PORT ANGELES FINE ART CENTER

A PEEK INTO THE PAST

One wall of the “Good Girls” exhibit. Marilyn Lysohir used a prototype mold for each head and then added the individual features, said PAFAC director Jake Senuik.

PAFAC presents a yearbook that’s come to life
by AVANI NADKARNI
Sequim Gazette, Staff writer

It’s the ultimate tribute to the end of childhood: carefully crafted sculptures of each of the 163 girls — now women — of Sharon High School’s class of 1968, all handmade by a former classmate.

Moscow, Idaho, artist Marilyn Lysohir, who graduated from the Pennsylvania high school, came up with the time-consuming idea after running into an old Sharon High School classmate at a gas station on a trip to her hometown.

After returning to her Idaho home, where she has been living with her husband, former Washington State University art professor Ross Coates, Lysohir dug out her senior year yearbook, The Mirror, and put a familiar face to the near-stranger she’d run into.

Four years after first coming up with the idea, Lysohir finished the 13 dozen faces. She used a prototype clay mold for each head, carved their individual features and finished by carving each name into the figure.

“She said the noses were a little tricky for her because it’s hard to see the pictures,” Seniuk said of the black-and-white, often-blurry yearbook-style photos that Lysohir used.

Lysohir debuted her works, named “Good Girls,” last year at the Washington State University Art Museum, and, according to Port Angeles Fine Arts Center director Jake Seniuk, it was around that time that she began to have a burning curiosity about what the women she had so carefully sculpted were now.

One by one, Seniuk said, Lysohir, who now owns the Moscow candy shop Cow Girl Chocolates, began tracking down and contacting her old classmates. Many had stayed in Sharon and others had moved to other parts of the country. One, Linda Di Fiore, was a successful opera singer and a professor of music at the University of North Texas. Another had been an editor at Time Life. Four of the classmates flew to Pullman to be present at the exhibit’s opening. Seven of the women, Lysohir learned, had passed away, and she honors them by placing roses behind their sculptures.

Through March 9, 130 of the sculptures are displayed, in alphabetical order, just like in the yearbook, at the Port Angeles Fine Arts Center, while another 12 are up in Port Angeles’ city hall — the remaining 20 figures are at another exhibit.

“It reminds me of the Vietnam (Veteran’s Memorial) Wall,” Seniuk said. “The scale and the big vastness.”

Seniuk, who also graduated in 1968, said part of the importance to him is the fact that it was a big year historically.

“1968 was an explosive year, it was a pivotal year in U.S. history,” Seniuk said. “These women probably ended up being the girlfriends, the wives and sisters of young men who did go (to the Vietnam War). The exhibit sort of represents the end of childhood. I don’t know if Marilyn intended that or not.”

Multimedia group Buffalo Girls Productions is making a DVD, “Good Girl,” on Lysohir’s journey of making the sculptures.

“When I look at (“Good Girls”) I realize that it’s the first time that I really documented people so that they exist in real time,” Lysohir said on the video. “That, to me, was important to do.”

Seniuk added that Lysohir’s Cow Girl Chocolates are for sale at the center, with all proceeds going to the center itself.

A reception honoring Lysohir, who was planning to travel to Port Angeles for the opening of the exhibit but was snowed in, is planned for March 9, the last day of the exhibit.

The Good Girls of Sharon High

* What: “Good Girls,” a tribute by Marilyn Lysohir to the women in her high school class of 1968
* When: Now through March 9
* Where: Port Angeles Fine Arts Center, 1203 E. Lauridsen Blvd., Port Angeles
* Contact: 457-3532
* Additional Info: A reception honoring Lysohir is planned for March 9 at the center

Link to the Port Angeles Fine Arts Center.

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