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Show Graphic camera, with the vertical poles held in place for scale. The group had to work fast. With a tight deadline hanging over them, there was no time to waste. Still, the participants recalled that evenings were a time for fun around the campfire. Eldon Allen played guitar and taught others x-rated versions of well-known cowboy songs. Tidwell told stories of earlier visitors, including oil-exploration geologists, representatives of the Harvard Peadbody Museum, and members of Butch Cassidy's gang. Meanwhile, Back in the Studio ... Back in Salt Lake City, the group reconvened in a vacant building at 222 S. West Temple Street. The location was ideal for their needs, with open spaces, high ceilings and streams of natural light. With funding from the Indian Arts and Crafts Board, they purchased lengths of duck canvas and sewed it together on heavy-duty machines. The fabric was then stretched over wooden frames and covered with white tempera. The group divided the canvas into two sections, one 40 feet long, the other about 25 feet. Each section was 12.5 feet high. Lynn Fausett, by now recovered from the surgery that had prevented him from going out into the field, marked eT the canvas into one-foot grid lines, and with help from the MO reference drawings and photos, blocked out the mural to scale with charcoal. Then the artists came in and started painting. It was done over a "half-chalk ground," or combination of half chalk and half linseed oil. This provided a flexible base because the mural would need to be rolled and shipped before it was permanently mounted. The group worked around the clock and managed to meet their November shipping deadline. The Barrier (Horseshoe) Canyon mural made its debut in January 1941, at the Museum of Modern Art in New York, as part of the largest exhibition of American Indian arts and crafts ever assembled. After its showing in New York, the canvas was shipped to Denver, where it was stored during World War IL.\It finally returned to Utah in 1967. Following some shrewd horse-trading on the part of Don Hague, then an employee of Looking Back over the Years ... Elzy Bird, who is retired and living in a Salt Lake City suburb, looks back on the Barrier Canyon experience with enthusiasm: “For a city boy like me to go out and see that country for the first time was quite an experience," he reflects. "I thought the art, in many cases was very sophisticated. “It looked like there’d been a lot of thought given to the pictographs,” he continues. "Like the ones with the little figures on their shoulders and the design both painted and pecked on the face. You wonder how they ever did it with the materials they had on hand. You wondered how in the hell they got so high up on the cliff face and how they went about painting them." He pauses and looks reflective. "I thought it was one of the real achievements of the [WPA] art program that we were capable of doing it. When you're young and strong enough to do those things, you should do it. I’m glad that I got introduced to that country, and that I got to go back again and again. It was a great experience, a thing I’ll always remember." pec 8 Special thanks to Don Hague and Elzy Bird fo for their zy Bird AK PL ACE which had cognizance over the mural, agreed to return it to the University of Utah in exchange for $5,000 worth of materials from the collection of the U. of U. Anthropology Department. Ownership was transferred to the U. of U. Museum of Natural History in 1973. RRR CECECCEE CCE of Natural History, and others, the Denver Art Museum, STE Coffee? Tea? Orme? ighway 191 435.259.5201 www.moabutah.com/bucks/ Serving Dinner Nightly State Liquor License &, the Utah Museum AB'S LEESKEEREEEEEETERES EET ES CEREENTS EES SUBSCRIBE TO THE ZEPHYR assistance. . Details on page three canoe company l.c. Rob Soldat says: RENTALS GUIDED TRIPS SALES “First solar energy. CANOE SCHOOL Then...The World!" Labyrinth & Stillwater Canyons on the Green Calm & Whitewater “Daily's” on the Colorado Goosenecks of the San Juan Gateway to the Confluence on the Dolores Robert Soldat HC 64 Box 2510 Castle Valley, UT 84532 (435) 259-7638 702 South Main Street (801) 259-7722 (800) 753-8216 CALL SUPERIOR 5S enn Er ENERGY, SOLAR PUMPING EXPERIENCE SINCE 1987. ERTS SRE |