Wednesday, September 12, 2007

Past becomes present in hand-made books

Exhibition unearths mining heritage


By SABINA DANA PLASSE
Express Staff Writer

Gregg Olsen will present a reading and discussion from his book ?The Deep Dark: Disaster and Redemption in America?s Richest Silver Mine.?

The Wood River Valley's mining history is full of fortune seekers, homesteaders, and men and women carving out lives in the alluring gulches and mountains of Idaho. In the late 1800s, the valley's most profitable mines were producing lead, silver and zinc, an ore known as galena.

Rural mining life was tough and unpredictable, but in Hailey, the region's second-largest sliver producing district, the mines proved profitable. Of the 280 producing mines of the Mineral Hill Mining District, located 12 miles west of Hailey, there was an estimated total gross of $16 million from the first district claims made in 1879 through the 1930s.

One mine in the Mineral Hill Mining District, the Pass Mine, which operated from 1884 to 1899, produced about $160,000 in silver, lead and zinc. The ore was brought to smelters in Ketchum and Hailey by horse and wagon down steep trails.

Nancy and Horace K. Thurber owned the Pass Mine property, located in Narrow Gauge Gulch. Horace was a successful businessman from the East Coast who owned grocery stores in New York City as well as Western mining and ranching land. His wife, Nancy, was the principal owner of the Pass Mine.

In 1899, the Pass Mine was closed due to Horace's death, caused by a heart condition. Nancy shut down the mine because she believed it had brought on her husband's death. The Pass Mine slipped quietly into history until 1994 when the Pass Mining Co. transferred its land holdings to Boise State University. The company also gave the university all its scientific, legal and business papers, as well as logs and personal items, to the university's Albertson Library Special Collections archive.

Among the many business records was a journal and cyanotypes—blue-tinted photographs--by Henry Webster Aplington. Aplington was Horace's young nephew, who documented a trip he made to the mine in 1895.

Though the university sold the property to a private owner in 2001, the archives remained at the school, where English professor Tom Trusky found a way to resurrect forgotten Idaho history through art.

"I created a course to allow students to create book art," Trusky said. "There are lessons about artists' books within this show, and the artists have utilized the area's historical events to make the books."

Trusky selected artists' books from the classes he taught from 2000 through 2006 for an exhibition at The Sun Valley Center for the Arts entitled, "Silver Lining: Pass Mine Artists' Books." It is on display through Oct. 11 at The Center in Hailey. The show is an extension to The Center's multidisciplinary project "What We Keep: An Exhibition on Books and Memory," which is also on display through Oct. 11 at The Center in Ketchum. The exhibition is sponsored by the Idaho Center for the Book, which has the unique focus of handmade books by Idaho bookmakers.

Trusky instructed his students to produce some type of book using any materials in the archives as well as Aplington's journal, which he had scanned and typed.

"The connections are close to Idaho," Trusky said. "The Pass Mine owners, documents and artifacts and photographs from the mine and surrounding area triggered doing books and a show. Fourteen-year-old Henry Webster Aplington's journal inspired most of the books in the show."

There are nine artists' books on exhibit, all featuring different aspects of the Pass Mine history as well as revealing regional history and attitudes. The books vary from beaded pouches to historical documents to accordion construction and moveable paper cutouts.

"There a lot of art processes on display, and they are all very involved," Trusky said. "I'm just the ghostly English professor."

In conjunction with The Sun Valley Center for the Arts exhibition, "Silver Lining: Pass Mine Artists' Books," author Gregg Olsen will present a free reading and talk from his book "The Deep Dark: Disaster and Redemption in America's Richest Silver Mine" on Thursday, Sept. 27, at 7 p.m. at The Center in Hailey.

The Center in Hailey is located at 314 Second Ave. South and is open from noon to 5 p.m. Wednesday through Friday. For more details, call 726-9491 or visit sunvalleycenter.org.




 Local Weather 
Search archives:


Copyright © 2024 Express Publishing Inc.   Terms of Use   Privacy Policy
All Rights reserved. Reproduction in whole or in part in any form or medium without express written permission of Express Publishing Inc. is prohibited. 

The Idaho Mountain Express is distributed free to residents and guests throughout the Sun Valley, Idaho resort area community. Subscribers to the Idaho Mountain Express will read these stories and others in this week's issue.