Sculptor Don Wiegand continues to be a mainstay on the St. Louis arts scene
By Traci Angel
Even if you haven’t heard of Don Wiegand, founder of the 40-year-old Wiegand Studios, you most likely know some of his work. The prolific St. Louis sculptor is the designer behind the esteemed Spirit of Hope Award, an award inspired by the late Bob Hope that is presented to those who demonstrate service to troops through the USO.
Many St. Louisans know Wiegand’s family through his sister and brother-in-law’s popular restaurant, Annie Gunn’s, and the adjoining Smoke House Market, started by his father, Frank Wiegand, in the 1950s.
Don Wiegand’s ties to St. Louis have always been strong. Wiegand studied sculpture at Washington University before opening his studio, a rehabbed former slaughterhouse in Chesterfield Valley that he allows to be used for parties, tours and fund-raisers. “I love it. I go back and forth to the coasts enough. I have deep roots,” he says.
Wiegand’s works are found in more than 500 private collections in the United States and Europe. Among his more famous are “Mary, Mother of the Church,” presented to Pope John Paul II at the Vatican; life-size bronze sculptures “Deidre” and “Maura,” located in the Lehmann Rose Garden of the Missouri Botanical Garden; and an Ernest Hemingway bust located in Boston’s John F. Kennedy Library.
Every year brings new projects. On March 18, a memorial sculpture to late St. Louis County Executive Buzz Westfall was to be unveiled in Clayton, and Wiegand is working on a sculpture to honor organ and tissue donors that will be erected in a park adjacent to Union Station.
Last year, Wiegand sculptures “Charles A. Lindbergh” and “Spirit of St. Louis” were aboard SpaceShipOne when it reached 360,000 feet as part of the private commercial space flight. The sculptures, created in tribute to Lindbergh’s historic 1927 flight, are on display at the St. Louis Science Center and this summer will head to the Smithsonian Institution.
There is no boundary to a sculpture’s possibilities, Wiegand says. One can take six months or 10 years to create, depending on the size, and his works tend to lean toward the patriotic or religious. “I’m very much both,” he explains. “But I’ll sculpt anybody. Everybody has a neat story or personality.”
