TEMPLE MURALS
Christensen said it all began with a local artist named Frank Magleby, who had gone on a mission for the church to paint easel paintings that went in foreign temples. When the time came for the Nauvoo Temple to be constructed, Magleby was approached and asked if he could put a team together to paint murals to enhance the walls of the temple interior. The group included Magleby, Christopher Young, Gary Smith, Doug Fryer, James Christensen and Robert Marshall. Though Magleby passed away in 2013 and Young went on to other ventures, Christensen, Marshall, Fryer and Smith went on to paint in other temples under the name Frank’s Boys, as a way to honor the artist and instructor that started it all. They are also four of the 10 key artists who worked on the murals for the Provo City Center Temple, along with Cassandra Barney and Emily McPhie (Christensen’s daughters), Downy Doxey-Marshall, David Linn, Jennifer Thompson and Clark Schafer. For Christensen, the opportunity to have a hand in such a holy work has been an incredible undertaking, especially in light of something he experienced at a young age. “I had an experience going through the murals at the open house of the Los Angeles Temple (in the mid-1950s),” he said. “I saw the murals there and it just overwhelmed me, and I
COURTESY OF THE LDS CHURCH
Gary Smith, a mural artist for the Provo City Center Temple, also did murals and paintings for a number of other temples, including the Brigham City Temple instruction room, pictured above.
thought, ‘What kind of a person could do these sorts of things?’ and it was just beyond me. No one could wish for anything better than to do a mural for a temple.” Christensen said it was just after that the church quit doing wall murals in temples — until Nauvoo, that is. Many years and several temples later, Christensen still sees the opportunity as a blessing, and a unique addition to his career as an artist. “Am I a religious painter?” he asked. “I don’t
do many Bible scenes and that sort of thing. My own direction has moved a little more fantastical and stylized, though I have done a few. But I’ve always accepted that it was a gift and a privilege and a responsibility (to create artwork for LDS temples). I’ve tried to use my art to uplift and occasionally chastise, but most of the time I encourage people and give them a job and give them things to think about. But I’m always very aware that I was blessed with a gift.”
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Just blocks from the Provo City Center Temple
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PCCT Magazine | January 2016