Simi Schools Shut Door on Homeless Folk Art Objects

Heirs to the Old Trappers Lodge collection of folk art renewed their search for a home for the art Wednesday after the Simi Valley Board of Education rejected a bid to house it at Simi Valley High School.

Rosemary Farish, who operates the Old Trappers Lodge motel and bungalow complex in Sun Valley, began telephoning cultural-preservation societies, the Los Angeles Zoo and other groups that expressed interest in acquiring the works created by her father, sculptor John Ehn.

“There are a couple of concessionaires interested; Knott’s Berry Farm has contacted us, and we’ve talked to the Gene Autry Museum and several other places,” Farish said. “We’re covering all of the bases.”

The Simi board voted 3 to 2 Tuesday to turn down an offer from Ehn’s heirs to move the collection of Western sculptures and artifacts to the school district.

Board members said they declined because of the high cost of insuring works of art, fears that some of the depictions of the Wild West life style could be viewed as offensive, and disagreement among board members about whether Ehn’s sculptures were, in fact, art.

‘Eye of Beholder’

“This is a case of art definitely being in the eye of the beholder,” said board member Mimi Shapiro, who voted with the minority to accept at least some of the Ehn collection.

Ehn’s four children must find a new site for the works because the lodge their father owned, which was designated a state historical landmark because of the folk art, is to be razed for expansion of Burbank Airport.

Farish must find a new home for the collection by the middle of summer, when she expects work to start on the airport expansion. Airport officials have said they have no definite plans for the property, which may become a parking lot or hangar site.

“The worst-case scenario would be that we would have to put everything into storage and out of the public eye,” said Farish. “The bottom line is that we will not allow the collection to be bulldozed or destroyed.”

Ehn was a Michigan trapper who opened the lodge in 1941. Ten years later, he began carving the first of 20 towering statues of familiar Old West characters. He later added a “Boot Hill” with humorous tombstones and hundreds of Western artifacts.

Spirited Debate

The school board’s discussion Tuesday sparked a spirited debate over the role schools should play in exposing students to different, sometimes controversial, artworks.

Some board members were concerned with sculptures that depicted dance-hall girls and women of the evening. Also, some tombstone epitaphs in Ehn’s “Boot Hill” described the departed as murderers and heavy drinkers.

Arguing in favor of the art, Shapiro said the “Old West is part of our heritage and these statutes depict life as it was in the 1800s. It wasn’t all good, clean and pure. A lot of it was heading to the saloon after work.”

Board president Ken Ashton said he believes that Ehn’s art was not of high enough quality for the district to accept. He voted with the majority to turn down the heirs’ offer.

“There was no question in my mind that some art students would find value in the statues,” Ashton said. “But I have to look at the district as a whole. Sometimes that’s hard to do. Still, the collection just didn’t belong in a school district. I would have said the same thing about our own Simi Valley folk art Grandma Prisby’s Bottle Village.”

Bruce Kanegai, the Simi Valley High art teacher who proposed that the district investigate acquiring the Ehn collection, said he found the board’s opinions on art frustrating.

“Our minds are not only on a different wavelength, they are in different dimensions and in different centuries,” said Kanegai.