You may have seen his work around Billings.
This past week, family and friends remembered Billings artist Lyndon Pomeroy, who died at the age of 93.
“I don’t know that anybody has taken steel to this point on planet earth,” said Dru Pomeroy. “I have not seen anybody myself that did it the way he did and has done as big of a portfolio. I mean 50 years of monumental pieces.”
Some of those pieces are all over Billings and Montana
“He had a sense of three dimensionality,” Dru said.
“For whatever reason I started calling my mom, Lenore and my dad, Lyndon,” Dru said. “I only called him father or dad under really, really special circumstances. And he loved that. It wasn’t something like I was doing it offensive.”
Dru helped with some of the labor needed in the artwork and learned a lot from his Dad.
“Lyndon was just good at everything he touched,” Dru said. “He was a superb fly fisherman. He was a superb hunter. He was an incredible shot. He was an incredible pilot. He was an incredible artist. Just this miracle in motion all the time. There was just nothing he couldn’t do.”
And Lyndon Pomeroy liked making his sculptures out of steel.
“It’s the material of our time,” Dru said. “The media of our time. Without steel, modern society doesn’t exist. If it’s not made out of steel, it requires steel tools to make it.”
And the steel gives the art longevity.
“The steel gives it a real hard core permanence,” Dru said. “ Unless his stuff is subjected to something unnecessary, that piece out in front of KTVQ will be there 10,000 years from now. “
Dru says his father took up art after injuries kept him pursuing his passion of flying.
“Especially when he got older, he’d just sit there in his chair or whatever and just out of him, he’d say I’ve had such a spectacular life,” Dru said. “He was blessed, he knew it and he was thankful that he got to do his whole life what he wanted to.”
Dru estimates that Lyndon Pomeroy made about 200 monumental pieces, 1,000 medium pieces and 1,000 small pieces during a 56 year career.
