I had just moved to Oklahoma after 20 years in California in 1992, and was surprised to find out that OKCity had one of the largest rodeos of all. I had heard of the rodeos for years, but had never been to one. I found out one day that O.G.R.A was having a poster contest and the winning prize would be $500, which was a lot of money in those days, and still is. I went out to the National Cowboy Hall of Fame here in OKCity a few days later to get some inspiration, and took a few pictures of various cowboys and rodeo scenes, so that I could design an image for a poster. I planned to do it in my usual form of art, marbling (marbleizing), which is an ancient Turkish artform that has been around for 1000 years -- not that cowboys and marbling have any connection with each other, but because I was a full-time marbler (and have been for 35 years now, as of 2023), so it was the kind of art I knew best; and also, because it would be unique, not something anyone had done before.
Marbling is done by floating several colors of paint on the surface of a liquid gelatin in a shallow tray. The colors are moved around by various rakes and combs to form intricate patterns. Then a sheet of paper is laid onto the surface, which absorbs all the colors. It is then rinsed and dried. But it was a lot more complicated for this poster, which has three marbled patterns on it. I had to mask off all the areas on the blank piece of paper where I did not want the color to stick, and do the first marbling (the light pattern such as on the horse's face). Then I dried the paper, masked off all of that colored area, plus the area that would eventually be the black part, and did the blue wavy marbling. Then all those colored areas got masked, and finally the black areas were printed. The paper also had to be coated with alum before each print, to make the color stick to the paper. So there were plenty of things that could have gone wrong, but it all came out okay.
I could have done it in a much simpler way, by making the three patterns on separate sheets, then just cutting and pasting the image onto one sheet. It would have looked exactly the same on the printed posters, but would not have made a good original. Since O.G.R.A. was going to auction off the original for charity, I wanted it to be good as a work of art that could be framed and displayed. (I never have found out who bought it.)
When word came that I had won, that was quite exciting. The whole pattern was also printed onto some tee-shirts to sell at the rodeo. After the rodeo, there was a stack of the posters left over, which were stored in the president of O.G.R.A.'s basement; the basement got flooded, and they were all ruined. So there are very few of them left.
The next year, there was another poster contest here, so I made two more marbled posters for that contest. I only got the second and third prizes -- they didn't think they needed a marbled poster two years in a row, which was sensible. They too got auctioned.
In February of 2023, the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City sponsored and curated a show of American marbled papers, which was displayed until the middle of April 2023. They bought 25 of my marbled papers from me, including one of the original posters, to be kept at the museum in their permanent collection. The marbled poster was given the most prominent position in the whole show!
Galen Berry MarbleArt.US Oklahoma City
