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Show Thursday, April 10, 2008 Page 8 AMERICAN FORK CITIZEN Pleasant Grove man loving life as a sculptor . ., i luniiii. i iij.pm. m iiniiiu.i in -in I "''' iiiiihiiiiiiiijii iiuiin nuMiim iii iii miii n .1 1 """ 1 "" J-1 DAILY HERALD mall shreds of clay fall to the table like the thin , peels of a carrot as Blair I Buswell delicately shaves some bulk from the body of a sculpted ox. Behind Buswell there is an array of anatomical drawings of oxen, photographs of the large animals in various positions posi-tions and stages of movement, and a collection of real ox skulls. There is even a television playing videos of oxen moving around on a farm for additional reference. Buswell is meticulous me-ticulous and precise. Towering above Buswell as he works in his Pleasant Grove studio is a larger-than-life covered wagon statue being pulled by four mules. Atop the wagon is a sculpted driver bearing a striking resemblance to Buswell. Sitting beside the wagon driver is a young girl modeled after Buswell's own daughter. The ox that he is currently working on is just a 14 scale model that will ultimately be enlarged to match the proportions of the giant wagon. It is just a small portion por-tion of the 10- to 12-year project that Buswell is working on for the city of Omaha, Neb. When complete, the project will be a bronze wagon train the length of an entire city block. "It is a dream job," says Buswell. "It is a job that has been a lot of fun, one where I get really excited to go to work. I don't look forward to Fridays Fri-days and a I don't dread Mondays." Despite the fact that he has been working for the past six years on the wagon train sculpture, Buswell is not best known for his depictions of the American West, but rather for his sculptures of athletes. One of his primary clients is the Football Hall of Fame. Soon he will have to take a break from his wagon train project to begin working on the sculptures of this year's inductees. Buswell has been producing sculptures for the Hall of Fame for 26 years and in that time has made at least 65 sculptures of some of the world's best athletes. "I got my big break from playing football at BYU," said Buswell, who met Bill Walsh (a one-time coach of the San Francisco 49ers) at his senior football banquet. Some of Buswell's bronze sculptures were on display at the banquet and Walsh was so impressed that he hired Buswell to make a sculpture for the 49ers. That introduction to the field of athletic sculpture led to a job creating sculptures sculp-tures for the Football Hall of Fame in Ohio. In 1990, Blair was honored as the Sports Artist of the Year by the United States Sports Academy. He was the first sculptor to receive the honor. "It took me 25 years to make people peo-ple really look like people," Buswell said. "Now I haven't had much time at all to learn about how to make animals ani-mals and wagons. I make my sculptures sculp-tures from the inside out. That is why I have the skulls; so that I can look at the structure underneath and then build it up. There is a reason that the folds do what they do and it is caused by what is underneath." The process of sculpting a larger than life, yet accurate, wagon train is even more complex than it sounds. Each of the components of the scene are originally sculpted at 14 of the actual size. That piece is then sent away to be scanned in three-dimensions and then mechanically formed ,,.;, J li')l'"l"1 ; ', ' - ' I"; J ' & " -mal- .. ' " " ,. .'tjfe'". ' ' "" f V ,- 1 ? - """' "" L - I m )v i J , ; f V .i;.J J!K v f . r ' J , , ' r t i r -'""" .t- f "'. " .mt ' " " "" "" ; , A w 1 - t i - . f '0 c; CRAIG DILGERDaily Herald Blair Buswell puts the finishing touches on a sculpture of an ox in his studio in Pleasant Grove. The sculpture will eventually be enlarged to five times its current size for display in Omaha. Nebraska. out of foam at 54 actual size, thus creating a larger than life foam replica rep-lica of Buswell's sculpture. That foam is then sent back to Buswell's studio, reinforced and coated with a layer of clay. Then the finishing touches in texture and detail are done in cluy. The final clay sculpture will then be bronzed and shipped to the site in Nebraska. It is impossible to pinpoint how long it takes Buswell to finish a piece since he tends to move between several sev-eral works-in-progress in order to keep a fresh outlook on each sculpture. sculp-ture. However, Buswell estimates that each sculpture probably takes a month or more of cumulative time to complete. Despite his dedication to each work of art and 27 years as a professional sculptor, Buswel can't single out a particular piece as his favorite or even his most challenging. Each sculpture presents a different set of challenges. "There are a lot of favorite pieces because of what they did for me, what they taught me and what I learned from doing them," Buswell said. "The sculpture I did of Danny Ainge was important to me for getting get-ting an athlete in action. I loved working with Charlton Heston. The Indian I have called "How Many More?" I love it because of the expression ex-pression that I was able to capture in his face. I don't have one favorite. I can go through every sculpture and pick out what I learned from doing-it." i r . . , - -. j I ..: .... CRAIG DILGER, Daily Herald Blair Buswell carefully ut tends to the final details of an enlargement of a sculpture of a pioneer woman in his Pleasant Grove studio. The sculpture will join a number of other components as part of a block longwagon train in a park in Omaha. 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