Day and Night, November 2010
Excerpted from the article “Tammy Bality sculpts her way to first with the Barley Goddess”
By Joyce Davis – The Daily Times-Call
Copyright Day and Night magazine. Used with permission.
Barley Goddess by Tammy Bality
LONGMONT – She was originally meant to be the goddess of the corn. Once created, however, the wondrous goose-majestic wings impressively outspread from her body, her head tilted regally from her sculptured neck – became the Barley Goddess.
Tammy Bality, creator of the goose, watched the flocks of living geese land in her barley field, then turned to the giant 7-foot plastic goose decoy.
Already the goose had taken on a new persona. Her body was raised to make her taller, her legs altered to make her more upright and the feathers of the outstretched wings finely detailed and ready for flight.
The living geese honking with delight, spied the bountiful goose from the air and v-lined for the barley as if her whisper, carried on the wind, had guided them there.
“They came each day, 50 to 100 of them,” Bality says. “I thought of her as the mother of all decoys. It was like she was calling them.”
And that’s how she became the Barley Goddess.
Born to be part of the Geese Galore 2002 Project, she was ultimately placed adjacent to the First National Bank of Longmont for display.
Of the nearly two dozen such goose decoys, all of which have been embellished and transformed into works of art by fine artists in the area, Barley Goddess emerged a clear winner among the hundreds of people who voted.
The goddess stands apart from most of the geese thanks to her detailed reconstruction.
Bality first worked up her concept of what the goose should look like by creating a small clay piece.
“I knew what I wanted her to be,” she says. “I saw some of the other geese – some were painted and others were slightly altered. But I wanted her to be a reflection of what I do. I paint, but that is not really who I am. I’m a sculptor more than anything else.”
In turning a plastic goose into a Cinderella goddess, Bality remodeled the goose from top to bottom.
“I had to cut her out in several sections, give her more cheek and turn her head. It was all the more interesting because I broke my thumb the week before I started,” she says.
To attain the illusion of a wondrous goose ready for flight, Bality inserted a rod through the entire body and created an armature that could sustain the weight of the outspread wings.
“Getting the steel and the plastic to work together was one of the biggest challenges,” Bality says.
The final result was exhilarating as well as satisfying. “I’d always wanted to do something like this, “she says. “I loved the cow parade they did in New York and the horses in Kentucky and Santa Fe and then in Virginia, the fish project they did along the James River. So I was hoping Longmont would do something.”
“When they did, I was ready to jump on it.”
The effort included Bality’s father, Roy Hardy, who found a special paint she needed for the plastic goose. “He’s a commercial painter and primed the goose with car primer for me,” she says. “He researched the type of car paint that could be brused on.”
Barley Goose is by far the largest piece Bality has worked on. Most of her sculptures are tabletop size and are based on Celtic mythology.
“I grew up in Longmont, but my ancestry is from Scotland, Ireland and surrounding areas,” she says.
“I started out with wildlife, and although some people wanted me to go into Native American pieces, I decided that’s really not my place. I wanted to work the Celtic legends into my art, to have it become reflection of who I am.”
In researching her Celtic roots through myth and legend, Bality says she found a culture that existed harmoniously with nature, and one that closely parallels the Native American system.
“Ancient goddess artifacts many times depict the goddess and animal,” she says. “My work is an interpretation of the Celtic goddess/god/shaman myth and the animals important to that culture.
Bality says growing up as an only child on a farm resulted in an ability to entertain herself. Her artistic endeavors were a big part of that. She graduated from college with a degree in political science, but the lure of art led her to take a class in ceramics and to pursue other forms of art.
Eventually she learned to make porcelain dolls, studied raiku and became adept at glazes and firing in kilns. She now shares her knowledge of dolls and sculpting with 4-H kids in the area.
A self-taught artist, she lives on a farm in southeast Longmont with her husband and son. The couple’s son, Kyle, is the sixth generation to grow up in this area on the farm that was homesteaded in the 1850s when Colorado was still a territory. Her family moved onto the farm in 1875.
These days Bality works in the finance department of the city and fills her spare time creating the kind of art that feeds her soul.
One of the bronze pieces, “Shapeshifter,” is based on the Celtic myth of the triple goddess the Morrigan/Raven. It won first place in all media at a Celtic art show in Denver this year, judged by Celtic historians, artists and the head of the art department at the University of Denver.
While much of her work is in bronze, she is now creating a piece that will be cast in clear acrylic to resemble glass.
The sculpture, called “Messenger,” features a woman wrapped in a shawl. On the back of the shawl is a hawk, done in relief, which will be seen from the front of the piece, thanks to its translucent quality.
“I’ve had lots of hawks flying around my place lately, and that’s where the inspiration comes from,” she says. “I think they must be telling me something. I’ve never done clear acrylic before and I’m pretty excited about it. It brings a new dimension to my work, a new outlet.”
Bality is touching up the Barley Goddess for her appearance on the auction block at tonight’s Geese Galore Gala.
“I’m hoping she’ll find a good home,” she says.
