Where did Demersville painting go?
You wouldn’t believe some of the calls we get here in the Inter Lake newsroom. People count on us for all kinds of information, from the curtain time of a local theater production to finding a copy of Uncle Ernie’s obituary from 1957.
One time I took a call from a frantic housewife who had misplaced a recipe she’d clipped from the paper for sesame chicken, and she was just hours away from her guests arriving.
“I’ve got to have that recipe! I’ve got company coming,” she exclaimed.
I tracked it down.
Invariably, readers will call or stop by to get a copy of an article they saw in the newspaper, and they’re sure it was just a month ago. When we finally find what they were after, it often was published several months ago.
“Wow, I guess time flies,” is the usual response.
As time allows, we’re more than happy to help readers. Sometimes we have to solicit a little help from the public, though. That’s case with a recent inquiry I received from Charlene Madieros of Kalispell, whose parents, Pierce “Bud” and Synneve Reeves, were local artists who at one time operated a Main Street business in Kalispell called Frontier Lamps.
The Inter Lake featured the couple’s homespun artwork, their frontier towns crafted from wood, lamps, wall hangings, clocks and paintings.
Sadly, Bud passed away a week after the article was published just before Christmas in 2007. Synneve has been in nursing home in Missoula in the final stages of Alzheimer’s disease and died May 17 at age 92.
One of the pieces they created was a painting depicting Demersville in a western town scene. The piece, 5 feet in width, hung in the Sizzler restaurant in Kalispell for years and then was featured at the new Sizzler that operated in north Kalispell before closing last year.
When Charlene saw an advertisement for an auction of the restaurant furnishings, she went to the pre-auction viewing and sure enough, there was her parents’ painting.
“My eyes filled with tears at the perfect decoration and painting with their names neatly painted right there on the front caption,” she wrote in an email.
The auction clerk told Charlene how to go about bidding on her parents’ artwork, and Charlene, in turn, gave the clerk the history of the piece.
The owner of Sizzler commissioned Bud and Synneve to make the Demersville painting for his restaurant. Charlene doesn’t know how much her parents received for their work, “but the workmanship and time put into it was worth hundreds, if not thousands,” she said.
“Knowing my parents it was probably mostly in trade; that’s how they worked back then,” she said. “I would have bid on it at any cost if my finances permitted. There were about 17 bids on it when I put my offer in with a cap at $200 (worth so much more) ... in the end it sold for $350.
Charlene’s burning question is who purchased her parents’ painting of Demersville. She hopes they know the history attached to the piece.
“I think about it hanging in another’s home or business and just hope it has found a good home. It would be great to meet the new owners,” she said.
If you know where the artwork ended up, let me know and I’ll pass along the information to Charlene.
Features editor Lynnette Hintze may be reached at 758-4421 or by email at lhintze@dailyinterlake.com.