Iconic bank mural enlivens FVCC arts building

An iconic bank mural and the Kalispell-born artist who created the 32-foot-long oil painting have been elevated from obscurity.

The mural has a new display place at the entrance to the Arts and Technology Building at Flathead Valley Community College.

“It looks like it was just done for that wall,” said Linda Robbin, who worked with her husband, Rand, to put the mural back on display. “It just enhances that so much.”

The work now hangs up 10 feet on the soaring wood-slated wall just inside the entry of the building. For several years, the mural was stored on a dark wall within public reach in the KM Building. 

Rand, an artist and former art instructor, said they were grateful for the KM Building owners for storing the mural.

“But it was low on the wall in that narrow dark hallway,” he said. “We were so afraid that some juvenile would come along and tag it with paint or put a blade in it.”

For the last 13 months, Linda and Rand quietly crusaded to return the late Robert Huck and the mural to the prominence they had earned in the art world and Kalispell history. They credit Theresa White, Kalispell city clerk, and Steve Larson, college director of public facilities, with securing a safe public home for what art appraiser Mark Humpal calls Huck’s “most significant single work.”

White worked with city officials to arrange a long-term loan of the mural for public display while Larson navigated the project through college approvals. Along the way, Larson fell under the spell of the work and caught the fervor for preserving and sharing it from the Robbins. 

“They wanted to have it some place where the whole public of the valley could see it,” he said. “It’s such a neat painting by Robert Huck, who was a famous artist. It tells a really good history of the Flathead Valley.” 

Even before they married, the Robbins each had a personal tie to Huck. Rand studied with the artist while Linda was connected to the mural he created as a centerpiece for the newly renovated First National Bank in 1960. 

As an aspiring artist and junior in high school, Rand took summer art classes from Huck at his West Glacier Art Colony in 1955.

“His family and my family had been here so long that they were very familiar with one another,” he recalled. “It was one of the first times my parents said, ‘You have to go to West Glacier and take lessons from Bob.’” 

Born in Kalispell in 1923, Huck had attended local schools, including Flathead County High School. Rand recently viewed the 1941 or ’42 high school annual in which Huck did all the illustrations.

After graduation, Huck served in the Army in World War II, then earned a bachelor’s degree from the Colorado Springs Fine Arts Center and a master’s from the University of Colorado. He traveled to Italy on a Fulbright scholarship where he painted and made relief prints.

When he returned from Italy, Huck offered art classes at West Glacier before becoming assistant professor of art at Oregon State College in Corvallis. Rand compared the class drawing excursions to field trips. 

“It was sort of a lesson in the park, too, because Bob knew the park well,” he said. “He was one of the first major inspirations I had.” 

Rand went on to earn a bachelor’s degree in art at the University of Montana, a master’s in painting and printmaking and a Master of Fine Art degree in printmaking at the University of Wisconsin. He taught courses at Skagit Valley College in Washington before returning in 1974 to the Creston family ranch, where he continues working as an artist. 

Linda’s connection began when Huck received the First National Bank commission in 1959 to create the mural as the dominant feature of the large wall behind the teller line. Her father, R.M. Leslie, was vice president of the bank and a huge fan of Huck’s work.

“I can remember that my dad was just so thrilled to have that mural there,” Linda said. 

The grand opening of the remodeled bank commanded a full-page spread in the Sept. 9, 1960, Daily Inter Lake. It included a story about the mural, described as the bank’s showpiece and a panorama of the Flathead with images of Glacier Park, rivers, Hungry Horse Dam, a lumber mill, hunter, fisherman, farming, cattle and cherry trees.

“It displayed all the industries that were prominent in the valley at the time,” Rand said. “The bank, being in the business that it was, was very much involved in providing money to different industries. I think the purpose of the mural was to emphasize those aspects.”

Just six months after Huck delivered the painting to the bank, he died in an auto accident in Oregon on March 13, 1961. Just 38, he left behind his wife, Dorothy, and 2-year-old son Clayton.

Although his career was short, Huck had long lists of painting and print exhibits as well as purchases by prestigious museums such as the Brooklyn Museum, the Library of Congress and Bibliotheque Nationale in Paris. His death only heightened Linda and Rand’s interest in his artistic legacy. 

When they moved back to the valley, the couple opened an account at the bank where they continued their love affair with the mural. Rand described it as very typical of Huck’s style of painting.

“He had a sort of geometric-ness about his work,” he said. “There are a lot of sort of flat planes and angles to it which is very typical of his painting — very  unique to his style.”

Linda kept tabs on the work after the building changed to a Wells Fargo Bank and then was sold to the city of Kalispell for a new city hall. She contacted the city manager at the time who said the mural would hang in the council chambers — but then the renovation left the wall too small, so it ended up at the KM Building.

“Rand and I decided that it had to be someplace that the public could see it,” she said. “We went around to different places. We definitely wanted it to stay in Kalispell.”

With the city’s approval secured by White, the couple said Larson took an interest and “really carried the ball for us” at the college. Art instructor John Rawlings took on the task of cleaning the mural. 

According to Larson, the mural was in good shape but suffered from years of dirt and exposure to cigarette smoke at the bank. He said Rawlings worked on it for four days with a special cleaning solution that did not affect the oil paint.

“After it was done, it was almost like there was a bright light shining from it,” Larson said. 

Rand and Linda were equally impressed, saying the painting looked fresh with the colors much brighter and more visible in the Arts and Technology Building. They visit often and look forward to many others enjoying the mural left to Kalispell as a legacy from one of its most talented native sons.

“It will be seen by hundreds of people all the time,” Linda said. “You go in the front door and it’s right there. You cannot miss it.”

 Reporter Candace Chase may be reached at 758-4436 or by email at cchase@dailyinterlake.com.