Fifty dogs by celebrity artists and writers will be unleashed in Princeton throughout the summer.
By: Ilene Dube
J. Seward Johnson Jr. is doing it. So is Michael Graves. If you don’t know how to do it, they’ll show you how to walk the dog.
"Fetch is his name," says Mr. Johnson, the sculptor. "I cut off his head and repositioned it so he’s looking up at you."
The founder of Grounds For Sculpture in Hamilton is not in the doghouse for having decapitated his living breathing black lab/hound mix. Rather, people are saying "good dog" about the 30-inch, eight-pound ceramic bisque statue he decorated for the Auxiliary of University Medical Center at Princeton. The Auxiliary has selected 50 artists, writers, personalities and school groups to participate in this event that benefits the Cardiac and Pulmonary Care program at UMCP.
It’s a dog-eat-dog world, and Princeton Dog Walk co-chairwoman Christie Robb wanted to make it a more humane place. Having seen a similar project in Kent, Conn., she presented the idea to the Auxiliary.
The decorated dogs will bow-wow viewers at locations throughout Princeton Memorial Day Weekend to Labor Day, and will be auctioned off at the D&R Greenway in Princeton at summer’s end. A map of the sites will be available.
Not one to spend his days writing doggerel, Mr. Johnson was wintering at his home in Key West "It’s the southernmost house in the U.S.," he says; "When I look out I can see Havana" when he took on the project. Having no doggone tools in Florida, he sent the cook out to get a rotary saw.
"I had to rework Fetch’s jaw to hold a basket in his mouth," says Mr. Johnson. "In the basket he’s carrying biohazardous waste."
While working on Fetch, everyone around Mr. Johnson said "eyueoow." But he remained dogmatic. "I had more fun doing it. He’s looking up at you, benignly that’s the other side of the coin. He’s an innocent party doing the fetching. He’s bringing you biohazardous waste because he doesn’t know any better."
The person who purchases Fetch might choose to put the black dog with a red collar by the front door and fill its basket with visiting cards, Mr. Johnson suggests.
A long-time supporter of UMCP, Mr. Johnson says he hopes the hospital’s new location in Plainsboro will have windows that look out on water. "Water opens the soul and gives you a sense of space," he says. "Hospitals in urban spaces are too depressing."
He helped to create Grounds For Healing at Robert Wood Johnson Hospital, where patients can reflect, and would like to see the new UMCP hospital look out on sculpture. "A dog carrying biohazardous waste will have to do for now."
Pulitzer Prize-winning poet Paul Muldoon took a slightly different approach. Like some of the other writers creating designs for Princeton Dog Walk Joyce Carol Oates and Elaine Pagels among them Mr. Muldoon worked with a "ghost artist."
Tricia Rosenthal, a documentary filmmaker and member of the Auxiliary’s Princeton Dog Walk committee, met Mr. Muldoon at the Princeton University Art Museum gala in February and dog-eared his page in her address book so she could create the beast from his concept.
Mr. Muldoon’s bright yellow animal is named Con. "Con is an Irish word for dog," he says. "A hound. Canis in Latin. Canine. I thought it could be fun, as a non-practicing artist or a practicing non-artist or a practicing con artist to have a con dog, as it were."
The Princeton University professor, a lover of words, also wanted to play with the concepts of con artist, con-vict and conviction of the artist.
Yellow was selected because it is the color on police do-not-cross signs and hazard tape. "This does the opposite of what art does," says Mr. Muldoon. "Art inveigles people to come in this (color sends the message) ‘stay off’ as ‘con’ announcing that it’s engaged in subterfuge. This is not a dog, though con means dog. I’m astonished at how profound this is."
When Ms. Rosenthal delivered the completed dog to Mr. Muldoon’s office, he held the bright yellow creature in his tweed-covered arms like a newborn baby. Walking through the hallways, he announced, "It’s a dog! It’s a dog! What a fine fine animal I’m delighted with this dog."
Mount Rose-based architect Max Hayden gave his dog two possible names: Patches or Prince. Purina Pooch also is an acceptable term of affection.
Although painted in a checkered pattern, the name Checkers may have caused some to bark at the association with the famous Checkers Speech in which that gone-to-the-dogs politician proclaimed his wife, Pat Nixon, wore a cloth coat, not a fur.
But Patches wears a Reunions jacket, and its orange-and-black colors would be especially suitable in the home of a Princeton University alumni. Patches would also fit in well in an older home that has been tastefully restored with old-fashioned charm in the style of Mr. Hayden.
Painted in tempera paint, the brushstrokes undulate in a painterly style, inspired by the MacKenzie-Childs line of painted pottery. Mr. Hayden says he was also influenced by the fantastical patterns in the Gustav Klimt painting "The Kiss."
Such projects heralding man’s best friend are not new to Mr. Hayden, who has created three doghouses in years past for Friends of the Homeless Animals fundraisers. Don’t be surprised if Patches shows up at PNC Bank in a coordinating doghouse.
Architect Michael Graves, whose doghouses are sold at Target and have been described by U.S. News & World Report as "a must-have for the yuppie puppy," calls his ceramic dog Deanery Dog. It has been painted in his Deanery pattern used on china and fabrics. A white floral vine trails through a soft blue, reminiscent of the accent color on many of his kitchen appliances and tools. "Graves blue," one of his associates calls it.
"It was easier for me to paint the dog than to make a decorative coat for her," says Mr. Graves, who often has his true dog, Sara, at his side. "She, too, wanted a decorative coat, so I painted her as well," he jokes. While posing for a picture flanked by Deanery Dog and Sara, an assistant of Mr. Graves had to give the dog a bone.
Mr. Graves has designed a doghouse, Good Dog, Bad Dog, for Target. The doghouse has two porches, one for a lab that misbehaves and one for a good dog like Sara.
Ellie Wyeth Fox, a Skillman-based artist yes, she is related to those Wyeths, N.C. and Andrew created Vegetable Dog. "The minute the project came to me I knew I didn’t want it to look like a dog but to be surreal," she says. The front legs are leeks, the haunches are eggplants and acorn squash, the ears are red and yellow peppers, the snout is bok choy, the body is covered with Swiss chard and collards and the tail is a long yellow pepper. The collar is composed of painted radishes, the nametag is a slice of beet.
Painting in acrylic, Ms. Fox says she was inspired by her membership to Honeybrook Organic Farm and visits to Whole Foods. She especially loves to paint the white veins of cabbage.
But all this love of vegetable doesn’t take away from her love of dogs. She has two Jack Russell terriers, and her dogs often populate her paintings of interiors, where a shift in the wind sends the curtains moving, as if a spirit has just passed.
Princeton Dog Walk co-chairwoman Jody Erdman, curator of the Ann Reid Gallery at Princeton Day School, says a coffee table book with photos of all the dogs and quotes from the artists will be produced in late summer. "We have to document this extraordinary event," she says.
"Artists are supposed to be outrageous," says Mr. Johnson. "So I was outrageous with a puppy."
Princeton Dog Walk decorated dogs will be on view throughout Princeton Memorial Day to Labor Day. Maps will be available at all locations, including the Princeton Area Chamber of Commerce, 9 Vandeventer Ave., Princeton. For locations, call (609) 497-4069. The Auxiliary of UMCP on the Web: www.princetonhcs.org/auxiliary (check for updates). Dogs will be auctioned Sept. 16 at D&R Greenway Land Trust, Rosedale Road, Princeton. Tickets cost $50.