Kristeen Keup stands before a hot rod mural painted in 1958 by Bruce Ryniker. He went on to design cars for Chrysler and GM and later designed "Hot Wheels" for Mattel Toys.
To mark the 75th anniversary of Billings Senior High School, a volunteer committee has launched a “Save Our Murals” campaign to restore and protect the iconic artwork adorning walls and stairwells around the school.
“Just think of them not being on the walls anymore,” Kristeen Keup said. “That’s just not possible.”
Keup, a Senior High graduate, retired Senior High teacher and a member of the Save Our Murals committee, said many of the murals were almost lost just a few years ago. As part of an air-conditioning project that involved lowering ceilings in the school’s hallways, it was proposed to simply paint over the murals.
Enough people raised an outcry — among them Keup, who was still teaching English at Senior then — that the proposal was scrapped. Only a portion of the hallway ceilings were dropped, with recessed areas left to accommodate the murals.
Ed Kemmick/Last Best News
Some of the plaster is cracking at the top of Ryniker’s mural.
Some of the murals need restoration, most of them need cleaning and some of them need better lighting, particularly those whose upper reaches are partially obscured by those new dropped ceilings.
Lyn McKinney, the librarian at Senior High, said the committee was conceived when she and other school staff people were discussing the 75th anniversary of the school and “were talking about ‘what are some of the things we’re really proud of at Senior?’” It didn’t take them long to settle on the murals, and Senior High Principal Dennis Holmes asked McKinney to form the committee.
Besides Keup, committee members are Bob Nolte, a Senior High graduate, Linda Meyer, a graduate and former Senior High counselor, and Sally McIntosh, a local artist and arts supporter.
Working with the committee is Hannah Lose, who will be a senior at Senior High this year, working on her Platinum Program project. Students in the rigorous core program take all honors and advanced-placement classes offered and also complete a major project.
Her project is helping the committee raise funds to protect the murals and to publish a book commemorating the artists and their works. The plan is to publish the book by next May, and to use proceeds from book sales to restore and preserve the murals.
Ed Kemmick/Last Best News
One of the most controversial murals at Senior High was painted in 1967 by Dirk Lee.
One step in the process is already done. Houston Harmon, the photography teacher at Senior, has photographed every mural already. Keup said about 110 of them remain, with an unknown number lost over the years, victims of construction and renovation or of being painted over.
Most of the murals are in halls and stairwells, but some are in classrooms. The oldest one dates back to 1948, when Senior High was nine years old. Artists used to have to submit a design and an application, then find financial support to complete the work, if chosen.
The murals range from traditional historical scenes and portraits of famous people to surreal and abstract works. One of the most controversial murals was painted by Dirk Lee in 1967. It is reminiscent of some album covers of the era, colorful, a bit psychedelic and crowded with a variety of faces, subjects and scenes.
Ed Kemmick/Last Best News
Part of what made Lee’s mural controversial was its depiction of a naked interracial couple.
One small corner of the mural shows a white woman with a black man, both of them naked, and elsewhere there is a white-robed Ku Klux Klansman in front of a burning cross. One of the more famous murals, a depiction of an Indian Wars battle, was painted in 1953 by Bud Luckey, who went on to work for Pixar Animation Studios.
For the book on the murals, the committee is trying to find out as much as possible about each mural and its artist. Anyone with any information is asked to call the school and leave a message for McKinney at 281-5442.
McKinney said the murals have never even been cleaned, as far as she knows, but they are well worth restoring and preserving.
“I have been in a lot of schools,” she said. “I have never seen anything like this in any other school.”
Besides being interesting works of art, she said, many of them serve as snapshots of the era in which they were created.
“It’s not only Senior High’s history,” she said. “It’s also Billings history and Montana history.”
Coincidentally, Keup’s Senior High class of 1964 will be gathering this weekend for its 50th anniversary. The class, which has events planned for Friday, Saturday and Sunday, will be collecting donations to support the mural project.
Over the weekend, it will also be hosting an art auction to raise money. Artist Karen Popelka Boylan, class of ’64, is donating art, as is Ben Steele, whose daughter Rosemarie is also a ’64 graduate of Senior.
“I posted that on Facebook,” Keup said. “Bring your checkbook. Screaming deal on a Ben Steele.”
