The essence of the animal

“She was known simply as Vivi,” writes Robin Beaver in a tribute to Wyoming wildlife artist, Vivi Crandall.
“A skillful horse woman and hunter who turned to wildlife art and found enormous success. She was gracious in her cowgirl hats, western skirts and boots. Vivi Crandall's home was secluded on Casper Mountain, but her paintings were hot throughout the West, selling for up to $100,000. When she died of cancer April 30, (2000,) at age 56, Vivi left a void in the lives of the people who knew her personally as well as those who captured her personality solely through her art.”
The Casper Star Tribune agreed. “A famous international wildlife artist, Crandall’s paintings literally sprang to life. Some people even thought her paintings were photographs. You can feel the fur, see the motion and see the breath of an animal on a cold day through her paintings, all Vivi trademarks.”
I wrote this story after the owner of the paper I was working for at the time, Mike Lindsey, came running in one afternoon saying, “You have to meet this woman.”
I am certainly glad I did.
A few months after the story appeared, I ran into Vivi in the bar of the Wolf Hotel in Saratoga. Gracious as always, she was very complimentary of the piece and offered to buy me a beer. I declined, as I already was just finishing a Pabst Blue Ribbon and headed out the door. A few days later a full case of PBRs arrived at Saratoga Sun for me, compliments of Vivi Crandall.
The sunlight streams through the corner windows of the hotel room and dances in the artist’s blond hair and off her bare left shoulder. The bits of straw matted in the buffalo’s shaggy mane also reflect the light and one has to look twice to decide what is real and what is canvas.
But Vivi Crandall knows. Art is art, and the trick to capture the essence of the animal.
“I won’t do anything I don’t want to do,” Crandall said as she put the finishing touches on her hauntingly realistic image of a buffalo in her hotel room at the Saratoga Inn last Tuesday.
“I want to bring out the essence of the animal instead of just the appearance. It gives you much more of a feel for it.”
Detail is the key.
“She picks up where other artists quit,” said Val Scheller of the Cedar Chest Galleries. “Detail has become her trademark.”
Crandall started the buffalo painting only a week and half prior to Tuesday’s interview. She expected to finish it in three or four hours, “and then I’m going to party,” she said. The painting was to have been hung in Cody at Buffalo Bill Art Show by Thursday.
Crandall says she paints a minimum of 12 hours a day. Sometimes she can still be found at the easel at 2 a.m.
“I just get too involved to break concentration,” she confessed.
She decided to set up her studio away from studio at the Saratoga Inn because “My husband went sheep hunting and I didn’t feel like being all by myself.” She and her husband own a guide and outfitting business and live on a ranch north of Rawlins.
“It has really been fun being down here, having other people around to wait on me while I’m painting.”
She says the many visitors who watch here working in her hotel studio do not bother her in the least. “I get so intense, I don’t know anyone is there.”
Crandall begins each of her paintings with ideas and then research, she said. She works with wildlife photographer Jim Hamilton and studies his photos along with other resources such as hides and draws very heavily from her outfitting and ranching experiences.
“My next one is going to be a beaver.”
She only works with acrylics even though she admits, “I always wanted to be sculptress.”
“If you do too many things, you create confusion for your audience. You bastardize your work.”
Crandall has really only been painting for three years but has enjoyed national and even international success. “I am very grateful that I was able to develop a style of my own. Some say it is too photographic but people like it. That’s the audience I’m painting for.”
Although she has only been painting for three years, she has been involved in art for some time including a stretch as Art Director for the Washington Post.
“I went to good art schools so I had a feel for it, but the painting was really self-taught. I started when my kids went to college. We had the guide business and it just was the natural progression to begin to paint animals.”
She and her husband moved to their ranch in Wyoming about 12 years ago. “It is one move I have never regretted.”
Crandall has already completed 36 paintings this year and she says she usually only takes one day to rest and clear her mind between paintings.
She doesn’t keep any of her paintings either. “We don’t own any art.” But she says she usually gets to know the people who buy her paintings somewhere down the line. She also publishes her own prints.
When asked what she thought the buffalo painting she was working on would bring, “I would think about $9,000,” she said.
But then it is a Vivi Crandall original. One of a kind.
Artistic success has found her and as she puts it, “it pays the bills.”
“I have been incredibly lucky but I work very hard,” she says and she returns to her work. The little daub on the tip of her brush becomes a glint in the Buffalo’s eye. The huge bison stares back at her approvingly.
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Missy Willard is special

I originally wrote this feature in early March of 1987 while working at a paper in Saratoga, Wyoming. My story is interspersed with a short piece by Erma Bombeck that the mother in this story, Carol Willard, gave me to help explain what she was going through. Bombeck died in April, 1996.

By Rob Carrigan, rob carrigan1@gmail.com

Did you ever wonder how mothers of handicapped children are chosen? Somehow I visualize God hovering over the earth selecting his instruments for propagation with great care and deliberation. As He observes, He instructs His angels to make note on a giant ledger.
“Armstrong, Beth son Patron saint Mathew. Forrest, Marjorie, daughter, patron saint Cecelia. Rutledge, Carrie, twins … give her Gerald. He’s used to profanity.”
___ Erma Bombeck

Missy Willard is special. Everyone who is in contact with her knows that. Her parents, her teachers at the Playing and Learning Center here in town, the children at the center, everyone knows how special.
Missy has a disorder known as Cerebral Palsy. “Cerebral Palsy is a general term used to describe a wide variety of conditions which result from damage to the infant brain before, during, or in the year or two following birth,” says Parents Magazine’s Mother’s Encyclopedia and Everyday Guide to Family Health.
Missy struggles with movements that you and I take for granted. It is hard work for her to muster enough strength to knock a stack of play blocks down.
Born two months premature, she spent the first three years of her life on oxygen. After her birthday in May, it was July before her parents, Mike and Carol, could even hold their child in their arms. She has additional problems with her sight and has spent more time of her four and half years in this world in the hospital than out. But everyday she makes progress.

Finally he passes a name to an angel and smiles. “Give her a handicapped child.” The angel is curious. “Why this one God? She’s so happy.”
“Exactly.” God smiles. “Could I give a handicapped child a mother who does not know laughter? That would be cruel.”

Having a handicapped child is difficult but rewarding, say the Willards.
“It has torn us apart and brought us together,” comments Mike. “It’s a big responsibility.”
“We have learned to rely on the family more. The family becomes much more important,” he said.
And they have felt their marriage stressed. “Our relationship has been through a lot but right now, I don’t think there is anything in the world that could pull us apart.”
The Willards have another daughter, Joy, who is 10-months-old and they say the little one has help a lot with Missy’s development.
“They play together all the time and they really miss each other when they are apart,” said Carol.
Carol has to spend much of her time at home with Missy and at first, she says she felt isolated. “Sometimes I felt like I just had to get out and see someone.” Mike said she was even a little jealous of him for being able to work.

“But has she the patience? Asks the angel.
“I don’t want her to have too much patience or she will drown in a sea of self-pity and despair. Once the shock and resentment wears of, she’ll handle it. I watched her today. She has that feeling of self and independence that is so rare and so necessary in a mother. You see, that I am going to give her has his own world. She has to make it live in her world and that is not easy.”
Patty Butler, who works with Missy at the Playing and Learning Center, notes her unique way of grabbing your heart.
“She is so special, the kids and the staff just have to fall in love with her. She is doing more for this school. The kids compete to be with her. They say, ‘Please, can I help you with Missy,” Butler says.
Missy began working at the Playing and Learning Center last July when her parents moved here, says P.A.L. director Dawna Erickson. She has been involved in the Home-bound program since she was about 18-months-old.
The staff at P.A.L. works with her for two-and-a-half-hour intervals Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays and Bulter visits her for and hour at home on Tuesday and Thursday.
Bultler says“it is a give-and-receive” situation. “It is rewarding for me when she does respond.”
The school uses a number of tools in Missy’s training; A swing, to stimulate her sense of moving, a huge beach ball for the same stimulation, and various toys to develop her other senses, such as sound and smell. Missy is even working with computers at the school.
Mike and Carol notice any and all improvements in their child’s life. “Any little progress is wonderful,” said Mike and they live for the day-to-day progress. “She can go anywhere,” he said.

God smiles, “This one is perfect. She has just enough selfishness.”
The angel gasps, “Selfishness? Is that a virtue?”
God nods. “If she can’t separate herself from the child occasionally, she will never survive. Yes, here is the woman whom I will bless with a child less than perfect. She doesn’t realize it yet, but she is to be envied. She will never take for granted a ‘spoken word.’ She will never consider a ‘step’ ordinary. When her child says ‘Momma.’ for the first time, she will be present at a miracle and know it! When she describes a tree or a sunset to her blind child, she will see it as few people ever see my creations.”

The Willards say they really like living in a small town but it has its drawbacks for Missy’s care. The respirators used to sustain her life after she was born damaged her lungs and she is still very vulnerable to colds and other sickness. She often has to be hospitalized for the slightest ailment. And with the closest hospital 40 miles away, that can create a problem.
One thing they find particularly welcoming about Saratoga is acceptance.
“Staring is a problem,” said Carol. “People stare at her and ask questions. Here they only ask once and that is it. They accept it.”

I will permit her to see clearly the things I see … ignorance, cruelty, prejudice … and allow her to rise above them. She will never be alone. I will be by her side every minute of every day of her life because she is doing my work as surely as she is here by my side.”

Missy also has a lot of contact with the Willards pets, Zues the cat and Spike the dog. “In a way,” Mike said. “The animals are a part of her therapy. They play and the animals are very protective of her.”
What hurts her parents the most is their child’s suffering. “The biggest thing was that she was so sick for so long that she no longer reacted to pain. She no longer cried. They would stick needles in her and she didn’t even flinch. She became so used to it.”
With the help of her parents, her little sister, the animals and training at school, Missy continues to progress.
Mike, holding his little girl in his lap on the sofa at home, reflects. “We have come a long way, haven’t we Missy?” She flashes her heart-tugging smile and responds.

“And what about her patron saint? Askes the angel, his pen poised in mid-air.
God smiles. “A mirror will suffice.”
___Erma Bombeck

Philosophy, leadership and group dynamics

Everyone wants answers to make solid decisions. The art is to recognize the right ones when you spot them.

By Rob Carrigan, robcarrigan1@gmail.com

Newspaper publishing is really the combined, life-long study of small-town philosophy, leadership and group dynamics as it relates to ethics and resource allocation. As such, I often ask others how to practice the art.
And I get answers — but I’m never really sure that they are the right ones.
“I wonder if we are all strung together by a universal ethic or model,” says my former football coach, Carl Rice, who lived and coached in Akron, Colo, and Wyoming.
“I think one can recognize right and wrong, especially in each other. I have been blessed to do what I do. I realize I have touched a lot of people. Think how many you touch with your decisions. I realize that much of the time we concentrate on the monster, which is the far removed machine. The truth is — the struggle rages in the individual. Ethics doesn’t just happen, it is a practice.”
But in a small town, is there an abundance or shortage of practitioners, and is change the agent? I’ll relay an answer from someone I have never met before, but feel connection to. Coy Hobbs edited the Saratoga Sun, in Saratoga, Wyo. When I contacted him a few years ago, he was editor of the same small-town newspaper I managed more than 20 years prior.
“There are frequent business startups (and closings) in town as the test for any local business remains ‘Can they make it through the winter?’” according to Hobbs.
“Saratoga's population is down to less than 1,700. The LP (Louisiana Pacific) sawmill closed a year ago, the coalmines at Hanna have closed, and the school district is leading the state in enrollment declines. We don't have problems here, just challenges and opportunities to see if we are as good as we think we are.
“Despite the changes, Saratoga is still one of the truly neat places in the world. Some say it will be the next Jackson Hole, to which most reply ‘Over my dead body.’ We're trying to reach a compromise between the two positions. I am still amazed by the wealth of talent and experience the residents of this quaint, little mountain village possess. It makes you want to believe that just about anything is possible here – and I'm just the cynical newspaper editor, not the chamber of commerce exec.”
Good publishers and editors have a knack of finding and printing what people want to read.
Jerry Elijah Brown, in the forward of the biography, “High Adventure” about noted Alabama Newspaper publisher Porter Harvey (written by his son, Sam) pays tribute to that effort.
“He published what readers need and want,” Brown said of Porter Harvey. “Not only what the cops, courts, and councils of governments were doing, but also how much rain was falling in different hamlets, where a column of ants in a bank parking lot was going, how the coin laundry was finally getting a restroom and which hymn and stanza a man was singing when he dropped dead at a church service. Porter knew how to excite by understatement — a rare talent that involves skill at both writing and display.”
But as we noted before, everyone wants answers to make solid decisions. The art is to recognize the right ones when you spot them.

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