George Kratina and the History of the Sculpture of St. Leonard

Before I tell you about George Kratina, I would first like to tell you a bit about myself and the context in which I knew him. When I was a child, my grandmother, a former jewelry designer, was friends with Anna Kratina, George's wife. When I was about five years old, my grandmother ended her jewelry career, and went to the Penland School of Crafts to study ceramics. At Penland, she met an instructor named Val Cushing. She became friends with Val, and in time he introduced my grandmother to Anna Kratina and her husband George. Anna was an artist in her own right, and worked in ceramics doing sculpture, having taken up the craft after her medical career. As a child, I remember my grandmother bringing me over to Anna's ceramics studio so I could create sculpture with Anna. I also remember visiting George’s studio and seeing the huge commissions that he was working on in the converted barn on his property. In the corner of the studio where he worked, there was a full-sized plaster version of the sculpture of St. Leonard that had been used to cast the bronze sculpture that is now located at the St. Leonard Center.

When I was about thirteen, I started working with George in his sculpture studio during summers and over Christmas breaks. The first piece that I worked on with George was a large sculpture of three saints, St. Joseph, St. Patrick, and St. Francis, that was commissioned by a church in San Francisco. I remember this sculpture taking George five years to complete. I then worked with George on a sculpture of Sam Wilson, the historical figure on whom the caricature of Uncle Sam was based, created for the city of Troy, NY. I helped George for three years on that piece, between the ages of 13 and 16, and was able to work on that sculpture almost to completion. Even at that age, I recognized the value in what George had to teach me; I didn’t accept money from him, even though he repeatedly offered to pay me. These two commissions of the saints and of Sam Wilson were the last that George sculpted before he died in 1980 when I was 18.

I have never seen either Anna's or George's resumes, so all I can tell you about them is what I can remember from when I was a teenager.

As I recall, George told me that his father was a sculptor who apprenticed in the sculpture guilds of Czechoslovakia. George showed me amazing sculptures that his father had carved in stone and wood, and cast in bronze. George also showed me bronzes that he had created in his father's studio when he was quite young. One of his early sculptures won the Prix de Rome, a prestigious scholarship for art students. George's father wanted George to continue in sculpture, and was very upset when George initially chose to pursue forestry. Although forestry may seem distant from sculpture, I remember George taking me into the woods and teaching me how to identify different kinds of trees by their leaves, their bark, and their structure. Knowing the forest was integral to George being able to maintain his home, build rigging for large-scale sculptures, craft his own sculptural tools, and select trees for the wooden pieces that he carved.

George always talked about how he disliked people from Yale, which seemed ironic when I later learned that he was a graduate from that University. Among George's memories from Yale was that he rowed crew, which he must have been well suited for because of his broad shoulders and strong back.

George went back to his sculptural training when he worked as a design and sculpture professor at Cooper Union University in New York City. It was while he was living in New York City that he met his wife, Anna. At that time, Anna worked as a nurse at Riker's Island prison. When you met Anna, you had no doubt that she had worked as nurse for many years because of her broad shoulders and strong hands. Anna's maiden name was Spalla (which means "shoulder" in Italian). I remember Anna telling me stories about how when she started nursing, people used to make fun of her because she wore black stockings, due to her traditional Italian upbringing, not the white stockings of nursing. Anna became a nurse because it was one of the few professions open to Italian women at the time. Even then, Anna was not accepted by the greater medical establishment as a nurse, which is why she worked in a prison.

I don't know the story of their meeting, but I know that Anna and George married when they lived in New York City. My impression is that they chose to leave New York City as part of the same "back-to-the-land" movement that motivated Helen and Scott Nearing to leave the city and move out to the country. The Nearings were famous for their book, “The Good Life.”

At some point back in the 50s, George and Anna bought an old farmhouse in Old Chatham, New York. When they fixed the house up enough to live in it, they moved from New York City to Old Chatham New York to make it their permanent home. Their house showed the richness of George's forestry background, with beechwood floors made from trees that he had personally cut from his own property, had milled, cured, and installed himself. The house was also richly decorated by Anna’s extensive mosaic work and her own sculpture.

It was Anna’s connection with sculpture that led to the friendship with my grandmother and ultimately to my working with George. My grandmother talked about how Val Cushing would go to Anna's studio to throw large forms on the wheel that Anna would then richly decorate to create her sculptures. With Anna's extensive medical knowledge she created figures with bizarre anatomical form. Her sculptures were brightly colored and fanciful, like an adult three-dimensional version of Dr. Suess.

After moving to Old Chatham, George became a professor at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute (RPI), where he taught sculpture and design to engineering and architecture students. While working as a professor at RPI, he also took on his own commissions, of which I can guess that one was the the bronze of St. Leonard that you have. I remember the studio itself having one entire end made of translucent fiberglass panels that allowed the north light in. I remember George telling me that this fiberglass wall of his studio could be removed if needed to allow large sculptures to be taken out. In his studio, George created large sculptures in bronze, enameled steel, and aluminum. His two final works, which I was able to help him with, were both created in sheet and cast aluminum.

The process that George taught me for sculpting in bronze had many steps. George would first create small versions of his sculptures out of wire and clay. George called these small, quickly done versions of the sculptures “sketches.” These three-dimensional sketches were about six inches tall, and allowed George to experiment with several different versions of the same theme. I remember seeing many small versions of sculptures George had done in his studio in varying positions, some seated, some moving, and others in more peaceful poses, like that of St. Leonard.

From these sketches, George would take the most promising designs and refine them so that he could show his clients different versions of what the sculpture would look like. I remember many of the sculptures that he completed, and I remember seeing the early sketches of many of those still in his studio. Thinking back, I do remember seeing some early sketches of St. Leonard among the hundreds of pieces decorating the large workspace. When a client had selected which of these small sketches they wanted him to refine, George would then create a larger, more detailed version of the sculpture. The more detailed version of the piece was typically about eighteen inches tall.

The process that George used for creating these larger sculptures is called a "waste mold" casting. George would first create the sculpture in plasticine clay, and then cover the sculpture in plaster. He would then carefully remove that plaster in small predefined segments. This plaster covering would become a mold for the more permanent plaster version of the sculpture. While removing this mold, the original plasticine version of the sculpture would be destroyed. George would then coat the inside of this plaster mold with a thin layer of soap to act as a separator, and then would form a positive plaster sculpture into the plaster mold that he had created. When this internal sculpture had hardened, he would then break away the external mold. This traditional process is fraught with risk, because at the time that you destroy the plasticine, the only version of the sculpture that you have is a plaster mold, and then to uncover the plaster cast, you then destroy the plaster mold -- hence the term “waste mold” casting.

With this plaster version of the sculpture created, George would accurately position the sculpture in his studio, anchoring it firmly to the floor. Then George used a huge custom-made tool to assist him in creating a full scale version of the sculpture. This tool is called a three-dimensional pantograph, and it allowed George to select points on the small sculpture and locate these points in three dimensions on the full size version of the piece. After finding these points in three dimensions, George would create a three-dimensional armature for the full size version of the sculpture. If George were creating a bronze like St. Leonard, he would form plasticine around this three-dimensional armature, full scale. The process for creating a full scale sculpture was very much like the process for creating the small scale model. George would cover the large plasticine sculpture in plaster, again creating a "waste mold," which he would then carefully remove, and use this mold to form full-sized plaster sections of the sculpture. George would then ship these full size plaster pieces to an art foundry in Brooklyn to be cast in bronze. Years later, I had the privilege of actually working in that foundry, learning the casting process in detail.

What I remember about George was how encouraging he was to everyone around him. He had a relentless positive attitude that he used to inspire his students at RPI, and to inspire me. I remember meeting several of his students from RPI when they worked long hours on various sculptures in George's studio. I remember George’s work ethic and positive attitude would spread to everyone he worked with. I remember learning a selflessness from George that put the process before the individual. I don’t think George never signed any of his sculptures, feeling that this would express too much of his ego.

I remember something that George used to say: “You can do anything,” and then in a softer voice, “If you know what you are doing.” When George said you can do anything, I felt as if I could, which included building skyscrapers and creating the Hoover Dam. Then when George said, if you know what you are doing, I understood that he was not talking about having college degrees, but instead meant that I could do it if I were competent to do it.

When I went to college, I studied sculpture extensively, but even in my first semester in the school studio, the professors commented that I was already doing graduate level work. There probably isn’t a college in the country that has a sculpture program as comprehensive as the training that I received from working with George. Years later, I graduated from the University with a degree in mechanical engineering, and went on to become a mechanical designer. My success as a mechanical designer has been in no small part because of my early experiences working with George, or as he would say, “Having conversations in three dimensions.”

Among the many projects that I am currently working on is a novel in which one of the protagonists, loosely modeled on myself, apprenticed George Kratina. In the book, it tells how my protagonist is creating a sculpture of Anna. After Anna passed away, George wanted to create a tribute to her, which he started, but was unable to complete because of his failing health. In my book, my character is creating the tribute to Anna that George was never able to finish in his life.

George's farm house in Old Chatham, New York, is still owned by his cousin. It is located on Old Pitt Road. When I was last there about ten years ago, his cousin had several of George's sculpture students from RPI continuing to live in the house and maintain it as George and Anna had lived in it, richly decorated with George's and Anna's sculptures filling the house and covering the property.

Now, as I near my fiftieth birthday, it was exciting for me to make the trip from Pittsburgh to Ohio to see George's sculpture of St. Leonard. Attached find a photograph of Caitlin and me standing at the foot of the sculpture. We spent some time enjoying the work, and it meant so much more to me because I had known George, and because I had participated in every step of the process that would have gone into creating it.

Seeing the sculpture now, there is one additional point that I feel I need to mention. I can see that most of the sculpture was covered by a dark patina that George applied to protect piece when he created it. Unfortunately, on the top surfaces of the sculpture, on the feet of the sculpture, and on one place on the side of the sculpture, this patina has now weathered away and the bronze has begun to corrode.

I don’t know what resources you have for conservation, but I would hope that this sculpture of St. Leonard could have its patina reapplied to help protect it as George intended fifty years ago. The process that we used in the foundry involved preheating the sculpture and using a torch to apply the patina. This process may require having the sculpture taken off the base, being resurfaced, and then being placed back on its pedestal. A professional should be consulted to see if the sculpture could have its patina reapplied while still in place.



Regards, Phil Garrow