M E R I D I A N     M A G A Z I N E

Brigham Young in the Family Room
By Steven Lloyd Neal, M.D.

Recently, the giant statue of Brigham Young and a family representing the Mormon Battalion volunteers finally left my studio for the bronze foundry in Enterprise, Oregon. After being such a large part of our family room/art studio and home for the past one-and-a-half years, we feel a little empty here at the Neal household. My wife, Susan, however, won’t miss the migrating globs of brown oil-based clay that seem to infest even the farthest corners of the house, including the white carpet in the bathroom upstairs.

Commissioned by the Mormon Battalion Association more than three years ago, the statue is one of two heroic-sized statues that will flank the Mormon Battalion Visitor’s Center now in phase one of construction at This Is the Place Heritage Park in Salt Lake City, Utah. The twice-life size statues include the largest statue of Brigham Young ever realized and have been funded by art patron and entrepreneur Larry H. Miller.

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Architect’s rendition of planned Mormon Battalion Visitor’s Center, now under construction at This Is the Place Heritage Park in Salt Lake City, Utah. This bronze sculpture is one of two that will flank the entrance into the visitor’s center.

The two statues tell the story at both ends of the trail that the Mormon Battalion marched: Council Bluffs, Iowa, and San Diego, California. These statues were begun over three years ago after travel, research, and consultation with the Mormon Battalion Association and the Brethren.

The working maquette models of heroic statues, “Duty Calls” and “Duty Triumphs,” viewed here in the artist’s studio in 2004.

The table-top maquette statues were developed in detail first, to work out the compositional bugs and anatomy, taking more than 1500 hours of labor.

Finished rendition of small “Duty Calls,” just before casting in bronze. Most of the men called by Brigham Young to march in the Mormon Battalion left families in very uncertain and difficult circumstances.

When I studied marble carving in Pietrasanta, Italy, my teachers said, “La profila e’ prima;” or, the work begins with the profile. Composing a likeness of Brigham Young posthumously, and doing it giant-sized, is no easy task.

In the first place, there is no profile of him in the Mormon Battlion era. He was 45 years old in 1846, and had no beard. He also had a full complement of teeth. The only true profile taken of Brigham Young was in 1874, three years before his death.

The last known photograph taken of Brigham Young and the only suitable portrait in existence. President Young was 73, photographed three years before his death.

One can see that there is a loss of nasal support due to loss of the maxilla due to loss of teeth, which allows the nose to droop and upper lip come in, pressing the two jaws closer to each other, a very common effect of facial aging. Using plastic surgery principles, I raised the tip of the nose, gave it support, and increased the projection of the maxilla to produce more height in the lower third of the face, or de-aged the profile, to obtain a likeness that is more likely to have been his appearance in 1846, when he mustered the troops of the Mormon Battalion.

Using plastic surgery principles, the artist had to “de-age” Brigham Young’s face to what it might have look like in June of 1846, when he was 45 and had no beard.

Other photos from an earlier era were used for other details.

The enlargement of the rest of the statue, “Duty Calls” began in Styrofoam, the choice for modern sculptors due to its strength and light weight. We had some assistance from computer imaging, which saved me a year of work, but still required another year-and-a-half of work to correct the distortions, and resculpt the piece into a believable presentation.

This process took another 700 hours or so. The head, for instance, has to be enlarged 3 to 5% more or will appear too small because it is high up in the air from the viewer, a lesson learned from the ancient Greek sculptor Phidias and his famous statue of Athena.

Putting the finished head on rest of the twelve-foot tall Brigham Young.

As one can see in photo #7, Brigham is joined by a family representing those thousands of Saints, strung out over Nebraska and Iowa, living in lean-to’s, wagon boxes or nothing at all, having just been expelled from Nauvoo early in 1846. There would have been no Mormon Battalion had not President Young supported it. He found God’s hand in it, and indeed, it saved the Church from political enemies and provided money for thousands of destitute Saints to obtain supplies to go West. The soldiers who marched in the Battalion were mostly fathers and husbands who left their families in uncertainty and perhaps in harm’s way. Here the anguish of mother and daughter is evident, the commitment of the father to serve, and the knowing eye of President Brigham Young that this Battalion must be raised.

Summer of 2007: The family of four and Brigham are almost finished in the clay stage, ready for the foundry.

He is about to make eye contact with the mother in commiserating gestures. Symbolically and esthetically, the light hand of duty on the father’s shoulder interrupts the physical form of the spiral/ helix of the family, and also the harmony of the family. This is a reminder to all us latter-day saints that duty is often a sacrifice, and is still a legacy of believers.

Pictures 8 through 14 are of recent events in my studio. Steve Parks, the owner of Parks Bronze, is helping me cut the precious Styrofoam and 600 lbs. of clay into pieces that can be transported to the foundry two hours away.

We think the large version of “Duty Calls” will need to be cut into approximately 150 pieces, each one a precise fit. These pieces will be individually molded, then by the lost-wax method, cast into corresponding bronze parts, and welded together into a 4,000-pound statue. This will take another six months. It will then wait for its companion piece “Duty Triumphs” to be completed before both of them will be placed by crane on a flatbed truck and shipped to Salt Lake in time for their unveiling scheduled in June, 2009.

During the next 13 months, Michael Hall, my assistant, and I will finish the second statue, “Duty Triumphs”, composed of one 10-foot woman and five twelve-foot tall men, who have finished their march to San Diego. We will keep you Meridian readers posted!

Beginning to carefully cut up the statue into smaller pieces for molding and casting into bronze.

The statue will be cast in an estimated 146 pieces, and then welded together.

Just his legs are left.

Legs to be transported.

The rest of the statue is touched up before disassembling it.

The next phase begins.

After one and a half years, the studio is cleared. The next phase at the foundry will take an estimated 6 months. The scheduled unveiling for both statues will be June, 2009.

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