with everything looking realistic.
The secret is in the engineering, and that's what the pair believes puts them on the cutting edge of this concept.
"I think there are a lot of possibilities," DiVita said. "It's a bit dangerous because it would be so easy to fail at doing something like this … I can see so many ways to fail. They're so intangible. But once you look at [an art piece] on a wall, you'll know it."
A major drawback is that this yet-to-be-named art form is too expensive for DiVita and Saubert to experiment with, unless they have commissioned projects to pay the costs. The Freedom Bank sculpture cost about $65,000 plus installation costs.
Meanwhile, Bennett is looking at the Freedom Bank's huge blank south wall hovering over the tellers' area.
He thinks it would be a good place to put something.
Reporter John Stang can be reached at 758-4481 or e-mail jstang@dailyinterlake.com