WOMAN IN ART
finds it productive also. Genius may be a respecter of persons, but not of locality. Yet the locality will be enhanced in interest in proportion to the development of the genius.
The little town of Moulton, Iowa, was the early home of Nellie Verne Walker, one of the foremost sculptors in the United States. Like most eldest daughters in a family of six children, her time and talent were devoted to household affairs and the ordinary school. When sixteen years old, she left home duties to the younger helpers and went into her father's tombstone shop, for he was a maker of monuments. There she learned to smooth and polish marble, cut epitaphs and decorative borders; she became acquainted with the feeling and texture of stone, and the opportunity thus opened suggested other and more beautiful things than tombstones to be made from marble. She had scarcely been outside of her native town, hence had never seen a statue and had no idea of the processes of sculpture. She knew that statues could be carved from stone, and she began to dream and plan for making something out of stone.
In the shop yard there was an appealing block of marble neatly squared for a pedestal. She asked if she might have it to make into a bust of Lincoln. After a few days of diplomatic intercourse she was given the block, and with great enthusiasm began to carve the head of the great President. In twenty-four days it was done, cut directly from the picture into the stone. It was crude enough—but remember she had never seen anything she could use as model for technique; the work was hard and uncompromising, but it did look like Lincoln.
Her first success inspired her with the determination to become a sculptor. The family was friendly toward her ambition, but in spite of that, there were plenty of difficulties in the way. But the girl who persisted in her efforts to acquire that first block of marble until she got it was not to be daunted.
On the first day of the first month of the first year of the twentieth century, Nellie V. Walker arrived in Chicago to begin her career with a course at the Art Institute under Lorado Taft. Beginning as a student, it was not long before she was an assistant instructor in modeling, so between being a teacher and a pupil she spent seven or eight years at the institute.
Very naturally, a large proportion of her works were memorial pieces, and she has made a name for herself as a sculptor of monuments. Her designs are original, beautiful in proportion, while the dignity and sincerity
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