'Lost' statue to get new life

PROVO — The 2-foot-tall sculpture is of an Indian peering around a cliff, on the lookout for his people.

It's called "The Sentinel" and was sculpted in 1912 by a 15-year-old boy who became one of Utah's most venerable artists, Avard T. Fairbanks.

For decades, Fairbanks' descendants believed "The Sentinel" had been destroyed, but on Thursday morning, Timpanogos Elementary's principal Diane Bridge presented it to the late sculptor's grandson, Daniel Fairbanks.

"How many of you have seen this in the library?" Bridge asked students at an assembly as she held the 25-pound sculpture before them.

Most students raised their hands. "A sentinel is someone who makes sure no one hurts the others," Daniel Fairbanks explained, "so this Indian was the guard."

Daniel Fairbanks, the dean of undergraduate education at Brigham Young University who also restores sculptures, plans to work on "The Sentinel," which his grandfather made from plaster.

Avard Fairbanks gave it a patina of bronze, which means he spread coats of bronze and brown paint over the plaster and rubbed it in, which created an effect in which the bronze comes out on the sculpture's relief.

Being made of plaster, the sculpture is brittle. Pieces have broken off over the years, and Daniel Fairbanks said he will fill them in to restore "The Sentinel" to its original form. He will then have a mold made so it can be re-created in bronze.

If Bridge permits, Daniel Fairbanks would like to give the school the sturdy bronze version of the sculpture and donate the fragile plaster version to a museum.

Avard Fairbanks is known for a sculpture of Abraham Lincoln that the state of Illinois chose to display on its state-themed quarter. Nine of his sculptures are on display in Washington, D.C.; four are in the U.S. Capitol Building.

In addition, The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints commissioned him to sculpt monuments of pioneers on Temple Square.

After studying in France, Avard Fairbanks' style changed so much that people who study him often do not recognize his earlier work, his grandson said.

His signature even changed from when he first started sculpting, yet David Fairbanks admires his talent as he looks at the muscular body of the American Indian who is the subject of "The Sentinel."

"The human anatomy he had here is perfect," he said.

Although the family may have thought the sculpture was destroyed, Swanson, Springville Museum of Art director, had spotted it at Timpanogos Elementary years ago and catalogued it.

"The Sentinel," Swanson said, shows how the young Avard Fairbanks' talent was years ahead of his peers.

When Avard Fairbanks was a teenager, Swanson said, he had sold plaster sculptures to schools to finance his art studies at France's Ecole Nationale des Beaux Arts.

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E-mail: lhancock@desnews.com