Small town surprise
fter days traveling the back roads of Oregon, where the word “town” defines just about any setting with a general store, gas station and antique shop, the little town of Joseph in northeastern Oregon comes as unexpected as a ball gown at a hoedown.
Street lamps are antique style, sidewalks resemble old-fashioned cobblestone and Main Street holds a colorful stretch of galleries, shops and cafes. That’s the first clue that this isn’t your typical one-horse town.
But what really catches this first-timer’s eye about Joseph is the bronze.
Bronze sculptures are everywhere. On one street corner, an eagle swoops low. On another, Chief Joseph stands robed in buffalo, his rifle cradled and ready. On the far edge of town, a lissome lady takes a garden stroll, one hand grasping purple tulips, the other holding a hat. There are signs for the Valley Bronze Foundry, the Bronze Antler Bed and Breakfast and the Art Walk, a display of — you guessed it — bronze sculpture.
Who knew?
Or perhaps more aptly, who would have guessed?
Twenty years ago, Joseph was another rural community struggling just to stay on the map. Storefronts were boarded, homes were for sale and many people wondered if Joseph, once a thriving agricultural and logging community, would survive.
But in the midst of those dark days, Glen Anderson, a Joseph resident and collector of bronze sculpture, decided to follow a hunch.
Valley Bronze Foundry vice president Lyle Isaak recalls, “He toured a foundry that was being run in the Portland area and felt the building was not very complex, and that it really boiled down to good artisans and a knowledge of the casting process.”
In 1982, Anderson converted an old truck repair shop into the Valley Bronze Foundry and in 1986, he lured Isaak away from the Portland foundry to come aboard as general manager. Says Isaak, “I had been in Oregon 18 years, and I didn’t even know where Joseph was.”
He arrived to find a town down on its luck and stayed long enough to watch it blossom — thanks in part to a $2 million downtown revitalization project in 1999 — into a bustling little community with some 28 art galleries, eight restaurants, numerous gift shops, a hardware store, a museum (the subject is bronze) and a few more foundries as well.
Anderson, though, sold his foundry and moved on.
Of course I know none of this as I make my way that July day on Highway 82 to the Wallowa Lake Lodge. On this day, the only thing on my mind is getting to my room and finding a comfortable chair with a nice view of the scenic wild beauty this part of the state is famous for.
But suddenly, there I am, just a few miles from the lodge and there’s Joseph. Among the first signs that this little burg has more than the usual quota of character is the sign on Main Street just as I approach the heart of town.
It reads: “This town is heaven to us, don’t drive like hell through it.”
I immediately take my heavy foot from the accelerator, glance quickly in the rear-view mirror for flashing red lights and slow down. And then I decide to ditch all previous plans that call for an early morning back on the road, and instead spend some time seeing just what this town is all about.
Main Street is just shrugging itself awake when I return the next morning in search of breakfast. I don’t have to look far. Flying cups and saucers in blue, red, green and yellow float across the white wood front of The Old Town Café. Hand-lettered signs, white on green, promise “breakfast all day” and “bottomless soup.” Next door, stacked stone columns frame the entrance to the Old Town Garden, the café’s outdoor dining nook. Carved out between two buildings, it comes complete with stone floors, rock sculptures, flowers and a few canine customers.
I take a seat on a rustic log barstool at a rough-hewn table and consider the menu, which includes huevos rancheros and the “hole-in-one” — a breakfast sandwich of toast, eggs, oven-baked bacon, cheddar cheese and mild green chili. With the exception of the veggie scramble ($7.50), most entrees range in price from $4.95 to $6.95.
“We know who the sausage is for,” waitress, owner, cook and sometime dishwasher Gail Walter sings as she carries a steaming plate from the kitchen. On cue, two dogs, previously soaking up the morning sun, shake themselves awake and trot to the table where their owner divvies up the breakfast meat.
A yellow lab mix watches from across the garden, and apparently deciding this looks like a fine way to earn a morning treat, plants himself beneath my table to await his. I don’t tell him I’m a vegetarian, but I do share my toast.
My stomach full, I head out to explore Main Street. My first stop is the Valley Bronze Gallery, where I find bronze sculptures with price tags that range up to $200,000, the cost of Idaho artist George Carlson’s bronze draft horse. There’s the “Run of the Salmon People,” by Alaska artists Jacques and Mary Regat, an evocative and complex piece of salmon, water and, at its heart, native people and their boat, for $12,975 and “Curioso,” a charming bronze of a boney young horse encountering a turtle. By artist Nario Lopez, it’s a relative steal at $3,200.
Foundry manager Malcolm Phinney tells me that 98 percent of the artists hail from the Northwest, though others come from as far as Tel Aviv. The majority of the bronzes sold here are cast at the Valley Bronze Foundry, though a few are not. There is also ceramic art, paintings in various mediums and photographs for sale. A sign in the window advertises foundry tours weekdays at 3 p.m. for $5. But it’s only 9 a.m.
Any other time, I might have been able to finagle an impromptu early tour, but these days, Phinney says, the foundry staff is feverishly at work casting pieces for the World War II memorial unveiled in Washington, D.C. this past Memorial Day. Tours go only as scheduled.
Instead, I venture to the other end of town — three blocks, give or take a few — to the Manuel Museum, home to sculpture David Manuel, whose work has earned him the title of official sculptor for the U.S. Marshals Bicentennial and for the 1993 Oregon Trail Sesquicentennial. The museum complex also includes Manuel’s private foundry, a gallery and restaurant. While David is the talent behind the bronze sculptures that fill the museum and gallery, his wife, Lee, is the woman who sees to it that the rest of the world shares in the beauty of his work.
I meet Lee at the museum front desk and am quickly ushered along on a foundry tour, where I learn the 11-step process that takes original artwork from clay to patinaed bronze. I am also treated to a sneak peek of “Amazing Grace,” David Manuel’s 15-foot monument of a horse and rider.
The Manuels also own the Bronze Bear Bed & Breakfast, where guests pay $150 a night and receive a limited-edition bronze bear valued at $250. Rent the $300 suite and they’ll throw in two bears. The 2002 sculpture featured a bear breaking into a picnic hamper; 2003’s was a bear fishing.
Although it’s still much too early for the Valley Bronze Foundry tour, given its history in town it seems I should at least see the place. I cross Main Street and walk until I spot the bronze horse in mid-gallop. I have no luck coaxing foundry workers into leading me on a tour, but I do meet Walter Matia, the Maryland artist charged with sculpting the two life-size Spanish bulls being cast at the foundry for the new Houston, Texas, football stadium.
How exactly does an artist from Maryland sculpting a major piece for a stadium in Texas find himself at nearly the end of the road in rural Oregon?
“They found me,” Matia says. “At a show in Oklahoma City, a Valley Bronze Foundry representative said, ” ‘I’d like to give you some bids.’ I said, ‘In a pig’s eye I’m going to drive to Oregon.’ ”
Nonetheless, Matia asked for references and discovered that the foundry had a stellar reputation. And so began a relationship between artist and foundry that sees Matia visiting several times a year.
“Joseph is unexpected,” he says. “I really like the people up there. They made a commitment to keep their town a town and that is an amazingly important thing in the West. I think Joseph is probably the longest cul de sac in America, ending at the lake. If it wasn’t, it would be the next Jackson Hole. Thank god it isn’t.”