Ortho R. Fairbanks
Ortho R. Fairbanks (1925 - June 2, 2015[1]) was one of the many members of the Fairbanks family who have been prominent artists.
Fairbanks was a grandson of painter John B. Fairbanks and the nephew of Avard Fairbanks. He was born in Salt Lake City and received a BFA from the University of Utah in 1952 taking classes from his Uncle Avard. He received his MFA in 1953 also from the University of Utah.[2]
From 1960 to 1968 Fairbanks was a professor at the Church College of Hawaii.[2]
In 1965, Fairbanks was in Italy doing a study of sculpture in Italy and was able to obtain a copy of Vincenzo Di Francesca's unique conversion story to the LDS Church, which he then gave to the Improvement Era, which was the first to print it. It was later adapted into the film How Rare a Possession by the LDS Church.[3]
Fairbanks sculpted a monument to John Morgan and his commercial college, one of the first business schools in Utah.[4] He has also made a sculpture to remember young children who die.[5]
The statue of Karl G. Maeser on Brigham Young University campus is by Fairbanks.[6] Ortho Fairbanks has sculpted a bust of the prophet Joseph Smith which he worked on when he was studying in Italy. He had access to the church death masks of Joseph and Hyrum Smith. Because of the ability to have these death masks he was able to accurately sculpt the Prophet Joseph Smith. Because of these death masks it has given many artists the ability to portray what the prophet Joseph would have looked like. Ortho was one of the first sculptors to use these masks to sculpt his portrayal of Joseph Smith. It is owned by the Church History Museum in Salt Lake City, Utah.
