George-Ann Tognoni: Life of an American Sculptor
Chapter I
Standing Forward, Looking Backward

" Here in the rich soil of the Middle West, where America has its roots, [h]ere shall be the soil and the seed and the strength of art."
Christian Petersen

        Over the threshold of the farm house where the artist's father had lived since the age of three, Louie Neudeck carried his bride Eva.Ý He soon built near the old house a one-bedroom dwelling where Eva would no longer feel compelled to throw potatoes at the rats invading Louie's childhood home. George-Ann and her sister Marjorie, four and a half years her senior, would live in the little wood frame house with their parents until George-Ann was 15 years old.Ý On the crest of this section of Iowa farm land, Louie's father had built the old two-story place for his family of five children, after trading a successful saloon on the Mississippi for the land.Ý In the 1930's, Louie replaced the shambles of his father's house with a fine brick home. It had indoor plumbing, like the houses in Fort Dodge nearby; a separate bedroom for his daughters and a stone pillared porch.

        After George-Ann and her family moved into the new home, a neighbor who purchased the little square dwelling that had served them for over twenty years lifted it from its basement, onto a trailer, and up onto the highway to resettle further down the road.Ý The grand old house could not be salvaged, but while it occupied the rise beside their little home, George-Ann and Marjorie played in the make-believe worlds suggested by its valuable furnishings.Ý Their gaiety and liveliness drove away any ghosts lingering after Louie's mother deserted the old place to live with her daughter.Ý Lightning had killed Louie's father and two of the children raised in the house met with tragedy: Louie's favorite sister Mabel died of appendicitis, and a farming accident crippled Louie's only brother Harry.Ý The artistic daughter of the Neudeck farm kept the story of her bed-ridden uncle's recklessness in her memory.Ý He had raced with a team of gentle work horses, and when they broke from the wagon he drove, the wagon tongue dug in and violently flipped the wagon on top of him.Ý George-Ann's understanding of those powerful work horses and, even more, her thousand observations of her fatherÝcultivating, plowing, planting, and hauling behind them are the life that moves within the bronze sculpture Changing Hitch.

         With Changing Hitch she issued a quiet statement of the peculiar liberation of farming life and the prudence required for harnessing the power of horses.ÝÝ To do this she balanced and unified opposites.Ý The farmer is small and light in his step; the horses are ponderous in the momentum of their lifted hooves. In the farmer's posture there is no complaint of his routine:Ý his shoulders are not slumped.Ý He walks confidently behind his animal dynamos because his relationship with them is one of trust and respect made visible in Changing Hitch through the power of artistic expression. The prongs of the tool the farmer carries curve away from the horses; they are not a prod, but will be used as a fork to pitch the weary horses their ration of hay.Ý The farmer's simple figure does nothing to divert the eye's enchantment from the details of the harness on the horses.Ý Its intricacies are a physics lesson in the distribution of weight and forces. Even the little blinders are a reminder of the care with which the strength of real horses is translated into horse power.Ý Imagine the wide leather straps running from the heavy yokes to a loaded wagon.Ý In the sculpture the chains at the ends of these straps are disengaged and hooked up over the rumps of the animals to prevent their dragging.Ý The thin leather straps in the farmer's hand are not so much controls as signals to help the farmer guide the horses.Ý The horses remind him that he is small, and their acceptance of the harness enables him to persevere at his daily work in gratitude - the prime mover of true liberation.