Local sculptor creates piece for Fort Pierre

With a small, hand-built studio located between Pringle and Wind Cave National Park, Matthew Lanz continues his self-taught craft of sculpting and painting as commissions come in. Most recently, this involved creating a sculpture of Pierre Chouteau, Jr., which will be displayed in Fort Pierre.
Lanz is a self-taught artist with no formal education or training in the industry. 
“I knew back even when I was 5 what I wanted to do. I was always drawing,” said Lanz. “I grew up always knowing that’s what I was going to do…I carve, paint, sculpt and do all kinds of things.” 
In high school, Lanz was not allowed to have paper and a pencil during class unless there were notes to take because he was always drawing. Even then, he had to turn in his notes to prove to the teachers that he hadn’t been drawing.
“I had a mentor a little bit up in Spearfish. He was a retired college teacher for art, and he said, ‘Oh wow, you’ve got this. You need to get into sculpting,’” said Lanz. “I didn’t know if I could do it. I was intimidated, and I was in my 20s.” 
Although everyone told him not to do it because it was too involved, too technical and too advanced, Lanz created his first sculpture when he was 26. 
“I had to tone it down a little bit because I couldn’t afford to make the mold. I didn’t even know how to make a mold,” said Lanz. 
Lanz has created several pieces since, including the life-size bronze sculpture titled the Water Carrying Woman at Moccasin Springs Natural Mineral Spa in Hot Springs and Siouxper Boy at Rapid City Regional Airport. 
The idea for the Chouteau sculpture originally started 12 years ago when Future Fort Pierre commissioned Lanz to create the piece. 
“They wanted Pierre Chouteau, but they didn’t know how. They didn’t know what he would be doing. A lot of sculptures, they’ll just do somebody standing there, so I said, ‘This is how I would do it.’” 
After presenting his idea and being commissioned for the project, Lanz traveled through a blizzard with his youngest son to deliver the maquette for committee approval. 
“They loved it, instant hit. Then, I get back home, and I think, ‘Oh, I’m going to hear from them in the next week or two.’ Nothing,” said Lanz. 
It turned out they did not have the funding available for the sculpture. Lanz “kept knocking on the door” for three years before forgetting all about the project. Ten years later Lanz got an email from Future Fort Pierre saying they had partial funding for the project.  
“It was a place for me to start,” said Lanz. “I gave them a huge price reduction just to get the work.” 
Typically, the price of a sculpture is determined by gauging the price of the foundry work and marking it up times three, and the foundry’s price is nonnegotiable. 
“I just crave the work,” said Lanz. “I said, ‘I’ll tell you what,’ and I took it for $32,000 less commission just to get the work.”
As a whole, the project cost over $120,000 to create a seven-foot, five-inch bronze sculpture. 
Chouteau was a fur trader who helped give rise to Fort Pierre’s status as the Fur Trading Capital of the Northwest.
“The whole sculpture revolves around the beaver hat on the sculpture. That was the fashion back in Europe and the east coast of the United States. Before this was all the Louisiana Territory still,” said Lanz. 
The sculpture is designed such that Choteau appears to be on a plank wood floor with a stack of furs and a beaver hat beside him as he writes notes recording trade item transactions in a ledger. 
Whenever designing a sculpture, Lanz does extensive research on the object of the piece and incorporates those historical elements into his sculptures, hand-making all the little accoutrements.
This included a meerschaum pipe, a bullet mold, a ladle for melting the led, a bar of led, a keg of black powder, a hand forged double spring beaver trap, a flintlock, a file, two trade knives, a hand-forged camp ax, a dozen iron trade points, a pack of vermillion with a dragon on it, padre beads, a pipe bag, a five- point trade blanket, three twists of tobacco and an iron striker. 
“There’s a lot of history in all of that. If anybody was a history buff looking at that piece, they could cut it up, break it up and say, ‘That guy’s got it down,’ because I had to do a lot of research and was very meticulous to the detail,” said Lanz. 
For the first time, Lanz used a 3D scan of the maquette and a Computer Numerical Control machine to create a “super dense, tight” foam structure for the sculpture, roughly 80 percent to detail. He had it freighted to his studio in pieces.
“They build this steel armature underneath,” said Lanz. “They cut these pieces up, and it’s like another puzzle.” 
Lanz put the armature together and then honed the sculpture, carving the foam and creating the rest of the sculpture and details with clay.
“It was pretty cool to use that because it saves a lot of time,” said Lanz. 
Lanz started sculpting the statue of Pierre Chouteau Jr. in the beginning of November and finished in the middle of June. 
The remainder of the process will be completed in the next four-to-six months depending on the piece itself and how many other pieces are ahead of it in line at the mold maker and foundry. 
“It’s a super long process. It goes through so many people. It’s kind of flattering actually because my hands employ basically at least 40 people because of the different people in the industry and all the things it goes through,” said Lanz. 
Typically, when creating a sculpture, Lanz said the process starts in his mind and goes to his hands as he creates a three-dimensional sketch. While he might do a little sketch on paper, most of the work happens with his hands. 
Often the concept will be developed while talking to the committee behind the project as it dictates the specifics of the design.
“Then, the piece itself starts dictating,” said Lanz. “The size and the concept that you have dictates how you’re going to do it and how long it takes.”
The sculpting process begins with a maquette, a small model of the sculpture used as a rough draft. When the design is finalized, the maquette goes to a mold maker before being cast in bronze. 
From there, the final sculpture is created based on the maquette. When completed, it is cut into pieces and transported to the mold maker in an insulated temperature controlled truck so the clay and sculpting wax don’t melt. 
That’s when, Lanz said, “I had to learn how to cut myself off. It’s like you deliver a baby, and it’s gone. And you just have to trust the process.”
Once the mold is complete, it goes to the foundry wax department where wax is poured into the mold, which is called wax chasing. Then, they have to clean up the wax to make the pieces flawless, “because however the wax is, that’s exactly how the bronze is going to be,” said Lanz.
From there, it goes to the shell room where the piece is slowly prepared for the bronze, building up a powder coat or ceramic shell. This alone is about a two week process, according to Lanz. 
Next is the metal pouring room where the shell is cured, and the wax is melted out to create a hollow negative. 
“At the same time, they’ve got a crucible heating up the bronze at 2,400 degrees, and they have many of them going,” said Lanz. “They’ve got to be very careful with those hot shells and make sure all the wax is out. Because if there’s hot bronze and molten wax, it’ll explode.” 
After the bronze is poured, they can knock the shell off in just a few minutes. From there, the project is taken to the metal finishing room where the sculpture is perfectly assembled to the sculptor’s unique style. 
“They’re hollow to a certain point until you start getting to the extremities,” said Lanz. “And when they get bigger, they have to build a stainless steel armature, and then they’re built around that.”
The welders flawlessly blend the pieces together, a finish is added and finally the sculpture is shipped to its final destination. 
“While that’s going on, the artist is coordinating the site to make sure everything is right,” said Lanz. “I am the liaison now with the foundry and the mold makers to the (Future Fort Pierre) committee because those other industry departments don’t go through a third party…I go through, and I keep things organized, keep things flowing.”
The foundry will give Lanz a tracing of the base, and he will forward it to the committee to figure out what direction the sculpture will face. There is also additional coordination between city offices. 
The final step is to place the sculpture with a crane and install it on the base. 
“I feel like this style is being lost because I feel like myself, I am obsolete and a non-essential in this world, because it’s not a necessity,” said Lanz. “But without art, everything’s boring and mundane…It brightens things up.”
Lanz would love to see a series of sculptures of South Dakota natives of distinction or historical significance come to Custer. 
“It just takes people in the community that know people that know people that put money together and say, ‘Hey, we want the namesake, Custer, in bronze,’” said Lanz. “The site for it presents itself later.”
Lanz would also love to create a life-size rendition of his first sculpture to display somewhere in Custer. 
“People would come and stay longer just to see that,” said Lanz. 
Lanz is part of a 501(c)3 organization to help raise money for sculpture projects and even suggested setting up a temporary studio in Custer so tourists could watch him sculpt and donate to the project from their phones. 
Lanz can be contacted at whitestarstudiosd@gmail.com or 605-517-1811. 
“If they can think of it, I can do it,” said Lanz.