The following is excerpted from an interview by Barn research team member Jeannine Huenemann with local artist Jerry Fuhriman. He is a Cache Valley native, whose dad Wendell Fuhriman took care of the cattle and was a cattle judge on campus. In the 1960s, Jerry was a student at Utah State University and later became a faculty member of Landscape Architecture. He remembers art classes in the Barn:
"I took a class in the Barn....it was either ceramics or sculpture, I could have had two classes but I remember that they were both from [Larry] Elsner. So my memory of the Art Barn is less the structure, and more the personality of the instructor.
"I probably didn't appreciate how great of an artist he was at the time. I remember he was very, very quiet and you would show him your project, and unlike most people he wouldn't just start chattering about it right away. He would say nothing but he would pick it up and he would hold it, and he would caress it with his hands because part of the sculpture was just the tactile, you know the surface and how it felt, and the weight of it, and proportions and so. And then generally he would say something none committal like 'you know you might work on the form a little bit,' which left you wondering what you should do about the form.
"It wasn't until years later, in fact, it's interesting that he was my professor when I was a freshman and he was also on my tenure committee (when I was a professor). So I went a long time knowing him and then eventually collecting his work, and realizing what a terrific artist he was."
No comments:
Post a Comment