People who know Cheyenne art dealer Harvey Deselms likely know his sidekick — a 16-year-old white Jack Russell terrier with a hankering for special treats named Dot.
Deselms, a driving force behind Cheyenne’s Capitol Avenue Bronze Project and owner of Deselms Fine Art and Custom Framing, wanted to do something special to keep his aging companion alive in his heart as she heads into the last chapter of her dog’s life.
He doesn’t go many places without her.
“She turned 16 last August, so she’s a high-mileage model,” he said. “And I thought we better get a bronze of her before we don’t have a live model. She’s healthy, but she’s getting up there in years.”
So, working with award-winning bronze sculpture artist Christine Knapp of Lyons, Colorado, Deselms has received his first of three 18-inch-tall life-size sculptures of his “buddy.”
The pair recently took a trip to the Loveland, Colorado, foundry that casts the bronze so the patina artist for the sculpture trio could match the living Dot.
The colorful circle around the Jack Russell terrier’s right eye that makes her so distinct and resulted in her name was made to look like a younger version of herself with less gray and more brown.
Deselms has received the first sculpture and brought it back to Cheyenne.
One is destined for his gallery, another for his home, and the third for a friend who considers himself “Dot’s second dad.”
Raised on a ranch with working dogs, Deselms said he never had a dog as a pet before Dot. He remembers seeing an ad in a local shopping guide for Jack Russell terriers in Carpenter, Wyoming. He drove out and saw her.
“I made the decision that I was going to drive back out there with the money in the morning,” he said.
Why a Jack Russell?
“They’re kind of spastic and unruly, which I can identify with, and I thought it would just be kind of fun,” he said. “They're very smart and bounds of energy.”
Deselms agrees that putting one’s pet in bronze is not cheap, but doing a bronze of Dot seemed appropriate.
While he didn't say what Dot's sculpture cost, casting a life-sized bronze of a pet can vary widely in price depending on the pet's size, the artist and weight of the piece.
An online search shows artists and foundries can charge anywhere from $500 to more than $5,000 for a small-breed dog. Other options like taxidermy and freeze-drying are less expensive, ranging from a few hundred dollars to $2,000 or more.
Bronze, however, is what Deselms is known for and he's worked with artists putting sculptures in public — 82 of them as part of the Capitol Avenue project.
Taxidermy No Option
He said he never considered a taxidermy option, like famed TV cowboy Roy Rogers did with his horse, Trigger.
“That’s just creepy,” he said. “The taxidermy animal is going to degrade; bronze is something that is going to be around forever.”
Knapp, who is working on her 13th bronze for Cheyenne’s Capitol Avenue project for this spring or early summer, said she has had other pet owners want to immortalize their pets as well.
“I can’t tell you how many I’ve done,” she said. “I’ve done three labradoodles for a couple in the (Colorado) Springs, I’ve done a Yorkie, Harvey’s, and a pug. Most of what I do is custom work like that.”
Knapp said her process is to try and photograph the animal herself if the animal is alive, which was easy in Dot’s case since she has worked on the Capitol Avenue project with Deselms and knows Dot well. Otherwise, she has to rely on client photos.
She said certain views of the dog help her capture the right pose. Another aspect entails talking with the customer about the animal’s personality and then a sketch to see if it fits what her client wants.
“You just don’t want a boring animal standing there,” she said. “You kind of want them to give you an idea of who they are.”
Once the right sketch is approved, she sculpts the creature in clay and then allows the client another chance for changes before the actual process of making the bronze occurs.
‘Spunky’ Pose
In the case of Dot, knowing her already gave Knapp an idea of her personality and pose.
“I wanted to kind of display her spunky, feisty personality,” she said. “So, she’s sitting there in a way that only she sits … but I put in a tilt in her head to kind of indicate she is listening to you, she’s checking you out.”
As part of his bronze project with his pet, Deselms plans to also have little 6-inch Dot bronzes for sale in his gallery as kind of a marketing tool. He said when he first picked up Dot from the home in Carpenter, he brought her to the gallery. Her entire life has been as a “gallery dog.”
“She’s so much more than a pet — a sidekick, a confidant,” he said. “She’s been a good exercise buddy … She’s just old enough that she’s not going to be doing any more exercises with me like that.”
Deselms said Dot has her own following among the customers and clients who have visited his gallery over the years.
Many of them stop by just to drop off a treat for Dot. She loves the healthy Greenies dental treats that look like a toothbrush as well as a popular comfort food that several customers save and deliver just for her.
“She’s a French fry connoisseur,” Deselms said. “People will come downtown and say, ‘I was at lunch, didn’t eat all my fries. Here’s a couple for Dot, gotta go.’”
With the bronze version of Dot now part of her life, the real Dot doesn’t pay the art much attention, Deselms said. She can’t smell it or eat it.
When the real Dot passes from his life, Deselms said he would not try to replace her, at least not for a while. But he knows her memory will never be far away either in the studio or at his home.
“I’m blessed to have a buddy like that,” he said. “I’m going to have a little reminder of her to stub my toe on for the rest of my life.”
Dale Killingbeck can be reached at dale@cowboystatedaily.com.
