What can you do with a camera, clay, wax, sandblaster, welding torch, and a mixture of copper, lead, and zinc? If you are Deborah Copenhaver Fellows you can create a world famous bronze monument. Every time you drive past the Santa Cruz Fairgrounds in Sonoita you see Deborah’s artwork displayed in “A Tribune to Ranching”—her first equine monument.
Deborah was born in Spokane, Washington, and grew up across the border in Sand Point, Idaho, where her parents, world champion bronc rider Deb Copenhaver and his wife, Cheryl, owned a cattle and Quarter Horse ranch. Deborah had to travel 25 miles to go to school. Living on a ranch and caring for horses fostered her lifelong passion for horses. As a preteen she won barrel racing competitions, and, as a talented artist, she sold drawings of horses at an early age.
After high school Deborah went to Washington State University to study art on a Rotary scholarship. A year later she moved back to Spokane and attended Fort Wright College, where she received a B.A. degree in fine arts. It was here that her life’s work became clear. She delights in saying that her sculpture teacher, Sister Paula Mary, “opened the world of art to me.” Deborah remembers the first time she met Sister Paula Mary. “She had her customary clerical habit on, as well as a welding cap.” During her college years Deborah was asked to accompany Sister Paula Mary to Greece on a study tour. She also studied art in Italy and France and took a side trip to complete a sculpture of a famous horse in Poland. “You learn a lot in school, but you learn most when you get out.”
These experiences were the spark that set Deborah’s heart on fire for a lifetime of sculpture. Her high school teacher told her many years later that she always knew Deborah had talent. Her heart is in her work. One of her favorite sayings is Louis Nizer’s “A craftsman works with his hands and his mind. An artist works with his hands, his mind, and his heart.”
In 1975 Deborah came to Arizona and worked as a wrangler on a dude ranch in Prescott. It was there that she cast her first bronze project. But soon afterward she returned to Washington, where she set up a studio in an upstairs bedroom and went to work. Within 18 months she received a commission to cast a bronze statue of Bing Crosby for his alma mater, Gonzaga University. She has also completed other projects in Washington State, including a Vietnam Veterans Memorial and a tribute statue to the Boy Scouts titled “Footsteps to the Future.” Deborah honors women in art as much as horses. Many of her works depict women in positions of strength and grace. She says, “ I want the woman in western art to be conveyed as a confident, capable, feminine, graceful image.” These are her own qualities, and her works in Arizona galleries are in constant demand.
that was awarded First Place for 3-dimensional artwork at
the Desert Caballeros Western Museum in Wickenburg, AZ.
Deborah also honors her father in art. She has produced a statue called “Giving Thanks” that shows a cowboy on horseback praying. “I watched my dad many times take off his hat and pray, so that is what I sculpted. I don’t think there is anything neater than a man, a strong man, with his head bowed.” That sculpture is now in a museum in Georgia.
Another well-known work of Deborah’s is the Barry Goldwater statue currently in Phoenix. There was a nationwide search for an artist to do the work, and Deborah got the call. Some 26 months later she delivered the larger-than- life 700-pound statue and its 900-pound base to Phoenix in the back of a horse trailer.
Soon it will be moved to the US Statuary Hall at the Capitol in Washington DC. Deborah first worked with photographs, then modeled in clay and made the mold into which bronze at 1,900 degrees was poured. The statue is 8 feet tall and was put together with 20 separate pieces. To keep the weight down, the thickness of the bronze is less than a quarter inch. Deborah says it is also hollow like “a chocolate Easter bunny.”
Her work is nothing but genius as her success confirms. Deborah says genius is spelled w-o-r-k! “Never give up on your dreams. Keep at it.” is her motto.
Sonoita is honored to have the talented Deborah Copenhaver Fellows and her husband, famed western artist Fred Fellows, as its residents.