Honoring their sacrifice: Terry Lee's suffragette
Well-known artist Terry Lee stands next to his latest work-in-progress, a suffragette, to be donated to the City of Coeur d’Alene (sponsors are needed for costs). Some suffragettes sacrificed their lives to gain women the right to vote in 1920. (Photo by NINA CULVER)
Sculptors first fashion a preliminary model, called a maquette, before completing the full-size version. (Photo by NINA CULVER)
Terry Lee created Mudgy Moose, from Susan Nipp’s children’s story “Mudgy and Millie.” Children and visitors love to climb on Mudgy statues throughout the city, so Lee has to restore them every spring. (Terryleeart.com)
“The Idaho Farmer” by Terry Lee greets visitors to McEuen Park in Coeur d’Alene.
Terry Lee is not only a sculptor, but a talented painter. (Terryleeart.com)
Hayden artist Terry Lee is working on his fourth life-sized bronze sculpture to be placed in Coeur d’Alene’s McEuen Park: A suffragette.
Suffragettes were women who fought for women’s right to vote, finally given by the 19th Amendment in 1920. Suffragettes were arrested and beaten for their efforts; some even died.
In a way, their sacrifice is honored by one of his own. While a sponsor is being sought to cover its formidable costs, Lee is donating the sculpture to the City of Coeur d’Alene.
Lee is building this newest addition to his public art installations in a shop next to his home. He’s made her frame from welded rebar and has shaped foam insulation into her form. He’s now adding clay to create her features and other fine details.
The woman, based on a live model Lee hired, will be wearing period clothing and carrying a sign that reads “Votes for Women.” Lee said he is building the suffragette to represent all women who fought to get women the right to vote.
“We’re not honoring a specific individual,” he said.
The large sculpture is based on a smaller version that Lee presented to the Coeur d’Alene Arts Commission and the Coeur d’Alene City Council for approval.
“They start out small and then they get big,” he said. “She’ll be hollow. She’ll weigh about 250, 275 pounds.”
Lee never expected to be making so many sculptures for Coeur d’Alene’s signature park. He’s known for his large wildlife paintings and also made the Mudgy and Millie statue that sits in five different locations in Coeur d’Alene.
A well-known local general contractor, Contractors Northwest, Inc., built McEuen Park. Company president Dean Haagenson approached Lee about doing a sculpture for the new park.
“He came to me and said he’d like to pay for a statue of a carpenter,” Lee said. “He said he’d pay for it and donate it to the city. I said ‘Great, let’s do it.’ We thought it was going to be the only one.”
Lee’s first statue, called “The Working Man,” was modeled on a Contractors Northwest foreman who worked on the McEuen Park project. It was dedicated in 2014 to “the farmer, the logger, miners, construction workers, and all who by their hands built America.”
Then Doyle Jacklin of Jacklin Seed Co. approached Lee about paying for a statue of an old-fashioned farmer with a scythe for the park, also to be donated to the city. That sculpture was installed in 2017.
By then Lee was thinking bigger and considering doing more statues that honor the region’s history.
“After the first one, the idea sprung,” he said. “Dean started it with the working man, but Doyle started the idea of a history walk.”
He thought his next effort should be a lumberjack.
“I went out and started looking for a donor,” he said. “I don’t want to cost the city any money.”
He found one: Marc Brinkmeyer of Idaho Forest Group. The lumberjack is currently at the foundry and should be installed next to The Working Man and The Farmer soon, Lee said. He also has plans to do a miner, but is trying to finish the suffragette first.
“It’s important to get it done,” he said. “Next year is the 100th anniversary of the (women’s) right to vote. I’m hurrying up to finish the statue.”
Each statue typically takes Lee a little over two months to complete, then spends about four months at the foundry, where it is cast in pieces before being welded together.
But Lee is working on the suffragette statue with no clear idea of when or if he’ll be paid. He hasn’t found a donor to pay project costs yet, but is forging ahead anyway. He does have a donor for the miner statue.
He’d also like to do a statue of a World War II Navy nurse in honor of the Farragut Naval Training Center in the future if he can find a donor to fund it.
“This is a history,” he said. “Those industries were huge to the life of Coeur d’Alene.”
Lee has come a long way since he began his art career in 1994 after years spent running a sporting goods store, and teaching scuba diving.
After starting his art career, he was told by George Carlson that if he learned to sculpt, he would draw better. George taught him how to build the armature and how to use the clay and tools.
Since then Lee has run a weekly sculpture class in his studio, teaching others how to sculpt. He always considered painting a hobby, then picked up sculpture work to go with his painting. Those “hobbies” have made Lee a highly respected artist in the region.
He’s known for using non-traditional colors in his paintings of animals – a streak of orange there, maybe a bit of blue or a dash of purple.
“That just came naturally to me, using that kind of pallet,” he said.
Now Lee is living his best life, selling his paintings in galleries in several states while also making his own history walk of statues in McEuen Park.
“This is the fun zone for Terry Lee,” he said. “I can play with paint, I can play with clay, I can travel the world.”
For more information about Terry Lee’s art see Terryleeart.com.