He’s guy who did the Bison logo

Daniel Clasby has won prizes for ice sculpting in Japan, built breast-plates for “Xena: Warrior Princess,” met famed film director Peter Jackson, and owned an Italian restaurant in New Zealand.

Yet the most lasting impression Clasby has left on his hometown of Great Falls was not a dazzling piece of jewelry, a sculpted piece or iron or an elaborate drawing.

Clasby’s gift to his hometown from 47 years ago is seen all over town, and has withstood the test of time. It’s a graphic depiction of his high school’s mascot, the Bison.

Let’s go back to 1968, on a night during basketball season, when Clasby was a senior at Great Falls High School. A thought came to Clasby; it was more than a whim.

“I was lying in bed one night,” Clasby said in a telephone interview from Cedar Falls, Iowa, where he lives. “All of a sudden, this vision crossed through from one side of my head to another. I was so excited.”

He leaped out of bed and spent a couple hours drawing a logo featuring the word bison and also shaped like the animal. Then he spruced up the drawing again, and brought it into school. Clasby showed it to his art teacher, Don Walters, and to several basketball players, including Bill Howard, John Lee and Ray Howard.

“They were excited,” Clasby said. “We made a silk screen, which I still have.”

The Bison graphic quickly became popular. Students spent hours and hours taking the image and placing it on sticks to use at games and rallies.

“All the kids were like totally involved,” he said. His art teacher also suggested the students decorate basketballs with the logo on it; they did four.

The Bison graphic was a big hit, but there were plenty of other things going on. This was also the 1960s, the decade of the Vietnam War, protests, peace, love and rock ’n’ roll. Clasby graduated from high school, and planned to attend the Art Institute of Chicago.

At the last minute, Clasby changed his mind and hitch-hiked to Seattle, startling his parents. He flew to Europe, where he was accepted by an art academy in the Netherlands. He studied in Holland for three years.

Then it was on to New Zealand, where he taught art, owned an Italian restaurant, and for three years demonstrated his art skills to tourists at what is now called the New Zealand National Maritime Museum in Auckland.

The museum work was fun, but he worked seven days a week. Plus, “we never got any work done” because of all the crowds, he said.

That restaurant gig — he called it Daniel’s, with Italian fare — was long and not lucrative. He gave up the restaurant, but not before meeting his English wife, Nicola Wilson-Clasby, at the restaurant.

New Zealand offers grants to artists, filmmakers and others in the arts, and Clasby in the early 1980s was in Wellington, N.Z., applying to an arts council for grants.

“Here was this scruffy character and we started talking,” Clasby said. “He was in there applying for grants, too.” His name was Peter Jackson, who went on to win Oscars for his Lord of the Rings film trilogy. Plenty of artists in New Zealand later worked for Jackson, who filmed his Tolkien epics largely in New Zealand.

“Everybody liked him,” Clasby said. “He has such a vision.”

Clasby himself worked for the popular 1990s syndicated television shows, “Zena, Warrior Princess” and “Hercules,” creating Zena’s metal breastplates, and a miniature village for “Hercules” for use when giants were on the screen.

Clasby, whose art includes sculpting, painting, metalwork and jewelry, has lived in Montana, the Netherlands, New Zealand, England, Spokane, Wash., back in Montana and now Iowa. In 2000, he created a body of work for the Montana Arts Council that was displayed around the state. Clasby taught art at the University of Northern Iowa, but he has retired from education and spends fulltime creating art.

He occasionally returns to Great Falls, and he was pleased to see his bison logo, slightly altered from 1968, is still around.

“It’s everywhere,” Clasby said. “I think it moved me quite a bit.”

“That graphic is on the front of the press box” in Memorial Stadium, Great Falls’ top football field, says Class of 1965 graduate Phil Faccenda. He thinks Clasby should get proper credit as the originator of the logo.

“The fact that it’s endured for so long, and I don’t think anybody knows where it came from,” Faccenda said.

Clasby didn’t know his creation would have such staying power.

“It was rather just a happening,” said Clasby, a true child of the ’60s.

True to their school

Several alumni of Great Falls High School have contributed to new windows at their old school. The windows are large, energy-efficient and pricey, about $5,000 each. They are part of a restoration of Great Falls High that may cost $30 million to $50 million in the coming years.

Three new windows were installed in the library earlier; others were installed last week in the high school’s tower. A donation of $15,000 by Terry and Daryl Lynne Albrecht of Fort Shaw paid for three new windows; a $5,000 donation by the area Merrick family paid for a new window on the school’s east side. Both families have a large number of Great Falls High alumni.

“We have 444 windows left to go,” Faccenda said. He said the Class of ’65, which celebrated its 50th reunion over the weekend, also will donate a window.

Faccenda hopes others classes and alumni will sponsor windows. Call him at 406-868-9235 for more information.

The Great Falls school district plans to renovate the beautiful old school, but an estimated $37 million renovation budget would only cover about half of the $2 million or so needed to install new windows for the building.

Richard Ecke writes a weekly column on city life. Reach him at recke@greatfallstribune.com, 406-791-1465, or follow him @GFTrib_REcke on Twitter.