In the mid-1930s, a young farm boy in the northeast Pennsylvania spent a lot of time near a spring. That boy discovered an excellent molding clay in the banks of the stream.
"It was so exciting to have a ball of clay in my hands," said Glendora resident Richard Myer, now 65.
Myer hasn't lost the passion of working with his hands. Of course, now he's using palette knives, Exacto blades, dental devices and proportional tools for his sculptures, some of which have taken months to complete.
This is not a man who punches a clock. Sometimes he wont break for lunch. His studio in the back of his home is filled with more tha 300 pieces of work. From bodybuilders to busts. From cowboys to cowgirls.
For the 17th year, Myer will enter five pieces of work for San Dimas' Festival of Western Arts American Indian and Cowboy Association program this week. He's been a part of the AICA show in San Dimas since the event started.
"The main thing in art is the desire," he said. "If you really want to be an artist but you don't think you can be, well that closes your mind. If you have half an able brain, you can come up with anything." Myer's brain cells work overtime. And other folks have noticed his hard work. His bronze sculpture "Visions of Eagles" won San Dimas' AICA "Best of Show" in 1991. Not too shabby for a man who started his college days at Brigham Young University in 1948 as an accounting major.
"I figured you got to make a living somehow," he said. "But I took one art class and I said 'this is for me.'"
When he graduated in 1952, he attended the Art Students League in New York. Myer eventually found himself in the commercial artist world as a package designer. He did that 14 years. In 1970, he worked at a foundry in El Monte.
Former Festival of Western Arts President John Walgren is a huge fan of Myer's work, particularly "Vision of Eagles," which is on display at San Dimas City Hall.
"He has a lot of great pieces, but "Vision of Eagles" is a great, great piece," Walgren said. "That sculpture says it all about him. It shows him being an inspired man"
"Richard is one of the nicest guys you'll meet," he said. He's really soft-spoken until you get him talking about art. He is very well-respected in his field."
Like many of his pieces, "Vision of Eagles" tells a story. Storytelling, Myer said, is essential to his art.
This concept is quite evident in his bronze work called "Who Wins?" The one foot sculpture has a bear standing in a stream. The bear has just pulled a fish from a stream, but simultaneously a mountain lion looks on from atop a cliff.
"Who Wins?" is one of five items Myer is hauling to this year's exhibit. The project seems to have that certain feeling the artist tries to achieve.
Knowing anatomy and proportion well is helpful, he said, but the key to a successful sculpture is its emotion.
by John Welsh