WELLSVILLE, Cache County -- Kreg Harrison says there's nothing like winning a 100-meter dash going away.
"It's bottled . . . then you explode," he says. "How many times in life can you be bottled and explode?"Actually, that defines Harrison's artistic career, which has erupted from an obscure studio in a well-kept secret corner of the globe, Wellsville, to acclaim as one of the world's pre-eminent dog sculptors.
It's a long way from Harrison's youth in Orem, where he participated in track, basketball, football and baseball at Orem and Mountain View high schools -- playing on a Class 4A state hoops champ in 1982 and running the 100 meters in 10.87, best in Utah at the time.
"My focus wasn't on art. It was on athletics and girls," said Harrison, who lives in Hyrum.
Now he commands $10,000 a pop for a bust of a dog, $15,000-$25,000 for a full dog figure (depending on size), $18,000 for a horse-head study (full horse negotiable).
Wealthy clients -- largely in the East and South -- pant for these works, as well as original waterfowl, bird dog and fly-fishing editions, snapped up at prices in the $1,000-$3,000 range.
So widely has his fame spread, he recently was the subject of a front-page feature in the Wall Street Journal -- however reluctantly.
"I haven't asked for this," Harrison said. "I'm a private person. I just wanted to blend in like everyone else. I pretty much agree with (LDS Church) President (Gordon B.) Hinckley who says adulation is poison.
"I'm just a guy who's worked hard and fallen in love with the thing he does for a living. I'm pretty sure most people in my past have to be thinking, 'You, of all people, on the cover of the Wall Street Journal?' "
But it's easy to connect the dots from Harrison's sporting past to his artistic triumphs.
Because both in sports and the animal kingdom, Harrison said, you find a thing called "it."
"When I choose a dog for a piece, I might go through 150 dogs till I find the right Lab I want to create," he said. "They're all dogs who have 'it.'
" 'It' is what Larry Bird had. Watch him walk down the street, he was just a schmuck. On the basketball court, he was effortless excellence.
"Marcus Allen was all fluidity and grace in football. Marcus had 'it,' just like Muhammad Ali in boxing and Pele in soccer.
"I've seen mule deer who have 'it,' the way they prance across a meadow, with the same quality Gregory Hines has. Baryshnikov has 'it.' That's what I look for in a dog."
But there is only one true way to translate "it" to a frozen metal medium. Only one way to live up to the sign on his studio at 85 Main St. in Wellsville that reads: "H. Kreg Harrison. Breathing Life Into Bronze."
That way, Harrison said, is: "From life."
You can't capture the essence of itness in a one-of-a-kind dog working strictly from photographs.
He'll follow a dog around for days, sketching, moving, doing "gesture studies," molding his clay on a small stand.
To catch the dog in his natural state, Harrison spends enormous time getting on good terms. When he started, he used a tape measure to get the dog's proportions.
"They immediately thought I was the vet. They stiffened," Harrison said.
Now he uses pre-measured rawhide.
"I let them sniff it. And me. Pretty soon they accept the routine and I've got a feel for them I want," he said.
Sometimes his penchant for accuracy gets wilder and woolier. Once, to get a top view of a Morgan stallion he was bronzing, he suspended himself on his elbows from rafters over the snorting horse's stall.
"I'd never seen proper photos of a horse's spine," he said. "It was kind of stupid. I didn't know what I was doing. But I'm pretty picky about my research."
That extends to musculo-skeletal study. Poke around Harrison's studio, you're going to bump into the odd bucket of bones. Dog scapulas, hips, crania.
"When I went to this vet in Cache Valley to get the bones, he probably thought I was some weird cultist," Harrison said, grinning. "But if you can't see the skeletal structure in the finished piece, you can't see the true animal.
"And hopefully what I'm giving you is not just a setter but your individual dog."
Harrison's penchant for authenticity expands to his studio. It looks as if an LL Bean bomb went off in there while undergoing the Attack of the Plaid Monster.
All along one wall are, oh, maybe 100 coats (Harrison has no idea). Many red-and-black Mackinaws standing shoulder-to-shoulder with ochre upland game vests and forest-green bird-hunting coats.
Along the floor, boots as far as the eye can see. Pack boots, high boots you tuck into pants. "Look at those groovy Converse wading shoes," Harrison says affectionately, the way someone might mention a pet cat.
John hats hanging everywhere. Fedoras. Elmer Fudds, the kind he wore when he winged a few at Bugs.
Gun cases coming out your ears. Creels. Stacks and racks of luggage.
"I like anything leather," Harrison said.
Burl-handled landing nets. One whole wall of old-time catcher's mitts. Wooden tennis rackets ringing the ceiling.
"Scary," Harrison said with a grin. "But I can justify it."
Each is a would-be prop in catalogs pitching his wares, Harrison explained.
"Anything with color. Anything with texture," he said. "I had experts tell me you can't package these kinds of items with your work. 'Detracts from the bronze,' they told me. It's been the thing that has sold my pieces."
And when it comes to actual sculpting, each relic is an ally.
"I use these coats to get the exact drape of a pocket, the hang of a sleeve," Harrison said.
More than anything he depends on personal experience.
Harrison discovered sweet fishing spots all over the West during an extensive guiding career. He both learned to appreciate and disdain people wishing to share his love.
"You see people dressed up like a Christmas tree out of Orvis (outfitters magazine). I just look like a hick from Utah. But when they went with me, they caught fish," he said.
Though a staunch conservationist, he loses patience with people such as those in a Wyoming gallery who banned one of his bronzes of a hunter with a brace of birds slung over his shoulder because it "depicted dead things."
"It's the providence of God," Harrison said of the game. "But you get these people swimming in Granola who never grasp the true nature of hunting.
"That sculpture has been one of my best-selling pieces."
Despite his natural affinity for outdoor life, Harrison couldn't have started out further from sculpting it. For six years of adulthood he was building a technical career with Word Perfect.
Making good money. And a black hole in his soul.
"If I would have stayed, I'd have slit my wrists," he said.
He took some physical therapy courses. Until one day helping ferry a patient, a colostomy bag broke onto his foot.
"I found out I do not do well with bodily fluids," he said.
When Word Perfect announced it was seeking an advertising designer, Harrison became interested. He'd sketched and taken art in high school. He didn't get the job, but it triggered his taking design classes at Utah State.
After commuting from Orem to Logan for a semester, he transferred to Brigham Young University, where he earned his bachelor's of fine arts in 1991.
More importantly, he ran into his mentor, Grant Speed of Lindon. Harrison calls him "America's foremost cowboy artist.
"He cowboyed in Texas. His work was honest. He was a family man. He was everything I wanted for a role model," Harrison said.
Soon, Harrison was turning out his own work. On a whim he went to New York where he coaxed John Apgar of J.N. Bartfield Galleries on 57th Street to meet him at a Manhattan hotel.
"He was used to selling Remingtons and million-dollar paintings," Harrison said. "He must've thought I was the bellboy."
But Apgar took one of Harrison's pieces. It sold. That began Harrison's big-city connections. His work is sold in galleries in Dallas; Atlanta; Lexington, Ky.; San Francisco; Scottsdale, Ariz.; Jackson, Wyo.; and Manhattan.
"I'm much better known in New York than Utah. Most of my work is sold east of the Mississippi," Harrison said.
There's a reason for that.
"Mormon frugality," Harrison said with a grin. "As a seventh-generation, frugal Mormon I can say that."
It's family enrichment, not independent wealth, he's after anyway. He and wife Brooke are proud parents of Madison, Sydnie, Shaeli, Nykelle, Erica and K.J.