Serve Daily - From tragedy to art: Local sculptor Gary Lee Price speaks about overcoming challenges through art

If you were to look at Gary Lee Price’s art gallery, a feeling of childhood wonder and uninhabited freedom and love would do doubt come over you. But with that representation of childhood wonderment, freedom and unity, comes a lot of pain.

When Price was six years old, his mother was killed in a murder suicide by his stepfather, and little Gary was there to witness it.

“I lived in Germany at the time, and my stepfather was a military vet, and he was a very jealous and selfish man,” Price recalled. “He married her and got transferred to Germany. They had a rocky relationship and he killed her and then killed himself.”

Shortly after witnessing the brutal killing of his mother, Price was flown to the United States where he was adopted by a family in Montpelier, Idaho. He was in the first grade at the time, and was plagued with nightmares. He immediately started school at AJ Winters Elementary school and was placed in Mrs. Anderson’s class. It was in that class where little Gary began to take flight.

“My first grade teacher, Mrs. Anderson, knew what had happened,” Price recalled. “She had this new student coming into her class from Germany and two weeks ago, he witnessed the murder suicide of his parents. She likely thought, ‘What am I going to do?’ But she was a great teacher, and because she knew what I’d been through and knew what I’d witnessed and what my memories were, every time I drew something, she would hold it up in front of the class and say, ‘Look what Gary Price did!’

“All of a sudden, instead of me focusing on what I had just witnessed – seeing my mom lying there in a pool of blood with 345 caliber slugs in her, looking at me and we’re eye to eye and I’m over her bloody body crying. Instead of focusing on that, Mrs. Anderson transferred that energy into something positive. And so then all of a sudden all the little school kids were saying ‘Oh my gosh, Gary! That’s so cool! That’s so beautiful!’ And then I’m refocusing on something positive.”

Price spoke about time his mom spent with him when he was little, developing his artistic talent, adding that having Mrs. Anderson also noticed that within him, gave him a comfort and outlet that he would need to navigate some more challenging years ahead.

“My mother had spent so much time with me doing artwork,” Price recalled. “She knew that I came into this life with an interest and a certain talent for art. She has spent lots of time with me developing it, and Mrs. Anderson recognized that. And being the amazingly brilliant first grade teacher that she was, she emphasized my ability to the other students.”

Tragically, Price’s new home life was filled with yet more things that no child should endure. Price explained that while the parents who adopted him were good at giving him the attention he needed to heal, that attention proved to be problematic to their older son who took it upon himself to hurt little Gary.

“When I was shipped to America into a new family, there was a stepbrother who was seven years older than me,” Price recalled. “He resented me popping into this new family. He had all the attention, and I came in and then all of a sudden I got the attention. And for the next seven years, I was extremely abused in every possible way by this step brother. I’m talking sexually. I’m talking mentally. I’m talking spiritually. Had it not been for my art and knowing that I had something to live for beyond that negative stuff, I don’t know if I’d be here today.

“I believe what Mrs. Anderson did for me in the first grade was the catalyst that I needed to launch literally the rest of my life,” he said.

Through all the pain, Price created art. He drew. He painted. He sculpted. Eventually, Price graduated college with a degree in painting and drawing.

“My art was cathartic because art heals,” he said. “Graduating in art was very helpful for me to realize that I could create a goal and reach it. Right after college, I went into sculpture full time, and have been doing that for 45 years full time. A lot of the subject matter has been children and birds. Those have been my two basic genres, and they both represent having a happy childhood. Birds represent flight and rising above our challenges, having the ability to have a better visual and simply rising above our earthly plight.

Price’s sculptures have been displayed coast-to-coast in galleries across the nation. He has even been commissioned to sculpt murals locally, including one representing the late Alan Curtis that sits at Springville Memorial Park. He also has a piece displayed at Springville High School that showcases someone helping another up a cliff.

Price says that with all of his art, he hopes to showcase humanness and hope. He also said that he hopes that in sharing his story, it might give others courage to do the same, while also finding avenues for healing. In 2023, Price wrote his story in a memoir titled Divine Turbulence, that he hopes will help and inspire others.

“In my memoir, I describe implicitly what (my abuser) did to me,” he said. “Telling my story, letting people know that many men and mostly women go through sexual abuse that debilitates them in one way or another their entire life, was important to me. It could be from a parent. It could be from a brother. It could be from a family member. It’s time to expose it. People need to be aware of what happens in families, and it gives them the courage to deal with it and to talk about it, so that people can become free of that shame and that guilt.”

When asked what inspired the title for his book, Price said that even with all that he has endured, he believes that there is a divine hand in it all.

“One of my key beliefs is that there’s a divine orchestration to all of this stuff that’s going on down here on Earth,” he said. “I don’t know exactly how it is. I don’t know if it’s exactly the LDS view, the Catholic view, the Protestant view or the Buddhist view, but I believe that somehow there are higher powers that have something to do with our being here on Earth. I call it divine. I think there’s, there’s, a higher power and so I named the book Divine Turbulence because even though we all go through crazy once in a while, there’s a divine orchestration to it all.”