George Lundeen, the longtime Loveland sculptor, now has a new feather in his cap: a life-size statue of Thomas Jefferson he sculpted nearly 30 years ago has been installed in the Rose Garden at the White House.
The sculpture has spent over a decade sitting in Lundeen’s backyard, but on the occasion of the semiquincentennial, he thought it might find a better home elsewhere.
“I figured it was just sitting by the little river shack we have out by the river west of town,” he said. “I thought it might look a little bit better if somebody could see it in Washington, D.C.”
Lundeen approached an associate, Steve Barber, who had connections in the Capitol, and was able to connect with the White House, which expressed interest in accepting the piece.
“Livvy called me on Monday, and said ‘You need to listen to this recording,” Lundeen said, referring to Olivia Lundeen, who works at the studio. “It was President Trump, calling us about noon on the Fourth of July, thanking us for sending Thomas Jefferson over. It’s not every day that a kid from a small town in Colorado gets a call from the President of the United States.”
Trump has made several additions to the Rose Garden during his second term, including sculptures of Benjamin Franklin and George Washington, and now Thomas Jefferson.
The sculpture features Jefferson sitting with a laptop desk on his legs, staring with resolve into the distance while writing the first draft of the Declaration of Independence.
The desk was of particular interest to Lundeen in 1998, when he said he was first working on the sculpture, calling it the first laptop computer, with drawers for paper and ink. He was fascinated with its design and felt it would be a compelling piece of history to include in a sculpture.
The sculpture did not arrive in time for the Fourth of July, in part because it needed to be rigorously checked.
“The Secret Service has to get it and make sure it’s not a Trojan Horse,” he explained.
But it made its way there eventually, where it will continue to sit in perpetuity.
George Lundeen stands next to a small model of his 1998 sculpture of Thomas Jefferson; a life-sized version was installed at the White House Rose Garden earlier this month (Will Costello / Loveland Reporter Herald).
Because there are no photographs of Jefferson, Lundeen had to rely on contemporary paintings and busts to achieve his likeness, but the trickiest part of sculpting any figure is finding the right expression.
“If you were my client, or if I was sculpting your mother, I’d put every photograph I could find on the table and tell you to pick six or seven that you like,” he said. “What you’re telling me is what expression tells you what you want to see.”
This can’t be done with Jefferson, a man who can’t be asked and was never photographed, but telling the story through the piece is the important thing, Lundeen said.
“The story you want to tell is him writing the Declaration of Independence,” he said. “So you want to have some sort of resolve on his face, the seriousness.”
Jefferson’s actions in life have contributed to a complicated legacy, Lundeen said. His slave ownership during and after the Revolutionary War have led to a reassessment of the man.
“That’s a fatal flaw,” Lundeen reflected. “But at the same time, he wrote those words that created the United States of America.”
As for the sculpture itself, uprooted from its place near his home, Lundeen said he won’t miss it.
“I’ve got plenty of stuff,” he laughed. “You get tired of looking at your own stuff. I kind of like looking at other people’s stuff.”
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