Utah sculptor who created Kokomo statue visits his artwork

KOKOMO, Ind. (AP) - DJ Bawden has created well over 100 statues of historic figures since he became a full-time sculptor in 1980, including monuments of George Washington, Martin Luther King, Joseph Smith, famous Indian chiefs and Roman soldiers.

But two years ago, he was commissioned to create a figure honoring a man and an industry he had never sculpted before. It was Elwood Haynes, who manufactured one of the nation's earliest automobiles in Kokomo.

The $40,000 bronze sculpture was commissioned by the board of the Howard County Automotive Heritage Hall of Fame, and was unveiled a year ago at the Seiberling Mansion.

The statue depicts an elderly Elwood Haynes sitting casually on a bench, staring gently into the distance.

Bawden spent months crafting the piece in his studio in Provo, Utah, before shipping it to Kokomo to take its place as a permanent monument to one of the city's greatest innovators.

And recently, the Utah native made a trip to Kokomo to see his handiwork for the first time.

"I knew what the spot looked like from photos people had sent me, but I'd never been there to see it myself," Bawden said during a recent interview inside the Kokomo Automotive Museum. "It's beautiful. We loved it."

Bawden said he decided to make the stop with his wife, Deana, while on a trip to deliver a statue of Jesus to a church camp near Lake Webster before heading out to Pennsylvania to drop off another statue he had made of John F. Kennedy.

But there's a good chance Bawden will make the trip to Kokomo again next year. By then, he'll have created another sculpture honoring Kokomo's automotive heritage.

The Howard County Automotive Heritage Hall of Fame in May commissioned him to make a statue of Edgar and Elmer Apperson. The $60,000 piece will be placed just outside Kokomo Municipal Stadium, which sits across from the factory where the brothers built some of the nation's first mass-produced automobiles.

Bawden picked up the artist renderings last week while he was in town before heading back to Utah to start on the project.

Bawden has now been creating historic statues for decades inside his studio, where he's made hundreds of monuments that sit in cities and towns all across the country honoring their local heritage. Those pieces have made him one of the most prolific sculptors of historical figures in the nation.

Bawden said he's been able to do that by developing a unique process that allows him to create bronze sculptures quickly and efficiently without sacrificing the quality of artwork.

"We all do things our own way, just like if you're restoring an old car," he said. "I've learned my own techniques that have allowed me to do my own statues much less expensively."

Troy Caldwell, one of the co-owners of Caldwell Monument who helped spearhead both the Haynes and Apperson brother statue projects, said that was the main reason they decided to pick Bawden to do the sculptures.

He said when they first decided to commission the statue of Haynes, board members wanted it to be carved from stone.

"I said, 'Guys, I don't think you want to do it in stone, because you're not going to capture the image right. It's not going to have character,'" Caldwell said.

Plus, the only way they could afford to commission a stone monument would be to ship the project overseas.

Caldwell said when they started considering a bronze statue, they assumed it would still be way over budget. But then they came across Bawden, who was charging half the price of other artists they talked to.

"He was much less expensive and he had tons of experience doing historical figures," Caldwell said. "Those two things sold us on him. The thing is, if we hadn't come within budget on the Haynes statue, we wouldn't be doing the Apperson one now."

Bawden said he developed his unique sculpting process after spending a lifetime honing his craft.

He said he came from a family of artists. Two uncles were painters and sculptors. Bawden's dad was a woodcarver, and had him crafting small statues of Indians and cowboys from wood when he was just a kid.

Bawden was just a teenager when he started learning the art of bronze casting from other Utah sculptors and making his own pieces.

"That's something most people didn't get to do until they graduated from college, but I was doing it as a teen," he said.

In the 1970s, Bawden had already established himself as an accomplished sculptor, and was selling his work to art galleries throughout the Rocky Mountain region. At the same time, he was also working at Kennecott copper mine - one of the largest open-pit copper mines in the world - where he would sometimes use their forge to cast his statues.

By 1980, he had gained a large enough reputation as an expert bronze sculptor to do his craft full time. He also became known for creating statues of historic figures that captured their presence and spirit.

But he quickly realized crafting historic pieces comes with its own set of challenges, Bawden said.

"When you're doing historical figures, you want to make them as accurate as possible," he said. "You don't want to put some kind of style on them that doesn't fit their era or something they would never wear."

That became a problem on a statue he was commissioned to build for the town of Hermann, Missouri. The piece depicted Arminius, a German chieftain and Roman solider who was part of a famous battle in 9 A.D.

Bawden said the town wanted the piece to be historically accurate, but they couldn't nail down what kind of armor or weapons Arminius would have used in the first century. It took them four years of research before they were satisfied with the rendering they gave to Bawden.

"It can really get involved, I'll tell you what," he said. "You just let the historians work it out and they let you know when the dust settles."

Gary Loveless, secretary for the county automotive hall of fame, said they came across the same issue when they started working on a rendering of the Haynes statue.

"The first time the rendering came back, somebody said, 'That's not the kind of hat he was wearing,'" Loveless said. "We had to go out and get copies of the photos and talk about which kind of hat we wanted him to wear. It's a real process. It's not just an artist's rendering. There's a lot of research involved."

But, Bawden said, it's worth the wait to make sure he gets a rendering that is as historically accurate as possible. After all, the statues he builds last forever, and are created to honor people who have done great things - just like Elwood Haynes and Edgar and Elmer Apperson.

"These statues help inspire future inventors like Haynes and Apperson, who were really the first pioneers in building cars," he said. "It's pretty fun to honor people like that and create something lasting so people can appreciate them for years."

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Source: Kokomo Tribune, http://bit.ly/2tMv8tA

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Information from: Kokomo Tribune, http://www.ktonline.com