A January Field Trip

Today as I compose this note, the temperature is 28 degrees below zero. { normal Saskatchewan fare for the middle of January }  It is with very fond memories that I look back on the delightful visit which we made to the Epp / Gauthier sculpture collection on the eighth of the month.  That Sunday, prior to the first snow fall of 2012, it was about 2 or 3 above as we strolled around the grounds of Bill Epp’s old haunts and visited his major bronze works and the installations which spanned over  thirty years of Bill’s hosting symposia and visiting artists.  We of the 330 Design Group had accepted the hospitality of Jean { Bill’s daughter } and her husband Roger Gauthier to visit the extensive indoor Art collection of the Epp / Gauthier family which consists of over forty bronze sculptures by Bill and his students as well as the larger outdoor pieces which are located on four to five acres surrounding the house and foundry.  The collection in total consists of about thirty large works by Bill, primarily in bronze, and another thirty to forty by visiting artists.  The late Doug Hunter’s estate is storing about twenty of Doug’s welded steel and granite pieces there as well.  Doug was a student of Bill’s and a former member of the Prairie Sculptor’s Association.   The large works which we visited were primarily bronzes by Bill although there were many welded steel, stone and concrete pieces, with the occasional work rendered in wood.

J.S. Korpan