Waking Up At the Very Gates of Hell
“There are no words to describe what it’s like to open your eyes and realize you have been in an accident and you are paralyzed,” said Matt Clark, metal sculptor. Learn how one mother and son confronted a devastating reality with courage, creativity and art.
by Melynda Thorpe
If you believe that creativity is all in the family, you’re about to meet one mother and son that will painstakingly prove you right.
Contributing to the art and culture of their community, Lynne Clark-Brunson and her son Matt Clark are embarking on a journey that begins in the late hours of a hospital room in 1979 when Matt woke to what he describes as the worst possible reality anyone could ever imagine.
A senior in high school with a promising rodeo career ahead, Matt suffered a severe spinal chord injury while working under his truck one afternoon that would change everything for the Clark family.
Transported to the University of Utah Medical Center in Salt Lake City, Matt recalls, “I remember coming in and out of consciousness for the first couple of weeks before I really came to.” And when he did, “There are no words to describe what I experienced — I knew my entire life had been destroyed in an instant and it felt like I had been thrown into the fiery gates of hell.”
Against the prognoses of medical experts and doctors who would tend to him over the next eight months, Matt and his mother went to work deciding how they would together learn to think outside of the box.
It would require some rebellion.
“When doctors tell you that all you’re ever going to be is a vegetable and you ought to check yourself into a care center and you’ll be lucky to live maybe three years, I realized I had to define my own life and what it was going to be,” Matt says. Then, looking at his mother, “And you don’t make it through things like that alone.”
Matt recalls how his mother showed him by example the importance of “going against the clan.” He says, “Mom would come in each night and undo all that the doctors had done to discourage me during the day.” For example, “They would tell me I would never be able to push a wheelchair or use my hands and that was just something I was going to have to accept.”
He continues, “Mom would come into my room, remove the splints being used to fuse my hands and fingers and massage them and we would talk late into the night,” he says. From those moments, Lynne says she realized, “the one thing I could believe in was the healing power of love.”
Fundamentally disturbing, Matt says when he realized he could not have confidence in the medical experts assigned to help him, he would have to break down all of his previous belief systems and begin building his own.
“After about five years of therapy at home, I plateaued and realized this was not going to get any better,” Matt says. “It just doesn’t. There is no plateau. But what we have learned is to take each new day as it comes, to find a new ways of doing things and to never accept the answer “Can’t.”
The Artist Within
When Matt first came home and pieced together a sculpture from pieces of metal he saw in a pile, she says she loved it and encouraged him to do more. Matt had toyed with welding in high school, and when he realized creating sculpture could be a way for him to express his inner self, he began thinking of ways to make it happen.
“I came up with this design for the handle of a hammer that was different from anything anyone had ever seen,” he says. “But it worked for me, so I kept going.”
Matt has since built an entire metal sculpture shop around him filled with tools, hoists and systems that allow him to create works up to 30 feet tall. A favorite piece locally is “Painted Pony” located at Ancestor Square in downtown St. George. He also sells work to buyers throughout the country and last fall was the subject of a documentary film titled, “Pieces of the Soul” produced by Spencer Sullivan.
In addition to purposeful, Matt’s work expresses both the whimsical and playful side of his personality. Many of his pieces resemble animals of his imagination.
Despite what doctors had told him, Matt has learned to drive a truck, graduated from college, married, went to work for Dixie State University creating and developing the institution’s Disabled Student Services Program, and has become a successful full-time artist. And what he is admittedly most proud of, his son has also taken an interest in metal sculpting. Logan, age 12, recently announced that he plans to attend Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) to learn to build a hovercraft for helping his dad move up and down for working on tall, vertical sculptures.
The Power of Love
While attending Brigham Young University, Lynne worked part- time at the Bidulloph-Stum Photography studio in Provo, where she had the opportunity to learn the art of photography, which included hand painting photographs, at which she became very adept.
After graduating with a degree in music and art, Lynne was hired to teach music at American Fork High School and became a member of the Mormon Tabernacle Choir.
After moving to southern Utah, she decided photography would be a way for her to have the flexibility to be a mother while helping with the family income. Opening the Lynne Clark studio in 1968, three days a week she would drive from her home in Beryl, Utah, to St. George.
Within a year of moving to southern Utah, her first son, Matt, was born. That was 1961.
In 1989, having decided to take classes in counseling and psychology, Lynne graduated with a second degree in marriage and family therapy from University of Northern Las Vegas (UNLV), and though she claims to have never intended to be a therapist, she has developed a reputation for being one of the very best.
Life taught her to be, she says.
Over the years, Lynne has continued her work in photography and she began collecting historical photos in 1968. She now has more than 20,000 images dating back to the beginning of the Dixie Cotton Mission in 1861.
“My collection really began because I have an interest in history,” she says. “I could never have imagined that it would grow to what it has become.”
Recently, she published a book titled “Images of Faith,” a pictorial history of St. George, Utah. The book contains 400 pages and more than 1,200 photographs. The first printing of 1,600 copies arrived the day after Thanksgiving 2012 and sold out in 6 months.
“It is just delightful to me that people have taken such an interest in these photos,” she says. “We stand on the shoulders of the great faith of those original settlers of Southern Utah, and I believe we should pass on their legacy of faith and hope to coming generations.”
To all who have known Matt and Lynne and their family throughout the years, and to all who meet them as new friends, it is clear that they have not gone this journey alone. Truly, they are bonded together by the tragedy that was given them, and with determination, have found a remarkable way of creating meaning and purpose and joy in the process.
Melynda Thorpe is a freelance writer living in southern Utah. This article originally appeared in Southern Utah Neighborhoods Magazine.
