RE LOG Fall 2017

14 Ransom Everglades LOG FALL 2017 and arranging them in a tower. That sculpture claimed first prize at the Miami- Dade County Youth Fair, and garnered an invitation to a national competition that promised the winner a trip to the White House. Feinstein had her heart set on meeting President Ronald Reagan, but the family’s Irish Setters got in the way. The two dogs, who had a habit of chewing on shoes, happened upon the sculpture and gnawed it to pieces just days before the event. Feinstein was forced to withdraw. “I was beside myself,” she explained. Though the project was lost, Feinstein had gained something invaluable: the beginning of a personal style. “Everybody makes works that come from their childhood,” Feinstein said. “All artists, all writers, all moviemakers – I really believe all recreate some kind of feeling they had when they were children.” Testing boundaries At Ransom Everglades, Feinstein fondly recalls art teacher Beau Siegel and English teacher Dan Leslie Bowden, whom she appreciated for his dramatic influence. She also found a cast of wonderful teachers at Columbia, and eventually applied to a graduate program at Yale. Once again, her art went a bit too far; she believes she was rejected by Yale for wearing to her interview a transparent miniskirt and T-shirt that read “I’m a Satisfier.” It mattered not. Mentors at Columbia helped her get into the Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture in Maine, where she further developed her skills. The connections she made through both programs helped her begin to establish her professional reputation. One of her biggest breaks: landing a place in an exhibition in SoHo in which artists actually lived in their works for the length of the six-week show. She created a gingerbread house for Sleeping Beauty, put on bright red lipstick, and slept in the house during the exhibition – a perfect arrangement, as she was tending bar late at night at that time. Besides bringing attention to her work, the exhibition also allowed her to meet her eventual husband, renowned painter John Currin. The two hit it off. She served as the model in some of his works, and they married in 1998. The beauty she builds Over the next 15 years, Feinstein cemented her burgeoning reputation by crafting elaborate sculptures that sometimes fit into living rooms, and sometimes did not. An additive sculptor, she creates her works out of nothing, building rather than whittling down a block of something. She unveiled her “Snow Queen” exhibition in 2011 in New York, attracting breathless reviews for the work’s flamboyant depiction of the Hans Christian Andersen fairy tale. Other works have been featured in public art displays around the nation and as far afield as South Korea. Her art has been published in books and exhibited in France, Italy and England. In 2011, the New York Times called Feinstein and her husband “the ruling power couple in today’s art world.” Though their complementary passions have elevated both of their careers, they’ve also made living a routine existence impossible. Feinstein and her family used to reside in a Manhattan loft whose décor has been featured in a number of magazines. Recently, they moved to a townhouse in Gramercy Park. “We’re both really visual people, so you can’t just buy a rug at Rooms To Go when you are the two of us,” she said. “The conversation we can have over what kind of silverware we’re going to get is hysterical. It’s pretty intense. And then, we have three kids on top of it. I don’t think it’s easy for them to have us as parents.” Feinstein laughed. She and Currin have provided their children with access to a world of boundless creativity, and an exciting existence in the pulsing center of the art world. They could not raise their children and continue their careers quite as well anywhere else, yet Feinstein can’t help but get nostalgic about RE. “I wish I could live in Miami so my kids could go to school at Ransom Everglades,” she said. “If I didn’t go to Ransom Everglades … I would not be where I am in my life. It’s an amazing school.” “I wish I could live in Miami so my kids could go to school at Ransom Everglades, The great structure Ransom gave me is actually what every artist needs.” – Rachel Feinstein