Lyndall Bass' artwork soon will be jingling around in our pockets.

That's because the "tails" side of the next version of the penny was designed by the Santa Fe artist.

The new penny will still carry a portrait of Abraham Lincoln on its "heads" side — but it won't be the Vincent D. Brenner portrait that has been used since 1909.

Instead of the Lincoln Memorial, which has been on the back side since 1959, or one of four scenes from Lincoln's life that appear on pennies minted this year, the 2010 penny will carry Bass' austere shield and scroll.

And because Congress isn't expected to authorize any more changes in the penny for generations, "It's going to be a kick for the rest of my life," Bass said. "Any artist would be absolutely thrilled."

Bass, 57, grew up in North Carolina, attended the Academy of Fine Arts in Philadelphia, earned bachelor's and master's degrees at Indian University, Bloomington, and came to Santa Fe in 1990. Canyon Road Contemporary Art, 403 Canyon Road, carries her landscapes and figurative oil paintings. Her Web site is at www.lyndallbassart.com. She is married to another well-known artist, Geoffrey Laurence.

Two years ago, Bass saw an ad seeking artists for the U.S. Mint's Artistic Infusion Program. She applied, was accepted and joined a pool of artists paid for submitting new designs for coins. The penny was her 12th assignment. Previously, she worked on designs for a commemorative quarter for the Virgin Islands and one of the presidential dollars. The penny is the first time one of her designs has been chosen. She will be paid extra as an honorarium.

"It's very difficult to get one of these things, but I hung in there because I knew eventually I would get one," she said. "We all saw what happened for Glenna Goodacre when she got the Sacagawea coin."

Bass said she began working on the penny in the same way she did the other coins — making sketches, sending them in and making changes as committees gave her feedback. The heraldic shield, a symbol that goes back to the European crusades, became popular in the United States in the 1780s and was widely used by Union forces in the Civil War.

"The idea is to commemorate Lincoln's preservation of the union," Bass said. "There were probably over 100 different things coming into the mix throughout the whole process, but in the end, they decided they liked the shield because it showed protection."

Bass' shield carries 13 vertical stripes, symbolizing the 13 original states, with "e pluribus unum" (out of many, one) across its top.

She said she came up with the scroll, carrying the words "one cent," to symbolize "a contract, which is what money is. It's a contract of trust.

"I also heard one time that money isn't money unless it's moving, so I decided to do a wave pattern to that 'one cent' so it was rolling along. It wasn't static. It was currency rolling from one person to another."

Bass said she balanced and "humanized" the scroll and shield by using Leonardo da Vinci's Vitruvian Man, in which a man's limbs form a circle. "I thought that's an easy thing to get human proportions in a circle," she said. "So I put it on there and it actually fit pretty well, so then I just tightened up the curves and the shapes."

The only other feature on the back side of the new penny is "United States of America" around the top half.

Joseph Mena, a staff artist at the U.S. Mint in Philadelphia, has sculpted Bass' design so it can be made into a die and sent out to other mints around the United States in time for production to begin in January.

Although Bass' design for the back side of the new penny was unveiled by the director of the U.S. Mint in Washington, D.C., on Thursday, the front of the coin remains a mystery. It reportedly will feature one of the three other Lincoln busts done by Brenner for the 1909 penny and kept in storage for the last century.

"They haven't shown that yet," Bass said. "They're telling people what they're going to do with Lincoln because everyone wanted to know ... but people won't really see it until the coin actually starts hitting the streets. ...

"I'm so glad it's still going to be a Victor Brenner sculpture because it wouldn't even look like a penny without that period portrait on there."

Contact Tom Sharpe at 986-3080 or tsharpe@sfnewmexican.com.

HOW THE PENNY EVOLVED

The 1-cent coin was one of the first produced by the U.S. Mint after it was created in 1792.

The original penny was larger than today's, made of pure copper and carried the image of a woman with flowing hair, symbolizing liberty.

In 1857, the penny's size was reduced, its composition was changed to 88 percent copper and 12 percent nickel, and the image was changed to that of a flying eagle on the front and a wreath on the back.

In 1859, the eagle was replaced with Lady Liberty wearing a feathered headdress that looks similar to an Indian war bonnet — giving it the popular name "Indian Head penny."

In 1909, the centennial of President Abraham Lincoln's birth, Vincent D. Brenner's portrait of Lincoln appeared on the front of the penny with two sheaves of wheat on the back — giving rise to the common term "wheat penny."

In 1959, an image of the Lincoln Memorial replaced the wheat sheaves on the tails side of the penny.

This year, for the bicentennial of Lincoln's birth, four different pennies were issued. Each had Lincoln's portrait on the front, but the back carried four different scenes from his life — a log cabin symbolizing his childhood in Kentucky, Lincoln sitting on a log while reading a book symbolizing his formative years in Indiana, Lincoln standing by a courthouse symbolizing his professional life in Illinois and a scene of the unfinished U.S. Capitol symbolizing his presidency.

Today's pennies are copper-plated zinc, with copper representing 2.5 percent of the composition. Each penny weighs 2.5 grams, has a diameter of .75 of an inch or 19.05 millimeters and a thickness of 1.55 millimeters.

Source: U.S. Mint


Editor's note: This article first appeared Nov. 14 on Santafenewmexican.com and is being re-published so those who did not see it during the weekend can do so now.