Hautmans acrylic painting of a spectacled eider flying over an Arctic seascape will be featured on the 1992-93 Federal Duck Stamp. Money from the sale of the stamp is used to purchase and protect vital wetlands for waterfowl and numerous other wildlife species.
Held November 5 and 6 in Washington, DC, the annual contest is sponsored by the Interior Departments U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service.
Joe was seated with his brothers Jim and Robert in the crowded Interior Department auditorium when Interior Secretary Manuel Lujan announced the winner. Robert finished fourth in this years competition, also with a painting of spectacled eiders. "My brothers really helped me," Joe Hautman said. "They really know their ducks and were my biggest critics when I was doing the painting."
Jim Hautman, 27, became the youngest person ever to win the contest in 1989 with a painting of a pair of black-bellied whistling ducks. "Next year, maybe its Roberts turn to win," Joe Hautman said.
Lujan congratulated Hautman on the award, saying, "Its a talented family when two brothers can win the contest within 3 years, and another brother finish fourth." Hautman will meet President Bush later this month at the White House.
Hautmans design was one of 585 entered in this years contest. Second place went to Thomas Wood of Woodbridge, New Jersey, for his watercolor of a pair of Barrows goldeneyes; and Bruce Miller of Mound, Minnesota, placed third with an acrylic design featuring a pair of spectacled eiders.
Hautman, 35, grew up in St. Louis Park, Minnesota. He and six brothers and sisters spent a lot of time playing in a nearby wetland where ducks and geese were plentiful. He attended the University of Minnesota and initially majored in art but later switched to physics.
Hautman eventually earned a Ph.D. in physics from the University of Michigan. He currently is working at the University of Pennsylvania on a National Institutes of Health grant to study computer modeling of cellular structures, research that may ultimately help scientists combat disease.
Hautmans work leaves him little time to paint. In fact, the winning design was only his fifth painting of a duck ever. He has entered the Duck Stamp Contest the past 4 years, but his designs never survived the first round of judging.
"I like the Duck Stamp Contest because it has a deadline that makes me finish the painting by a certain date," he says.
Since it began in 1934, the Federal Duck Stamp Program has generated over $400 million and nearly 4 million wetland acres have been acquired through these revenues. All waterfowl hunters 16 years of age and older are required to purchase the Federal Duck Stamp. In addition, it becomes a valuable collectors item and is bought by philatelists and conservationists across the country. The Duck Stamp Program is remarkable because 98 cents of each dollar raised through the sale of Duck Stamps goes directly to purchase migratory waterfowl habitat.
The spectacled eider is a large Arctic duck, restricted to coastal Alaska. The male has a pale green head with large, white eye patches. At close range, the green feathers seem to form a mane at the back of the head, and the white eye patches are rimmed with black, giving them a spectacle-like appearance. The bird is further identified by the white throat, neck, back, and folded wings contrasting with the slate-black body. The female is tawny brown marked with streaks and discontinuous bars of dark brown. She can be distinguished from other female eiders by the light brown eye patches.
The judges for this years contest were Jack Elrod, award-winning artist and writer/illustrator of the "Mark Trail" comic feature; Martina Roudabush Norelli, a prominent art historian who spent 20 years with the Smithsonian Institutions National Museum of American Art; Jeannette C. Rudy, active conservationist and one of the leading promoters of Duck Stamps for more than 30 years; Vin T. Sparano, outdoor writer and executive editor of Outdoor Life Magazine; and Dr. Charles I. Wiles, Jr., a leading conservationist and retired educator who recently assumed the presidency of the Izaak Walton League of America.
The Duck Stamp has been issued annually by the Federal Government since 1934 when Jay N. "Ding" Darlings drawing entitled "Mallards Dropping In" became the first design for the stamp. Subsequent artwork was commissioned until the contest began in 1949.
The Federal Government offers no monetary award to the winner. A pane of stamps bearing the artists design and autographed by the Secretary of the Interior is presented to the artist during the next years competition. However, commercial wildlife art dealers market limited edition prints of the winning design under private agreements with the artist. Through this contest, the reputations of previously unknown artists have been established overnight, and those of professionals considerably enhanced.
The five species eligible for this years contest were selected from a list of six that have never before appeared on a Federal Duck Stamp. Next year, the five eligible species will be canvasback, Canada goose, mallard, northern pintail, and greater scaup. Through an annual process of elimination and alternating eligible species, all 42 species of North American will be portrayed on a Duck Stamp by 2002. The current 1991 Duck Stamp, designed by 1990 contest winner Nancy Howe, is on sale at most U.S. Post Offices and some national wildlife refuges across the country for $15. Citing the success of the Duck Stamp program, President Bush filmed a one-minute public service announcement asking all Americans to support conservation by purchasing the stamps.
EDITORS NOTE: Black-and-white glossy prints and color transparencies of the winning design are available on a loan basis from the Fish and Wildlife Services Audio-Visual office, 202-208-5611.
The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service is the principal Federal agency responsible for conserving, protecting and enhancing fish, wildlife and plants and their habitats for the continuing benefit of the American people. The Service manages the 93-million-acre National Wildlife Refuge System which encompasses more than 530 national wildlife refuges, thousands of small wetlands and other special management areas. It also operates 66 national fish hatcheries, 64 fishery resource offices and 78 ecological services field stations. The agency enforces Federal wildlife laws, administers the Endangered Species Act, manages migratory bird populations, restores nationally significant fisheries, conserves and restores wildlife habitat such as wetlands, and helps foreign governments with their conservation efforts. It also oversees the Federal Aid program that distributes hundreds of millions of dollars in excise taxes on fishing and hunting equipment to state fish and wildlife agencies. For further information about the programs and activities of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service in the Great Lakes-Big Rivers Region, please visit our home page at: http://midwest.fws.gov
