Copper Kings 3 · Mining the West: Primary Elements · J. Willard Marriott Library Exhibits

The Copper Kings: Arizona, Utah, and Montana

The Copper State (cont.)

In 1931 Phillip Latimer Dike (1906-1990) first visited Arizona. He taught art at the Chouinard School of Art in Los Angeles, where he met his future wife, who was from the copper-mining town of Miami, Arizona. When he visited her, he was struck by the dramatic landscapes of copper mining he saw in Miami, Globe, and Jerome. The memories of those trips were still vivid for him in 1940:

"Man tackling the vastness of that country, digging and living amid cliffs—crag-riddled mountains—so tremendous in scale as to scare the sense of reality into one. Man-made forms and nature’s giant ones with the contrasted elements of thunder-storms and sunsets setting the stage for an excited but humble painter. The depression also left its impression on the stark pageant as mines closed and towns and mines seemed to shrink under the sun."²

Dike made several paintings of Arizona mines, but the strongest work is Copper (Figure 4) which was inspired by Jerome, about which he observed: “How it holds onto the side of the Verde Valley no one knows.”³ In this work, the artist made a dramatic panoramic aerial view of the town, mining operations, and stormy vista of the Verde Valley in the distance. Striking in color, powerful in composition, and muscular in execution, Dike effectively captures the scene’s emotional intensity. Although the painting broadly suggests the typical mining landscapes of Arizona, several Jerome buildings have been identified.

Fig. 4. Copper

Martin Stupich (b. 1949) made a group of large panoramic photographs of the Morenci mine. One titled Morenci Panorama February 1989 reveals the staggering scale of the industrial sculpting that has taken place over more than two decades. (Figure 5) The terraces he depicts resemble the remains of some ancient civilization.

Fig. 5. Morenci Panorama, February, 1989

[1] [2] [3] [4] [5] [6]

² “Phil Dike: He Captures the Scale of the West,” American Artist 4 (November 1940): 19.
³ “Phil Dike: He Captures the Scale of the West,” 20.