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Artists dream of White House Christmas
Two artists with Valley ties created White House ornaments that reflect America’s diversity and talent.
Linda Parks drew upon what she described as an elementary school process to create an ornament for a White House Christmas tree with the theme, “A Red, White and Blue Christmas.”
Don Drumm put his expertise in metals to work when he fashioned an ornament for the same tree.
The two artists, using different approaches, reflect the scope of art and the diversity of America in what they portrayed on the Christmas ornaments.
Parks is a former resident of Hermitage, Pa., and her mother, Betty Thanos, lives in Hermitage. Parks taught art from 1973-81 at Reed Middle School in Hubbard. She now lives in Plattsburgh, N.Y., and U.S. Rep. John McHugh of North Country, N.Y., asked her to represent that state’s 23rd District.
Drumm, a Warren native who graduated from Warren G. Harding High School, was asked by U.S. Rep. Tim Ryan of Niles to represent Ohio’s 17th District. Drumm operates Don Drumm Studios and Gallery in Akron with his wife, Lisa.
For Parks, art has been a lifelong vocation and avocation. She also taught art in kindergarten through the 12th grade in Danbury, Conn. In Plattsburgh, where she lives with her husband, Robert, publisher of the Press Republican, she is a volunteer docent at Plattsburgh University Art Museum and is involved in fundraising for North Country Cultural Center for the Arts there.
“The 23rd District is one of the largest geographically ... it goes from Lake Champlain to the end of the state,” Parks said. “But it’s not as populous as other districts.”
Parks admitted she was “quite surprised” when she received a call from McHugh’s office. “I was very honored to do this,” she said. Artists were asked to keep the project under wraps until the ornaments went to Washington.
Parks said each artist received the same 6-inch chrome, plastic ball — a blank slate. “It came this summer and it had to be at the White House by Oct. 1,” she said. Parks said directions instructed the artists not to change the size or shape. She also noted that the sphere wasn’t the easiest “canvas” on which to work but “the challenge spurred creativity.”
“I spent a lot of time on the idea before actually working on it,” Parks said. “That’s how I work best.”
Parks said she decided to highlight two attractions of the 23rd District — Lake Champlain and the Adirondack Mountains. “I wanted to portray the loveliness of the lake and the grandeur of the mountains,” she said.
Her process involved spraying the sphere white, then mixing glue and water and affixing tiny pieces of tissue paper. “I tore, cut and overlapped the tissue to create the mountains and lake,” she said. Colored tissue paper provided the shades rather than paint. “I’ve used this process with students thousands of times,” she said. The mountains have a purple cast and the lake, blue. With other tissue, she created ice along the lake.
Parks admitted she wasn’t satisfied with her first experimental effort. When she picked it up again, “it all came together,” she said. “I covered the whole thing with sparkling glaze so it glistened,” she said. She said the ornament took about 12 hours to decorate.
Her ornament also features a message, “From the icy crystals of Lake Champlain to the purple majesty of the Adirondacks, winter in the twenty-third congressional district, N.Y.”
When Drumm received the sphere to be decorated, he said he set it on a shelf. He had almost forgotten being contacted by Ryan’s office about creating an ornament because he was so busy at his business.
Something brought him back to the globe. “I turned it into a sun,” he said, noting that his own logo is the sun. “I worked with epoxy and polymer materials,” he said. “I wanted to relate it to the industry of the city [Akron], where the rubber industry evolved into polymers.”
Drumm said he then painted the ornament gold and used a patina to add purple highlights.
The 73-year-old artist said his sun ornament also features a Christmas message of “peace, love and joy.”
Drumm said his speciality is in metals and he pioneered the use of cast aluminum as an artistic medium.
The artist has worked on a wide range of public, commercial and private commissions in the United States and abroad, and his art is in homes, businesses, universities, city sidewalks, churches and synagogues worldwide.
Drumm said he didn’t start out in art. He said he studied medicine at Hiram College. “I made my contribution to humanity by getting out of medicine,” he said. He happened to take an art history class at Hiram, and it changed his life. “I fell in love with art history and graphic design,” he said.
Drumm said an instructor encouraged to transfer to a school with a more extensive art program. He attended Kent State University, where he earned a bachelor’s in fine arts and a Master of Arts.
In 1960, he opened his own studio and devoted himself to being a practicing sculptor and designer/craftsman. “I think of myself as a third-generation metal worker,” he said. He noted his grandfather was a blacksmith and his father, Walter Drumm, who ran a GMC truck dealership, also was a welder.
Drumm said his designs run the gamut from “small things like cookware to one-of-a-kind sculptures for city parks.”
He created a “Garden of Fantasy” for Summa Health System’s Akron City Hospital. “They’re abstract plant shapes,” he said.
Works by the former Mahoning Valley resident also are on display at Trumbull Art Gallery. “These are mainly my newest castings,” Drumm said.
Drumm, who received the Ohio Designer Crafts’ Lifetime Achievement Award, also is the first recipient of the Outstanding Visual Artist award from the Akron Area Arts Alliance and the first recipient of the American Institute of Architecture “Artist and Craftsman Excellence” award.