SigMT

SiG MT 38 MEMORY LANE Contway was born on February 13, 1935, on the windswept northeastern plains of Malta, Montana. He was reared in the ranching lifestyle commonplace to the area, establishing a foundation and a respect for the working cowboy that kept him firmly tethered to his roots throughout the rest of his life. Oentimes, that resourceful cowboy know-how even helped pay the bills. But before those chapters could unfold, Contway had other milestones to achieve. Aer graduating from Malta High School in 1953, he ventured out of state and hired on with an oil crew out of Oklahoma. From that point forward, his life would be filled with constant travel and a passion for education. Contway ultimately returned to Montana and earned a teaching certificate at Northern Montana College in Havre before assuming his first teaching position in Loring in 1955. He impacted an untold number of young lives during the years that followed, teaching in the communities of Dupuyer, Lodge Pole, Cut Bank, Great Falls, and at the New Miami Huerite Colony prior to his retirement. When school let out for the summer, Contway would head out to the rodeo arena, where he racked up awards and championships of a different sort. He took home the top prize at the North Central Montana Rodeo Association's calf roping championships in 1964, 1965 and 1966 and also filled his Professional Cowboy's Association permit. Contway made the down payment on his property west of Great Falls in the spring of 1967, thanks to the sale of a good rope horse. He traveled throughout the Western United States, Mexico, Canada, the Bahamas and Europe, perusing art galleries and gaining inspiration for his own creations. "It was a small museum in Madrid that provided Jay the greatest inspiration of all," says his wife of 23 years, Lynn Contway. "It was here that he saw the beginning of the Bronze Age. No explanation was necessary. Jay understood what he was looking at." He even operated his own foundry for a period of time, enabling him to control the entire creative process of his crasmanship from clay to casting. "He closed his foundry at the age of 77, when his legs no longer had the strength to li a crucible filled with boiling metal," Lynn says. But by that time, he had long been a household name in the world of Western art. Many of his bronzes were like snapshots of energy-filled moments, and his ability to capture movement and the most minute of details was nothing shy of masterful. "He was divinely blessed with a God-given talent for Western art," Lynn says. "He painted in watercolor and oil, but his greatest gi was his ability to sculpt in clay and cast in bronze. No one made a beer cow horse than Jay Contway." "Jay featured and sold his art from box stalls and auction rings, to ballrooms and exhibition halls in more towns and cities than he could count, all while gathering a following of hundreds," Lynn says. "He is a legend. He has a legacy, just like C.M Russell." Jay and his wife, Lynn, forged a life together for 23 years.

• Cover