Christopher:

Thanks for the stroll through my home town. My dad often sent me on
sketching assignments to the Capitol Building, the governor's mansion and
nearly every other building you mentioned in your descriptive tour. Just a
couple years after the notorious Greenie Cap incident, I was watching the
Sheldon go up. (My older sister was studying art at the UofN and I would
come down to the studios at the campus to help her with her projects.) At
the construction site I recall the contrast between the rough wooden crates
and the smooth travertine marble inside them, with its ever so subtle curves
that eventually formed the splayed pilasters on the exterior. I must have
made a sketch of it, to be able to recall that detail. Then several years
later I was in art school there myself. I recall they had a problem with the
flat stones on the exterior coming loose. One afternoon I was sketching
nearby and eavesdropped on an animated discussion among three "suits" and a
lady. I knew one of the suits was the director of the museum, and as I think
about it now, the other two must have been the architect and the contractor,
or their reps. They walked over to the building, pushed on one if the
stones--it rocked back and forth a little. The discussion was getting quite
loud, finally the lady said only about three words, those guys just looked
at each other, then at her, and everyone walked away in a different
direction. I think maybe the lady was Olga Sheldon, herself. Anyway, the
Sheldon stood large in my education. It was there that I got to meet and
learn from the likes of Louise Nevilleson, Tony Smith, Nakian, etc., and
have my own art works exhibited in the same halls as theirs--quite an
inspiration for a Nebraska hayseed, which, I suppose, is exactly what the
Sheldons had in mind when they had the place built.

John (...the artist as a young man) Leeke

--
To terminate puerile preservation prattling among pals and the
uncoffee-ed, or to change your settings, go to:
<http://maelstrom.stjohns.edu/archives/bullamanka-pinheads.html>