The Garden City Telegram
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Man finds unlikely home for art
Published 2/8/2010 in Local News
By KATHY HANKS
Special to The Telegram
SCOTT CITY -- For now, Jerry Thomas is living in two worlds.
Spending most his waking minutes in Scott City, he is preparing for the upcoming grand opening of the Jerry Thomas Art Gallery on May 1 and 2.
But his home is 4 1/2 hours away in Manhattan. So he drives back from Scott City, after a day of cataloguing paintings and fixing displays, to watch his daughter play basketball. Then he works on a current painting until early in the morning, catches a quick rest and heads back west to the work of building a gallery.
The 4,000-square-foot Jerry Thomas Art Gallery is a dream come true for the wildlife and western artist.
"Giant, special," is how he described it.
The $400,000 addition is attached to the El Quartelejo Museum, on the western edge of town on K-96.
Thomas approached the Scott County Historical Society board about five years ago with a proposal to build an art museum in Scott City, explained Patsy Graham, a volunteer with El Quartelejo and Scott County Historical Society.
After that, he was given a large gift of $100,000 from Everett Hueftle, a local supporter who has since died.
Thomas, a 1977 Scott County Community High School graduate, was also given $7,777 in donations for the gallery from his classmates.
"There has been terrific community support," Graham said. The gallery has also been awarded a Tourism Attraction Development Grant from the Division of Travel and Tourism, with the Kansas Department of Commerce and Housing.
Graham said the fundraising continues.
"Jerry is bringing money, and we are all in that mode," she said, describing a state-of-the-art gallery with the interior finishing virtually complete.
"Jerry's prints sell consistently," Graham said. And visits have increased by almost a 1,000 in the past year. They expect it to increase dramatically in 2010.
It was back in 2000 that Thomas was selected by the Kansas Historical Society to create eight book covers for a series on U.S. Army forts. Those original paintings will be on display in the gallery.
Among his many honors as an artist, Thomas has been Kansas Wildlife Artist of the Year, as well as Kansas Ducks Unlimited artist and National Ducks Unlimited guest artist, as well as Waterfowl U.S.A. National Celebrity Hunt Artist; many of those original paintings will also be in the gallery.
For now, there are a lot of behind-the-scenes things that must be done such as cataloguing and arranging displays, which include many of the original artifacts used in the paintings.
"We don't have much time," Thomas said, as he noted May was just three months away.
The opening of the gallery will coincide with a statewide Shriners convention to be held in Scott City that same weekend.
Thomas hopes that the gallery, which will include a large gift shop, will support itself.
The inside of the gallery includes a mini-theater that tells a story of how each painting was created.
Each painting will be part of an interpretive display.
"It's going to blow your socks off," Thomas said.
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