Don featherstone1/16/2024 ![]() ![]() “It was the 1950s, and everyone said plastics were going to be big so I went into plastics.” According to Bangor Daily News, he “likely would have taught in an arts school or focused on watercolors” if he had not chosen a career in yard ornamentation. “I did it to keep from starving,” Featherstone said in a 1997 interview. Penguin pair designed by Donald Featherstone (courtesy Union Products division of Cado Company, Fitchburg, Massachusetts) ![]() He became more interested in the arts in middle school when he started sketching and working with watercolors, and, during high school, took fine arts classes on nights and weekends, studying photography, oil painting, architecture, and design. He eventually attended a three-year program at the Worcester Art Museum‘s art school, but rather than pursuing a career as an artist upon graduating, he joined the plastic manufacturer Union Products (acquired by Cado Company in 2009). ![]() He’s most recognized for helping to dot the yards of US suburbs with shocking pink plastic flamingos - the exemplar of kitsch that rose from its resin roots to become the “ ambassador of the American lawn” and even a “ signpost for the transgression of social and cultural convention.” But Donald Featherstone, who died last week from Lewy body dementia at 79, was also a trained painter and sculptor who left behind much more than his fuchsia specimens, upon which he had bestowed the playful trinomial nomenclature “Phoenicopterus ruber plasticus.”įeatherstone, born in Worcester, Massachusetts, began making art as a child and recalled drawing the neighborhood bread truck when he was four. His autobiography, Brush, Camera and Memories, was published in 1985.Donald Featherstone, “Bookmingo” (2010) (photo by Charles Sternaimolo, courtesy Fitchburg Public Library) Survived by his wife and their daughter, he died on at Toowoomba and was buried in the local cemetery. He handed over his film collection to the Heritage Building Society for preservation in 1982. In retirement he taught painting at adult education classes and introduced art therapy at Baillie Henderson Hospital. Infrequently irascible, Featherstone was noted for his enthusiasm, humility and charity, and his joy in the small pleasures of an `amateur’ artistic life. Widely acknowledged as the best amateur film-maker in Australia, he won several national and international prizes for his work. He was a foundation (1952) and life member (1961) of the Darling Downs Amateur Cine Society. ![]() By 1980 he had made fifty-five films including fictional stories, travelogues, and historical epics and documentaries-mainly about the Darling Downs, including the only surviving footage of the royal visit there in 1954. He had bought a second-hand 16-mm Kodascope camera in 1926 and had begun experimenting with home and holiday films. On 27 July 1966 he was awarded the insignia of the serving brother of the Order of St John.įeatherstone’s great love was film-making. From late 1961 to June 1968 he was a nurse and, from 1965, a first-aid instructor at Toowoomba Mental (Baillie Henderson) Hospital, Willowburn. In January 1946 he became an ambulance officer and honorary instructor at the Toowoomba station of the Queensland Ambulance Transport Brigade. Rejected in 1942 for active service in the Royal Australian Air Force, he worked as a medical orderly in the Civil Constructional Corps at Wallangarra, Drayton and Canungra, and at Truscott, Northern Territory. On 25 February 1933 at St James’s Church of England, Toowoomba, he married Emmie Gillam, a shop assistant.Īt the foundry Featherstone initiated a benevolent fund and started first-aid training under his father, gaining the St John Ambulance Association instructor’s certificate in 1939. An early member (1927) of the Toowoomba Art Society, he won prizes for his paintings at the Royal Adelaide Show and the Brisbane Exhibition. Tall and lanky, in his youth Featherstone had moderate local success at swimming, tennis and rifle-shooting and, learning to play the steel guitar, participated in two local entertainment groups, the Bohemian Club and the Merry Makers. He was self-employed until 1927, when he found work as a machinery painter at the Toowoomba Foundry. In 1924 he moved to a larger firm in Brisbane but, made redundant by the introduction of spray painting, returned to Toowoomba. He worked for a year as a boot delivery-boy before securing an apprenticeship as a coach-trimmer and signwriter in his uncle’s paint shop, where he was nicknamed `Don’ to avoid confusion with another apprentice. Educated at Harrowgate Hill School, Darlington, and Toowoomba East State School (1912-14), Sydney left aged 12. In 1911 the family migrated to Toowoomba, Queensland. Sydney (Don) Featherstone (1902-1984), ambulance officer and amateur cinematographer, was born on 16 November 1902 at Darlington, Durham, England, second of six sons of Joseph Featherstone, railway shunter and ambulanceman, and his wife Eliza Dorothy, née Moody. ![]()
0 Comments
Leave a Reply.AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |