Sunday, December 16, 2007

Noted Wyoming sculptor dies in L.A.

On Saturday, the Casper Star-Tribune announced the death of Robert Russin, the renowned Wyoming sculptor and creator of the large bust of Abraham Lincoln located at the summit of I-80 between Laramie and Cheyenne. He died Thursday in Los Angeles.

Russin, 93, was an art professor at the University of Wyoming for almost four decades, beginning in 1947, and produced numerous pieces which are on display throughout Wyoming and the world.

Russin's Lincoln bust has been called "the largest such depiction of the nation's 16th president ever done." It was placed on the highest point of old U.S. Highway 30 in 1959 and was moved to its present location when I-80 was built. Russin also sculpted three pieces on display in Casper: the "Prometheus" at the county library, "Energy Man" at the Chamber of Commerce and "Fountainhead" at City Hall.

Another "Energy Man" piece is on display at the Department of Energy in Washington, D.C. A work called "Wyoming Crystal" is housed in the State Capitol in Cheyenne. Just recently, two bas reliefs he carved for the entrance of the old law school building on the UW campus were removed before the building's demolition. They will be placed inside an addition planned for the current law school on the east end of campus. He also did the "Wyoming Family" piece which graces the center of Prexy's Pasture and the Benjamin Franklin statute nearby.

Susan Moldenhauer, director of the UW Art Museum, said Russin was known "as a prolific artist and a dedicated professor." She said he did much figurative work, mostly in bronze, while his works in marble and other stone materials "were more abstract." Moldenhauer said she was at an international art fair in Miami just last Sunday when she mentioned to an elderly woman sitting next to her that she was from Wyoming. The woman asked whether Susan knew of a man named Robert Russin, a teacher of hers at Cooper Union in the '40s. "She was remembering him very fondly and said how sad the students were when he left for Wyoming," Moldenhauer said.

During his long career at UW, Russin was granted a Ford Foundation Fellowship to work in Italy, and he returned there frequently to work on projects. When one of his children was born at the old Ivinson Hospital in Laramie, Russin was inspired to make a sculpture called "Fulfillment," depicting mother and child. He held onto that work until 2006, when he donated it to the present Ivinson Memorial Hospital on 30th Street.

Russin's works are also in the collection of the U.S. Navy at Abbott Laboratories, the Hyde Park Museum and his alma mater in New York.

Jack Rosenthal of Casper told the Casper Star-Tribune that Russin "had great depth to him, beyond his art. I'd sit and talk to him while he was chipping away on a piece. He had strong feelings about the world and about people, a great sense of values. He knew what was truly important."

Rosenthal said Russin's last request to him was that his ashes be buried up on Sherman Hill near his favorite work, the Lincoln bust.

For full obituary, go to http://www.trib.com/news/wyoming/.