Madison Shumway
Staff Writer
Various art installations sprinkle the grounds of ISU, but the origins of many are a mystery to the students who walk past them every day. A little digging revealed the artists behind several sculptures and the forces that inspired them.
The bronze Bengal just outside the SUB, perhaps ISU’s most recognizable piece of art, first bared its claws in 2012. ASISU commissioned the statue and, after an artist submission process, chose Pocatello artist Malynda Cooper’s design.
“The focus was on school spirit and rising up,” Cooper said, and so the tiger was designed with one paw extended.
Cooper, the owner of Art Supply of Pocatello, sculpted the Bengal with a metal frame and foam, using clay for its skin and details. After being cast in bronze, the statue was unveiled at the quad.
At 1.5 times life size, Cooper said the tiger was her largest sculpture ever, as well as her first animal. The artist usually sculpts human figures.
“[Artwork on campus] creates a different environment instead of the stark secular nest that the university can be. It promotes creativity in more of a welcoming atmosphere for students and faculty,” Cooper said.
Just east of the Eli M. Oboler library sits a burst of intersecting tubes. Art professor Miles Friend installed the yellow pipes in 1978, according to an ASISU Advocate article published September of that year.
Friend told the Advocate reporter he wasn’t trying to make a social commentary with the sculpture, but that he was intrigued by the concept of infinity and the similarities between micro and macrocosm.
“It is natural… to attempt to relate the strange to our own experience,” said Friend of his process in 1978.
The then-assistant professor was known as a “faculty rebel,” according to Diane Olsen’s “Idaho State University: A Centennial Chronicle.” He also drew cartoons for The Bengal.
Another university art instructor created the sculpture on the opposite side of the library. The rust-brown bird, which extends its wings next to the library’s doors, was the work of Don Brown.
Brown cited natural forms as inspiration, according to the Advocate. The artist collected bones bleached and worn by the elements, and their influence is evident in the organic lines of the sculpture.
Brown’s bird, as well as Friend’s yellow tubular piece, were funded by an artistic embellishment clause in the library plan.
The campus should feature works of art “for the same reason that there are old books in the library,” Brown told the Advocate.
Aided by a National Endowment of the Arts grant, Brown installed another piece in 1981, along with art students Cindy Laughlin and Eric Krempa. Brown’s and Laughlin’s works can no longer be found on campus, but Krempa’s piece still stands in front of the engineering building.
The 15 foot free-form sculpture, which features two triangular arches welded from tubular steel, was inspired by the engineering and science fields of the time.
Krempa’s goal was a modern structure that inspired thought, according to his interview from the Advocate in September 1981.
“I wanted to make it big, open and airy so people could look at it from different angles, like life,” he said.
The arches were Krempa’s first project on a large scale. The former art student now works as an architectural planner in North Carolina.
