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Farrah Fawcett at the Umlauf 2

By Michael Barnes | Tuesday, May 26, 2009, 05:22 PM

Back to researching Farrah Fawcett’s Austin connections. This came to the newsroom from Nelie Plourde, director of the Umlauf Sculpture Garden and Museum. Some of this is well-known material, but it’s worth repeating. For Part 1, see post below.

Fawcett occasionally modeled for her fellow classmates in Charles Umlauf’s classes. Umlauf sculpted several head studies of the young actress, the of which are in the collection of the Umlauf Sculpture Garden & Museum. No one ever recognizes the one Umlauf did from life, but they all do recognize the two he did from photos of her during her “Charlie’s Angels” period, with her iconic hair, and another three or four of which are in her own collection.

Later, in late 1987 and early 1988, Fawcett commissioned Umlauf to do several stoneware studies of her infant son Redmond. Over the years she put together a nice, small collection of Umlauf sculptures, drawings and prints.

Her last visit with Umlauf was shortly before he died in November 1994. Fawcett was in Austin working on a film and came by the museum just before it closed. She had been up most of the night with the filming and dealing with the aftermath of a quake which had done some damage to her California house.

Both Charles and Angie Umlauf were here to welcome her and we started walking through the garden. Quite quickly the entire conversation became all about the original clay or plaster sculpture (for whatever bronze we were looking at), what tool had Umlauf used, why did he go with that patina, what about those ears, etc etc.

After about 45 minutes of this Angie and I retreated to the terrace and left them to their teacher/student conversation. Fawcett continues to stop by the Umlauf whenever she is in the area.

Over the last year, we have been in talks with Fawcett re: exhibiting her work here at the Umlauf Sculpture Garden & Museum, as part of our series of annual exhibits of work by former Umlauf students.

How many times did Umlauf used Fawcett as a model for one of his sculptures? Not that many actually. But many, many folks “of a certain age” believe every single sculpture of a woman down here is based on her.

Fawcett had that same deep groove between her nose and upper lip that Angie Umlauf had, and that Umlauf used for the majority of his female sculptures — maybe that’s what makes her seem the model for all of them.

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