By Bryon Wells
Arizona Daily Wildcat
December 1, 1997

Painting the hours away

Adam F. Jarrold Arizona Daily Wildcat Dan Hickman, a painter with UA Facilities Management, painted the mural on the wall of the ventilation unit in the Facilities Management paint shop. Hickman enjoys working with a variety of media in the Southwest genre and would someday like to create a piece that would be displayed more prominently on campus.

Dan Hickman is a painter.

In two senses of the word.

The Frederick Remington of the UA Facilities Management paint shop, Hickman found a way to transform his work area into the open range.

He composed a bronco rider mural on the wall behind the shop's ventilation hood to show his appreciation of cowboy culture.

"It's my way of preserving the western heritage," he said. "While I'm working I can look (at the painting) and I'm someplace else. I'm not in the paint shop."

A self-proclaimed Western artist, Hickman's cowboy mural is a project he did on a weekend - a slow day.

"I used their (Facilities Management) paint, but I did it on my own time," he said.

Hickman said that he doesn't just mimic western culture through his art - he lives it.

A UA employee for two years, Hickman also works in the autumn at a couple of ranches in the Tucson area. He helps out with cattle roundup and branding. He also owns two horses and enters horseback shooting competitions.

Hickman moved from Virginia to Tucson in 1979 and said he has always been an artist, adding that he began with painting and then expanded into other media, including bronze sculpture.

The cowboy artist said his lifelike statuettes are done from photographs and sculpted from a mold using the "lost wax method."

The finished product can weigh up to 50 pounds, he said, and can earn Hickman as much as $3,000.

Hickman has done sculptures for Harelson Elementary School, Mesa Verde Elementary and the bust of former Sen. Morris Udall that stands in front of the Udall Center.

Working from his studio, Western Heritage Sculpture, 4360 N. Bear Claw Way, Hickman crafts bronze busts of cowboy friends and local ranchers.

"Sculpture is my favorite," he said.

"The people that I do, there's a story behind the people."

Hickman recently completed a sculpture of his friend Don Stinman, owner of the Reddington Land and Cattle Co.

Stinman was once a stockbroker in Philadelphia.

"He got tired of the fast life," Hickman said. "He now raises Texas Longhorn (cattle)."

In the future, Hickman hopes to do work for more schools, museums and maybe the University of Arizona.

"I'd love to have a piece of my work here," he said.