What a relief

A one-ton bronze sculpture cast in Kalispell arrives at the Montana House chamber in Helena

The Daily Inter Lake

Meriwether Lewis sits on a rock, writing in a journal.

William Clark stands behind Lewis, checking their position with a sextant.

Nearby is Sacajawea, surrounded by men of the Corps of Discovery, straining as they manhandle pirogues and dugout canoes into the Missouri River.

The scene is somewhere in Montana.

Actually, it's nowhere in Montana. But it also is everywhere in Montana.

The scene is a big, possibly one-ton bronze bas-relief sculpture of Lewis and Clark in Montana.

It left Kalispell Art Casting on Wednesday, arriving Thursday in the Montana Senate chamber in Helena. Work is scheduled to begin Monday to install the 16 1/2-foot-long, 8-foot-tall sculpture in the chamber. That task should be completed by the end of November, said Kirby Lambert, curator of art for the Montana Historical Society.

More work - including setting up the proper lighting - will occur in December, and the sculpture will be formally unveiled in early January.

"It'll be fun to see it once it's in place," said Jon Olson, co-owner of Kalispell Art Casting along with Jack Muir.

Their business made the rubbery molds and poured the liquid bronze to create the sculpture created by Eugene Daub of San Pedro, Calif.

The Montana Senate requested the sculpture so it could have a piece of art on the scale of the Charles M. Russell mural - "Lewis And Clark Meet The Flathead Indians at Ross' Hole" - that hangs in the Montana House's chamber.

The Montana Historical Society and the Montana Lewis and Clark Bicentennial Commission came up with the idea of commissioning a big bas-relief sculpture of Lewis and Clark in Montana. They also raised the $370,000 to tackle the project, which is not being done with any state money.

Bas-relief is an art form consisting of carving or etching a semi-three-dimensional partial statue so it sticks out from a vertical flat piece of stone or metal. The term comes from the Italian phrase basso rilievo, meaning "raised contrast."The organizations hired Daub, 63 - who has been doing bas-relief sculptures for about 30 years - to tackle the project.

"Relief is almost a lost art. It's somewhere between sculpture and drawing. It's not two-dimensional. It's not three-dimensional. It's more like 2 1/2-dimensional," Daub said during an interview in May.

Daub studied numerous photos of Montana mountains and hills. He combined several topographical features from different parts of the state into one picture to capture Montana's diversity. He checked with historians to make sure the people, clothes, equipment and boats in the sculpture are accurate. The picture has roughly 20 members of the Corps of Discovery in it - along with Lewis' dog Seaman, mountains, a river and a framelike border showing Montana's plants and animals.

A key to bas-relief sculpture is to ensure that the strongest light source strikes the picture at the correct angle to add dimension and texture to the work. That's why December will be devoted to setting up the best lighting arrangement in the Montana Senate chamber.

Daub carved the bas-relief sculpture in wax, breaking it up into 59 four-sided, unevenly curvy pieces for individual molds. Kalispell Art Casting created 59 bronze pieces, which then had to be welded together.

Ryan Hansen did the welding, spending 150-200 hours on the project.

The individual pieces were curvy to prevent obvious straight lines from showing up in the sculpture. Then the welded pieces had to be buffed to add texture and to further hide the welding seams.

Ryan expects to visit Helena after the sculpture is mounted to check out his work, of which he is proud.

He said: "You're building history."