"THOMAS J. LANGAN"

BUST OF MY FATHER

"Little Man" in the Suitcase
by Eileen Langan

As a tribute to that brave NYC fireman, and the expansive personality who just disappeared when I was 15--my first major sculpture was a larger-than-life bust of my dad.

I started the bust in my tiny two-room apartment in the '60s on a small table I found in the basement. I used a hanger and coffee can for an armature attached to a piece of plywood, and worked on the sculpture for over a year in the light of the bedroom window where I watched a guy on the porch next door blaring out R&B on an electric guitar.

The apartment had a small front room with a wall of kitchen cabinets on one side that I wanted to separate from my Danish modern couch, chair and lamp table. I positioned a divider of bookcases filled with typical stuff-- art books, bongos and a small TV--in front of the cabinets, which left a narrow aisle to work in the kitchen. Leaning against that my guitar waited to be played.

Because my friend Nancy was coming up from Manhattan for the weekend, I decided she'd have the bed and I'd take the couch. I moved the 60-pound clay bust into the front room and put it on top of the bookcase/divider. I never dreamt anything could happen to it. When Nancy arrived, I showed her my progress on the bust, but Nancy wasn't into artwork, so there wasn't much conversation about the sculpture of my dad.

I was in the bathroom the next morning as Nancy was preparing to go home, when the house shook with the sound of an eight-wheeler slamming into the building. I dashed out of the bathroom--"What the hell was that?" Nancy, in the kitchen, didn't answer. When she had bent to put something in the trash under the sink, she bumped the bookcase/divider behind her--causing the top-heavy bust to catapult off and land face down into Nancy's open suitcase on the floor. At the impact, Nancy had jerked up... hit the cabinet, and her mouth was bleeding.

"What happened to your little man?" Nancy asked peering at me from behind the divider as I stared with horror at the scene.

I thought about the year of sculpting as I lifted the heavy wet sculpture from its suitcase grave--trying not to add to the damage. Not too bad. The forehead of the bust miraculously had impaled on a corner of the open suitcase--saving the other features from being smashed flat. Except for the severe deep gash in the forehead, my "little man" had a face. It was time to attend to Nancy's injury.

After that experience, I wouldn't let anyone help me carry the unwieldy bust on its plywood board from my apartment to Earl's car for the long ride to the casting house in midtown Manhattan. I had to hold the sculpture level in my arms as I crawled into the back seat, and positioned one hand between the head and the back of the seat to steady its ride. Within minutes I could no longer feel or move the hand that was wedged behind the head of the bust. In twenty minutes, excruciating pain ran through my cramping arm and back.

As Earl drove, helpless yells kept up from the back seat. We had to keep going. I wanted a mold and a casting made from my original--before I moved to California. I nearly fainted watching the casting house employee carry my bust up the narrow ladder to the loft foundry. They made a superb casting, as shown here.