Sculptor creates a 'grizzly' sight

Dayton Lamphear and his grizzly.

Patron after patron peeked into the Soda Creek Gallery last week to catch a glimpse of Dayton Lamphear's nine-foot tall sculpture of an Alaska brown bear.

Word of the massive creation seemed to get around quickly, as people rushed to see the giant work of art before it departed for Alaska.

As it turned out, however, snowy weather gave local art connoisseurs a viewing reprieve. The sculpture will remain at the local gallery at least through the first week in January.

The public is invited to visit and view the piece.

The bear was commissioned by a private collector in Alaska and took Lamphear more than three months to complete.

Lamphear is originally from a little town near Stowe ski area in Vermont up by the Canadian border. He has been an artist for 23 years and, in 1978, moved to Sisters, where he established NorthWind Studios.

Although 90 percent of the sculpture was shaped using a chainsaw, Lamphear said, "I don't like to be compared to chainsaw carvers; I'm a sculptor. I want realism and detail that can't be achieved solely with a chainsaw."

Curiously, much of the finish work was accomplished with a pneumatic power tool that Boeing developed to be used in aircraft technology.

"Probably a lot of the tools I use would never be found in any other artist's studio," said Lamphear.

"Technology gives us tools that no artist had before our generation," he said. "I think old world artists would have chosen these tools if they had been available."

Lamphear believes that art and technology are developing side by side, as one continually helps define the other.

The bear is fashioned from a beautiful piece of dark, burnished redwood.

The tree itself is something of an anomaly.

Lamphear said that the redwood tree was planted many years ago by a settler in the Willamette Valley, an area to which redwoods are not native.

Although the displaced redwood thrived, unlike its lofty forebears it never grew much more than about 30 feet tall.

What it did do, however, was grow outward -- with gusto -- in some years producing growth rings more than an inch and a half in width. The result was a massive six-foot-thick trunk with deep character to the wood.

Lamphear fingered the contours of his creation as if it were a living thing.

"I feel that the spirit of the once-living tree is reborn within the sculpture," he said. "A man once told me, 'An artist is one whose ears are open to the music of the universe.'"

Elaine Larson, who works at the Soda Creek Gallery, said, "He has brought in so much business -- just the bear alone -- people come in and say, 'Ohhhhh, my, it really is nine feet tall.'"

The artist chuckled.

"I wanted the piece to be powerful enough to intimidate, to give a sense of what it would be like to be its prey."

Until the $30,000 sculpture makes its journey to Alaska, locals will still have the opportunity to stand in the shadow of the great bear. Soda Creek also has a number of Lamphear's other sculptures on display, all of which are in a more affordable price range.

The artist's pieces tend to portray the images of nature, and much of his work is done in bronze.

His bronze work is sculpted in clay, and the finished works are poured into molds at a foundry in Enterprise, a town that boasts a sizable art community.

Mike Abbott, who manages Suttle Lake Resort, said that Lamphear has been commissioned to produce some of the sculpted art that will be a part of the recently approved proposed lodge.

Construction at the resort site is expected to start early next year.

One of the planned pieces is a large fireplace mantle.

"My thought on that," said Lamphear, "is to do the leading edge of an eagle emerging from the wood of the mantle. I'll use wood that is native to the area, of course."

Lamphear is clearly looking forward to the Suttle Lake project.

"I love Suttle Lake; it's where I get a lot of my inspiration. It's such a phenomenal place. There's still a sense of isolation out there.

"It has Oregon written all over it."