Marilyn Hoff Hansen’s work displayed at Art Museum of Eastern Idaho

An Idaho Falls native is being showcased at the Art Museum of Eastern Idaho. Marilyn Hoff Hansen is one of the city’s most celebrated artists and the exhibit is a collection of her seven decades worth of art.

Hoff Hansen grew up around horses, or as she puts it, with a laugh, “I grew up *on* a horse!” laughed Hansen.

Her life’s work is filled with different illustrations of the animal.

“Not as horse portraits, but because of their graceful lines — curvilinear lines. And their spirit and their power,” said Hoff Hansen.

Marilyn paints, sculpts, welds — she does it all.

“Instead of just using one medium, it seems to be unique to me that I just can’t make up my mind, you see? You get into one phase and it kind of eases into another, and maybe it comes back and catches another,” said Hoff Hansen.

But one of her best-known sculptures is the one of the little boy and two dogs at the Idaho Falls Public Library. It’s a sculpture based on the book “Where the Red Fern Grows,” and she brought in local school kids to help her when she was making it in the ’90s.

“I gave each student a little piece of clay. I said, ‘You can put this anywhere you like, but you know that I’ll have to mush it. But you know your clay is in there.’ That generation of children own that piece of sculpture. That was the most delightful and fun piece of sculpture I’ve every done, I believe,” said Hoff Hansen.

Hoff Hansen told me art is such an exciting career for her because there is always something new you discover from trying to solve a problem. And she loves the results that have come from it.

“It’s pleasing to see the things on the wall all at once, and think, ‘By golly, it’s probably a life worth living,” said Hoff Hansen, laughing.

Marilyn Hoff Hansen’s showcase at the Art Museum of Eastern Idaho ends Saturday at 5 p.m.