Tag: sculpture

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Chainsaw Masterpieces

By Michael Zimny

Jarrett Dahl is set to begin his ninth summer of chainsaw art in the Black Hills.

When Jarrett Dahl looks at a log, he sees more than just a log. He sees into the log. Possibilities lurk — like woodland creatures yearning to be freed from timber prisons, by sharknadoes of razor-sharp Husqvarna teeth.

Dahl’s received some recognition for his vision. The Orlando, Florida Ripley’s Believe It Or Not houses his massive sculpture, carved from a monster cottonwood, of an eagle easy-riding an asphalt-hugging hawg. He’s recreated the eagle rider as a fixture at his Keystone shop.

Dahl was raised in Dawson, Minnesota. When he was 18, he went fishing for a couple weeks in the Kenai Peninsula of Alaska. While there, a high school friend’s uncle — Scott Hanson, a well-known chainsaw artist in Soldotna — introduced him to the art form. A couple weeks turned into a summer. Dahl was carving bear’s heads out of stumps in no time, and kept going back the next three summers.

In Jarrett’s eighteenth winter, he started experimenting with selling wares in the lower 48 — at a craft mall in Branson, Missouri. “I took a trip out there with my family,” he says, “and they left me there and said good luck. I met another wood carver out there that took me in and helped me out a little bit and I was able to prove to my Dad that I could make a decent living. So I just kept doing it.”

A smaller version of his eagle rider. The larger sculpture resides in a Florida museum.

Between summers in Alaska he tried a shop in St. Cloud, Minnesota. In 2006, he tried his first Sturgis Motorcycle Rally and found a niche. He’s been to every rally since. His Sturgis success led to the summer store in Keystone, then to a Hill City shop run by his younger brother Jordan. Over the last seven years, he’s run winter shops in Palm Desert, California, then Aspen, Colorado.

As Dahl’s Chainsaw Art gets set to open in Keystone and Hill City for its ninth Black Hills summer, this time the brothers plan to stay put well past first frost. “This will be my first winter in South Dakota,” Dahl says. “I’m just going to try to make a go of it, try to build up as much inventory as I can. It’s kind of nice, because there are no people here, I’m able to get projects done. I appreciate both times of the year.”

Even as the paint dries on the sign out front, the Keystone shop is already a woodland Shangri-la in the presidents’ shadow. Eagles roost regally or lock beaks in arrested free-fall. There are bears and bears of course. A 16-foot warrior reaches skyward, Minions stand poised to give the people what they want. A Tlingit-influenced totem could trace a line to that first Soldotna summer. What might nine winters bring?

Michael Zimny is the social media engagement specialist for South Dakota Public Broadcasting in Vermillion. He blogs for SDPB and contributes arts columns to the South Dakota Magazine website.

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The Horse Years

By Michael Zimny

Wayne Porter’s 40-foot horse stands tall over the town of St. Lawrence.

“We’re on top of a giant horse in an almost nonexistent town talking philosophy.”

Wayne Porter was talking about physicist Leonard Mlodinow’s The Drunkard’s Walk — and the idea that the courses of our lives are wholly determined by random sets of circumstances beyond our control — between welding in place the pieces of an ear about 2/3 his height.

His enthusiasm for the concept might seem counterintuitive coming from a man who has spent nine winters at St. Lawrence building a 40-foot horse one steel railroad tie plate at a time.”It’ll be 10 years until I get the stupid thing done,” he says.”Next spring, I’m hoping. But I’m always wrong. I was wrong when I first started it and I said it’ll be about three or four years.”

So he works 12 hours or more per day, all winter, until Memorial Day when it’s time to open Porter Sculpture Park in Montrose for the season. Then in mid-September, it’s back to the horse. Some might think such dedication must be born of free will, but Porter argues it’s more likely that a random combination of genetics and upbringing chose him to be the horse maker.

The horse has been Porter’s wintertime project for several years.

He learned his work ethic and how to work with metal from his father, who owned a blacksmith shop in St. Lawrence.

“My dad had me working hard hours in the blacksmith shop when I was 12. Like someone would come in and bring in an old leg of a bathtub, so I had to look at the one they had and hammer another one out to look like that one. Or a high-speed gear … it has to be balanced because the whole thing will just fall apart. We did it just by looking at it.”

Soon he started using that uncanny ability to eyeball a part — and to recreate an existing one or make one that doesn’t exist yet to spec — to his art.

After attending South Dakota State University and earning degrees in political science and history, he returned to St. Lawrence to farm sheep (Porter, though a vegetarian, would rather see grass grazed than plowed — he can expound at length on his ideal cattle hybrid, based on ancestral aurochs, or the rationale for cloning a wooly mammoth) and get back to sculpting. Soon he sold the sheep and devoted himself full time to his art, beginning with his 60-foot bull head, which towers over the prairie acreage he chose near I-90 in Montrose for his sculpture park.

The bull head was a three-year project. A horse built more-or-less to scale (Porter likes the aesthetics of elongated necks, and it shows, though his is still a”believable horse”) is a more ambitious project. The symmetry required to achieve some balance is more complicated. The center of gravity is higher.

Porter’s experience working in his father’s blacksmith shop in St. Lawrence is useful when welding high atop the steel horse.

He built a frame out of steel rod based on a small bronze model, then began the slow work of shaping and arc welding each individual plate into place. To shape the plates, he heats them red hot in a wood-burning furnace he built himself, bends the metal with a press made by his dad, then pounds it to perfection.”When I make the horse I have to make it from the inside. I don’t know what it’s going to look like on the outside, so I have to have a different kind of visioning. And when I go down and look from afar, all I can do is see if I did it right or wrong.”

Time is always on his mind.”I don’t stop moving. I just keep cutting steel. I like working fast. I don’t take breaks. I’ve got to move. So I don’t clean the steel up on the floor, because that kills productive time. I always think I’ve got to produce. I’ve got to watch time. Play around, do anything else but build a horse, a 10-year horse will become a 40-year horse. You have to triage and I triage toward productivity.”

When the horse is completed, there’s still the iffy task of transporting it to Montrose. How to figure the Bayesian probability of the horse making it intact? Either way, after the last external plate has been welded in place, Porter will have some internal work to stabilize his horse atop a tractor-trailer. Either that or,”put some wheels and a sail on it, and it will make it there eventually.”

The welding season is almost over, and it’s been a good one. There have been a couple winters when frostbitten fingers have forced some recovery time.”It takes weeks before they’d stop stinging. What I’d do until they heal again is I’d write children’s books until the weather cleared up.”

“I need to create, and if I’m not working on the horse I’m going crazy, so I have to put the energy elsewhere.” Almost as if compelled by an impersonal force greater than himself or the horse.

Michael Zimny is the social media engagement specialist for South Dakota Public Broadcasting in Vermillion. He blogs for SDPB and contributes arts columns to the South Dakota Magazine website.

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The Ultimate Survivor

By Michael Zimny

John Lopez’s new sculpture captures the moment that an angry grizzly bear attacked frontiersman Hugh Glass.

On the last weekend in August, Lemmon-based artist John Lopez unveiled a new sculpture commemorating Hugh Glass, close to the spot where the legendary pioneer nearly lost his battle with an angry grizzly bear. The sculpture — depicting the pivotal moment in the Glass legend — comes at a time of renewed interest in his story.

A film biopic based on Glass’ life is scheduled for release around Christmas. The Revenant, directed by Alejandro Gonz·lez IÒ·rritu and starring Leonardo DiCaprio, features the legend of his fight with the bear, his struggle to survive and his quest to avenge the men who abandoned him for dead.

Having grown up in Lemmon, Lopez understands the fascination with the story.”I think [because of] the fact that it happened so close to our hometown of Lemmon, we have all heard the story since we learned about it in history class,” Lopez says. “And every time you drive by Shadehill or Summerville, you’re reminded of it. He’s the ultimate survivor.”

The sculpture was unveiled in front of a crowd gathered for the inaugural Hugh Glass Rendezvous at a South Dakota state recreation area also bearing his name, contiguous to the Shadehill Reservoir and Grand River National Grassland.

“Rendezvous” is the name given to a loose network of outdoor festivals for history buffs, where the facial hair and throwback clothing are reminiscent of modern day Brooklyn, but without the irony or the artisanal pickle stand. And for any group that celebrates the pioneer ethic, it would be hard to find a more rugged embodiment of frontier grit than Glass.

Lopez worked on the sculpture in his Lemmon studio earlier this year.

“The life that he had even before he was mauled by the grizzly bear, and then to crawl 200 miles after the grizzly attack, puts him in a category of frontiersman where he has a cult following among rendezvous-ers and historians,” Lopez says.

The visual aesthetic Lopez has employed echoes the chaos in the moment. While he incorporates his usual divergent mash-up of found objects, the energy of the piece is in the long flowing plasma-cut strips of sheet metal that form the grizzly, insinuating frenetic movement and fear.

What we know about Glass is steeped in the mythos of the American West. It’s probably impossible to know if he truly ate the half-rotten flesh of the same bear that nearly killed him — or the carcass of a buffalo calf he scavenged from wolves — to make it through the first few days after he was abandoned to the elements.

We know that he already had a reputation in the West as an adventurer — a tall, wiry man who wore buffalo skins and cut his hair with a knife — when he signed up for the”Ashley’s Hundred” fur trading mission, led by General William Ashley of the Missouri militia.

Frederick Manfred described his frontier ambition in the 1954 biography, Lord Grizzly. “The new, the old new, just around the turn ahead, was the only remedy for hot blood. Ahead was always either gold or the grave. The gamble of it freshened the blood at the same time that it cleared the eye. What could beat galloping up alone over the brow of a new bluff for that first look of beyond?”

We know that over a brow of the beyond, near the forks of the Grand River, Glass surprised a mother grizzly with her cubs. How exactly he survived is the stuff of lore, but he did survive, though mutilated and broken. Expedition leader Andrew Henry left Jim Bridger and John Fitzgerald to give Glass a proper burial when he succumbed to the inevitable. The pair dug him a grave, then abandoned him, afraid of being caught in hostile territory. They didn’t have to steal his rifle and knife to leave him even more helpless, but they did.

Hugh Glass faces his adversary.

After the bear fight, his struggle to survive his abandonment is what entrenches the Glass legend in the frontier narrative. Though his memorialization is in some ways an American update on the sacred iconography that has kept the memory of martyrs like Saint Sebastian alive for millennia, Glass parts ways from the ancients. His ordeal is more the consequence of wanderlust than unwavering faith or innocence. Though he would learn virtue later, he’s been enshrined in the American memory for brute frontier badassery.

His road to Fort Kiowa confirms in an excruciating tableau of hardship and pain what he’s made of. Desperately, he employs maggots to eat the dead flesh from his mangled back. Recalling the biblical allegory of Job, without emulating his patience, Glass fights buzzards, wolves and coyotes, eats rattlesnakes, fashions a splint out of bear skin for his broken leg and crawls more than 200 miles.

“Three months of plain hell,” is how Manfred’s Glass describes his torment when he finally arrives. From there, legend says he embarks on a whiskey and hate-filled quest to avenge Fitzpatrick and Bridger. But by the time he finds their trail, the grizzled old mountain man has learned forgiveness, adding a moral component to his fabled resilience.

These scenes have lived in literature, and an obscure western corner of the American conscience, for nearly two centuries. With a new monument by one of South Dakota’s most innovative artists — to communicate the raw terror in his defining moment, and his stubborn will to survive — the legend of Hugh Glass is secure in the Grand River forks foothills.

The new sculpture will be on permanent display at the Grand River Museum in Lemmon.

Michael Zimny is the social media engagement specialist for South Dakota Public Broadcasting in Vermillion. He blogs for SDPB and contributes arts columns to the South Dakota Magazine website.

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Cecil Harris Honored in Aberdeen

By John Andrews

In our May/June issue, we wrote about young Aberdeen sculptor Ben Victor’s latest project: a 9-foot bronze of Cresbard native and World War II naval flying ace Cecil Harris. More than 200 people gathered on the Northern State University campus in Aberdeen over the weekend to officially dedicate the statue outside Spafford Hall.

Harris had gone largely unrecognized for his heroics until friends and family began spreading his story in recent years. In 2010, an 80-mile stretch of South Dakota Highway 20 through Potter and Faulk counties was designated as the Cecil Harris Memorial Highway. There has also been a push to have the Congressional Medal of Honor awarded to Harris posthumously, but when it appeared unlikely to happen, efforts turned to raising funds for the statue.

Harris was born in Cresbard in 1914. He was a student at Northern when he joined the Navy before the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor in December 1941. His most memorable mission came on Oct. 12, 1944, when he shot down four enemy aircraft and saved two of his Fighting Squadron 18 teammates at Formosa. His heroics earned him the Silver Star. On two more occasions he shot down four enemy planes without taking a bullet. By Nov. 25 he had accumulated a total of 24 and a new nickname: Speedball.

Though he wasn’t the highest-ranking pilot aboard the USS Intrepid, Harris’ shipmates always looked to him for leadership.”With all due respect to our senior leadership, it was Harris who build our squadron into the deadly efficient fighting force that it was,” says Harold Thune of Murdo, who served with Harris during the final two years of the war.”As a pilot, I believe he was without peer.”

At the dedication on Saturday, retired Navy captain and pilot Ken Schroeder explained how Harris saved his entire squadron of 20 pilots by leading them through darkness and thick fog to the Intrepid.”He located the Intrepid, almost hitting its superstructure, landed safely, and then asked the captain to call the squad in,” Schroeder said.”He saved 17 aircraft and 20 pilots that day.”

By the end of the war, Harris was the second highest Navy scoring ace. He received numerous honors in his long military career, including the Navy Cross, Silver Star, Distinguished Flying Cross and the Air Medal.

Harris returned to Cresbard after the war and lived quietly as a teacher and high school principal. He returned to active duty during the Korean War and became a career Navy officer, serving 27 years before retiring in 1967. He died in 1981 in Washington, D.C., and is buried at Arlington National Cemetery.

Some wonder if Harris would welcome the attention. There’s a story that says when Harris came home from World War II, a large crowd gathered at the train station in Cresbard to greet him. The train pulled in and left again with no sign of Harris. Apparently he had sneaked out the other side and went to the local pool hall for a beer. Nevertheless, Ben Victor’s statue seems a fitting tribute to a World War II hero that few South Dakotans know anything about.

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‘I Told You So’

By John Andrews

Richard Pettigrew did not leave this earth on good terms with the men who ran Sioux Falls. Despite the fact that he attracted railroads to the fledgling community on the falls of the Big Sioux River, established businesses and secured land grants, his opinions on other political matters alienated him from nearly everyone in town. When he died in 1926, the surveyor, politician, businessman and South Dakota’s first full-term senator was quickly forgotten.

But Darwin Wolf has resurrected Pettigrew. His statue of the man, a project 10 years in the making, was unveiled last week along Phillips Avenue in downtown Sioux Falls. The dedication featured kind words for Pettigrew from city officials, the presentation of a small replica to students from R.F. Pettigrew Elementary who helped raise money for the project (and who watched Wolf sculpt as part of the Artists in Schools program), and deeper reflection on the man who was part city-builder, part scoundrel.

We visited Wolf in his Sioux Falls studio in 2010, when the Pettigrew statue was still a clay head sitting atop a table. When he took the job in 2003, it began with meticulous research, just like his other projects. But the artist grew fascinated with the wily politician.”The more I learned, the more I found that I liked and disliked,” he told us.”He was such a tenacious fighter and did so many good things for Sioux Falls, the monument evolved into being a project for some redemption.”

There are countless stories of Pettigrew’s unscrupulous behavior. There’s the”Deuel County Fraud” that marred his first run for the state legislature. Pettigrew discovered that his opponent had ensured Pettigrew’s name was left off ballots circulated south of Sioux Falls. So naturally, Pettigrew omitted his opponent’s name on ballots north of town. Pettigrew was elected, but the House threw him out.”He fought fire with fire, and he was the one who got burned,” Wolf said at the dedication.

In 1870 Pettigrew and Nyrum Phillips wanted Congress to open Fort Dakota to settlement. Too few people lived within Minnehaha County to sign their petition, so they added names of men they thought would soon arrive and sent the document to Washington. He also started a stockyard and meatpacking plant along the Big Sioux River, but had no plan in place for waste removal. It was simply dumped into the river.

Chicanery aside, we cannot deny the role Pettigrew played in making Sioux Falls the urban center it is today. He brought five railroad lines to town, and got funds to build the county courthouse, post office and penitentiary. And, as Augustana College president Rob Oliver noted at the dedication, he helped secure the land grant on which the school stands today.

As U.S. Senator, many of his stances ran counter to popular opinion. He was an early advocate of women’s suffrage and opposed imperialism and America’s involvement in the Spanish-American War. He was indicted under the Espionage Act for comments disparaging President Woodrow Wilson and encouraging young soldiers to avoid fighting in World War I. His stellar legal team led by Clarence Darrow avoided prosecution, and you can still see the indictment hanging next to the Declaration of Independence inside Pettigrew’s home at the corner of Eighth and Duluth, just as it was on the day he died.

Wolf’s statue stands 10 feet tall (15 if you include the pedestal), and everything about it is meant to vindicate Pettigrew’s position on one final contentious issue. Pettigrew holds a letter in his right hand. It’s meant to be the note he penned to city leaders in the 1920s urging them to spare a piece of land near the falls from urbanization and create a park. They paid him no heed, and businesses soon moved in. Their buildings were hollow shells by the 1990s, when the city decided to remove them and spruce up the area as part of its Phillips to the Falls project.

Today Pettigrew stands at the corner of Fifth and Phillips overlooking downtown as families enjoy Falls Park behind him. If he could say anything to the leaders who occupied those downtown office buildings 100 years ago, it might be the line Wolf scratched into the base of his statue:”I told you so.”

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Kadoka’s Incredible Metal

By Jerry Wilson

It takes little rain to turn Badlands soil to gumbo, but little sunshine to dry it out. When I turned off Highway 73 onto Swift Horse Road south of Kadoka, the sun had begun its work; the lightly-graveled three-mile road to Brett and Tammy Prang’s Frying Pan Ranch had dried enough that I didn’t get stuck, but it was sticky enough that when I pulled up to Brett’s shop, the car was a ball of mud.

Brett was polishing the steel of a big buffalo skull. Nearby stood a man-sized steel man, Willie Yellow Hawk, still awaiting finishing touches when I was there in 2005.”He was a working cuss,” Brett said, nodding to the likeness of a long-time neighbor in this remote northeast corner of the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation.”I ran over Willie with the tractor,” Brett said — “the sculpture, that is, to bend the steel.”

As my eyes adjusted to the dimmer light inside the shop, dozens of unique objects came into view — arrows, feathers, busts and beasts, all of them bent, hammered and welded from steel.

Prang first began playing with metal almost 30 years ago, picking up odd scraps of iron and welding them together, just to see what would emerge.”One night I was playing basketball with some guys, and I started dinking around with some bolts and nuts and nails, and a monster emerged,” he said.”I made quite a few things back then, just to give away.” But Brett didn’t think of himself as an artist; it was all for fun. Then in 1999, Tammy asked Brett to make her an arrow curtain rod, and their artistic life at Incredible Metal was born.

Of the many sculptures Brett has created with Tammy’s help, one stands out — literally. A 38-foot iron cross looms on the bluff above the Prang home, at the family cemetery where Brett’s ancestors lie. There’s no better word for the cross than unique. Sure, somebody could copy the general design, but nobody — not even Brett — could truly duplicate it; many of the items welded into the structure are one of a kind.

Brett and Tammy and grandson Colton took me up the hill for a look at the cross that, with the help of a crane, they erected on Memorial Day 2003. From on top of the hill, the panhandled bluff that gave the ranch its”frying pan” name and brand comes into view — as does most everything else for a dozen miles. But majestic as the landscape is, it’s hard to keep your eyes off the cross.

At its four feet are welded the family branding irons, including those of two of Brett and Tammy’s sons. The vertical and horizontal spans are linked by a pair of wheels from a horse-drawn road grader like the one Brett’s great-grandfather, Cap Pettyjohn, used to build ranch roads. Above that is a cousin’s locomotive bell, which can be rung with a rope. Below the crossbar is a lexicon of cast-off farm and ranch junk, the kind of iron pile that grows behind many a shop, but assembled in an order that might make sense to one man — a posthole digger, brake shoes, a huge threading die, an axe head, pulleys, levers, gears, a tire wrench, a chain boomer, clutch housing, chisel sweeps, disk blades, nuts and bolts.”We put the rake and pitchfork way up high, so we can’t do any more work with them,” Brett chuckled.

Back down at the ranch house, Tammy showed me her art, too, mostly tooled leatherwork — barstool covers, lampshades, feather art, and a magnificent cover for their art album. She also grinds Brett’s steel work to a smooth finish. She’s actually been creating art since 7th grade, when she sold tooled leather bracelets to friends at Belvedere School for a dollar.

“I guess Brett and I are a team at everything we do,” she said.”I don’t think of myself as an artist, really.” She had me fooled. But at that moment, grandson Colton and I were most attracted to the art Tammy removed from the oven — a big pan of cinnamon rolls, served hot with a glass of cool water from the spring.

Editor’s Note: This story is revised from the March/April 2005 issue of South Dakota Magazine. To order a copy or to subscribe, call 800-456-5117.

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Meet the Beasts

By Katie Hunhoff

Labor Day weekend is summer’s last hurrah for many. If you’re traveling around South Dakota to enjoy the holiday, stop and appreciate the inventiveness and creativity of our fellow South Dakotans at one of our unique roadside attractions featuring wild things. There’s Bear Country USA, Dinosaur Park and Reptile Gardens, sure, but here are three you may not know about.

A Lot of Bull

Drivers see South Dakota at 75 miles an hour crossing the state on Interstate 90, but many slow down, gawk and even swerve as they pass the Montrose exit 25 miles west of Sioux Falls. It’s probably the 60-foot tall scrap iron longhorn bull that diverts their attention. The bull is the centerpiece of Wayne Porter’s Sculpture Park, which comprises 10 acres of welded dragons, butterflies and other mythical creatures. Porter spends seven days a week at his park during the summer working on new projects and greeting visitors. It’s an ironic venture for Porter, who told us in 2007 that he studied political science and history at South Dakota State University because he thought an art career would be too time consuming. He even tried sheep ranching in Hand County before turning to sculpture full time.

His creations make people laugh and think. There’s a boy on a sled, a man’s hand reaching out from a brain for ideas and vultures lined up like fence posts. Everyone’s favorite, though, is the longhorn, made from 8-inch square steel plates from abandoned railroad tracks.

South Dakota’s Heaviest Bird

Another hard-to-miss animal resides about two hours north of Porter’s park. Most Chinese ring-necked pheasants measure two or three feet from beak to tail and weigh less than five pounds. They are dwarfed by the Tinkertown Pheasant, easily our state’s heaviest bird. The Walters, proprietors of a country store along U.S. Highway 212 about 12 miles west of Watertown, built the concrete bird in 1950. They later added a concrete donkey they called Depression Nag. Girl Scouts from Clark paint the pair each summer.

Pheasants were introduced to South Dakota over 100 years ago and legislators declared it our state bird. Each fall hunters flock here to bag their limit. Plenty of South Dakota towns claim to be the”Pheasant Capital.” Huron, Gregory and Redfield each boast giant, plastic pheasants to support the claim, but those are lightweights compared to Tinkertown’s everlasting rooster.

A Haven in the Hills

Mike Welchynski, founder of the Spirit of the Hills Wildlife Sanctuary, and friend.

More agile (and dangerous) animals can be seen outside of Spearfish at the Spirit of the Hills Wildlife Sanctuary. Don’t be startled if you hear the roar of an African lion or the deep growl of a black bear. They’re supposed to be there, and Mike Welchynski is taking good care of them. Welchynski founded the sanctuary in 1999 as an escape for exotic animals victimized by illegal breeding farms and abusive carnivals and circuses. Welchynski grew up surrounded by animals in the woods of Manitoba and created an animal sanctuary there. Spearfish residents Johanna Meier and Guido Della Vecchia, who were touring Canada with the Black Hills Passion Play in 1998, convinced Welchynski to establish a sanctuary in South Dakota. Today more than 300 cougars, African lions, tigers, camels, tropical birds and other creatures (including dogs, cats, horses, hamsters and others) live on 200 acres of rocky Ponderosa pine forest on the edge of Spearfish. The playful, harmless critters roam free, but the more dangerous wild animals reside in spacious cages.

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Crazy Horse: Pointing to the Future

By Bill Allan

Editor’s Note: The work at Crazy Horse Memorial has progressed considerably since Bill Allan, a Plankinton native, wrote this piece. It appeared in our November 1987 issue. To subscribe to South Dakota Magazine, call us at 800-456-5117.

Chad Coppess of Dakotagraph snapped this view of Crazy Horse Memorial in 2009.

I came up to Mount Rushmore National Monument in long nourished anticipation, like others who flock to see this renowned carving, and was moved by the grand tribute to these four presidents who guided our land during troubled times. However, having seen pictures of Rushmore in magazines and papers, my emotions fell short of what I wanted and expected.

The story of Mount Rushmore is inspiring. The accomplishments of the creator, Gutzon Borglum, and those of the four faces portrayed in stone are truly a tribute to man’s determination and exemplary of man’s ability to rise to new heights.

But today, the work is finished. All that is left are the visitations and the photo taking, as viewers pay homage to artist and subjects alike. It is the same with the Washington Monument, the Pyramids, the Eiffel Tower and other great masterpieces. They gleam with grandeur and artistic greatness. Our eyes feed on them and we are inspired.

And then we drive away.

But as I drove away down one of the Black Hills roads, I found new inspiration in a mountainous tribute being carved to the American Indian. It became the lifetime endeavor of a special man whose work is now being continued by his family.

“When the legends die, the dreams end; when the dreams end, there is no more greatness.”

The monument — conceived by local Native Americans, and engineered by the great sculptor Korczak Ziolkowski — is being carved out of a mountain of rock five miles north of Custer, South Dakota. It will one day be a gigantic figurine of the great Oglala Lakota leader Crazy Horse, astride a pony, pointing over the horizon to the Indian lands. “My lands are where my dead are buried,” the young warrior once told a taunting white trader.

While he lived, Korczak liked to brag that, out of the 4.5 billion people in the world, he was the only one carving a mountain. The largest sculptural undertaking of all time, it will rise to 563 feet and span 641 feet — higher than the Washington Monument, larger than the pyramid of Gizeh, and so massive all four of the heads at Rushmore could fit inside the head of Crazy Horse when it is completed. Sculpted in the round, it will picture Crazy Horse mounted bareback on a horse so large a five-story house could fit into one of the animal’s nostrils.

Henry Standing Bear, a Lakota chief, pleaded with an orphan boy from Boston who was already an established sculptor to carve a likeness of Crazy Horse, one of the greatest of Indian heroes. That was 1939. A war later Korczak accepted the challenge. He and Standing Bear searched until they found the proper mountain and, without money or income, forty-year-old Ziolkowski lived in a tent and immediately began the world’s most massive sculpture.

Not knowing this, I reflected little interest as we drove up the road leading to the project. I was let down. All I could see was a pile of stone at the base of a rock mountain that someone had painted white markings on. I expected little else to capture my attention.

I was wrong.

Photo by Chad Coppess.

There on the mountain I found an inspiration that will always be a part of my life. I found refreshing value in the determination of this man called Korczak. He could have likely written his own ticket to fame and fortune in the art centers of the world. Yet he was inspired to live the rest of his years in the shadow of a mountain, measuring, planning, carving and recording plans in the event he did not live to see the finish.

I am especially inspired by the last words the sculptor said to his wife, Ruth, just before his death in 1982 after 34 years on the mountain. “You must work on the mountain,” he told her, “but go slowly — so you do it right.”

It becomes obvious to all who view the stone carving that it is not the act of completion that carries the import of this tremendous undertaking. It is the act of doing!

I am sure the Indian people and Korczak designed it to be so. He did not plan to have a heart attack or have his back broken as he worked. And he knew bigots would oppose the idea of carving an Indian, yet he went ahead and bought the mountain with the arrangement that it would revert to the Indians at the death of the artist’s youngest child. These obstacles just happened as part of living his love of life.

The mountain could break his bones and his body, but never his spirit. Like Crazy Horse, the man he was perpetuating, Korczak had too much heart.

Today his wife and children carry on the work. Visitors pay a fee (presently $27 a carload) to see the progress. Believing in free enterprise, the sculpture proudly refuses federal financing, relying instead on the monies from private people, namely the American public. It gives every viewer the opportunity to be a part of the dream as they participate in the doing. Most visitors take a stone chip or two of the famous mountain to more graphically tell the story when they arrive home. As each small chip falls, we are reminded that the inspiration of the Crazy Horse Memorial is in the doing. When it is completed, one day in the distant future, it will tell the story of America’s first people and engrave the nobleness of the Indian Nation. From around the world, people will flock to view the masterpiece, and those whose aspirations found growth in the Crazy Horse story as told in rock may find a need for new goals that concentrate on the act of doing.

The memory of Crazy Horse is a marker, a milestone to the changing times of our nation. Perhaps we can view the Crazy Horse monument as an inspiration to rekindle our land’s greatness. This proud Indian chief, along with the leaders of other Indian nations, knew the value of this vast land. They deemed it worth fighting for. They, too, were willing to lay down their lives to preserve it.

No one said it better than Korczak Ziolkowski: “When the legends die, the dreams end; when the dreams end, there is no more greatness.”

On my next visit to the Black Hills, I will stop to look at the Rushmore faces, be uplifted, but will race on to the Crazy Horse site to see the progress that has been made in my absence. I will not look at Korczak’s grave at the base of the mountain, rather, I will spend my time appreciating his ongoing lesson in creativity.

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Art al Fresco

By John Day

Editor’s Note: This story is revised from the May/June 1997 issue of South Dakota Magazine. To order a copy or to subscribe, call 800-456-5117.

How many pieces of outdoor sculpture exist in South Dakota? In the early 1990s, when that question was originally asked, the highest estimate was 50 works. By the fall of 1994, volunteers with Save Outdoor Sculpture South Dakota had inventoried nearly 200 pieces. Reviewing the geography of South Dakota’s cache of outdoor monuments, one is struck by the democracy of the phenomenon — they are found in communities ranging from Allen, Bowdle, Bullhead, Epiphany, Marty and Salem to bigger cities like Aberdeen, Mitchell, Rapid City, Sioux Falls and Yankton. Score one for the artistic vitality of South Dakota.

South Dakota is proud of its most celebrated outdoor sculpture, an awareness that has led to serious proposals that the state should call itself “The Monument State.” The Shrine to Democracy at Mount Rushmore and the Crazy Horse Memorial, with their international appeal, have made South Dakota famous for monumental sculpture, and these works dominate our sense of what public sculpture should be.

But to fully understand South Dakota’s heritage of public sculpture, we must revere the more modest works that enrich our parks, campuses and city squares. Despite the hardships of prairie life and the sparseness of population, communities across the state began early to mark their benefactors, heroes and moments of triumph and tragedy with outdoor sculpture.

Among the oldest outdoor pieces in the state are monuments to valor in war — the Civil War, the Spanish-American War, and World War I. An early example is the 17-foot granite sculpture in Watertown titled “Company H Monument” dedicated in 1902. Located on the Codington County Courthouse lawn, it was erected in memory of soldiers who fought in the Spanish-American War and the Philippine Insurrection of 1899. As is frequently the case with such early statues, the artist is unknown but the piece was erected by the Watertown Monument Works.

Perhaps one of the most dramatic war memorials in the state is “Spirit of the American Doughboy” in Bullhead. This mass-produced metal tribute to those who served in World War I was created by artist E. M. Viquesney in 1920 and erected in 1935. The war memorial was presented by the Hunkpapa Band of the Sioux Nation. There are at least 138 life-size copies of “The Spirit of the American Doughboy” in 35 states, but few presented with such attention to setting.

Other outdoor sculptures were inspired by important community leaders, like the six-foot stone sculpture of General John A. Logan at the South Dakota State Veterans’ Home in Hot Springs. General Logan served in the Civil War and was the third Commander-in-Chief of the Grand Army of the Republic, the Civil War’s Veterans’ Association.

The number of South Dakota’s public sculptures grew with the Works Progress Administration (WPA) during the Depression. The concrete and stone “Dinosaur Park” in Rapid City is an example of this, as are the various concrete and stone works in Chamberlain.

Following the Second World War, a new generation of academic and professional artists began to work in the state on an ever-increasing number of public and corporate commissions. Assisted by a vital public arts movement invested largely in the newly-formed South Dakota Arts Council, the 1970s saw the beginning of an explosion in public sculpture. Across the state, sculptors like Michael Tuma and Dale Lamphere made reputations for themselves in the area of public monuments. Lamphere’s 1991 seven-foot, seven-inch bronze and granite work “Citadel”is an excellent example of the vitality of public art in South Dakota.

In addition, there are always those very special artistic spirits who, moved by the moment or by a sense of fun, create immediate expressions of joyous perception. Often considered the amateur, these artists fit the essence of the definition — one who does for love. South Dakota is blessed with a tradition of the folk sculptor who creates for the joy it gives him and the people who see his work. Today, new talents are emerging in South Dakota, who continue to capture our history and culture, our momentous events, and our aesthetic musings for public reflection and celebration.

Outdoor Art Today

Outdoor art has experienced a resurgence since this story was originally written in 1997. Here’s a few of the communities in which you can take in fresh air and great art.

  • SculptureWalk Sioux Falls adds art appreciation to the Phillips Avenue shopping experience.
  • Rapid City is now the City of Presidents, with bronzes of our nation’s past leaders.
  • RiverWalk sculptures grace downtown Yankton and Riverside Park.
  • Pierre is developing its Trail of Governors, which will feature life-size statues of South Dakota’s chief executives
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From Mud to Bronze

By John Andrews

As a student at South Dakota State University in Brookings, I found myself in Lincoln Music Hall quite often. I can’t count how many times I passed the bronze bust of Abraham Lincoln, which serves as the centerpiece of the building’s marvelous marble foyer. Never once did I wonder who made it. Turns out, it was a quiet Norwegian who learned to sculpt using Minnehaha County mud and became one of the most well known artists of his generation.

Gilbert Risvold grew up on a farm near Baltic. He went to country school, where teachers noticed the boy’s talent for crafting images from mud. He attended South Dakota State College and studied under Ada Caldwell (who also taught Harvey Dunn). Caldwell saw Risvold’s potential and recommended he apply to the prestigious Art Institute of Chicago.

As is the case with many artists, Risvold struggled to find his place. Nearing the end of his patience with sculpture, he entered a contest that challenged artists to create a statue of renowned Illinois politician Stephen Douglas. Out of 75 entries, Risvold won. The state bought his sculpture and placed it at the state capitol in Springfield, where you can find it today.

Risvold’s success with the Douglas statue propelled his art career. He did a statue of Idaho governor Frank Steunenberg, created a war memorial for Oak Park, Illinois and crafted the Mormon Battalion Memorial (perhaps his most well known piece), which stands in Salt Lake City, Utah.

Riswolds (many have substituted the “v” for a “w” in the surname) still live in Minnehaha County. In fact, they gather every summer for a large family reunion at East Side Lutheran Church. A distant relative sent me a note about the event, which is how I discovered the art of Gilbert Risvold. In addition to his bust of Lincoln in Brookings, his statue of Mother Sherrard, founder of South Dakota’s first children’s home, stands in the state capitol.