STORY AND PHOTOS BY KAREN BOSSICK

A new take on the story of the Sun Valley beavers that Idaho Fish and Game officers once dropped out of planes with parachutes is unfolding on the back wall of the Sun Valley Museum of Art.

Boston artist Ethan Murrow is about to apply the varnish to a nearly two-week project in which he painted his version of the story with the help of Nick Papa and members of the community.

The mural features a plane being piloted by a beaver. The sticks used in a beaver dam make up the body of the plane, while a woman’s face found on an arborglyph or tree carving made by Basque sheepherders sits on the tail.

Native American fishing hooks hang from the plane, along with a shepherd’s crook and jangling keys. The plane, which also boasts a healthy amount of galena ore, is dragging behind it an aquarium that offers a glimpse at the healthy underwater world that beavers help create.

As he looked for inspiration for his mural, Murrow was captivated by the story of how Idaho Fish and Game officers addressed an abundance of beavers in the Sun Valley and McCall areas by loading 76 of them into specially made beaver drop boxes and dropping them into the Chamberlain Basin in Central Idaho where they could help restore wetlands that had been ravaged by drought.

All survived the 1948 beaver drop but one.

“I was looking for a story I had a connection to, and I grew up on a sheep ranch in Vermont so I was familiar with beavers and coyotes. I ran across the beaver story and thought: What an amazing story about human ingenuity in trying to solve a problem. It’s a delightful story about humans and animals, how beavers can be pests but they also can be helpful.”

“My other goal was building imagery with a narrative that I hope will allow people to make up their own stories about what’s happening in the picture,” he added.

Rather than a straightforward painting of beavers parachuting out of a plane, Murrow decided he wanted to create a mural that might depict what it would be like if the beavers had been in charge of the operation.

“The beavers didn’t have a choice, but this is their plane. I liked the idea of beavers sneaking into the airport… I learned that beavers are quite the workers—they can transport their weight in materials and cut down a 150-foot tall tree.”

Murrow went to the Sawtooth Botanical Garden to learn about plants that are native to the Wood River Valley. Kristine Bretall of the Wood River History and Culture Museum in Ketchum helped him with research historical artifacts, fishing out keys from the 1800s that a resident had donated to the museum and an indigenous fishing hook.

He decided to model his plane after the Travel Air, a beloved plane that was used for the U.S. Mail and freight.

Murrow is known for his imaginative paintings that feature rather absurd characters absorbed in nature, such as the Hudson River Valley landscape. He created a sculptural piece featuring men exercising on and under a staircase and painted a man reading a book while seated on a stone in high tide with a bouquet of daisies on his head.

He’s donated a group of posters to The Museum to sell that feature a man hanging onto a tree lifting off over the ocean.

The Ketchum mural is the first outdoor mural Murrow has done.

He was invited to create it by SVMoA’s executive director Jennifer Wells Green, who met Murrow 25 years ago at a gallery exhibition he had in Los Angeles where Green worked then. She ran into him again at a private home in Ketchum and asked him to create a mural that would capitalize on local history and what’s relevant to the local community.

“He’s a really smart inquisitive artist who teaches drawing at Tufts. And we had a big blank wall that I always envisioned filling,” said Green, who said the museum will install an interpretive sign explaining the project. “Courtney Gilbert and I are so delighted by the beaver story. It has things like arborglyphs that people might not know about. Under plane, we asked Ethan to paint ‘1971’ because that’s when the museum was founded.”

Murrow started the project by painting a picture of the plane on paper, then projecting that picture onto the wall at night so he could trace a bigger scale version of it.

During the past few days, passersby have dropped in to help paint on the project.

Judy Fuller brought three fourth- through sixth-graders from Hailey to take part.

“They love art and didn’t say, ‘No!’” she said.

Courtney Noble and 10-year-old Maude Bates stopped by, creating their own paintings of a  parachuting beaver and a tree.

“It’s so cool and such a creative and retelling of a part of our history,” said Noble.

Moss Luem came with his sister Gaia and friend Emily Niven.

“It’s a cool way to be part of the community,” he said.

THE EDWARD R. MURROW CONNECTION

Yes, in case you were wondering, Ethan Murrow is the grandson of the legendary newscaster Edward R. Murrow. Murrow’s grandfather died before Ethan got a chance to learn at his knee, but his grandmother kept her husband’s legacy alive and young Murrow has learned about his grandfather from other sources, as well, including George Clooney’s new Broadway play “Good night, and Good Luck.”

Ethan Murrow said several family members seemed to get his grandfather’s gift for storytelling.

“And I think that’s why I like to tell stories with my paintings.”