Mike Leschin was welcoming two busloads of University of Utah students to the Cleveland Lloyd Dinosaur Quarry recently when he admitted – tongue-in-cheek – that he had always envied the USU Eastern Prehistoric Museum for its art gallery.
Those days are over now, he said. Leschin, who manages the world-famous Bureau of Land Management quarry, now has two artists in residence. They’ll produce the art for the quarry’s gallery-to-be.
Helper artists Anne Kaferle and Charles Callis will be working on site to capture the what they see and share their vision with visitors.
“We won’t be living here, but we have the key,” Callis explained. “Basically, we’ll be marinating ourselves in the scenery.”
Kaferle said the long term exposure to the quarry is the way to get the “feel of the shape of things” as the light on the colored rocks changes by the day and hours.
The visit from the U of U students was an occasion for a ribbon cutting and unveiling of some of the works the artists have already produced. A few minutes after that short indoor ceremony, the artists took their easels and palettes and set up shop for some plein-air painting outdoors.
Their landscape is the Morrison Formation, whose subtly colored strata are prime hunting grounds for paleontologists. CLDQ is unique as the world’s leading repository for Jurassic dinosaurs, especially carnivores. How so many meat eaters wound up in this final resting place is still a mystery.
Kaferle and Callis are also opening a studio in Helper.
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