How the Manti Project Began

by Al R. Young
It is impossible to turn back the pages of the calendar and point to a particular date on which The Manti Project began.  I can only point toward the haze of years, that now obscures so much of childhood, and say that somewhere "over there" or "back then" I yearned for a visual expression of stories from the Book of Mormon; more particularly, I yearned for an expression of the grandeur and wonder I felt in connection with the stories.

I have known, since the very early days of childhood, that I had artistic ability, but it has been the journey of a lifetime to try to understand what kind of ability and how much.  It has also been my experience that the dreams we have--about what we might do or what we might become--usually serve as sketches or even maps for what we should dare to do with the gifts we have.  My dreams about these things have come in stages, like hiking in the hills, where we see a summit we want to reach, go there, and discover that something even better looms beyond.

The early foothills along the way had more to do with achieving various kinds and degrees of artistic skill; not that my early works were merely lifeless exercises, for the development of skills ought certainly to include the ability to convey great feeling in connection with a subject. Looking back, all the foothills have been part of the same mountain range.

Of course, a great many things could be said about that journey because it lasted 40 years, but in terms of Book of Mormon artwork, the trail of my artistic endeavor finally took me up over a ridge in 2006, from which I had an unobstructed view of possibilities.  It is to that trail-head that the beginning of The Manti Project belongs for it was there that the sketch lines of the endeavor coalesced into meaning; and it was there that the destination finally had a name.

And I Will Not Deny The Christ (Moroni the Wanderer) by Al R. Young was the first painting completed for The Manti Project.  In its creation and substance can be found all the facets of the project as a whole.  Not the least of these is the approach to the material culture and the setting with which the figure in the painting is associated.