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University Daily Kansan, October 30, 1981
Page 3
Judge finds time for sculpting between dockets, deliberations
By LILLIAN DAVIS
Staff Reporter
Some think the judge doesn't take his work seriously enough—his artwork, that is.
Imagine a scultor who created a bronze sculpture entitled "Dog Shit," depicting a traditional frontiersman of the Old West surveying the territory, while his dog hunches up and squats behind him.
Not exactly a traditional form of bronze sculpture but then the sculptor who sits behind the bench in the Douglas County Law Enforcement Center, hearing everything from drunk driver cases to preliminary hearings on murder, is not exactly traditional either.
Douglas County District Judge Mike Elwell is a self-taught sculptor and judging from the number of pieces he has built. He has won he is a pretty good one too.
Of course, not all his pieces are as humorous or nontraditional as the frontiersman and his dog.
"My whole point with 'Dog Sht' is to take a medium that is rather serious in its expression and then do something untraditional with it," Elwell said.
Setting the piece aside, he quickly turned back to his more serious pieces and began to explain the importance of a model before attempting to sculpt it.
In his living room sat a testimony to this philosophy, a mounted deer's head and a small waxy replica with which he had pierced the muscle and bone on the deer's head.
"I go up to the Museum of Natural History at KU a lot to look at their mountings, but you kind of lose the detail from 40 feet away," Elwell said.
"It's like building a jigsaw, you have to know where each muscle and bone is."
He pointed to the deer's ears.
"For instance, did you ever realize that their ears were in front of their antlers?" he asked. "It's little things like that that make the difference."
Most of Elwell's pieces depict animals from the American Midwest and Southwest.
In an effort to find a model of a Texas longhorn steer, Elwell said, he called around until he found someone who had recently bought a mounted head.
However, after finding that source, he was told the head had again been sold to someone in Wichita and that it had burned in a fire.
He laughed and said he finally, unexpectedly found one in a veterinary supplies office near the Kansas City stockyards.
"You should have seen me sitting in the door to copy that thing down. Ewell said."
"The other day I even tried copying a live model," Elwell said. "But it drove me nuts trying to hold something in my hand. I was scared this animal and try to get it to hold still."
"What do you say, 'hold still,'?" he said. laughing.
Although he basically taught himself to sculpt, Elwell reminisced about an old sculptor friend who taught in his own home.
"Gosh darn, he was good," Ewell said. "He had a way about him to make everyone feel good and bring out the best in them."
Elwell said the sculptor had a great influence on him. After the man died of lung cancer a year and a half ago, he decided he just could not work on his own art.
"Basically, I just didn't work for years after he died." Elwell said.
Living in a spacious home in the countryside outside Lawrence, Elwell built a couple of buildings to house vats and equipment he needed to set up a foundry.
Then seven months ago, he picked up his tools again.
"Then I bought all my tools and even made a few." Elwell said.
He smiled and said professors at KU may not have agreed with his techniques or his ideas that gentle encouragement is a better teaching method than constant criticism, but he had seen both methods work.
He chucked and held a tool with a flattened dbl blade. Until Elwell got hold of it, he had been a dentists tool, but he didn't know what it was. He had shared it into an artist's工具.
Because he put his art aside for awhile, Elwell said, he had not entered any shows recently. But two years ago he was presented with the Center Art Show in Kansas City, Mo.
Ewell is proud of the fact that he not only creates his sculptures, but goes through the long t tedious process of casting bronze mold's.
Glimpses of him sitting in his judge's chambers hastily adding a few strokes to some small wax figure, is only a small crack into the process of bronze sculpting.
He said he thought of himself as a
devise. He knew he did not
develop his own style.
Hours of work follow this stage.
The problem with sculpture is finding
the right materials.
He said this was true of most artists.
"The problem is that most people have the basic needs of eating, paying the rent, the car insurance. They just want to be full time artists," Elwell said.
Elwell smiled as he remembered a saying, "If God blesses an artist, he gives them time.
Judge Elwell
That is so true."
KU alumns plan party
The last of the pre-game parties for this year's football season will be sponsored by the University of Kansas Alumni Association Saturday in Lincoln, Neb. Clair Kizer, field director, said yesterday.
Association office in the Kansas Union. Tickets may be purchased at the Hilton only if there is room for more participants.
A cash bar will开会 at 10 a.m. in the Lincoln Hilton at Ninth and P streets for a social hour preceding a sandwich buffet at 11 a.m., he said.
Association Director Dick Winnote表明 said he and Chancellor Gene A. Budig would speak informally at the luncheon.
"If there was ever an occasion to make reservations, this is it, because we are limited to a capacity of 150 to 160 people." Keizer said.
Tickets for the luncheon are $6.75 and may be purchased at the Alumni
"An audience like that is a tough one," Wintermorte said. "They're a football crowd and they're anxious to get to the stadium."
He said he hoped KU students as well as KU alumni from Kansas and Nebraska would attend the luncheon.
The Hilton is within walking distance of the stadium. Transportation to and from Lincoln is up to the individual, Keizer said.
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Psalm 2:1 and Acts 4:25
'WHY DO THE HEATHEN RAGE?'
The heathen embrace the entire human race in their fallen estate, which estate is the result of Adam's disobedience to The Commandment of God, and whose inheritance must be taken from God. And also they resist and seek to get rid of God's Anointed, The Lord Jesus Christ, who came from heaven to deliver man from his "estate of sin and misery." He was the true Son of God.
The God-man substituted Himself for fallen man and kept God's Commandments perfectly in his stead. Then, he again substituted for fallen man and took upon Himself the wrath and curse of God's judgment upon rebellion and disobedience, and was put to death on The Cross. After three years, His body was taken from the earth and appeared to His disciples and believing followers, and sent them to tell the world if they would repent of their sins — disobedience to God's Commandments — believe, accept Him as their substitute, and bring forth mercy; therefore, they would be reconciled to God, and receive the gift of Eternal Life.
*This is the Gospel, this is the Good News of the grace of God to all men. Hear the testimony of the man God raised up to “prepare the way of The Lord” found in John 3:16: “That believe that on the Son of God hath Everlasting life, but he that believe not The Son shall not see life; but the Son ablideth on him! If you leave this life being reconciled to God by Jesus Christ, then there is the “wrath of God” for you to face in the next life!*
God made a covenant with His people at Mt. Sinai when he gave them The Ten Commandments on two tables of stone, by Moses. He makes a New Covenant with all who in sincerity accept Christ as Saviour, whereby He gives Him the power to forgive those wrongdoers righteousness of the Holy One — into their hearts by the Spirit of God so they will desire to obey, delighting themselves in The Lord! "Do we then make Void the life through faith? God forbid; yes, we establish the law." —
Will not unrepented sin separate us from Christ?
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