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When I was a kid in Rock Island, three local celebrities were praised in the media, advertized in bookstores, and assigned by teachers:
1. Jazz musician Bix Beiderbecke
2. Poet Carl Sandburg
3. Sculptor Isabel Bloom.
I had just discovered Greek art -- rather, statues of muscular Greek gods, so for Christmas in ninth grade, I asked for "a statue."
"I don't want any statues of girls."
"It's a boy and a girl. That's like two statues for the price of one!"
There are only a few nudes among his drawings, and John's Thinker is the only nude statue, but he certainly preferred painting the male form.
His art returns again and again to images of male friendship and camaraderie, although the retrospective at the Figge Museum tries to closet him by concentrating on his crowd scenes and his one drawing of a nude lady. Could he have had known something about the "Manly Love of Comrades"?
Ok, Whitman was too early. John lived during the 1920s and 30s, the era of the Pansy Craze, the drag balls of the Harlem Renaissance and Ramon Novarro and Noel Coward's "Mad about the Boy":
Born Isabel Scherer in 1908, she grew up in Davenport, across the river in Iowa, and studied at Grant Wood's Stone City Art Colony, where she met and married fellow artist John Bloom. In the 1950s, she began producing distinctive sculptures carved out of Mississippi River stone or molded of mud mixed with concrete.
They were absolutely atrocious. Angels, fairies, hugging children, mothers hugging babies, cats, doves, bridal couples, snowmen, Santa Clauses, the most maudlin, sentimental, and heteronormative dreck ever imagined.
But everyone in the Quad Cities loved them. My parents loved them.There were two or three in every room. Dozens more crossed the state with us to give to our Indiana relatives for Christmas presents. When an out-of-town friend visited, they always went home with a Isabel Bloom fairy or hugging child.
So I should have anticipated what would happen.
I had just discovered Greek art -- rather, statues of muscular Greek gods, so for Christmas in ninth grade, I asked for "a statue."
I meant a desk-sized statue of a naked god, like the Belvedere Apollo, but Dad said, "Sure -- let's go down to Isabel Bloom's, and you can pick out the one you want."
I couldn't tell him "No, no...I wanted a naked Greek god, not some stupid boy holding a frog!", so my boyfriend Dan and I had to fake-grin our way through a mid-December visit to the crowded studio in the Village of West Davenport, as we sorted through Angel with Wreath, Unconditional Love, Lovebirds, Boy with Flag...
Eventually Dan wandered off, but my torture continued: Girl with Pumpkin, Newlyweds, Boy Offering Girl Flowers, Baby in Crib, Sleeping Cat...
Then Dan came running excitedly from a side studio. "Hey, what about this one?" It was a nude male figure, seated, his arms around his knees. Stylized, not muscular, but a heck of a lot better than the other stuff.
"John's Thinker, " he read from the bottom.
"Must be a statue of her husband," I said, carefully taking it from his hands. It felt warm to the touch. It was thrilling to think that I might be holding an exact likeness of a real naked man.
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"No, she didn't do this statue, her husband did," Dad said, frowning. "It's not a real Isabel Bloom."
"That's ok. It's different from the others. I'll take it."
He looked at me oddly. "The others are lots nicer ones. How about First Kiss?" He held out a statue of a little boy kissing an embarrassed little girl on the cheek.
"I don't want any statues of girls."
"It's a boy and a girl. That's like two statues for the price of one!"
Was he objecting to the price of John's Thinker? No, First Kiss cost twice as much. "This one's cheaper."
"But..you could use it as a kind of model, you know. When you want a girl to let you kiss her, just show her the statue."
"Gross!" Dan exclaimed.
"After you discover girls, I mean."
"After you discover girls, I mean."
"John's Thinker, please," I said firmly.
Dad shrugged. "Well, if you're sure that's the one you want. But I don't know what you're going to do with it, Skeezix."
Later I figured out that he always called me Skeezix, after a character in the old Gasoline Alley comic strip, when I expressed same-sex desire, something bizarre and beyond imagining at the time.
I still have the statue. And someone put an Isabel Bloom angel and cat on my father's grave.
More after the break
Recently I did some research into the work of John Bloom. He was married to Isabel from 1938 to his death in 2002, but before that, he lived for several years in a converted ice truck with the gay artist Grant Wood.
There are only a few nudes among his drawings, and John's Thinker is the only nude statue, but he certainly preferred painting the male form.
His art returns again and again to images of male friendship and camaraderie, although the retrospective at the Figge Museum tries to closet him by concentrating on his crowd scenes and his one drawing of a nude lady. Could he have had known something about the "Manly Love of Comrades"?
Ok, Whitman was too early. John lived during the 1920s and 30s, the era of the Pansy Craze, the drag balls of the Harlem Renaissance and Ramon Novarro and Noel Coward's "Mad about the Boy":
He has a gay appeal
That makes me feel
There may be something sad about the boy
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