Russell W. Bowers
Sculpture and Painting
“I've noticed that my hands look more and more like my father's. He was a man dedicated to work. His hands testified more than his words. To build – plaster, concrete, mortar. To create beautiful fireplaces and stonework. He also built young men and women as a coach and teacher. He enjoyed things physical, yet had a depth and experience, a searching manner. He loved to take us out into the desert, and later we him. Small ranches and homesteads attracted him. He was a missionary of an approach to life and the spirit. He died at our family reunion, high on the aspen-covered slopes of Boulder Mountain in Southern Utah. I remember placing his hands upon his chest…the pickup crossing through the sagebrush and knotted oaks. I remember the hands…”
Henry Moore preached “truth to the medium”. The weight of bronze and stone. The power of line. The knowledge of texture and pigment. My student days were in the midst of raising a family with my wife Donetta. Our seven are all unique – in gifts and challenges. Each has introduced us to a different landscape of thought and effort. Each has a different texture and depth. Different attributes. By the time we're experienced in sculpting lives we are unemployed, but the struggle never ends. Memory through the medium of family.
My grandson Lorenzo and I sometimes get out Audubon Book and check names and features of the tremendous variety of birds up at Madera. The Pinal Mountains near Globe, Arizona are lush in birds and animal life, a transition of altitudes and biomes, the transect point of mountain ranges. We notice the different varieties of birds of prey and hummingbirds. We find feathers and tracks and hear calls. He's a great mimic. Sometimes we sit in the rocking chair when the wind is blowing, and watch Cooper's hawks moving through the pines after their prey, or later, the colors change in the clouds of evening.To feel him comfortable against me. Trusting me.
Once I pulled my pickup through the pines to the village of Kirare on the edge of the barranca Batopilas (Batopilas Canyon) deep in the state of Chihuahua. My good friend, Ramon Figueroa, who sits for many of my paintings, was sitting on the stoop of the little concrete schoolhouse. He raised his arm and came to the window.
“What are you doing here?” I asked.
“Waiting for you.”
“Did I write you to tell you that I was coming?”
“No – I dreamed you would be here so I thought I would meet you before we went down.”
I have loved being among the Tarahumara of the Sierra Madre. They are the equivalent of Ernst Barlach's peasants of the Steppes of Russia, or Gaughin's Samoans or Tahitians. How much I have learned about what the important things of life are working among them. Dreams.
Sweetwater
Uncompromised Heroism
The Sweetwater Project was born of a voice… “a monument should be made of those men…”. Nearly nine years later Rusty and his family sat on the banks of the Sweetwater River near Devil’s Gate on the high plains to witness the unveiling of a heroic monument to the heroic handcart pioneers caught in the blizzards of 1856. In their desperation they were rescued by a group of young men from the Salt Lake Valley, in this instance carried through the ice-choked Sweetwater River to shelter. It is a lonely and lost place, forgotten in the pace of modern life, a focal point of faith and courage which needs be remembered.